Closing Update for 2017

Sneaking in one final blog post for 2017. This will be my 39th of the year, marking the year with the fewest blog updates since I started in 2009. I'll blame the period in time when I had three jobs, one of which was full time and night shift. Not much time and not much energy. Here's hoping for a more blog-heavy 2018.

The year with the most entries by a huge margin was 2012. In January I had just returned from Mali, and later that year I started Human Services Foundations, my first year of college. Passions ran hot in 2012.

I had to briefly return to Kitchener to do a little bit of work. I really hope that I didn't get food poisoning at that dinner party, because during my night in Kitchener, I ate a -lot- of leftovers from that party. No romaine lettuce, though. I don't think it was from that party though, as no one else that attended the dinner got sick.

My landlord tried to illegally increase my rent again and refuses to show me my lease, and is now asking me to court again. I'm going to try and get him to pay the court application fees and use the opportunity to get a copy of my lease. I don't know why he acts like this.

My aunt and cousin's visit is over. We gave my cousin a bunch of our old videogames, a dress, and a Lego set. Although each of us contributed in each gift, I was the one tasked with picking out the Lego set. Don't ever let me go Lego shopping, apparently I can't control myself. I wound up getting the largest, flashiest, most expensive set I could find.

My aunt gave my mom a painting of a phoenix, my brother some homemade jewellery, and me a note/sketchbook with a homemade cover including an engraving of a gryphon.

New Years lunch with grandparents didn't pan out for unavoidable reasons.

Ending the year on a bit of a sad note, one of the people who attended the Summer Program each year that I was involved with it, suddenly passed away shortly after Christmas. Young woman, about the same age as me. Some pre-existing health issues, but nothing that indicated serious concern that something like this might happen. Large personality, added a lot of flavour to the program every year. The loss of her presence will definitely be felt.

I'll close it with that. As always, my New Years resolution is getting my G2 driving license. Here's to 2018.

Christmas 2017

Christmas 2017 is now over. I spent the actual day quite ill with fever, difficulties digesting, and weaving in and out of consciousness due to extreme fatigue. The previous day I had been a bit gaseous, and then Christmas morning, I woke up without much of an appetite, and then within a couple of hours I was laid out, sweating, and almost delirious. Most of the worst of it was done by midnight, so it really was a bug set just for Christmas day.

Boxing day, I still had difficulties with digestion and was still fatigued enough to take an involuntary nap in the middle of the day, but the fever was gone. Today I seem to have my full energy back, and just a bit of lingering digestive issues. I never had a headache or respiratory issue, which I find are the most uncomfortable symptoms anyway.

Neither my mother or brother caught it. It's speculated that it might have been food poisoning, but I haven't had anything different to eat than them, since I've been at home for about a week. The only time I ate anything different from them was when I went to my roommate's dinner party last Friday. But since Christmas was on Monday, that leaves a 2-3 day gap between the party and when I got sick. Apparently there's an E. coli outbreak in some Canadian provinces, including Ontario, which is being spread through Romaine lettuce. One of the dinner guests brought a salad, and apparently E. coli takes about three days to manifest, so maybe that was it.

For Christmas this year I got some boots, which was inspired by the fact that I was telling them about how I just wear running shoes throughout the winter, and it gets awkward when the parents of people I support bug their kids to wear boots when I myself don't bother. I got a new wallet, which was a long time coming since the section with all my cards on my old one was literally being held together with Scotch tape, and I also got some paint supplies.

Me and my brother pitched in and got mom a deep freezer. She also got some cooking gear and a toolbox. My brother got a couple video games, an Alpaca scarf, as well as some other fashion stuff.

Family decided we were all going to do a dessert this year. Brother made nanaimo bars, mom made a red velvet cake, and I made a blueberry pie. I decided to do the blueberry pie since it was my entry and the hottest selling item at an old college bake sale, but since my mother and brother are acquainted with my grandmother's signature wild blueberry pie, I felt it might be an unwise choice matched with this more discerning audience. End result was alright, although the crust had the issue of cracking and leaking like with my last attempt.

My aunt and cousin are coming over today and staying overnight. Then on New Year's Eve, we're having dinner with some of my grandparents. Then it's onto a New Year and a new semester.

Finals and Christmas

Finals are done and I have all my grades back. They haven't been officially posted yet, but since I've got the results for each individual assignment and the grading scheme for each course it's possible to figure out my final averages. They're good. Predictably, I didn't do as well on the tests as the assignments, but overall, my grades are a cut above average.

After the initial awkwardness of not knowing the University's systems and getting bit for it, the courses wound up feeling easier than I expected. My academic advisor told me to avoid 100-level courses for next semester, so maybe things will get a bit more challenging in January.

Christmas is nearly upon us. I still have some Christmas shopping to do. Usually I'm pretty good at picking presents for people, but this year I can't think of anything original, and there's nothing I even really want.

Tomorrow my roommate is having a pre-Christmas dinner. It's slightly peculiar because he's really getting into the Christmas spirit despite being Muslim. I guess Christmas has become pretty detached from religion. I pulled out my old artificial Christmas tree from the back of the walkway closet. Still has blue tinsel and a tree topper as well. Last year's roommate wasn't a big fan of Christmas so I didn't do any decorating. Over the past three years, I have had three different sets of roommates on Christmas. And that's only if you only count my time post-student housing.

Going to have Christmas proper in Guelph. I'm bouncing back and forth between the two cities throughout the holidays.

Fruit Paintings

So, I finished my final written assigment. It was for East Asian studies, and the topic was comparing Northeast Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) with Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Brunei). This kind of went along with my criticism that the final exam was too focused on Southeast Asian nations, when they had only been covered in one of ten lessons, only four of them were expanded on, and none of them were included in the text. It was validating to see in the project description that further research would be required, as information would be required that was not covered in the lessons or the text. So how was I supposed to prepare for the final?

I did get my grade back for the final, and I will say that I did more than twice as well as I thought I would. But that's... still not good. I only need 2% on this final assignment to pass this course, and despite not doing well on the final, I am at least meeting the class average at this point in time.

Since the last written assignment was comparing the different Northeast Asian nations, about  half the research was already done. I just condensed the information in the previous assignment, focused on what unified them, and then compared them to Southeast Asia, which required new information.

Recently, I painted a bowl of fruit. I always looked down on people who did that. I was like, "Why would you paint a bowl of fruit when you could just take a photo and perfectly reproduce the image?" But my art course has really changed my perspective. One time I bought a painting because "It looks crude compared to the others, but it's my favourite for some reason". It's interesting to revisit that decision, as now I have plenty of reason for why that one would be my favourite. I'm like "Wow, there's such an impression of depth and these colours just vibrate together". Yeesh.

Me and my brother and cousin recently hung out. We were originally going to go to one of the great lakes, but I had to cancel our original hang out date due to conflicting obligations. When I offered a tentative time in late November, they both jumped at the idea, but I guess it didn't occur to any of us that it wouldn't exactly be swimming weather.

We went to Hamilton and cruised around until we found a spot where we could access the beech.  Hamilton has a reputation for smelling bad, and when my cousin and brother showed enthusiasm to access this place, I felt they already knew about this reputation and that my input would just perpetuate a stereotype.

But when we got out, both of them were like "Wow, it smells bad" and I was like "Of course it smells bad, it's Hamilton" and they were like, "If you knew it smelled so bad here, why didn't you say anything?" and I was like "I thought everyone knew that Hamilton smells bad"

We visited a place with a bunch of boats. Some people sent a hand signal at me, so I sent one back to them. My brother and cousin asked if I knew them. I said I didn't, I was just improvising. Then we got kicked out.

So eventually the smell, the cold, and the hostile boat people chased us away. We got to see some cool birds, though. Some swans, and also what might have been a flock of common merganser. I've seen hooded meganser and red breasted merganser, so if those were actual common merganser, I think I've sighted every type of merganser.

