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.

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.

" '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."

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:

A non-Band Practice

What we did today was, a bunch of us all got together and worked on each other's songs with no focus on an immediate gig or who was in what instrumental roles. We were freely switching instruments, and generally playing songs by three different people who have never played in the same band before. At one point I was sitting on the floor cross-legged in front of a keyboard, feeling like Schroeder, playing left-handed keyboard while singing harmony vocals and shaking an egg shaker, feeling like I was contributing something. It was fun. My brother-in-law and sister have moved back to town, so we can practice music together. Laying aside dreams of being stars and having huge gigs really seems to help us get places with putting together some songs with everybody helping out.

How September's Looking

So my car died and my sister had a miscarriage and I didn't get a job to start the school year. I trusted that it wouldn't be all bad, though, and the first Friday of the first week of school, I got called for a 4 week fill-in job. Only 4 weeks isn't good, but 4 weeks of work at full teacher pay is badly needed. It's an "Adult Alternative High School" which means kids who dropped out of the normal system paying money to come in and work fairly independently on lessons to get high school diplomas. Almost all of the girls (15 and up) are pregnant or new mothers. At ten minutes to each hour, pretty much every student (all but maybe 3 of 30) goes out for a smoke. Extremely pregnant 15-year-olds smoking in low-cut tops and push up bras and sweatpants stretched drum-tight that say "Naughty" across the butt is starting to look normal and everyday to me. There are a lot of gauged ears, piercings and tattoos of all sorts, including several people with tattoos across their throats and up and down their necks. There's a lot of talk about visits from lawyers, police, abusive ex-boyfriends, parole officers and welfare people. Girls are scared that they'll be thought "bad mothers" and argue about who is a bad mother. I'm teaching a lesbian woman who my father taught in Grade 5 ten years ago. I'm teaching kids who are struggling with following the rules and jumping through the hoops to pass Grade 12 English, who write plays and poetry in their spare time and read John Irving for fun. I'm trying to get 18 year olds with kids named after Greek gods to read two pages of newspaper article and answer the questions, and they get bored and go back to reading "The Fellowship of the Ring" under the table, which they're halfway through. I'm liking it far more than I thought. In high school, I never heard the words "Can I PLEASE get the other books so I can do more work now?!"

A Good Weekend With Not Nearly Enough Names to Go Around

Saturday was Dave's birthday. Bill and I drove to my Dad's house and worked on the garage roof for an hour or two, then went to Kingston for Dave's party. Dave's sister has started selling Tupperware, so the party was in the form of a Tupperware demonstration, with Tupperware products being used to make salsa (which we ate with corn chips), chicken with rice, and chocolate cake, all using only using the microwave and Tupperware stuff. Dave's friend Dave was there. Dave's friend Dave hosts stand-up comedy nights at the "Time To Laugh" comedy club in Kingston, so we hung out with him, then went to the show.

All the comedians we saw were hilarious, which came as a bit of a shock. While hosting, Dave asked "Who has a birthday today?" and one lady put up her hand. He asked what she'd gotten for her birthday and she said "A facial!" He turned pink, then said "Just when I was trying not to get too dirty... A FACIAL? What else? A pearl necklace?!" When Dave asked "Who else has a birthday today?", Dave sitting with us yelled "Me!" When comic Dave asked birthday Dave "And what did you get? Not a facial, right?" Birthday Dave yelled from the back of the club "Tupperware and Scotch!" which was an odd enough response to get a laugh.

The headliner was Steve Patterson (pictured here) who has a unique style, to say the least, and doesn't depend upon sexual humour as much as the others did. There were actually TWO guys named Steve Patterson (out of four comics) that night! The "other" Steve Patterson (who had to go first, to support the "main" Steve Patterson) said he was annoyed that gay people have taken the rainbow as their symbol. He says he isn't ready to give it up as a symbol with non-gay connotations, and suggested several symbols that would more explicitly symbolize homosexuality. Steve Patterson the headliner took requests and did song parodies with different accents. His "A Scottish Pink Floyd sings about the audience tonight" song was extremely weird. The mother of some kid name Ryan who is competing on "Canadian Idol" was there.

We slept on couches and the like at Dave's afterward, and the next day we had french toast, talked and played video games on the XBox, then we came home and Troy, Bill and I watched an episode of "Six Feet Under", a show I really like that I wanted them to see. We went to rent it, but it was all out, so we were "forced" to get it by electronic means.

Bill bought the "Bowling For Columbine" DVD and we watched the extras for that as well. I'm certainly not saying what my real name is, but it's exactly the same as the director of "Bowling For Columbine", so I have just gotten used to seeing that name written everywhere and assuming it doesn't mean me, even if it is getting an Academy Award.