Year-End Update

Dear all,

Amid turkey leftovers, guest-receiving, chocolate overdoses, a new washer arrival, and a terrible, terrible mess to clean up from the delivery, I'm having a wonderful holiday. It lasts for another week, or two, or whenever. As it so happens, my long vacation is a result of a good and/or bad thing - being a supply teacher.

Anyway, I would like to start to end this year's blogging by trying to remind myself what happened over 2005. Uh...

January

Continued to work at the school. Constant reminders of why teaching is a hit-and-miss game pop up everywhere. Also, January tends to be the most depressing month due to nothing happening.

February

Ivo comes to visit and cheers me up immensely. :):):) ... Winter is also starting to look less ugly due to my first trip to the tubing place. Stupid shit happens with the landlord.

March

Nagging thoughts over purpose of obtaining two degrees.

April

The Pope dies. Why is this such a big event to me, I'm not even sure anymore... Waves of strike days further disturb the regularity of the school year at the school, not to mention the teacher turnovers during the year.

May

More of my strike escapades. 3/4 of the school disappears to the wild for a character-building camping trip, while the leftovers like myself are stranded at school to fend for ourselves.

June

Exam corrections, and biking diversions pepper my month. The anniversary of my father's death still hurts.

July

Trip to Cowtown and environs. Weddings strengthen the family bonds. Got to see Wesley. :D Also, got to meet the psycho vampire dog Bobo. :|

August

Disappointed with myself not getting a job for the school year. :( Nonetheless, I made a vow to continue working in Quebec.

September

Amazing training to run 5 km! Well, not really that amazing. I turn 25. Does that mean I'm just an old baby?

October

Amazingly completed the run. @_@ Also, amazingly obtained a driver's licence. @______@ Also, the start of a long supply teaching run...

November

Continued the long supply teaching run. Happily, it means that I shouldn't be as worried as the summer to obtain a job, hopefully for the reasons I'm thinking of. The word "pancake" keeps popping up. Eddie's grandma passes away. :(

December

Birth of PJ the 3rd. :) Along the same lines, I learned the virtues of ordering things online. The possible start of crazy buying sprees... Felix and Rachel separately visit for the holiday break. :D:D:D

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Jorgh visits me every month or so. I also go to Montreal every so often to shower him with gifts and/or food. I mean "and."

I met many interesting people and had lots of memorable experiences. I keep reading more and more manga when I should actually try to read real books, but I find pictures and stories more attractive. Might this be the real start of a different path?

Indeed it is.

A Merry Cleaning Ninja Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Here's PJ the 3rd, with new best friend Mama-Mega-Modem. 

The Aria is Alive!

Finally, after three days of hacking away, PJ the 3rd is connected to the net. But not all is perfect in the cute little box (that now does *not* blind me, having disconnected the infernal light plug)...

Such a quiet, quiet box... but alas, my motherboard is having a completely screwed up time trying to get any sound out of it. No sound driver. And it seems that the culprit is the ever disgusting WinXP (that I had installed from a questionably legal copy).

On top of that, so far I have experienced the SUPER LENGTHY blue screen of death thrice at completely random times in the last few hours. It doesn't give the odd short unintelligible message, no. The entire screen is filled with unreadable blather about how crap just happened and just when you think you're about to read War and Peace on your screen, it flickers off and you're left wondering what happened after the second word.

Oh, PJIII, when shall I be allowed to enjoy the first game of Baldur's Gate upon thine precious hard drive? ;_;

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I had a most disgusting hot chocolate event this evening, when I brought out my suspiciously old box of cocoa and made a cup. Right when I'm about to take a sip, a dozen little floating dark non-cocoa flecks floated up to the top. Little bug-shaped flecks. :(

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Did *anything* happen today that didn't end in tragedy for me? Well, I woke up early to join the teachers up in the hinterland to picket, since all the public school teachers in the region are on strike. I was not obliged to go, as I am not working, but I decided to join in to show my appreciation of everyone.

What I enjoyed the most was one teacher's most clever sled. It looks like a dog sled, but it's actually a kick sled, that was designed in Norway. It's part skiing, part sliding, and all fun. She said it was a gift from her husband, who got it from Ontario. She also said it cost around 400$. I said I would buy a million of those and sell them here if I could.

At the end of picketing this morning, we were treated with coffee and doughnuts by the union. :)

I Feel Totally Stupid.

After the months of research and weeks of buying parts, I finally got them on Wednesday. I have been out of town though since Wednesday, so I only got the chance to put the parts together today.

I was very happy to start cracking on the assembly, thanks to the wonderful Antec Aria case, and the cheapo Asus A8N-VM CSM motherboard. I then realized after several attempts at plugging in a 20-pin power connector to a 24-pin power receiver, that the two are not actually compatible, nor wish to become compatible.

I do not blame Ars this time because they didn't recommend it, and I bought the parts without thinking everything through. Hell, I would have just stuck my old crap in the new box if I didn't read about mATX cases. But let that be a lesson to us all. 20!=24

UPDATE: There exists an adapter for this kind of crap. Good.

UPDATE 2: I feel like an even bigger idiot. There's a way for the 20-pin plug to go into the 24-pin socket, with an extra 4-pin plug. Ok, I don't even know how it works, but it should. ... If my next update starts with "OMG" it means I killed it.

UPDATE 3: Much luck! I put it all together, and now it runs like a blueberry chocolatety potluck with marshmallow fluff... I mean like a dream.

Sub (Last Day)

I finished early and decided to offer my services voluntarily to the elementary sector. It was soooo fricking cute. The kids were in the hallway getting dressed to go out for recess, and they recognized me from the music band's performance.

"Are you the miss who teaches music?" one cute little huggle asked.

"I taught music, yes."

"Oh I love music!" And she went on and on about the things she enjoyed and the activities that she participated in. And it was so fricking cute! I wish my kids could do that... ;_;

(Unfortunately, the teens get more depressing and/or disturbing as they get older.)

My colleague invited me to her class to help her class with their 150 word Christmas stories. The little boy who also came up to me after the Rememberance Day performance was in that class, and he exclaimed, "Oh, it's the music teacher! You're a very good music teacher!" Then he read me his cute story about Santa and Rudolph zipping around the world delivering toys despite the terrible events befallen upon their quest for Christmas cheer.

Actually, all the kids wrote about terrible events befalling Santa and Rudolph. One even suggested that Santa experienced terrible injuries and/or disease, such that Christmas was delayed by four days.

I had to stealthily escape eventually to visit the office, but my colleague informed me that the kids asked when I would go back to visit again.

God, I should just visit that class every day. ;_;

Return to Obscurity

The teacher is returning on Monday, but I have a supply day Monday as well for another teacher so it still means I have to go back there Monday.

I wasn't sure yesterday if I was supposed to return to continue replacing but they told me that morning so I spent all evening at school correcting absolutely everything. It was worse than report card deadline because at least I had weeks to prepare for that. I don't even know if I cleaned up everything in her room... But I'll be able to talk to her on Monday to straighten out certain things, like why there's a chocolate bar in the drawer, and where I left the records because I sure as hell don't know.

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I'm listening to "Christmas in Heaven" from the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life, and I think it was probably the most exciting Christmas song at the time. Who wouldn't like to watch a song and dance number with a bunch of topless women? Really. '_'

I still have yet to watch Life of Brian. That could probably count as a Christmas-y theme of a movie, no?

I got home last night and started uncontrollably singing a jazz variation of Jingle Bells everywhere. It must have been due to the supression of all holiday spirit I had to endure during the last few months, not necessarily due to the union's pressure tactics.

When my computer parts come, I'm going to go absolutely INSANE.