Here I Am

Hello, fine people! I aplogize for not posting more lately. That whole APT thing takes up rather a lot of time. This week, however, is Spring Break! I spent the first weekend with an odd stomach bug, but now I'm feeling fit as a fiddle. Except for being sore from yoga. And the fact that I've been having nightmares. *sigh* No such thing as perfection, I guess.

So I've read everybody's blog posts from the past month or so, and I'm now all caught up. Yay for Jo and Eric comeing back!! I take it that's at the end of June? We will have to have dinner. :-) And yay, Angela, for blond boy! Smitten is an excellent state of being. :-)

Things have been pretty standard around here as of late. Peter still has MorPRi's copy of WarioWare. We should get together this weekend for wings or something and get that back to you. During school, I'm there until 5:30 three days a week for rehearsals. I'm conducting some fun stuff, like October and Havendance. Registration for next year is now complete, so I've got two classes of grade 10 students, most of whom have officially decided to not take band next year, but they're still behaving and performing well. I have a lot of prep blocks during the day, since all the after school stuff is for credit and therefore counts towards my mentor teacher's courseload, but the two-hour after school rehearsals are exhausting. Late afternoon is not my best time of day. All in all, though, I'm having fun and getting my work done. I owe the Coutts Library $13, so I can't register for my classes for next year right now, but I've more or less decided to take a full year of at least 8 courses, total, despite only needing 6. I want to take the Popular Music Theory course. Don't look at me like that.

I've been spending my time off watching the second season of Boston Legal on DVD with Peter. I adore that show. I am deliberately avoiding knowing anything about its fan base, though--some things I just want to enjoy unadulterated. I should get my butt in gear and write some lesson plans for next week sometime soon. My mentor teacher leaves for Cuba with the Jazz Band on Thursday morning, so a week from today. He gets back very early on Friday morning of the next week, and is supposed to be around to teach that day. Since the weekend they're gone is Easter, I will have the program to myself for four school days. I'm vaguely terrified, and I wish I could go with them. There will be a sub around, and I've met her, but she's not a band teacher. She's a professional sub. Before I found out that my mentor teacher has requested her, I was going to see if I could get Angela. ^_^ I'm kidding, mostly, but that would have been fun. :-) Then again, I guess Angela's not on the Catholic sub list. :-(

I should go get some lunch. My mom bought a whole bunch more of those Bistro Crustini things, so I think I'll go microwave myself one. :-)

Am Sick

So it's been a while since I've posted. I've been busy. And I have time to post now because I am sick and I can't really sleep anymore. It's just a cold, but a nasty one. I was at the Catholic School Board Band Share Day last night and was feeling worse by the minute. The night went well, otherwise, though. I saw Ben, among other people. He managed to get a job teaching at a Catholic school. I found that funny, though not so much when you consider that the reason he got the job was because he student taught there last year and was asked to come back because the wife of the guy who teaches there normally died on Saturday. :-(

Anyway, the PD day we had on Monday was considerably better than the one I had last term. No yelling at all. ^_^ I even managed to get out of one of the meetings because it was about the IB Middle Years Program, which is not particularly relevant to me, or even to my mentor teacher.

Why won't the DayQuil kick in? Bleah...

As for the rest of my life, it's been on hiatus for the time being. I went down to the University yesterday to look for Nora (one of my students wants to buy a harp, and I thought Nora taught on Tuesdays, but, alas, she doesn't), and I saw a bunch of people I hadn't talked to in a while. It was quite nice. :-) I have been missing my friends lately. I can register for next year sometime soon, so I should check on that. See how long I'll be in school. ^_^

Two Days of Socializing

Something new that I learned today: Red Bull works, and it tastes like Rocket candies (the Canadian kind).

Teacher's Convention didn't really teach me anything, though. It wasn't as bad as I feared it would be, but it was of almost no use for professional development. Lots of jewlery booths in the trade fair area. A session on how Rita Burns and Jayne Mongomery-Barnes run their programs. (I went to Avalon, and nothing really has changed there.) A session on training singers. (The Alexander Technique is really easy to get wrong.) A session on the role of music in the lives of adults with careers outside of music. (Romeo Ochoa is an interesting man.) A session on a fiction writing program this woman will come do with your English class for a week. (She wasn't familiar witht the term antecedent action.) Today I missed the first session because I showed up for the second session thinking it was scheduled for the first block. So I got myself a chai from Remedy and ran a couple of errands. *Then* I went to watch a session consisting of the Northern Alberta Junior High Honour Band rehearsing for an hour and a half. (Their concert was this evening, but I did not attend.) Then I skipped the last session and walked around the trade fair. (There was lots of free candy there, too.)

School is still going well. This coming week is one of the few five-day weeks I've got. Apparently, we have two PD days. Here's hoping they're at least not unpleasant. Last term, the PD we had was unpleasant.

It's really cold in the basement of my house, which is not good because my bedroom is in the basement. Right now I am wearing long-sleeved, long-pantsed pajamas and fuzzy slippers, and I'm under my down comforter, and I'm still frozen. Shades of Montevideo. My "warmth box" on the computer power cable isn't even warm right now! :-( So I think I will go turn on my space heater and atempt to sleep. I will attempt to post something interesting soon.