Friday 26 December 2003

A Notice to All and Sundry

Notice: as I have received nothing whatsoever but chocolate for Christmas, I will no longer be accepting gifts of any kind of chocolate for some time. (Note the miniature chocolate computer on the left) I have approximately 6 months worth of chocolate to get through, and as I am trying to cut down, I will be devouring it at my leisure.
Please consider the vast numbers of non-chocolate items that can be readily purchased in your locals centres of commerce and consider making me gifts of some of the wide assortment of other things for sale of a non-chocolate nature.

Saturday 20 December 2003

Off For Two Weeks

Once my time filling in for a teacher at the Adult high school was up, I did some fill-in work on a day-by-day basis at various programs for troubled children and youth. I, for instance, supervised the twelve-year-olds whose mothers had sent them to school with their cigarettes and a permission form for them to smoke. I led them outside, where they (on Thursday, after an entire morning spent not doing their math) began to do the calculations for who would need how much booze on Friday. They had the ideal place not to get caught drinking underage (the eldest was 13): right behind the sewage treatment plant.
Eventually, I got hired as an "Instructional Assistant" for the rest of the year at a different "Adult" high school in the next town over, teaching people (some of them juvenile delinquents, some of them ladies in their 60s, who hold the mouse sideways and open a new instance of Word every time they look back at the screen after chatting with someone, and then can't find their original work) to use Microsoft Office. Some of the local scholars can be seen giving a friendly bird to the camera.
Had the school Christmas party. I can be seen here with the guitar. Now we are all off for two weeks at Christmas. Because I am technically a Temporary Instructional Assistant (though the reality is that I teach full-time and will until the end of the year), I won't be paid for the second half of December. Ha, bum hug.

Monday 8 December 2003

" 'Tis The Season... "

I've been hearing that phrase around an awful lot lately, usually without the ellipses or anything to make it a complete thought. For me personally, it seems "'tis the season for a huge buck to run full tilt into the side of my car while I was driving, caving in my front fender."

Friday 5 December 2003

more niceness and also something else

Finally got over to my folks' house for birthday supper belated by nearly a month. I ate way too much pot roast (roast beef with the carrots and potatoes cooked right in with the meat so the flavours mix together) and then chocolate cake.
There's a whole lot more going on in the lives of people around us than anyone can handle. Not many people are currently confiding in me, which is unusual. Some suffer in silence and others seem to get deadened to the bad stuff in their life and just endure it as if it were inevitable or normal. Some are kids.
Who here had a happy childhood? Didn't think so. When I was 15, we were asked to draw pictures of ourselves in art class. I attach the one I drew of myself back then: