Positive Title

It is Wednesday afternoon, and there is an Australian guy in my bathroom who actually says "mate" a lot. He's stabilizing the toilet because the floor's uneven and talking to somebody on his walkie-talkie. Apparently, we should have the floor redone so that it's level. Maybe later.

I have my meeting with my University Facilitator for my APT tonight. I don't want to go. This could be done via e-mail with only half an hour's worth of work on the adviser's part, but we have to go in a listen to her talk for an hour instead. It's far more inconvenient to skip, though, so I'll be going.

My parents left this morning. It's been snowing all day, so I'd say they chose a good time for a vacation. *jealous grumble*

I'm not quite sure why the repair guy keeps flushing the toilet when all he's doing is putting little plastic wedges underneath it... Oh, well, he just finished, and it doesn't seem like any pipes have burst, so it's all good.

My class had a "field trip" to the Bandstand this morning. They gave us an insane amount of brochures and sample CDs and whatnot. I think I'm going to have to organize a lot of this stuff that I've been getting and put it in binders or something. Not that a lot of the brochures will stay terribly relevant in terms of what they're promoting, but having the publisher information or manufacturerer information or whatnot might be good. We got a seating chart template today, for instance, that we'll have to fill out and submit for festivals, apparently, so I might keep that. Am I being a keener?

I'm in a bit of a better mood than I was yesterday, which I'm glad about. I noticed that my last two posts had rather negative titles and I thought I should add something less melancholy. Tom e-mailed us, though (speaking of my second-last post), admitting that the Curriculum Guides for Secondary Music are no longer on the Alberta Ed website. He didn't believe me when I told him yesterday. See, we need the General Music Curriculum Guide for our Unit and Lesson Plan assignments, and the library's out, so the fact that they're not online anymore (apparently, they were last year) is kind of important. Their not being online doesn't surprise me, though--they never even bothered to write a junior high General Music Curriculum Guide, so I guess they figured that nobody needed the high school one enough to keep it online.

Anecdote: When I was in junior high school, I wanted to switch instruments. I asked Mrs. Burns about this and she said I was bored. I was more or less like "Well, yeah." So she gave me scale exercises to work on.

Another Anecdote: I was writing in my journal (not diary--journal) before my first class one October morning in the tenth grade, as I often did, and I noted that Mr. Speers said something directly to me. It was the first time he'd spoken to me outside of teaching class. I didn't hear what he said.

Yet Another Anecdote: When I started high school, after a while, I decided to try again for another instrument. Mr. Speers was understandably reluctant to let a 10th grade student in the advanced band start a new instrument (I had asked for the bari sax). I gave up on it, but Joyce mentioned in passing to Mr. Speers that I'd really wanted it. He apparently sighed and told her to tell me to come see him. I was horribly embarassed at what probably came across as egomania on my part and avoided Mr. Speers for a good month afterwards.

One Last Anecdote: In the 11th grade, I signed up for Beginning Band (which is just Concert Band with a cheaper rental fee) on the bari sax. I even rented one over the summer so that I could hold my own and Mr. Speers ande Mrs. V-K wouldn't try to talk me into withdrawing. I didn't tell Jeremy, with whom I was studying at the time--he found out at the first concert. He mock-yelled at me and I thought for a second he was serious.

Blah...

Feeling somewhat listless right now, and wishing I had one of those cheesy emoticon features on my blog like on livejournal so that I could have a little tiny bobbing picture of a squished yellow head sporting a tire tread mark. Maybe listless isn't quite the right word...