Anyway, we eventually had to retreat. Since the original idea was to paint something, my cousin invited s over to her place. She and my brother decided to paint a bowl of pears and pomegranates. For some reason, I got overambitious and tried to paint a conch shell. I would not recommend this for new painters. The top of the conch came out okay, but I couldn't make the bottom look concave.

Felt real bad when my cousin and brother's fruit paintings came out nice and my conch shell looked flat. But I've since painted a bowl of fruit and now I know that is a far moe achievable goal.

Classes Done for First Semester

Today was my last day of class for my first semester of University. I still have an assignment and a final exam, but my last formal class is finished.

Remember how the midterm for Sociology got leaked and I wound up with a 40% presentation and a 60% final? Well, I did my presentation and got 90%. This means that my average for that class is presently 90%.

I did not expect to do that well for the presentation. There were six people in our group. We had three team meetings, two of which were inside a week from when we would be presenting, one of which was the day of the presentation. We had one guy not show up until the final meeting, and he had not even met three of our team members previously. He even showed up to that team meeting late, at around 3:20, when we'd be presenting at 4:15. Another one of our team members discovered he had to go to court on the day of the presentation, so somebody else had to present his material for him. Despite efforts to maintain communication, every member of my group stopped attending class for two sessions before our presentation date and stopped responding to messages. I thought I might be presenting alone.

Two people got into a really polite and lengthy argument over which order the slides should be in right before the presentation. Somehow my section got put as the closing segment, so I didn't get to do my "run through" until about twenty minutes from when we'd be presenting. My understanding of a run through is that you do it so that if something doesn't work, you can change it before you have to present it. But with that amount of time, there's no time to change anything, so if something doesn't work, you just kind of acknowledge it and then you have to present it with the newfound knowledge that it doesn't work.

But then they cranked it into hyper-gear and we smashed the presentation. A 25-45 minute timeslot. We lasted 35 minutes with a 15 minute section for questions. The professor was so intrigued, she kept us for 25 minutes, which bled out the next presenter for 10 minutes.

Our subject was gun laws. I presented a list of history's mass shooting incidences with the highest level of mortality, then went over the three incidences with highest number of casualties, then presented a case study regarding media and how frequently certain terms are attributed to specific demographics, and then I went over gun use in popular culture.

We went over seven different countries and their policies and level of effectiveness regarding gun laws: Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, United States, Canada, and Mexico. Then we looked at the NRA, then a history of advancements in gun technology, then my section, which was history of mass shooting incidences and media perception.

The whole thing was a bit of a criticism on how the United States has been handling incidences regarding firearm violence. My apologies to my readers from the United States.

I got a group project and a written assignment for East Asian studies back as well. 89% and 93% respectively.

Just did the final for that class and I've no confidence in how I did. I guess I got arrogant after how well I did on the written assignments. I thought if I'm doing so consistently well, I must have a grasp on the subject, and I shouldn't have to worry.

I didn't expect such a focus on Southeast Asian nations. We'd only had one class on it, and only got to focus on four of the ten countries that comprise that region. That area is not even in the textbook. The first half of the semester was based on China, then the second semester had two classes on Japan, then two on Korea, then one for all of Southeast Asia. But it felt like each individual Southeast Asian nation was given the same amount of gravity as Japan and Korea, whether or not it was covered in lecture or in the text. Brutal.

But the final was only the same weight as the midterm, I did great on both the written assignments, I still have a written assignment to do, I should get perfect for my attendance grade, and I should get a bit of extra credit. Even if I bombed the final, I can't have failed.

I got my still life back from my art class with 78%. I also handed in the final project, which was a greyscale image reproduced from a photograph given by the instructor. Turns out, each image given to the students was part of a larger picture, so when we turned in our canvas paintings, we got to put them together as pieces of a larger image.

We were allowed to use one primary colour to influence our greyscale image. I chose yellow, for that sepia tone. I really gained an appreciation for yellow because of this class. It's statistically the least popular colour, but it's half of what makes green, which is frequently seen as being as important as any of the primaries, and it's also the most prominent source of warmth in most images. The first two colours I ran out of in this class were yellow and white, there were just such demand for them.

I had to quit Stats class this semester because it kicked my butt. Might have been partly due to the fact that at the beginning of the semester I was still trying to maintain three jobs, one of which was full time, while also studying full time. Math has never been my specialty, and with everything else, I got overwhelmed. I dropped the course before I could receive an academic penalty.

I also quit my English class. When I started the semester, I didn't know what LEARN was (It's our online system). My course address was declared "TBD" which was curious. So I waited for my class To Be Declared while unbeknownst to me it was actually an online course based on an online system no one had told me about. When I finally logged on, there had been a wealth of assignments already put into place, the first of which was mandatory and made out for the first day. It was "Introduce Yourself" and asked you to state your name, program, and reason for attending class. An easy grade,
if somebody had told me where I needed to be to receive it.

Between Stats and English, it was a hard start to the University system, but it's smoothed out since.

I've had difficulty choosing courses for next semester as well. Turns out, I was supposed to do that in September, except they only notified me through the student email, and no one told me I had a student email (I think the lack of information I've received comes from the fact I had so many transfer credits?) so I'm doing everything crazy late. I've managed to sign up for  Social Psychology, some Russian culture course, and an Art and Society course. The former for my program-specific requirements and the latter two for my breadth requirements.

I'm on a waitlist for a bunch of English courses too. Turns out, I'm required to take an English course to prove my proficiency. When somebody saw that I had not completed that credential first semester, they threatened to kick me out of the University, contacting me three days in advance of this expulsion. So I looked into it, and there are five courses that meet the requisites  of this criteria. Three of them I can't take, because they are only for people who have English as an additional language. Then there was the online course that didn't work out last semester and which is now filled up. Then there's another course, but when I signed up they said I already have it as a transfer credit so I can't repeat the course. So now the University is saying it's not a big deal, and just to get myself registered within a year and a half.

Feh. I wanted to fit this in before November was over, but now we're more than a half hour past that. Here's hoping I can make December a more blog-filled month.

Edit: The blog is counting this as a November post. I'll take it!

Halloween 2017

Little late to be posting about Halloween, but I'll post about Halloween. Last year I tried to give out candy at my unit, but of course, even though my neighborhood is largely family-based and there are lots of children, not very many people want to trick-or-treat in my area. Can't blame them. When I was a kid, I knew all the best areas to Trick-or-Treat, and those were usually the more wealthy areas. So not around here. The only benefit to Trick-or-Treating in this area is the proximity of the units. Since we're attached, stacked townhouses, you can hit four places while barely having to move. But even the fact that this neighbourhood has so many families sort of backfires, as that means a lot of people will be away from home Trick-or-Treating..

Last year I caught some kids while they were leaving the complex, and some when they were returning. I even rang on my neighbour to give her kids candy. Like reverse Trick-or-Treating.

I went crazy last year, with no perspective on how much candy I should get. I bought $40 worth of candy, enough to fill three bowls, and didn't manage to empty one. Spent the rest of the year trying to push old Halloween candy on people. This time I tried to restrain myself, but I still wound up buying $25 worth of candy. Managed to fit it all into just one bowl, although barely.

I had a bit more perspective on which candies are more popular this year based on which were the hardest to push last year. Didn't even bother with any gummies this year. I just got fruit chews, chocolates, caramel squares, and tootsie rolls.

There was some tentative idea that I would have a stand at the front of my complex and hand out candies on behalf of the neighbourhood (I think the neighbourhood just outside gets better traffic for Trick-or-Treaters) but that fell to the wayside, as I realized that I had a class on Halloween night, from 6:30-9:30, basically the prime Trick-or-Treating hours, and I even had a paper due that day. No one took it on themselves to replace me as the neighbourhoods rep, but I left my roommate with my candy bowl. He managed to hand some out.

