I'm back in Kitchener. Second night in, I solved my busted shoe problem. Value Village had a perfectly-sized, classy, cheap pair of shoes, and I could go into my third day of training with decent footwear.
My room had a cute little coffee maker that brewed one cup per use. I got up in the morning, looked at the instructions, prepared the machine and flipped the switch. But it didn't turn on. I looked down and saw it wasn't plugged in. I went to plug it in and realized there wasn't an outlet. The room seemed to be designed to avoid putting outlets in convenient locations.
Having maid service is weird. I get my bed made and my towels folded in some funky way. I get new miniature bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. But it's a weird feeling to know that someone is coming into your room and doing stuff.
I couldn't find my camera, so I couldn't take photos of the exotic land of Brantford. I took some with my phone, but I don[t know how to take them off, so it doesn't matter much.
Training was good. We got to act as a facilitator for another facilitator and vice versa. We got to create a goal and develop a plan and have one developed for us. I've got confidence that the plan I have is both realistic and will improve me in an area applicable to where I'm at, and I also believe in the plan I helped deliver for another,
Friday, October 30, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
New Story
Guess where I am?
...
... If you guessed a hotel in Brantford for a three-day training session, you got it! Transportation and hotel charges covered by my employer. I'm call this my first business trip! And since the hotel has a complimentary breakfast and my training a complimentary lunch, I'm pretty much covered for food, too.
All of my coworkers with Facile have done this New Story training except for me, because I was hired at an unorthodox time, and because when I first started working, I had two jobs and couldn't take on anything more. I'm the only person representing Facile for these session.
Funny thing is, my training is at a hotel, but my room is booked at a different hotel.
This room is sweeeeet. I've got two beds (for some reason), a fridge, microwave, TV (that I can watch TV on!) WiFi, shower with towels, soap, conditioner, shampoo, and body wash, even an ironing board!
My door has a peep hole! I haven't lived in a place with a peep hole since I was a teenager! I tested it out, and a guy walked by at that exact moment, just in time to get peeped at! I have one of those manual clasp locks, which brought back distant childhood memories. In fact, sliding that lock gave an eery sense of deja vu.
It's strange how I appreciate stuff that I used to disregard, and to be fair, should probably still disregard. But when I get into my room, I get so jazzed about everything ("WOW! Complimentary toilet paper!")
This place gives me flashbacks of the Residence at Conestoga. And I guess it should, since the Conestoga Residence is a repurposed hotel.
What a location! There's a Food Basics, a Zehrs, and a natural food supermarket all less than a block from each other. There are two malls across the street from one another. There's a Winners and a Sears literally facing each other. There's a Value Village, a Mark's Work Warehouse, and a Moores. There's an LCBO, a dollar store, a TD bank (and several other banks that don't concern me) restaurants, fast food joints, and pubs. I have literally never been in a neighbourhood so versatile in terms of shopping and consumer needs.
Unfortunately, it didn't support my specific shopping needs today. Since I'm away for three days, apparently one of my shoes thought this would be the perfect day to develop a tear. We're getting the tail end of Hurricane Patricia and my torn shoe is doing an insufficient job of keeping my foot dry, so I went shoe shopping. But I've got shoes at the house, so I didn't want to buy anything fancy, but none of these clothing stores had anything at a decent price, or even anything in my size. So annoying.
Last night, me and my roommate watched a horror movie, the remake of Poletergeist. It involves a possessed old house, an oncoming storm, electronics malfunctioning, and an oncoming storm. We were living in an old house with strange furnishing, my computer had just fried, hurricane Patricia was setting in, and it was a full moon night. To top it off? The character that gets the most focus is a young boy named Gryphon (alright, Griffin). WHY?! Sometimes life just syncs up in disgusting ways like that.
...
... If you guessed a hotel in Brantford for a three-day training session, you got it! Transportation and hotel charges covered by my employer. I'm call this my first business trip! And since the hotel has a complimentary breakfast and my training a complimentary lunch, I'm pretty much covered for food, too.
All of my coworkers with Facile have done this New Story training except for me, because I was hired at an unorthodox time, and because when I first started working, I had two jobs and couldn't take on anything more. I'm the only person representing Facile for these session.