I have just finished eating an apple and I now have a piee of skin stuck between my teeth. I ate the apple because I was hungry and dinner won't be for a while, and, when it's ready, it won't be something I like. I don't mean to sound like a picky kid, but I don't like snap peas--I never have--nor do I like baked potatoes--and, again, never have. These are to accompany steak, which is fine, but which we have quite often around here. Oh, well, it's a vehicle for my dad's wine and my parents are leaving tomorrow, so I let my dad eat what he wants. I know I told people at Morgan's birthday party, but I don't think I mentioned it here that my parents are going to a resort in the Mayan Riviera for two weeks. It's one of those nice all-inclusive ones where you can subsist on waffles and tequila if you want. Man, I could stand to spend a couple of weeks doing that. ^_^ My parents haven't been to a resort like that since the summer I turned 12, and that was universally acknowledged as the Vacation from Hell. Not because of the resort or anything, though, which is probably why they're trying it again. Even I was a little young for tequila at that point. ;-)

My cold is getting better, though certainly not gone. My nose is very sore. I got to class on time this morning and there were two other people there. We hoped that, if enough people were sick, the class would be cancelled and we could go home. Then Tom came in followed by some guy. More people showed up and the guy left, at which point Tom told us to stay away from him. Apparantly, he'd been the cause of a lockdown at a high school last week when they told him he couldn't volunteer in their Music program and he flew off the handle. Tom knows him, but the guy's a little nuts. He wasn't sure if he should call Campus 5-0 or not, and we told him to.

A girl in my class named Jen is scared that she has Mono. This would be a _bad_ time for that. Her husband's not sick, though, so she's pretty sure she's just got a nasty virus.

Other than that, things have been pretty low-key around here. My brother came over on Saturday for his birthday. I *gasp* did homework. Oh, and I got my student teaching placement. I'm at an academic Catholic high school near where Peter lives. Those of you who can figure out which school that is will understand why I'm happy with the placement, but those of you who can't figure it out will have to be confused, since putting the school or teacher name on this blog would be unprofessional. For now, anyways. ^_^

Oh, and one last note: I've taken down the Tinuviel Henneth link because she's put a "Xanga Lock" on her blog, which means you have to log in to a Xanga account to view it, and, since I don't believe that anybody who frequents this blog has such an account, nor do I believe that they are interested enough in her to get one so that they can read her blog, I just decided that the link is unnecessary. Wow, that was a long sentence. Not cynically, I suspect that this lock has been put up because she's started dating a guy she's been set up with and she is possibly slightly uncomfortable admitting to the world that she and this guy are trying something, lest her self-possessedness be called into question. The self-described "Ice Queen," who has torrid, one-sided love affairs with everyone and everything she comes across (and doesn't hate), has been of interest to me for a while now, and I am saddened.

Badness

Bloody Hell...
Why can't I find the Curriculum Guides on the Alberta Education website like Tom said we could?

Also: Nasty sinus headache, cough, and very sniffly nose. :-(

Yay! I Can Post Again!

For some reason Blogger has been doing weird things to Netscape recently, closing the browser whenever I click on the login page, so there have been a few times when I've considered posting something but haven't because it's been too troublesome. Right now, however, I am using Firefox, so everything should be good.

Do cough drops count as cold medicine? I'm not suppsed to take cold medicine because it makes my other medication not work, but I've been coughing lately, and I've been hedging my bets by buying those Halls Fruit Breezers, which have less medicine than their regular ones. They're remarkably tasty, and sucking on something gets me to swallow more, which lets less phlegm accumulate in my throat, but I'd either like to have more of the ingredient that dries out my throat, or, if I'm not supposed to have any, switch to maybe just some mints or something. I haven't felt too bad, though, at least. The cough is just annoying, as is the blowing my nose more often, which, since it's winter and the air is dry, makes it bleed. *sigh*

Otherwise, things have been pretty normal. Class goes on like always. We went on two "field trips" recently. On Thursday, we went to St. John's Music and they told us about their rental programs and score stock and repair program and all the stuff to tell your students to go buy from them. Yesterday, we went to the Alberta Band Association office, which I didn't know was across the street from Numchok Wilai, and Neil Corlett told us about their conference and mentor program and music lending library. We were supposed to go downstairs to the Alberta Choral Federation office after that and hear essentially the same lecture about Choral stuff, but the guy (whose name I can't remember) forgot and nobody was around. Nothing surprising about either excursion, but it was nice to have some areas of general uncertainty sorted out. And I've added to my booklet collection! Man, if I actually had a booklet collection where I kept all the booklets I ever got, I don't think I'd have space for a single other thing in my room. ^_^