But I still have half a bowl of candy, so if anyone wants any old Halloween candy, feel free to drop on by. We've got fruit chews, chocolates, caramel squares, and tootsie rolls.

Curtains and Garden

I took a picture of my closet that is now made from a curtain, if you couldn't imagine it from last post's description

See? So much more visually appealing than some hard white panel. The shameful secret of closet doors is that their only function is to obscure vision as to what is inside the closet. A curtain can easily fill this role with better aesthetic appeal.

I've also stitched up my backpack recently. I think I've mentioned, but every time I sew, I feel like I have to relearn. My backpack split across the seem from where the zipper connects with the rest of the pack, meaning that I could still zip,  but it wouldn't obscure anything from within the pack. Like a closet without a curtain.

In the past, I've sewn up backpack tears with fishing line. If a fish can fight for its life against it, it can hold some textbooks, am I right? But when I tried to thread fishing line through the eye of a needle this time around, the fishing line was just too thick.

So I used dental floss. Not proven against fish fighting for their lives, but definitely durable enough to be ground against teeth.

And while I'm sifting through photos, here's a pic of this year's garden setup. Cherry tomato plants looking kind of wilted, but you can see how they've grown, Cabbage plants looking robust, but they still haven't produced, so I don't have much hope for them. Next year I'll just be a tomato farmer

Sociology Midterm Troubles

Remember how I said that my Sociology exam was my favourite? Well, today I went to class and my professor had a special announcement. She said that in her 18 years of teaching, she's never had to make an announcement like this. Apparently, the exam content and answers were leaked and shared over social media.

She said that the people making decisions about this were two levels above her, but that this boiled down to the fact that all exams submitted were considered void. Our grade was going to be split over a midterm, a presentation, and a final exam, with the presentation being optional. This means that, without the midterm being considered, we have the option of having a 20% presentation with an 80% final, a 40% presentation with a 60% final, or a 100% final.

I mean, it's technically less work to put it all in one test, but that's a lot of eggs in one basket.

Our professor let us open into a question-answer period, but she warned us "I can't answer anything about anything". This led to some very repetitive questions and answers.

"I don't know if I'm allowed to ask this."

"You can ask."

"How did this person learn the answers?"

"That's confidential."

"Can we at least learn how we did on the test even if it doesn't count?"

"It's all been voided."

"Why is all this information confidential?"

"That's confidential."

And just those questions being rephrased over and over.

Apparently some students take their studies more seriously than I do. One student asked to leave class based on how sudden the news was. The professor seemed on the verge of tears.

I recently broke my bedroom closet. I broke my previous bedroom closet as well, but that was in the small room, so I just put up a tension rod and hung a curtain to replace it. But that was when I was in the small room. I'm in the big room now, and big room means bg closet.

I tripped and crashed into the small closet door, to be fair, which disfigured it and disallowed me to reattach it. I didn't do anything to the large bedroom closet though. It just came apart as I was opening it, as strange as that sounds. I was talking to a neighbor who has lived in the area longer than I, and she says that both her closet doors have come undone some time ago.

Remember how I said, when I was looking for curtains, that the only place that sells proper curtains are those family-owned bargain stores? The big commercial locations like Wal-Mart sell only garbage transparent curtains for some reason. Same deal for curtain rods. The big business places only sell tension rods at sizes too small to fit my closet. But the first random bargain store I went to sold a generic metal pole that fit my purposes quite nicely. I really don't know why the largest corporations have failed to produce large sheets of fabric or long metal poles.

Anyway, my current closet looks slammin'. I don't know why more people don't have curtain closets, unless their closets are so overstuffed that things are leaning against the doorframes, in which case, my default closets would fail anyway. My current curtain closet panel has a far more creative design than the generic whit sliding closet panels we started with.

Midterms

Well, midterms are done. First one I had was for East Asian Studies, which I found intimidating because the professor told us that the class average was only a little above 70%. Since the bulk of my classmates are from East Asia and are therefor kind of versed with the course material, it kind of made me feel like, "Wait, if these guys are only a little bit above a passing grade, what chance do I have?"

My study habits haven't been the best. I mentioned in my previous post that I've been struggling with fatigue. But the old adrenaline kicked in at just the right moment and I read an entire textbook, cover-to-cover, in two days. We're only halfway through the semester, but the book covered course content all the way to where were in class.

The professor told us that we aren't a history class and wouldn't be tested like one, but the textbook is titled "A History of East Asia". Feel like I learned the entire history of China in two days. Do you know how old China is? It's really, really old.

Should have listened to the professor though. I think I did well on most of the historical questions, but there were more questions on current-day China and geography than I expect. What makes it worse is that I feel like those were kind of the gimme questions. I mean, you should have a grasp of the second largest and fastest growing economy in the world.

Multiple choice test, fifty questions in an hour. Professor said there was no way we could use the entire hour, "If you stay for the full hour it is because you enjoy the atmosphere of the exam".

Of course I'm thinking that gives me about a minute per question, which doesn't feel like much. But he was right. Finished the test in like twenty minutes. Reviewed my answers and handed it in at thirty minutes.

Didn't leave that exam with too much confidence, though.

Went to review for the Sociology exam and I was laughing. I've taken enough Sociology courses that there was basically no new content, I barely knew what to study. Two hours for seventy questions, took like, 45 minutes. Came out of it with a lot of confidence.

Had an art project due that week too. We were doing "disrupted landscapes", which are like regular landscapes, but then you do something to offset the feeling that the rest of the image creates. Examples that we looked at were that melting clock image, that image with the elephants with stilt-legs, some landscapes with words floating through them, some images with monsters in them.  I based mine on a photo of a mountain range that I took while I was in Mali. I really didn't want to disrupt it and was pretty uninspired on how to do it. Apparently that's a common feeling. Eventually I was like "Okay, what draws attention in this image" That rock formation "What do you notice about it?" That crevice looks kind of like a mouth and that grove of trees looks like a tongue.

So I drew some teeth and a tongue and eyes onto it. I'd forgotten I've got a thing for faces put on aspects of nature. Remember Tree Face? This was Rock Face. I so gloomily cartooned the face onto my painstakingly painted landscape, and then spent a solid half hour giggling at it.

Post Grouphome Blues

Ugh... I've been really low energy lately. I feel like I was going so hard for so long, with all my jobs and suchlike, and I always had enough energy to get everything done, but now that life has slowed down, I'm exhausted all the time. I guess at a certain point, when I just kept putting more and more on my plate, the only thing that was keeping me going was the fact that I had that momentum. As soon as I let up a bit, I crashed. I think I may have burned out without realizing it, because I was so distracted. Now I don't know how to burn back in. I feel kind of emotionally stunted, it's hard to get excited about things, or mad or scared or even depressed about things. I just feel tired, even though you'd think a bit of rest would be energizing. I feel like I could sleep for days if I let myself. I haven't had so much free time since Human Services Foundation.

Oh well, I needed some time to recover after Canada World Youth if I recall, and that took place over approximately the same amount of time (six months) as my stint with three jobs, and even a bit with that workload as well as full time University on top of it. This past half year was not less intense than my Malian adventure, haha.

And there was that time in third semester of Social Services where I crashed after running on adrenaline when a bunch of assignments were due at once, which I described as "A painful, delirious haze" and thought I was "permanently broken" after the fact. I came back to form, though.

Still, got midterms coming up, and I'd really like to be in fighting form right now. But I'm too reflective, too relaxed right now.

Oh, I'm not worried about finances anymore. Last time I updated, I was stressed because OSAP gave me my money and it wasn't even half of what they said they'd give me. But they gave the rest of it to me the next day. I don't know why they gave it to me in installments like that, probably just to mess with my head.

