Cooking Goals

I flunked my cooking goals. I burned my cornbread

And my pumpkin bread looks more like pumpkin cake

Nice photos though, eh? Really, the pumpkin bread was a delightful, delicious mistake which a number of people enjoyed. I made a taco dip for the Halloween party at WALES tomorrow, and it seems to have turned out well. I'm baking bread right now for my Random Act of Kindness, which I will give to my WALES coworker and my fellow Student Life Interns at our staff meeting tomorrow.

Halloween Costumes

I got a costume. I'm going as The Emperor of Evil (Only XXL in Wal Mart). I was pretty satisfied with it, but then I looked at the little tag with the photo of what it's supposed to look like, and it had a hood and a medallion. I felt better when it said "Accessories seen in photo may not be included with the costume" but then I read "Includes: Hooded robe, chest drape, caplet, upper face mask, medallion, gloves, belt."

I got ripped off!

I almost went as a lumberjack. That's easy, 'cause I just have to wear a flannel shirt and my suspenders, pop the rim on my toque and buy a toy ax, 100% lumberjack. One year I didn't dress up and just wore a flannel and popped my toque and people were like "Yo, that costume is legit!" Too easy.

But I have a friend who's going as a "sexy lumberjack" and uhhhh.... I can't be an unspecialized lumberjack next to that.

When I joked that the only Halloween toy ax I would find would be a demonic-stylized one, I considered going as an "evil lumberjack".

I stitched up my backpack. I got a backpack last Christmas, and it began to fall apart depressingly fast. The new tear seemed so ugly. but once it became wide enough that I could pull out my Family Ties That Bind textbook without unzipping it, I began to see it as a convenience. In the end, it was still too ugly, and I stitched it up. First I used dollar store thread, and it tore pretty fast. I had a really demotivating evening where I kept trying to stitch it and it wouldn't hold. Eventually I resorted to using fishing line. If it's good enough to hold a fish, it's good enough to hold some textbooks!

All the guys in my house use hygiene products that say "for men" on them. All the cheapest products have really feminine titles for some reason, like "Silkience Salon Formula" as if you have to pay extra to retain your masculinity and clean yourself at the same time. But I got a thing for shea butter, which comes from Mali, and around here it's considered a feminine product. So in the bathroom I've got my shea butter body wash and hand soap next to all my roommates sexually-insecure male-qualifying ripoff cleaning products.

They'll regret it when I have better skin later in life.

Respect Meetings

We had our first two Respect meetings last week that weren't run by our supervisor. I co-facilitated both of them, with a different partner each day. Both went fine, but the meetings were pretty small. We had ten volunteers in our first meeting and five in our second. We had a speaker come in both days and she was good enough to present to such small groups without complaint. She explained the background of Random Act of Kindness Day (this November 9th), which is what the meetings were about. Our next big project is facilitating RAK Day celebrations and events.

I'm being made to celebrate Halloween this year. I don't hardly know what an adult is supposed to dress up as, or where to get material for a costume. And I should probably get that figured out this weekend, since I may not have time during the work week.

Got block placement next week, which means I will be doing placement throughout the week. I also didn't have any projects due last week. Feels like vacation. Although if I hadn't been exempted from my communications class, I'dhave something due this week. And since I have the assignment to develop an Engagement Plan for Respect, and since doing four hours in meetings and five in the office is longer than the two hour comm class, I still don't have a lighter work load.

SSW Year 2 Grades

I've had some grades back by now. I got my first essay back, which was on an ethical dilemma that I've faced. I got 90%. Real happy, especially since I was uncertain if I was taking the right direction with it. I got my preliminary proposal back for a group me and a student partner will be running at my placement. 100%. Was on top of the world until I realized that a bunch of other people got the same grade.

When my partner boasted about our accomplishment to the WALES staff, I said "Wanna feel less special?" and explained how we weren't all that amazing considering how high the class average was. So the staff made me write our accomplishment on a piece of paper and put it in the "Awesome Jar".

Got a group assignment back today. 65%. Since passing is 60% and I need to retain a 65% average to stay employed at the school, I wasn't thrilled by this grade. Both my group members were really strong, too. None of us know where we went wrong, so we're looking forward to getting our feedback.

Did our first midterm exam today. I felt unprepared. It was a case study and I didn't feel completely lost on any questions, but not completely comfortable with any of them either. So we'll see how that goes.

Submitted my Field Placement Contract today, which comprises my educational goals, agreed upon and signed by my supervisor.

All in all, based on how intimidated I was at the beginning of the year, having completed two papers, two assignments and an exam with mostly positive results feels good.

Bingo

So my SD card stopped working for my camera and I decided to  go buy a new one. But by the time I reached the store, I realized that I hadn't brought my card with me for reference on what I should buy, and there were a number of options. I saw there were 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB cards (or something like that). I wasn't willing to go home and return by bus to learn the answer, so I decided to take a guess.I figured that I was only taking photos, so it shouldn't take much power compared to those who take videos, but I didn't want to go back and regret the new card, so I took an 8 GB,the second-lowest card for sale.

When I got home, I checked my card to see how close I'd come to it. My old card was 1 GB. They don't even  sell cards that low-powered anymore.

I got exempted from my communications class.When you get exempted from something, it feels like passing all the exams and all the papers at once without even trying. But I swapped my work hours at the school onto the time I would have been attending class, so all that means is that I actually get breaks during the school day, instead of clocking in an hour here and there at the office.

I went to a bingo hall for the first time in my life. Beforehand, I'd only ever used one board at a time, but here I had to use six boards at once... and that was easy mode. There were people using 18 boards at once. Don't know how they managed.

I was also unprepared to use the bingo lingo. After ordering the boards, we had the option to buy additional boards "in-book" and "out of book". I wound up ordering "one of each, out of book" but I'm glad I managed to figure that out while I was still standing in line.

Also, I'm used to any line being a "bingo" but according to this place, certain boards have certain calls at what a "bingo" is. Sometimes it's a line, sometimes it's an inner square, sometimes it's the whole board, etc

They also would ask anyone who got a "screw ball", a "pinball" or a "Daffy Duck" to call it out. Never figured out what any of that meant.

And there was a "rapid-fire round" where they would shout numbers at a ridiculous speed. I sat in on a round before contributing, thought the rapid-fire was normal, and was real scared to participate.