Random Ramble: You know what I don't understand? Beyonce's current single, Irreplaceable. Apparently she's breaking up with this guy for picking up girls, impressing them with the car she boughtr him. He tells her that she's being stupid and won't ever find anyone like him. To which she replies "You must no know 'bout me... I could have another you in a minute... So don't you ever for a second get to thinking you're irreplaceable." There are a lot of questions this raises. Why did she buy this guy a car? Maybe she bought a new boyfriend a car because she was infatuated in the beginning of the relationship, and once the coup de foudre wore off, he went, uh, "cruisin'." Or, no matter of their relationship, is she saying that she wants another guy who'll cheat on her, or is she saying that every guy cheats and she knew that before this guy did? In either case, the hell? And what exactly is her point with the line "In my closet, that's my stuff. If I bought it, please don't touch?" She thinks this guy is a theif, too? How does that come from cheating? Or did she think that and still date him, regardless? And all this isn't even touching the double standard about how women should believe they are unique and dynamic and special, but the song tells the guy not to think he's irreplaceable.

[/end random ramble]

I'm going to the symphony tonight. It's their "Music from Video Games" concert. Shelly got Peter and Dave each a pair of tickets for Christmas. Dave went last night, though, since he'd all ready gotten tickets to go with Bioware people. I haven't heard what he's said about it, but
I'm expecting a fun night. :-)

Quick Update

A list of the most relevant things in my life right now, as I procrastinate doing homework on the morning it's due:

1. I find out a week from today where my APT placement is, but I want to know NOW!

2. My hair is now the colour of red wine. Seriously. It was supposed to be dark brown with a tinge of red, but a tinge of red applied onto blonde hair turns into much more.

3. Mort Park has died. :-( We were forewarned of a death, but I thought it would be the pet monkey. Mort and his bullhorn will be dearly missed.

4. The WoW expansion has not succeeded in taking away too much of my time, though I suspect I may spend a few hours with it this weekend. I can hear you all laughing at me now.

5. My Music class can spend a long time discussing very interesting things, and it makes me somewhat sad that this is more or less the last step in my professional career path where I can sit around doing that.

6. I think... that is all for now.

I Miss Mandy

Too funny.

Thanks, PRi. ^_^

It is Sunday morning and I am in my pajamas and slippers, sipping a latte from my cute latte mug and generally enjoying life. :-) My throat is slightly sore, which worries me as it tends to be the first sign of a nastier kind of cold, but for now I'm choosing to believe that it's just because I was breathing through my mouth while I was sleeping, thereby drying out my throat, and all will be well in an hour or so.

In slightly less happy news, I have to reformat my conputer again. It takes about five minutes to boot up, mostly just displaying a black screen, then displays Windows all funkily and tells me I need to reinstall some Configuration dealy that I don't think I generally need to be aware of the existence of. Then it won't do anything. It'll try its damnedest to open applications when I ask it to, but it just can't seem to manage it. It can't seem to shut down, either. I actually tried just turning the thing on, then turning it off. I went to take a bath while it turned itself off, and when I came back, like, 25 minutes later, it was still displaying the "Saving Your Settings" screen. I've been having to take the battery out to get the thing to shut down. Needless to say, I have no idea what's going on, and I can't exactly work to fix it when it won't do anything. So, my project for the afternoon will be to reformat the thing again. Luckily, I hadn't put too much work into the last reformat I did, just downloaded applications and tweaked their settings, rather than, like, having ripped my entire CD collection again. *head swims at the thought of how long that would take* Then again, I think I'd just get the program that takes the songs off my iPod, instead. But I'm rambling now.