I made maybe my stupidest financial decision this past week, though. I bought a washer/dryer. Problem is, I don't know how to install one. I got a good deal on it, which is why I did what I did, but still not exactly an everyday purchase, and I worry about my impulsive decision being based on the "financial comfort zone". People get used to being at a certain level of income, and if they suddenly shift dramatically, even if they don't realize it they will often work toward what they're used to. This means that if someone suddenly loses a lot of money, they will fight harder to bring themselves up to what they used to have, and more strangely, if someone suddenly gains a great deal of money, they will spend in a way so that they return to what they're used to. It's the phenomenon of the homeless person winning the lottery and finding themselves in the same living situation a year later. So I'm worried that I felt the sudden financial spike and made a rash decision.

But yeah, got the washer/dryer, figured I'd just stick it in the wall just like it seems you do with every other major appliance. I look at the plug and see it's a bit different from usual, figure I can buy an adapter or something. Look up how to install a washer/dryer and find out I need a source of hot and cold water. Suddenly feel stupid. I guess I figured that the water just magically produced itself when you plug it in, like the electricity transforms into water somehow. And then yeah, it occurs to me that all that water isn't just going to get reused, the machine probably has to dispose of the dirty water somehow. Really common logic type stuff. Didn't think that one through.

I'm home for Thanksgiving right now. I get today and tomorrow off for Reading Break as well. It's really nice to actually get holidays now. We had the traditional turkey dinner and the like yesterday, which was pretty swell.

28

Well, my birthday passed and I am 28 years old now. I am now in my mid-late twenties (If you'll remember, I section each decade in groups of three, so 21-23 is early twenties, 24-26 is mid, and 27-29 is late. 20 and 30 are rounded numbers and don't get included. Each decade is treated the same. I am 28, so in the middle of what's considered my late twenties, ergo, I am "mid-late twenties")

I got 35 Facebook messages, two texts, two emails, three phone calls. My numbers are down from last year! I've spent too long skulking around under the cover of the night, people have been forgetting me.

 I posted on Facebook "Happy International Day of Peace and do you remember the twenty-first night of September?" because my birthday occurs on the International Day of Peace (great PR for a Social Service Worker) and because the Earth, Wind and Fire song "September" contains the line "do you remember the twenty-first night of September"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Peace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs069dndIYk

But my only commentor was someone who doesn't speak English, saying that she liked the music. So she obviously doesn't get it and just thinks I'm a disco fan. I don't think anybody made the birthday connect on either reference

On these posts, I usually list my accomplishments over the previous year. At age 27, I finally managed to gain sustainable full-time employment in my field, and I was accepted into and began University. I can't think of anythinhg else.

I finally got my OSAP today. Originally, I'd mailed my OSAP application to my school's financial aid office, because OSAP said I would need to submit my application there. But then I got a notice that I'd sent it to the wrong place, and that I was supposed to send it to the National Student Loans Service Centre. They linked locations online, but when I went to the locally indicated place to submit my forms, I was told that even though it says it's the place to do it online, they don't provide that service and I would have to go to another location. So I went there and it submitted just fine.

I was told I'd receive my funds on September 1st, but it didn't happen. Checked again and said it would occur September 1-6. Didn't come. Called the National Student Loans Service, at the number they stated I should call if I didn't receive my funds, and it was literally impossible to get a human. Just automated responses to prompted frequently asked questions. But among those responses, they said it would take five business  days past the start of my academic year. Since my academic year started on the 7th, that put things off until potentially  the 14th.

Called the financial aid office at UW even though OSAP's newest estimate wasn't expired, and good thing I did. Financial aid said that I hadn't written a promissory note, which was required to receive funding. Neither OSAP nor UW had indicated this was necessary. The promissory note turned out to be some little option tucked away, that gave some little multiple choice test that read something like:

Are you going to use your funding for school?

By clicking below, I agree to use my funding for school.

So from this point, they requested a couple days to process my promissory not, and then five business days to submit my funding. So in the end, I finally received funding on the 27th. I had to pay for textbooks out of pocket.

Let's talk about the grant. I just had my tuition paid and $2500 for living expenses for the semester.

Really appreciative for the tuition payment and the grant, but player please, let's budget this $2500.

So my rent is approx $950 per month. With roommate, let's lower this to $425. I pay hydro and gas. Let's estimate $60 hydro, $30 gas. $90 divide by two, that's $45.

$55 Internet, $55 phone. That' $110.

Let's make a conservative estimate of $50 per week for food. Let's say there's four weeks per month. That's $200.

So $425 + $45 + $110 + $200 = $780 for the month. And that' excluding other small bills like laundry, textbooks, and recreation. $780 multiplied by four to cover the semester is $3120, exceeding the budget of $2500.

I'm okay because I now have savings, but what I already have surpasses what was given, and I've still got like, three paycheques coming in from Hatts Off which will also surpass what was given. Which indicates that this isn't a sustainable way of living. I don't know how so many students manage it

Quit Again

I quit my job again. The girl who was supposed to take half my sleep shifts quit because of stress, and so for the past two weeks I've been working full time, studying full time, and working two part-time jobs. It got to the point where I'd only be home for a few hours each day to shower and change my clothes, and stay over Friday and Saturday nights. It's a weird feeling, being paying to live at one place, and being paid to live at another.

Getting paid to sleep is pretty swell, but the time commitment alone was brutal. I'd shift on at midnight and have to get up to help with morning routines at 6:30, so I was never going to get more sleep than that. Didn't usually get to sleep through the night either, as something would usually come up. I was averaging 3-5 per day. Travel time was ridiculous, an hour to get home from work, an hour and a half to go to school. And then there were lots of awkward inbetween times where it wasn't worthwhile to go home, so you'd just float around campus or downtown. And since my classes end in the evening and my work starts at night, not much would be open to occupy my time.

But I still agreed to be put on the relief list. My last regular shift is Thurs night.

I went home to Guelph for an evening and part of a day last weekend. My birthday is tomorrow, and I won't be able to go home for it, so we celebrated last Friday and Saturday. They gave me a food processor, a cookbook, and a mask from Ghana.

It was nice to be able to use the student discount at the Greyhound again. I missed all those discounts. First time I've used one since I started. My student card is also a city bus pass, so that's another thing I don't need to buy monthly anymore.

Got my school textbooks. Since OSAP hasn't come in yet, I had to pay out of pocket. During certain times back at Conestoga, I would not have been able to do that. One thing I'm really going to miss about working full time is the ability to make casual purchases without worrying about going broke. Although I know some people with better income than me, but they manage to be poorer than me. I don't know how they do it.

I'll probably post again on my birthday.

First Week of Uni

So I had my first full week of University. I'm taking Social Statistics, Intro to Sociology, East Asian Studies, Fine Arts, and English. Social Statistics and Intro to Sociology are specific to my program, Fine Arts is because I need an art credit, East Asian Studies is because I need a culture credit, and English is because I need to show I'm literate. Some kind of school policy.

Social Statistics, Intro to Sociology, and East Asian Studies are all in the Renison building, which is like the Social Work Building, and all three are held in two rooms which are right next to each other. Fine Arts is in East Campus Hall, which is on the direct opposite side of the school. I have one day where I finish Fine Arts and then have 40 minutes before East Asian Studies starts, and I use all 40 minutes walking over. My English course is online.

The fact that we have East, West, North, and South Campus halls basically means this place is so big that we have districts.

When I first went into Social Statistics, I noted that of the approximately 35 students, I was the only male. I'm used to being in a gender minority, but in SSW, it was an 80% female-20% male ratio. Even highly female dominated courses like Personal Support Worker and Early Childhood Education would have like, four males per class. I don't mind being in a minority, but when I'm the sole example, I stop being a minority, and start being just a dude. A lone exceptionality.