Funny thing is, my training is at a hotel, but my room is booked at a different hotel.
This room is sweeeeet. I've got two beds (for some reason), a fridge, microwave, TV (that I can watch TV on!) WiFi, shower with towels, soap, conditioner, shampoo, and body wash, even an ironing board!
My door has a peep hole! I haven't lived in a place with a peep hole since I was a teenager! I tested it out, and a guy walked by at that exact moment, just in time to get peeped at! I have one of those manual clasp locks, which brought back distant childhood memories. In fact, sliding that lock gave an eery sense of deja vu.
It's strange how I appreciate stuff that I used to disregard, and to be fair, should probably still disregard. But when I get into my room, I get so jazzed about everything ("WOW! Complimentary toilet paper!")
This place gives me flashbacks of the Residence at Conestoga. And I guess it should, since the Conestoga Residence is a repurposed hotel.
What a location! There's a Food Basics, a Zehrs, and a natural food supermarket all less than a block from each other. There are two malls across the street from one another. There's a Winners and a Sears literally facing each other. There's a Value Village, a Mark's Work Warehouse, and a Moores. There's an LCBO, a dollar store, a TD bank (and several other banks that don't concern me) restaurants, fast food joints, and pubs. I have literally never been in a neighbourhood so versatile in terms of shopping and consumer needs.
Unfortunately, it didn't support my specific shopping needs today. Since I'm away for three days, apparently one of my shoes thought this would be the perfect day to develop a tear. We're getting the tail end of Hurricane Patricia and my torn shoe is doing an insufficient job of keeping my foot dry, so I went shoe shopping. But I've got shoes at the house, so I didn't want to buy anything fancy, but none of these clothing stores had anything at a decent price, or even anything in my size. So annoying.
Last night, me and my roommate watched a horror movie, the remake of Poletergeist. It involves a possessed old house, an oncoming storm, electronics malfunctioning, and an oncoming storm. We were living in an old house with strange furnishing, my computer had just fried, hurricane Patricia was setting in, and it was a full moon night. To top it off? The character that gets the most focus is a young boy named Gryphon (alright, Griffin). WHY?! Sometimes life just syncs up in disgusting ways like that.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Oktoberfest
I voted today! I don't want this blog to get political, so I won't speak on who I voted for, but wanted to mention that I acted as an involved Canadian citizen and did my part in our decision-making process. Whenever I get into the voting box, I always worry that I'm going to mess things up somehow and accidentally vote for the opposite person of who I want, and wind up quadruple-checking that I did it right. And then I get self-conscious that someone is waiting for me to finish, and wondering how someone can take so long to draw an x in a box. It just feels weird that something with so much buildup only takes a couple of seconds to actually do. Something about that sheet of paper, which looks like a scantron and comes with a #2 pencil, reminds me of a school exam and I wind up overthinking.
Oktoberfest just finishing in Kitchener. Kitchener is silly about Oktoberfest. They close down all of Downtown for nine days and all of the bus stops in that area are inactive. All buses are free after 11 during this week, although you have to walk outside the Oktoberfest area to get one, and there are cabs parked everywhere to help prevent drunk driving. There are police stationed everywhere. Men are wearing lederhosen all over the place, which is kind of funny, because women will frequently wear revealing clothes in cold weather, but at Oktoberfest it's the men who choose fashion over function. Doing anything in Oktoberfest is called "Oktoberfesting". There's a mascot for the festival (Onkel Hans), who represents it in a similar way to how Santa represents Christmas. I went home for Thanksgiving, and Guelph's downtown was dead, probably because so many people were at Kitchener's Oktoberfest. There's a store (which I've never been in) called "Oktoberfest" and it stands year-round. If Kitchener were in The Nightmare Before Christmas, where there are portals to different dimensions that constantly celebrate a specific holiday, then Kitchener would be the Oktoberfest dimension.
I kind of hate Oktoberfest. I enjoy drinking, but shutting down the core of the city is a bit much. It makes getting anywhere difficult, and I just don't particularly enjoy the atmosphere.