EDIT: I fixed the problem without reformatting! Yay, me! The recovery CD that I could've used to reformat also had an option to reinstall specific components and applications, and I found the one I was looking for on that list. *does happy dance* On the other hand, I rented two discs of CSI Season Five to watch while I worked, and now I have no work to do. ^_^

These People Trynna Fade Me

I had a conversation that was interestingly disappointing today. I say this happily, as I've come to accept the fact that that's the best I can hope for. ;-)

I was at Vic this morning for the in-school portion of Ed Band with Craig Brenan. We were in the board room having a kind of discussion/meeting before going to observe his morning band class. He asked us to answer, in writing, what we considered to be the "purpose" of Secondary Music Education in Edmonton schools. After writing, we went around the table and each of us read out our answer. Then we went around the table again and refocused our answers in relation to these brainstorming cards that I won't bother describing. Then we had at each other, as was the point of the game Craig called "Muddying the Waters."

After we went around the table the first time, I was confused and asked for more specificity about the question Craig had asked us. I then found out that he was actually asking us at least these three questions:

1. Why should Music be taught in Edmonton Secondary Schools?
2. What is hoped to be accomplished by teaching Music in Edmonton Secondary Schools? (For convenience and practicality, I would further split this question into two sections: Curriculum-esque Knowledge, Skills and Attributes (good ol' KSAs) and everything else.)
3. Why do we ourselves want to teach Music in Edmonton Secondary Schools?

Ignoring the fact that number three may be a fallacy of many questions (because, if it is, we should maybe not have been there), I originally interpreted what Craig said to refer only to the KSA portion of number two. My ansawer, therefore, was as follows:

"...to develop music appreciation knowledge and skills through exposure to and experience with various types of music, with a primary focus on Western Tonal Art Music."

Craig said that my answer seemed "too textbook," and opined that Music teachers with such approaches seemed to suffer the worst from burnout early in their careers. I was vaguely miffed at him for misrepresenting the question, but, moreso, I was disappointed in him for only hearing jargon. "Music appreciation" is a big, fat, loaded term. Like "Heaven." Or "terrorist." Or "iPhone." And there's this assumption that nobody, not the teachers, the administrators, the students, the parents, the professional musicians, not anybody really gets that. I'd get more credit for limiting my scope and saying something like "...to teach students the calming effects of playing the piano" because it sounds like I might actually believe that.

This wound up sounding far more bitter than I intended. It's just that Craig, who's successful in his field and is preaching greater idealism to those who tend to all ready have the deluxe package, didn't understand that I was going for the most all-encompassing idealized goal I could come up with. I wish I knew so well the answers to the other two-and-a-half questions he asked.

I wish I Could Bring Coffe Into the Library...

So I made it to class today, only 20 minutes late. Getting out of Riverbend took forever, but it was smooth sailing after that. I'm now sitting in one of those glorious library sessions. Did you know that the Coutts library has its own blog? Craziness. I'm so glad I made it. *sigh* Oh, well. Ed Band tonight. That should be fun. Go, tuba! ^_^

Oh, and guess what? When I walked in, there were sheets for us to pick up, one of which was an evaluation sheet for this session! ^_^ I bothered with none of them.

Il Neige

So it's the storm of 2007, or so they're saying, and I really did try to get to class this morning. It took me 45 minutes to get out of Riverbend, then I sat on the Whitemud for another 20 waiting to get onto Fox Drive before giving up. The radio station I was listening to said nothing about Fox Drive, but it was at a stand-still, apparently (I found out later) because it was really slippery and people were having trouble getting up the incline and around the corner just before Belgravia Road. So I pulled out of the exit lane and drove down to 149th street to turn around. And I stopped at the Bon Ton Bakery and got blueberry danishes that were ridiculously yummy. I brought them over to my mom's office and chatted with her and Kim while munching. And now I'm at home and technically there's 50 minutes left in my class, but I've put my car in the garage to recover a bit, and I think it would be cruel to take it out now and drag it to campus, so here I sit, blogging.