I was told I'd be the only white person in East Asian Studies, but that turned out to not be true. Pretty wide diversity of nationalities. I'm definitely more of a minority in Social Statistics. Probably a room full of social workers who don't want to have to leave Renison to do their mandatory culture course.

But then when I went to Intro to Sociology, there were seven males in a class roughly the same size as Statistics. But I talked to one of them, and he was an engineer doing an elective. So maybe the other six are the same way.

Renison actually has dorm rooms on the top floors. I think that's crazy. Even during my year in the residence at Conestoga, I thought it was kind of weird that when I went to sleep, it was on school property. It was like always being in school. But this place actually has students living in the same building that they take classes in. One of my classes lets out at 9:20 PM. I'm sure there are students partying above us at that time.

Almost done my first art project. I carved a design into a board, and now we're going to make a print of it.

Despite the fact that I have to take an English course to prove that I'm literate, because I had transfer credits from both SSW and HSF, they put me in a course that's like, two years advanced. My friend was laughing at me.

At Conestoga, we had an on-campus pub called The Sanctuary that was open Tuesday and Thursday mornings (always thought it was weird to encourage drinking on a Tuesday morning in a school). At UW we have The Bombshelter, and it's at least open every day from when I step onto campus to when I leave, which is sometimes after 9:00 PM. Similarly, our Tim Horton's shut down at 7:00 PM at Conestoga, but even walking to the bus stop after 9:20, the UW location is still open. I wonder if their establishments ever close.

This school is bigger than I'm used to.

First Day of Uni

So I had my first class of University last Thursday. It was a Fine Arts course, my Academic Instructor told me I needed an arts course and a culture course for my breadth requirements. It was alright. I need to have a pattern for Tuesday, and I've already chosen one. Course will be divided evenly over three projects with an additional grade put toward sketches and showing my work. We were supposed to order some kits, but the door to the room where we were supposed to place our orders was locked, so we couldn't do that. Class let out really early.

I'd built everything up so much in my mind. I'd just finished my first sleep shift at the group home, and there was five hours between work and class. Decided it wasn't even worth it to go home. Big mistake, took less then half an hour to get to the University and spent the rest of my time getting anxious about it. Was having flashbacks to my first day of college and my first day in grade nine. First day in a new school really is a unique sensation.

After I finished the class, I felt really odd. Kind of like that deflated feeling you get after Christmas. Just the release of all that hype. I've got four new classes to attend this week, but my anxiety's not at the same level.

The day before, I went to the university to make sure that I could find all my classes and to get my student card. I thought it would be a lot harder than it was. The bulk of my classes are in a separate building called Renison, even my culture course is in there. Then each of my classes except my art one are shared between two rooms, which are next to each other.

Place makes me feel old. I support a guy who sometimes likes to go to the geology museum there, and I think I've mentioned on this blog that the place has enough resources that, if you lived on campus, you would really not have to leave for any reason. It has enough resources that it is completely self-sustaining. It's like a village where everyone is between the ages of 18-25.

So I thought it would be harder to find things than it was. I needed to find the Student Life Centre to get my WatCard. So I walked around the perimeter, assuming that such a central feature would be displayed openly. It was. Went in, found the line up. Handed in my student number and a piece of photo ID and I got my WatCard on the spot.

Then I looked up a map of the college, found out I only needed to find two locations for all my courses. Got a rough grasp of the geography of the place, wandered a bit and found everything I needed.

I'm using OSAP this time around. Ontario changed the laws so that, if you live under a certain financial bracket, they will pay your tuition and a chunk of your living expenses as a grant, meaning you don't owe them the money back.

I still don't have the money, though. At first I thought it was coming September 1st. Then I thought I remembered reading September1-6. Then when that time period closed, I called in and apparently it's "4 to 6 business days after your studies begin"... Which was September 7. So now I have to wait until potentially Thursday. Beginning to better understand old classmates complaining about OSAP not coming in.

It's funny, my brother goes to Guelph, where they have the Guelph Gryphons as their mascot. My brother's name means "Dark skinned warrior" and now I'm in Waterloo, which has the Waterloo Warriors.

Gardening Season Nearing Close

So we're coming in on the end of gardening season. To break it down, everything I grew from seed kind of sucked.  I originally tried to grow cherry tomatoes, sunflowers, zucchinis, and snow peas. The cherry tomatoes were transplants and everything else was from seed. The sunflowers and zucchinis sprouted successfully, but then something ate them. They left the cherry tomatoes and snow peas alone though, so I guess they didn't like anything established past the sprout stage, plus snow peas. Acknowledging this pattern, I went and bought more transplants, plus planted snow peas around the perimeter of my chicken wire fence and my mesh fence. I bought summer squash and red cabbage to replace the sunflowers and zucchinis, which did well. But the summer squash and surviving zucchinis crawled into the cabbage section and cast shade on them, so I now have healthy, but perhaps smaller cabbage plants then necessary. My snow peas started off well, but they weakened in later development. Don't know why, back when I was in student housing they were my strongest crop. Just got a small crop of snow peas today, which was more than I was expecting. Right now, the summer squash and zucchinis have blossomed, but I'm worried that they will drop their flowers before they produce. That's been an issue in the past. They always grow so large and lush and healthy, but what their final product is seems so random.

The cherry tomatoes were the real takeaway. They outgrew their tomato cages, then I had to tie them to stakes and they almost outgrew those. Never had such large cherry tomato plants, and I never met anyone else that has had the same success with them, either. I'm thinking that if I'm still here next year, I should try growing crops similar to cherry tomatoes. Unfortunately, other than real tomatoes, I'm lost. They're technically fruit that grows like vegetables. They seem one-of-a-kind.

My neighbor gave me a pink rose bush. I planted it in front of my unit. I didn't know what type of plant it was at the time, or how to care for it, but I figured it was worth putting in the ground and seeing what happened. I'm not a big flower guy, but it was growing so lush and healthy, I'm telling you, I thought about picking up some red and yellow roses as well. But something uprooted them. And then someone put a book shelf on them. Unfortunate.

Do you know how good I am at barbecuing now? I'm so good, I taught someone else how to do it. That's right.

My upstairs neighbour moved away. The whole neighbourhood's changing. First my friend passes, then another neighbour is evicted, then another one moves out, then another gets kicked out, then another evicted. Sorry, that story would have had a lot more impact if I could give identifying information.

Before I started the group home job, I was under $1000 in my chequing account, under $500 in savings, and I'd placed 0ver $900 on my credit card. Now that I'm going to University, I have no debt on my credit card and am up $4000 in my chequing account. Not a bad place to leave off.

You guys gonna kill me when I say this. I tried to quit my grouphome job, but they offered me sleep shifts in response. That means all I'd do is show up, sleep, and potentially manage emergency situations. That means no more dishes, no more laundry, no more lunches. I told them I'd give it a try. Another girl that tried to quit offered to take over half the shifts, which I'm glad to hand over. Still going to be crazy when I've got four direct support contracts and teach Safe Management to boot.

Solar Eclipse

I MISSED THE SOLAR ECLIPSE!!!  I hadn't heard that there was going to be one until the day before, when my neighbor told me. She said that it would last all day, and that it was so dangerous that children were not legally allowed to leave the house during it. I was super hyped. I've been around for a few lunar eclipses, but not for a solar one.

Looked it up, and turns out my neighbor was exaggerating. It was only a partial eclipse with 70% coverage, and it would last about three hours, not all day. But still a pretty amazing thing, I want to see a crescent sun. Me and the neighbor that claimed to be afraid wound up waiting for it outside, and it just never came. We watched a live feed of other people seeing it, but we didn't see it ourselves.

She was like, "Maybe it missed us?" I was like "How could it miss us? It's THE FREAKING SUN!"

And everyone else I've talked to seems to have seen it. Somehow someway, the sun managed to eclipse itself over everything in the area except for me and my neighbor.