Oktoberfest just finishing in Kitchener. Kitchener is silly about Oktoberfest. They close down all of Downtown for nine days and all of the bus stops in that area are inactive. All buses are free after 11 during this week, although you have to walk outside the Oktoberfest area to get one, and there are cabs parked everywhere to help prevent drunk driving. There are police stationed everywhere. Men are wearing lederhosen all over the place, which is kind of funny, because women will frequently wear revealing clothes in cold weather, but at Oktoberfest it's the men who choose fashion over function. Doing anything in Oktoberfest is called "Oktoberfesting". There's a mascot for the festival (Onkel Hans), who represents it in a similar way to how Santa represents Christmas. I went home for Thanksgiving, and Guelph's downtown was dead, probably because so many people were at Kitchener's Oktoberfest. There's a store (which I've never been in) called "Oktoberfest" and it stands year-round. If Kitchener were in The Nightmare Before Christmas, where there are portals to different dimensions that constantly celebrate a specific holiday, then Kitchener would be the Oktoberfest dimension.
I kind of hate Oktoberfest. I enjoy drinking, but shutting down the core of the city is a bit much. It makes getting anywhere difficult, and I just don't particularly enjoy the atmosphere.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Flower Pens
A couple days ago, I got to drop by student housing to collect my sunflower heads. I was happy to see that all seven heads were intact and ripe for harvest. So not only was this the year that I got the most sunflowers, it was also the first year that I got to harvest them. And I was very pleasantly surprised to see I got a 13 inch zucchini! My previous record was eight inches.
I went home for Thanksgiving and brought my zucchini with me, which we prepared as part of the Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of cool to actual bring my own harvest as a contribution to Thanksgiving.
My work has given me a little "book" (smaller than a laptop but bigger than a smartphone) which can detach it's keyboard to become a tablet (smaller than a book but still bigger than a smartphone). One day when I had finished charging it, I pulled out the cord but it left the front piece inside the computer. I thought that I wouldn't be able to use my book anymore, and I didn't for awhile, but one day I reached inside my bookbag (works great for both paper and electric books) and pulled out my charge cord for the little computer. That made me wonder, if my book's charge cord was in my bookbag, which charge cord had been using, and how had it been working? I checked all my electronics and matched them with their respective chargers. I don't seem to have anything missing a charger, so I really don't know where this random charger that worked on my book came from.
When I was in Summer Program, one of the activities we ran had people painting flower pots. We then had them filled with marbles and put fake flowers in them. The flowers were attached to pens with green tape wrapped around them to create a sturdier stem.
At the end of the day, we set the flower pots out on our sign-out table and participants brought them home. But of course a few people didn't want theirs, so they kind of wound up sitting on the table.
One day, we had several people writing at once, and instead of waiting to take turns with the community pen, someone had the good idea of plucking a flower and writing with. it.
Normally, we would run through a good number of pens due to people absentmindedly slipping them in their pockets, or maybe someone might just want an extra pen. But with the flowers, they didn't fit so easily or conspicuously in someone's pocket, and leaving a flower pot empty was too noticeable. So we could count on people "replanting" them, and we never lost a flower pen. As effective and much less aggressive system as that little chain they sometimes put on pens in banks. If I'm ever in charge of managing pens for an organization, I'm going back to the flower pot method.
I went home for Thanksgiving and brought my zucchini with me, which we prepared as part of the Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of cool to actual bring my own harvest as a contribution to Thanksgiving.
My work has given me a little "book" (smaller than a laptop but bigger than a smartphone) which can detach it's keyboard to become a tablet (smaller than a book but still bigger than a smartphone). One day when I had finished charging it, I pulled out the cord but it left the front piece inside the computer. I thought that I wouldn't be able to use my book anymore, and I didn't for awhile, but one day I reached inside my bookbag (works great for both paper and electric books) and pulled out my charge cord for the little computer. That made me wonder, if my book's charge cord was in my bookbag, which charge cord had been using, and how had it been working? I checked all my electronics and matched them with their respective chargers. I don't seem to have anything missing a charger, so I really don't know where this random charger that worked on my book came from.