The wondows at the back of our house look like a snow leopard splatted against them; there's a whole bunch of one-inch circles of snow all over them. From inside, where I'm cozy and dry, the storm is pretty cool. I got up this morning and my mom told me I shouldn't go to class, and I told her I'd be fine, but I offered to tell her that she shouldn't go to work. Unfortunately for her, she works about 2km away from our house, and even though traffic within Riverbend was horrid, it took her less than half an hour to get to work, thus eliminating the "I just can't get there" excuse. But a danish made her feel better. ^_^

Other than the storm, things are going well. I feel so much better to be back in Music-related classes this term. I understand school Music so much better than I understand school Drama, and I'm capable of appriciating school Music a lot more than school Drama. I'm hoping that doesn't change too much over the course of my APT. I still don't know where I'm going, which annoys me, but I've received confirmation from Tom Dust that Ken Klause has in fact left the teaching profession, at least for this year, in order to start a deck-spraying business of some kind, so I don't think there's a school that I would seriously object to being placed at. I'm going to be playing tuba in Ed Band starting tomorrow night. I hope I can remember how. ^_^ Bb is open and the rest is on a 3-valve system, except for the lower range. Right? Here's hoping, or things will sound... bad.

I think I will take advantage of this free morning to do a load of laundry. Clean clothes are always nice. :-)

Friday Night Excitement

So I've reformatted my computer and it's more or less back to normal now. Ironically, though, I'm using my parents' computer right now, just because I don't feel like bothering with with setting mine up right now. Reformatting was easier than I thought it would be, since I had a System Restore DVD. I just stuck the disc in the drive, confirmed about five billion times that, yes, I understood that all of my data would be deleted and I still wanted to proceed, and it did its thing for a few minutes and started up good as new. The first thing I did was change out the atrociously difficult to look at Satellite background the Toshiba Windows defaults to. It's very busy and shiny and makes you not really able to see what's on the screen.

Then I had to leave, because Sean called and resheduled dinner for that night because he had to have dinner with Deebs the next night. It was a good night. There were only five of us there-- Sean, Angela, Dave, Peter and myself--but much good food and fun was had by all. Afterwards, we went back to Peter's place and successfully experimented with Chocolate Kahlua Milkshakes. Mmm... ^_^ Sean apparently leaves at ridiculous o'clock tomorrow morning, and will only be gone for four months, which is the shortest he's been away in years, which is nice. I declare that Jo and Eric need to come back when Sean does, too. And Iva, because I want to meet her.

I go back to class on Monday, and, as much as this break is nice (and was so very needed), I'm glad to being going back because I'm getting bored. I know Spike's daytime schedule too well. Going back means that I have to go buy books, though, and read the first chapter of one of them before Monday. *sigh* I should do that tomorrow. The bookstore will be open, I'm assuming...

This is possibly because of my IPT, possibly because I haven't done it in a while, but I'm feeling the urge to do some acting. This is odd, since acting isn't really what I prefer to focus on in Drama and tends to wring me out a fair bit. I totally don't have the time to do any acting, and, even if I did, I'm not sure where I would start, really, since all the acting I've done has been class-related, except high school, where it was still for credit (though my Jazz Band credits always superceded it as Performing Arts X5), and I have very few contacts who would be able to help me. *sigh* It's all moot, I guess, and that's probably for the best, but, at the risk of sounding pretentious, I'm feeling somewhat expressionistically frustrated, and music isn't what's coming to mind.

One thing I have do to soon: Find a copy of MS Office. My version of Windows comes with OneNote, because it's the Tablet PC edition, and while that's technically an Office application, none of the others are included. Last time, I used my mom's government copy, but she's lost that, and now I'm stuck. Peter has no copy, Jenilee is a Mac user... I guess I could ask Joyce. Or somebody else who reads this blog and still lives in Edmonton. Anybody have a copy of Office I could borrow? Does it have a key code? :-D

Godot Would Be Faster

Contrary to the comment I just left on Morgan's blog post, I have in fact decided to make a New Year's resolution: to reformat my computer. It is now afflicted with the randomly-close-your-browser virus/spyware/annoying thing. This happened to Peter's comupter a while back, and it was really freakin' annoying. Then something happened to the computer and it wound up getting reformatted kind of by accident... Anyway, I've been meaning to do this for a while now--I've even got almost all my stuff backed up--but I just haven't gotten around to it. It seems like now is as good a time as any, since I'll have time to put everything back together before I need my computer for class. And I'll still be able to use my parents' computer (which is what I'm doing now) if I have to. Still, though--stupid computer.