I've returned to the Summer Program two more times. First time was Thursday of Wacky Water Week, and first activity was Four Corners Dodgeball. Dodgeball is always one of those borderline games on whether or not it's inclusive. Sometimes it makes the grade, sometimes it doesn't. The Four Corners version was pretty good, though. You start with four teams, each one holding possession of one corner of the gym. Rules are simple. If you get hit, you leave your corner and join the opposing side. If a corner runs out of members, it's out. This way, there are never people in time out, and there aren't people who lose, only corners. Keeps the competitive edge without disqualifying people.

After that, we played some water games ( example: a relay race between teams to see who could fill a bucket first) , then we played some bingo, then I had lunch with them, then left.

Then yesterday, my cousin drove me out to Camp Impeesa and we visited them during the Overnight. Turned out to be movie night, with everyone watching Harry Potter, so there wasn't a ton of interaction with the participants, but I at least got to say hi, and I seemed to know everyone there. Took my cousin on a tour of the hiking trail. Got to see the Peacehaven Trail, go on the Normandale Adventure, and visit Tree Face one more time. That camp grounds feels like home.

Unusual Shifts

Recently, I got to go work in a girls grouphome. One night, after I had shifted on at my regular place, I got a call saying that the night shifter at one of the girls homes couldn't work at that location because of a recent event. She was the only staff member there, and they asked me how many people there were at my location. Well, it was just me, so the idea was proposed that me and the other night shifter would trade places for the night.

Now, it's really common for females to work in male homes, but it's much rarer for males to work in female ones. Typical issue, the social services is flooded with women, so they can pick and choose where to put their men, so they put us where we can be "positive male role models" and where a little extra physical strength may be appreciated in an instance of physical aggression. But since the vast bulk of the workforce is female, the female-only homes are usually staffed by women only, and the male homes are mostly staffed by women as well.

Some female homes will have one male staff member, which the girls refer to as their "male staff" as if that's a job title. But at the place they were sending me, having a male staff was almost unprecedented, and I may have been the first male night shifter in their history. The whole thing was a last-minute arrangement.

Now think of these circumstances. I'm called in last minute in the dead of night. All the girls are asleep at the time of the arrangement, so there hasn't been any opportunity to let them know they're having a male night shifter for the first time. Among my night shift expectations, normally I'm supposed to do room checks to make sure no one AWOLs. Imagine how that would look, creeping into the house in the dead of night and sneaking into teenage girls rooms and looking at them while they sleep, when half of them don't even know me.

Thankfully, the evening staff was very emphatic that I was not to engage in the usual expectations. She basically told me not to do room checks, not to clean, and in an emergency, not to do any physical interventions, just call 911. Basically, just position myself in the living room and seem as not-creepy as possible so that the house isn't technically unstaffed.

First night, I didn't see anyone. Me and the other night shifter were texting back and forth, which was a pleasure. It almost felt like I wasn't working alone for once.

Then they needed me to be the night shifter at the girls place again, since the situation hadn't completely resolved. This time I encountered three of the girls. First one that saw me, a huge grin split across her face and she was like "Oooooh, who are you?" which was not the reaction I was expecting. I told her I was a substitute night shifter from the boys house. Then she wanted me to gossip about the boys there, but I told her I wasn't here to gossip and she needed to get her glass of water or watever she was doing and go back to bed, which she did.

Nice feeling to be listened to. At the boys home, I'd likely get a response like "YOU THINK YOU'RE BIG I OWN THIS HOUSE!!!".

Second girl just came and stood in front of me and stared until I introduced myself. Then she said "Are you even allowed to be here?" to which I responded that I'd been asked here by head office, so I guess so! She relaxed a bit, I apologized if I was making her uncomfortable. She said I wasn't, asked me my name again, I told her, she introduced herself and went to bed.

Girl three took a glance at me, went into the kitchen, grabbed a bowl of potato chips and went to bed. She's not allowed to have those, but since I'm scared crazy of having accusations put against me, if the girls first thought is that there's a new staff so maybe she can get some potato chips out of it, and not there's a weird guy in the house, I'm just like you go girl. Not picking up that conflict.

That morning, I got a text saying that the boys at my regular spot were all awake and throwing a riot. As soon as morning staff came in, they drove me over to the boys house so I could yell at them.

Next day the issue was resolved and I could return to my usual station. I was happy to. Girls scare me. A boy is generally more likely to try and break your nose, but a girl is more likely to make a false accusation that could damage you professionally. I'll take my chances with the boys.

Then this week, the kids went camping. For some reason, that did not mean my shift was canceled. This means that, for the first three days this week, I was looking after an empty house. I'd come in at midnight, watch the empty house until 9 AM and leave. PAid at my usual rate. Easiest money I ever made. I had some chores to do, but really, didn't even fill a night.

I got some big news! I'm GOING TO UNIVERSITY! Starting this September, University of Waterloo, doing Social Development Studies, working toward my Bachelor of Social Work. I get about a year shaved off because of my transfer credits from Social Service Worker at Conestoga, and I even get a few extra because of Human Services Foundation. I just gave my notice to Hatts Off, I;'m going to stay on their relief list. This means that I'll still have three jobs while I'm in University, haha. But definitely reduced hours and a lot more control of the schedule.

Family Get-Together

Recently my grandparents came to visit my mother and brother in Guelph, and my aunt and cousin were planning to be there as well. Unfortunately, I'm so locked in with work, it didn't seem that I would be able to make it to the get-together. However, by some quirk of fate, the entire household at the grouphome decided to go camping for three days and two of my direct support contracts went on vacation at exactly the right time. My boss gave me the option of tending to the empty group home or taking the time off, so I just took the time off.

My aunt and cousin stayed over at the Guelph location overnight, which including me made for five people in a two bedroom apartment. Probably the most people to ever stay overnight there.

I was going to stay for two days in Guelph, then come home and do such things as turn my timesheets into Extend-a-Family and visit the Summer Program again, but I kept letting time slip away and postponing things until I heard that the Hattsoff camp was getting called off a day early and I had to go back a day before I thought I would.

Makes sense the Hatsoff thing didn't go as planned, it was awkwardly timed. The week before, two of the kids were away camping, and we got a new kid a couple days before the trip. That means that two of them would be sick of camping, and the other would still be getting used to the house before setting out.

But yeah, last week we were at half capacity with only three kids in the house, and we've had an empty room for awhile now. This is the first time in a good bit that the house is full. Still, I don't make lunches anymore, since it's summer vacation and I don't have to wake the kids up for school either. So some of my duties are still diminished.

We lost two of our summer staff. Without getting into it, they chose to go a separate direction. But that means we have no morning shift, so we've been finding people to fill the morning shift, either through relief workers or getting our house staff to do overtime. We can't get our UMAB trainer to cover only two people either, so unless we hire six new workers, we have to find two new employees that are already UMAB trained.

A neighbor of mine recently got evicted. She was an older woman whose husband left her about a year ago. This overlapped with the time that I was looking for a roommate after my first batch at my current location. Unfortunately, her home was fully loaded with items. Logistically, if I'd moved in with her, there would be no place for me to even put down a mattress or store my clothes. She wasn't willing to part with any of her belongings and she was attached to where she lived. We quibbled about who'd move where, and eventually I took another roommate. Time passed, and she managed to last long enough on her own that I grew to believe she was financially secure and her need for a roommate was more due to loneliness than anything.

But then she got evicted, couldn't find anywhere else, and now she's in a homeless shelter. She left everything behind. Saw her place unloaded recently. People can judge her lifestyle, but it was still pretty depressing to see her lose everything after she fought so hard to hold onto all of it.

