Chicopee

Not yesterday, but the Friday before that, the Summer Program team went to Chicopee to do some team building stuff. We played volleyball, did tug-of-war with a giant elastic around the waist, slingshotted each other around with the elastic, played frisbee golf, walked on tightropes and balance beams, climbed rock walls and the Vertical Playground (a mess of ropes, beams, and tires).

I mentioned that last year I only got up a few footholds on the rock wall. Well, this year I did significantly better. I remember going for this one blue foothold over and over and only barely touching it when I did my best. This year, I got my foot on it on the first try, then glided up the wall like nothing as I pushed off. And from there I climbed at least a body length, and I think more (I'm using my own body for that measurement, so 6'3").

My coworker that is returning from last year as well said I also did better on the Vertical Playground, but I don't really think so. I think I made it to the same point I did last year, but I did it faster that's for sure.

Whole different game this year. I still didn't do the best, but I was significantly better this year, so I'm proud of myself. I won the tug-of-war, and even though it's not quite as much of a personal achievement, I was better at frisbee golf too.

When I was doing my student placement, sometimes I would find myself running late and dashing out the door before I could make myself a lunch. When I did that, I'd go to Central Fresh Market and buy a sandwich from the deli. Whenever I did that, I felt like I'd failed my first morning ambition, and put money from what I'd allotted to groceries to eating out. But eventually I realized that Central is a grocery store, which means that when I buy lunch there, it's not "recreational", it's grocery shopping! I can budget it under groceries. Still costs the same, but for some reason it gives a little mental relief to think of it that way.

We got new Extend-a-Family staff shirts. Last year they gave us four, which meant that I had a shirt for four of the five day work week. This year they only gave me one because I still had my shirts from last year. So I got fewer shirts, but at least now I have a shirt for every day of the week! They designed a new logo, so four days a week I'll still be advertising the old logo.

Extend-a-Family's symbol is always four stick figures standing together, holding hands, with one in a wheelchair. I guess it's hard to figure out a design a stick figure so that it immediately sends the impression of a wheelchair to the general public. A while back, they used an image where the image of a wheel was placed in front of the stick figures, but it didn't really make sense because that would mean the wheelchair was sideways and the person in it would have to be contorting their body to hold hands and face forward. Then they did another one where the person's legs were shown in two vertical lines to simulate a sitting position, with larger vertical lines on either side to represent the wheels. That's the one on last year's shirts. This new shirt shows the wheels simply as curved lines on either side of the person.

It's neat to guess why people make changes like that. For instance, aside from the change in the chair, a few other changes have been made. Instead of one figure showing the outline of a skirt and the other three without, this new image shows the body as a simple line that narrows on the top, expands in the middle, and tapers to a point. This means that this image is gender neutral and doesn't make use of tradional gender indicators that are now out-of-date. Also, each figure is the same height, including the person in the wheelchair, whose "body line" just ends where his waist would be, and his wheels replacing where his legs would be. By making each the same height, it makes the image less hierarchical. That's my take on it, anyway.

I use hangers from the dollar store in my closet. The dollar store sells white, grey, and black hangers. When I started, I bought a pack of each, to give my closet diversity. As my wardrobe expanded and I needed to buy more hangers, I would rotate which colour I would buy at a time. One time a while ago, I needed a new set and took a guess at which hanger colour's turn it was. I thought that it was white's turn, since I usually lean against white in decisions like those. But when I got back I realized that the last colour I'd purchased was white, so I already had more white than the other two colours, and now I had even more. I was so angry. Now my closet has a strong white hanger majority,

I built an extension on the garden since I felt my crop this year had been so disappointing, and I put some partially-grown tomatoes with the old part. It's not quite as bad as I first thought, though. After some weeding I realized that some of the plants had a different shape of leaf than the weeds, and I soon realized that those plants were sunflowers! There are also a smattering of zucchinis that are still small. My new garden extension has just zucchinis and sunflowers, since those are what I wanted most, and both have just started to grow.

Of my original batch of indoor plants, some failed to grow and I set them out in their jiffy pots and continued to water them just in case. But I'd put them outside and those pots aren't really meant to stand against storms so they became victims of the elements. Due to their inactivity and haven gotten knocked around, I gathered them up and threw them in the shed. Weeks later, I went into the shed to get a tool and notice that, without water or sunlight, one of the plants had sprouted. As I looked through them, I found two more like that. I've brought them indoors and have been watering them. I want to reward these plants, who showed such a determination to grow under the worst possible circumstances.

Almost feels like foreshadowing. Three opportunities will come because of actions made long ago and which I'd given up on.

Beer Machine

Got my first crop of beer from the beer machine a little while ago. It's... it's okay. It's really dark, almost opaque, with very little head. I used the "honey brown" mix, and even though it smelled overpoweringly sweet at first, when it finished brewing the scent was completely gone. It was kind of watery to taste on the first sample, but in the next few days it changed to a more "beery" and bitter flavour. I've had three other people drink it. It's okay.