It's just past 11 am and I am waiting for someone to show up to fix the shower door. They said they'd be here sometime this morning, and so far they haven't failed to live up to that, since it's not yet noon, but I'm not holding my breath. I actually had to wake up in case they did show, though, which is probably for the best, since my sleep patterns have been quite off-kilter lately. I made myself go to bed at 2 o'clock last night when there were no more CSI reruns of any stripe to watch. That show occupies an odd spot in my TV life. I like it (specifically the original), and I'll usually choose it over sitcom reruns and the like, but it's very full of implausibilities and errors that, if I decided to actually declare myself a fan of the show, I would have to come to terms with. Then again, from my perspective, being a fan of something is a rather larger declaration than it is for some people, since I have the dubious advantage of knowing what being a "fan" can mean. I've gotta say, though, that I think a ridiculously fun and exasperating job would be some sort of television dramaturgy position as a "fandom expert." But I doubt that anybody reading this knows what I'm talking about at this point, so I'll move on. ^_^

I finally checked my daytimer today and now know for certain that classes start on Monday the 8th. I was convinced for a while that classes started on a Wednesday, since that's how Fall term goes, but I was wrong. :-( Oh, well. I'm looking forward to my classes this term. If I remember correctly, they're from 9-12 Monday to Thursday, with Ed Band Thursday nights and Fridays reserved for an unscheduled class about Ed Band. I wonder what I'll play. I think I'd be good with anything except the clarinet. That was sooo my worst instrument. ^_^ My first choice would, of course, be the saxophone, preferrably bari, since that's the closest thing I have to a second instrument, but I get the feeling that I should expand my horizons a little more. Maybe play the tuba. ^_^ For those of you who've been in Ed Band, what did you play?

Hmmm... I think it's time for breakfast.

Celebratory!

I guess it's no longer officially New Year's Day, but I'll wish you all a happy new 2007 anyway. Happy new 2007!

Last night was good. My parents were a little stressed, but things went smoothly. Everybody we were expecting made it, even the couple coming from St. Albert. Dinner was large and delicious, with ham, lamb, candied yams, potatoes, veggies and an assortment of other dishes. There were a lot of people there, but there were also a lot of leftovers. I didn't get that drunk at all, or, at least, when I started to feel a little woozy, I had water and coffee and felt fine for the rest of the night, even though I kept drinking. Even Jenilee had her glass of Rose Champagne at midnight and even a sip of the port my dad opened. We turned on the TV 17 seconds before midnight, so we basically had time to realize how soon midnight was and then do the countdown from 10. Lots of smooches and hugs and such followed. These were mostly my parents' friends, though they're people I know and like, so it was all good. A couple of the people there had never met Peter, including Jenilee's dad, Joe. Joe got smashed and fell down trying to put his boots on when he was leaving and left a mark on our wall, but that was the worst of it, so it's all good. I played DJ with my mom's iPod, but the people there were of various ages and had differing tastes, so after people told me to change The Doors' "Break on Through" to another song, I turned on The Beatles 1 album and told my mom she could play DJ. At Jenilee's request, I introduced her to World of Warcraft. Peter had been joking about her potential to become a world premier raider, and her affinity for the game has certainly done nothing to disprove him. No surprise, she wanted to play a Night Elf Hunter (I guessed it would either be that or a Druid, which was her second choice), but she was very focused on doing stuff and killing things. I leant her my install CDs and Guest Account code, and once she gets high speed internet at home, she may become a force to be reckonned with. ^_^

Other than that, not much has happened since my last post. I went to bed at about ten past two last night and woke up just after 11 when Peter woke me up. I was very surprised at the fact that he woke up first, and I wasn't that keen on getting up, but I knew I should, so I went and procured coffee. Mmm... coffee. :-) And now it's after midnight and I am perpetuating my skewed sleep pattern. My parents went to bed at about 9:30, though, which I contemplated doing, but figured there were other, more amusing things I could do. Like write in my blog. Maybe *now* I'll go to sleep. Maybe. ^_^