Return to Summer Program

So a little while ago I visited the Summer Program

They kept the staff shirts orange, which is the colour I proposed, and which we changed it to last year. Happy to see that, makes me feel like my influence had some staying power, although because Extend-a-Family apparently can't stand to use the same shirt design twice in a row (their logo changed once per year three years in a row, and then when they finally stuck to one, they changed the colour) they now have the "Leader" and "Peer Leader" print done in large stylized-informal lettering on the back. They also have a logo "Live Life Fully" in the same informal lettering on the front. I like the new print design, but I'm undecided on whether or not they really needed a logo. I like that they changed the word "Staff" to "Leader" since Peer Leaders are staff as well. At any rate, those shirts will stand out more compared to other camp staff shirts.

New staff team doesn't have any green personality types. If you remember, Summer Program always does Personality Dimensions which defines people by one of four colour types: Authentic Blue, Resourceful Orange, Organized Gold, and Inquiring Green. I'm Green, and first year we had one other aside from me, but the past two years I was the Group Green, and now that I'm gone, they don't have any intellectual type. How will they get by.

They have a better spread for conflict intervention styles. Last year we were all but one Compromising, which caused our team name to be The Compromisers.  They have four returning Compromisers so it still has a strong tendency that way, but at least the new three are different.

Their team name is The Beehive. I... I don't like it.

They killed Personality Bingo, which was the weekly icebreaker that I used to host. Knew they'd do that.

When I got in, they were playing Mission Impossible, which is the game where people have to steal bean bags from one end of the gym and bring them back. Program Leaders shout a number of seconds, count it down, and when the time is up, look over the gym and try to spot participants. There are a number of obstacles placed throughout the gym that participants need to hide behind when the time is up, and if they are caught, they must return to the front of the gym.

So of course, I show up and everyone is hiding. I get noticed and a bunch of people compromise their hiding spots by exclaiming in surprise.

I just got thrown into it. A staff member needed to do something outside the gym and asked if I'd take over supporting someone. Kept providing support through a game of "Knight, Horse, Cavalier" and "Frogger".

Knight, Horse Cavalier is a new take on Huckle Buckle. Difference is there are only three specific poses in Knight, Horse, Cavalier. Frogger is a new take on Murder Wink, sifference is, instead of having a murderer who kills with winks, you have a frog that licks flies. The implied violence of Murder Wink has been a topic of discussion in the past, but honestly, no participant has ever seemed bothered by it. I used to act all theatrical when I'd get "shot" by the wink. It's hard to know how to react to being licked.

Stuck around for lunch. When everybody was getting their hands washed, I was still supporting someone. One of the staff members asked if I was "good" which is a covert way of asking if you are able to lead the group on your own. I was so stoked! Leading a group again!

It was a good group, lots of people I have a long-standing relationship with, both participants and staff. Some of the new participants were confused at how I fit into the system, and were asking if I was various peoples fathers, and even got asked if I was the boss of the Program Leaders (haha). Even the new staff I was kind of familiar with, since I taught them Safe Management.

A lot of the participants wanted me to go swimming with them, which is what they were doing after lunch. But I'd worked a nine hour night shift before coming to Summer Program, and I'd already worked half a day. I knew if I swam, I'd come back, and then all there is is journals, and then the day is over and I would have officially worked two shifts in a row and wouldn't get any sleep that day.

Really took it out of me, especially since I climbed a mountain the day before (just gonna drop that there casually). I really don't have the time to be running around with my old job.

...I'll visit them one more time before they leave for Overnight.

Tooth fairy, fidget spinners, new staff and roommate

Being the tooth fairy is really intimidating, I don't know who  came up with it. Since I'm the night shift worker, it usually falls on me to fill this role. It's one of those things you don't think about until you have to do it, but it's more complicated than you would assume. Not only do you have to plant the money under the kid's head without waking them up, but you have to search for the tooth as well. Absolutely no way that if someone came into my room while I'm asleep and started putting their hands under my pillow, that I would sleep through it. And depending on how clean the kid's room is, and where they are sleeping, the place can be an obstacle course. And worst of all is, what happens if you do get caught? The kid wakes up and asks you why you're in their room. I've spent a lot of time perched outside kids rooms, developing strategies to bypass clutter, and coming up with excuses for why I'm creeping around in their room at night. The whole things is just a bad scene.

You know what the most recent craze is with the kids? Fidget spinners. They're these hand-sized disks, usually with four more disks branching off from the centre, and you spin them. That's all there is to them. I finally got to spin one, and it was like, "So this is what you kids are getting up to these days". When I was a kid, yo-yos came back into trend during a time when technology was on the rise, and that was strange enough. But at least with a yo-yo, there are a variety of tricks you can do (although when I was a kid, they were developing "automatic yo-yos" which even I thought was lame and got so common I had a hard time finding a non-auto.) With these spinners, there's not much to do. Spin them between your fingers, balance one on your finger while it's spinning, put one on the table while it's spinning, wave it up and down while it's spinning to feel the "forces" of the air pressure, buy multiple spinners to compare their weight. Absolutely everywhere sells them now. You can get them glow in the dark and there are ones that make sound effects. They cost $10-$15. I'm failing to see the hype.

I had ADHD growing up, so people would give me little toys like this to play with to occupy my hands while I was trying to concentrate. But kids these days don't just use them to expend excess energy while trying to focus on something else. They will actually spin as a primary mode of entertainment, which to me seems odd in a world developing virtual realities. I've seen "fidget cubes" as well, which are little boxes with dials, switches and buttons that don't do anything, and "fidget flippers" which I don't know much about, but I imagine they flip.

I renewed my credit card recently.You know that three-number code that comes on the back of them? New credit card's is 666. Don't trust that at all.

A neighbour of mine's car broke down and had to borrow a friend's vehicle that was on vacation. During this time, he needed a place to keep his vehicle and a place to keep the vehicle he was borrowing, so he asked me if he could use my parking space. Obviously, I do nothing with my space so I agreed with it. Good old neighbour bought me a bottle of whisky to thank me for it. Actually asked around to see what I drink. Just a sweet, neighbourly gesture.

Since summer vacation started, we have had to hire new staff to cover the time that school used to occupy. Previously, some school staff would come in the morning, help with breakfast and hygiene routines, take them to school and continue from there. But they weren't actually residential workers, so now they're doing whatever school staff do during the summer, and we've had to bring on new residential workers to work a 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM shift. Since my shift ends at 9:00 AM, that means I've been asked to take on a mentoring role, and some tasks such as administering medication have been left to me, since I'm now "Senior staff".

When I first came into my position, I had a nightly sheet to fill as the "Senior night staff" but because there's only one of us, I got to be a senior on my first night. However, with these new staff members, it's the first time I get to have experience over someone else. Living it up.

I got a new roommate. I was considering holding off until September when a buddy of mine would be looking, or there was a guy looking for a roommate in the Bread and Roses next month, which is a spot I've had my eye on. But since then, a neighbour of mine for over a year, who was subletting from a guy whose luck turned south, found himself in need of a room, and so I took him on.

It's only been a couple of days, but he's gotten rid of our cockroach problem, which I'm thoroughly grateful for. I try to keep the place clean over here, but the upper and lower units are connected, and a roach problem has been spreading throughout the complex. We used to have an ant problem, and fixed it, although I must say I prefer ants over roaches. As far as pests go, at least ants are clever and industrious, and mice are cute. Roaches are losers who stumble over each other like they're drunk and live on the corpses of their kin.

I told my new roommate "They can survive their head being cut off for a week, for every one you see, there's seven you don't, they're predicted to survive a nuclear war, the sooner you accept their status as the dominant species in this home, the easier it will be for you". But he beat them. We're the first unit in the complex to beat the roaches!

I swear, these exterminators aren't doing much. We had exterminators come in twice for ants, insisting that poison wouldn't work on them abd only traps would. Then they'd leave and I never saw an ant trap. Then my old roommate put down some Ant-B-Gone and too them all out. My upstairs neighbour has had exterminators come in for roaches but has seen no progress. Then my roommate puts down some poison and voila. Extermination must be one of those fields filled by people who don't really do anything.