My garden's not doing well at all. I grew everything from seed this year, so when stuff came up I sort of assumed that they were my crops. But a little while ago I compared my plants with the newly-sprouting weeds in the unused portion of the garden and they are the same. I figured that since my stuff was growing faster and better than the weeds, that it must be different. But in reality, the weeds in my portion only grew better because it was better soil, with more regular watering, and no competing weeds.

The only thing that's growing alright are the beans. I don't know what to do.

I used to get really existential when I'd weed. Like "Why should the strong die to make way for the weak, just because the weak profit me more?"  I almost appreciate these crafty weeds, that grew in so systematically and so appealing to the eye, as if they disguised themselves in order to survive.

I have a couple of flower baskets growing at least. So there's that.

But I wanted zucchinis and sunflowers!

Summer program training started this week. It's good to see my people again.

Convocation

Today was my convocation! My grandparents, my mother, my brother, and a friend all came to watch me walk across the stage.

It wasn't held at the college, so I had to take a 2 hour bus ride to get there. On my last of three buses, a friend texted me saying we had to be in line half an hour before the stated time. I was going to get off the bus 40 minutes ahead of time, but this news gave me 10, and since it's still a bit of a hike to get to the destination, I thought I'd have to sprint it. But almost as soon as I got out, an SSW peer swung by in a car and motioned me to get in.

When I got there, I received a call, which I didn't think was possible because I'd put it in Airplane Mode (an idea that occurred to me after my phone decided to delete half my contacts again and put it in Airplane Mode). Turns out, my phone had called Emergency Services. I was worried they were going to send a crew over and crash convocation, but they didn't because they made voice contact with me. I turned my phone off for the ceremony. My contacts later came back.

When I did the ceremony in HSF, we all wore these sashes called liripipes over our shoulders and everyone had trouble keeping them on. I remember I felt greatly accomplished at balancing my liripipe flawlessly. This time around, nobody dropped a liripipe or even seemed to struggle. I wondered if they modified them in some way to make them easier to balance. I noticed they had ridges, and wondered if the HSF liripipes had ridges or if this was the modification that made the difference.

Remember how I said that the Registrar's Office had me down as Gryphon Sibbald Sibbald, and that because of this, my HSF certificate said "Gryphon S. Sibbald". When I went into the office, the receptionist was very defensive, as if I was calling blame on her, even though I know that were there some sort of mistake, it would very likely not be the cause of the random receptionist that happened to be working in the Registrar's Office when I went to talk about the issue. She countered by being the first to allocate blame, saying that I must have filled out the form wrong, because the office doesn't make mistakes.

Well afterwards, my Student Portal and other academic systems would always address me as Gryphon Walter Barent, when it used to just call me Gryphon. I only realized the implication of this when we all got our name cards and was shown as "Gryphon Walter Barent Sibbald" while everyone else got "first name, middle initial, last name" format. That receptionist who'd gone out of her way to be antagonistic and to flaunt the infallibility of the Registrar's Office had put my first name as "Gryphon Walter Barent". That's why all the systems that would address me by my first name started calling me by first and middle.

My program coordinator asked me how I wanted to called on-stage. I said Gryphon Sibbald was fine. She told me she'd call me whatever I chose. I told her to say the full name.

In HSF, the played us out with an orchestral take of Bad Romance. If they played an orchestral version of a pop song this time around, I wasn't able to identify it.

Camera Down

Ech, using the school computer to update the blog since I can browse, but not type anything on my laptop.

On top of the bust laptop and creepy phone, I recently found out that somebody extracted the removable battery on my camera. This hits kind of hard since, while I've got kind of an uneasy alliance with my laptop and phone, I actually really like my camera. And my camera stopped working out of no fault of its own, unlike my laptop and phone. At any rate, I feel like I'm losing all my tech.

I can't extract images from my phone's camera because the SD card is nigh impossible to take out, and the phone camera very quickly shuts itself down. If I want to take a picture of something, I have to use a Nintendo 3DS. Bah.

We've had a couple of really hard frosts recently. I was wearing a jacket two days ago. My sunflowers, beans, and squash are still coming in hearty, but I'm not feeling good about the tomatoes. My flowers are coming in fine.

Did I ever tell you I wound up with a sixth roommate? That puts us up to seven, which means we're at full capacity. Five-two gender ratio girl-guy. That means that it's the opposite of the past two generations of roommates I've had, which was always five guys and two girls (although last summer we had a two girl-one guy, and a two girl-two guy dynamic).

I also don't think I mentioned having run an information session for my mother's career counseling program, for anyone interested in Human Services Foundation, Social Service Worker, residence and student housing, and working for Student Life.

Today I appeared on camera to be used for promotional material for Student Life. They had me talk on my experience with the Connect Workshop I did almost three years ago.

I won that School Spirit award in class, and it looks like I've held onto it for awhile after-the-fact, with the video, information session, and that school tour I helped out with.

Looks like I'll be one of only two returning staff for Summer Program this year.

I tried to make that old post from 2009 to be not the primary link on Google to my blog. I tried editing my name out of the post, but my post, name included, still shows up as the first hit, with the name extracted only once its been clicked. 2009 wasn't exactly my prime year, I'd much rather be judged on recent events. Oh well.