When I was in Summer Program, one of the activities we ran had people painting flower pots. We then had them filled with marbles and put fake flowers in them. The flowers were attached to pens with green tape wrapped around them to create a sturdier stem.
At the end of the day, we set the flower pots out on our sign-out table and participants brought them home. But of course a few people didn't want theirs, so they kind of wound up sitting on the table.
One day, we had several people writing at once, and instead of waiting to take turns with the community pen, someone had the good idea of plucking a flower and writing with. it.
Normally, we would run through a good number of pens due to people absentmindedly slipping them in their pockets, or maybe someone might just want an extra pen. But with the flowers, they didn't fit so easily or conspicuously in someone's pocket, and leaving a flower pot empty was too noticeable. So we could count on people "replanting" them, and we never lost a flower pen. As effective and much less aggressive system as that little chain they sometimes put on pens in banks. If I'm ever in charge of managing pens for an organization, I'm going back to the flower pot method.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Super Blood Moon Eclipse
I am officially a Registered Social Service Worker and I am now legally able to put letters behind my name. I have transformed into Gryphon Sibbald, RSSW.
I was home for some time last week, and my grandparents visited. My family wanted to see an example of one of the bottles on my spice rack, in case they could find something to replace the one that broke. They'd been laughing at me for my overreaction to my damaged spice rack, but as soon as they saw the bottle, they learned better. It's not a fixation, anyone who owned that beautiful spice rack would feel the same.
A while back, we had a Super Moon, a Solar Eclipse, and a Blood Moon all together. I'm sure you heard about it, it was a pretty big astronomical anomaly. I was with my family at that time and it was overcast! Looking at visuals of people who charted its progress, it looks like it started in its Super Moon form, eclipsed, and then when it reappeared, it was a Super Blood Moon. So dramatic.
Because the house I'm living in came furnished, it was easy to think of it as a complete package and to only consider what we brought in as needing any kind of consideration. During the third week of our stay, something tickled my senses and I saw the room with a bit more clarity than usual. I turned to my roommate and said "That plant's fake, right?"
It wasn't fake. Along with the furnishings, the previous family left two spider plants and an aloe plant. They must be pretty hardy, because after three weeks of not being cared for, they were all only just beginning to look a little depressed. A little water and they look as happy as anything. And I guess aloe doesn't need sunlight, because it's stationed on a shelf in the middle of the room. Seems weird to me, but whatever.
I briefly visited my old place in Student Housing. I brought back my raffle-won lawn ornaments, my snail, toad, and turtle with solar powered glowing resin. I need to get back there to cut the heads off my sunflowers. Apparently they're still attached but wilted, which makes them ripe to harvest.
I was home for some time last week, and my grandparents visited. My family wanted to see an example of one of the bottles on my spice rack, in case they could find something to replace the one that broke. They'd been laughing at me for my overreaction to my damaged spice rack, but as soon as they saw the bottle, they learned better. It's not a fixation, anyone who owned that beautiful spice rack would feel the same.
A while back, we had a Super Moon, a Solar Eclipse, and a Blood Moon all together. I'm sure you heard about it, it was a pretty big astronomical anomaly. I was with my family at that time and it was overcast! Looking at visuals of people who charted its progress, it looks like it started in its Super Moon form, eclipsed, and then when it reappeared, it was a Super Blood Moon. So dramatic.
Because the house I'm living in came furnished, it was easy to think of it as a complete package and to only consider what we brought in as needing any kind of consideration. During the third week of our stay, something tickled my senses and I saw the room with a bit more clarity than usual. I turned to my roommate and said "That plant's fake, right?"
It wasn't fake. Along with the furnishings, the previous family left two spider plants and an aloe plant. They must be pretty hardy, because after three weeks of not being cared for, they were all only just beginning to look a little depressed. A little water and they look as happy as anything. And I guess aloe doesn't need sunlight, because it's stationed on a shelf in the middle of the room. Seems weird to me, but whatever.
I briefly visited my old place in Student Housing. I brought back my raffle-won lawn ornaments, my snail, toad, and turtle with solar powered glowing resin. I need to get back there to cut the heads off my sunflowers. Apparently they're still attached but wilted, which makes them ripe to harvest.
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