Overworked

Some jerk ate my sunflowers. I had 13 sunflower sprouts, and 12 of them got eaten all in one night. My zucchinis were coming up too, and I lost all but three. Whatever it is seems to only like sprouts, though, since the remaining one sunflower and three zucchinis have been doing fine since they got past the sprout stage.

Since my snow peas and tomatoes share one plot, and my sunflowers and zucchinis share another, there is a stark contrast between plot A and plot B. I wound up planting snow peas around the perimeter of the fence in plot B, since even though it's late in the season, whatever it is apparently doesn't like snow peas. I also went and got some transplants, since this pest seems to only eat sprouts. So now I've got red cabbage and summer squash growing alongside three zucchinis and one sunflower, and some latent-growing snow peas.

A little girl asked me if she could plant a sunflower in my garden, so now I'm really hoping that one will sprout and flourish despite it being late in the season, and with a sprout-loving pest in the area.

I learned how to grill. Remember how I said I had a grill-expert neighbour, and I was barbecuing in the dead of night so I could experiment with it uninterrupted? Well, he caught me, and it's a good thing he did. I'd gotten a fire started, and he came over to tell me I was overcooking my food. I was just happy that I'd managed to burn something, since the previous I hadn't been able to get a fire going at all. But he told me to stop feeding my flames, had me look at the glowing charcoal beneath and told me that was all I needed.

I totally would have thought the dim glow of the charcoal indicated only an insufficient and dying fire, incapable of cooking anything. But the next day, the two of us worked through it, and yeah, charcoal has a subtle and efficient glow, which cooked my dinner perfectly that night.

This past week I got to facilitate Safe Management courses for the Summer Program. It was our largest group yet, with two different summer camp teams and a few people taking the training for personal reasons. It was really gratifying to be able to take that leadership role with so many of my previous peers, but it also reminded me of how much I'll miss the Summer Program.

Everybody assumed I would be coming back for some reason. Come on people, it's seasonal work, I don't exactly wait nine months a year so that I can take back the only position that is relevant to your life.

Last week was draining though. For two days, I did a nine or ten-hour overnight shift, and then did six-hour training sessions during days. On both those days, I only got three hours of sleep. Plus I also had a direct support shift on Monday, and I rescheduled someone I had to cancel on because it fell into a Safe Management day to Friday, so I worked on my only day off. This Sunday, one of the people I support has a Summer Enhancement benefit, so after I do my regular four hour Sunday shift, I'll travel for an hour and a half, then support someone else for two and a half hours, than have three hours to waste which doesn't allow me to go home because of the Sunday bus schedule, and then I'll do a ten hour Sunday shift, since they ask me to do an extra hour on Sundays.

I knew a couple guys with two jobs, averaging three hours sleep a day, back when I worked factories. I always questioned what their motivation was for working that hard, since even if you make money, you've no time to spend it, and the average work day killed me bad enough already. But now I've turned into that kind of worker and I still can't tell you what the motivation is.

Garden, Spice Rack, BBQ

My snow peas are coming in strong now. For a few days they were the only crop grown from seed that I was seeing progress with, which made me nervous. But because I had such a tough time prepping the soil and building the fences with my busy schedule, I wound up building the tomato and snow pea plot before the sunflower and zucchini plot, which got done a few days later. It makes sense then, that a few days later, my sunflowers have begun to sprout. Now just waiting on the zucchinis.

One of my tomato plants is not a tomato, though. I was reprimanding it for its slow growth and encouraging it to catch up with its siblings before I realized its leaf shape is different, as well as its growth pattern. So I have a mystery plant on hand.

Do you remember that spice rack I was weird about? The one where my tarragon bottle got broken? Well now somehow I've lost coriander. But it's kind of okay, because now I've got three on each level, so it balances, and if there were two spices I never used, it was tarragon and coriander, anyway. One of my original roommates said he could mount my spice rack to the wall, but I didn't believe him because that sounded way too incredible to be possible. But he never got around to it, moved out, and I've had my spice rack sitting on my kitchen counter as it always has since then, with it's tragically broken tarragon bottle on display.

But now coriander is gone, and since my roommate moved out, I've been reorganizing the kitchen. I noticed  my counter wall space was crowded by appliances, and I hit a stroke of genius. I managed to open up space by discovering the method to mount my spice rack to the wall!

...It was pretty easy... The spice rack has hooks in the back. I put a couple nails in the wall and placed it against them.

I've got a little barbecue now. Seriously, just a little travel-sized, $20 grill. This is a really unmanly thing to admit, but I've only ever barbecued once. It was during the Summer Program, and through the duration of the overnight program, when staff are required to provide food preparation services, the girls would simply not let me take a lead in making meals... until a barbecue was involved. I was then forced in front of the grill and assumed an expert in the craft. Gender expectations, much?

But it was a grand success. Everyone was complimenting my technique. The process was... exhilarating. Just me, fire, metal, and meat. It felt so natural.

But when I did that, the fire was already lit and pretty much all I did was flip meat, to be honest. Along with barely knowing how to bbq, I also barely know how to make a fire (that also came up during Summer Program, I got asked to make a fire with no tools when I'd never made one before. I managed it, but retelling the story, I was told I'd gone through "every evolution stage of man")

So I was attempting to light the fire yesterday, but I couldn't make anything long-lasting enough to make food with. I did it in the dead of night, one part because my internal clock is reversed and I'm used to being up during that time, and the other part because I don't want my grill-expert neighbour to catch me struggling to make fire. Serious blows to my man-cred if that happens.

I missed the I Choose Dign!ty rally this year. This is Extend-a-Family's march to City Hall, where everyone who feels short-changed on their due respect from community can join together to choose dignity. After the march, at City Hall there are speeches from those on the topic of dignity, there are the Dignity Dancers, and there is a  Fo' Cheesy van that give out free grilled cheese sandwiches.

The past few years I have really hammed it up and thrown down to get in every bit of promotional material I can at this rally. People mention to me all the time that they've seen in this ad or that, but this year I couldn't muscle my way in. RIP my fame.

My clock's broken. Actually kind of gloomy about it. 4 years ago I bought it at Dollarama and it has since given me only accurate time. Recently however, it has developed a sticking spot where it goes backward in time one second per minute before progressing naturally. Before stopping it today, this collective loss in time set it back a full 45 minutes.

New Cell Phone, Laptop, Garden, and 1rst Aid Certificate

BLARG! It's been over half a month since I've updated! I was averaging 4 posts a month, and I only met half my average last month. Alright! I'll tell you what's going on.

Last year, I lost my position as an Independant Facilitator and retook my Summer Program Leader position in late April. This left me with only my Direct Support contracts to stall my sinking savings until June when they would pick up again. I called it the "Miserable Month of May". It was all about financial loss and surviving until things picked up again in June. This year, with my more-than-full-time job as an overnight staff at the grouphome, my four Direct Support Contracts, which I recently got a raise in, and my Safe Management instructor position, which has taken more hours than was originally estimated, this May has been all about financial gain.

...Or at least it was supposed to. Both my cell phone and laptop recently broke at nearly the same time. I already explained that my cell phone had developed problems with its charge port, and I was using a pen and some rubber bands to create pressure on it while charging to prolong its life. Well, eventually, no number of rubber bands could apply enough pressure and the phone simply refused to charge.

And you know my laptop had its own unique charger issue. The first charger stopped working and because of its unique build I had to special order a new charger. This one worked for half a year, but then the charger randomly exploded. I was able to piece together opposite parts of the new and old charger to create something that worked. I estimated it would work for about another six months before needing to be replaced, but one day I powered off my computer and it just wouldn't turn back on.

It's funny, my new cell phone needed a micro SD card. I had all my contacts saved to my old non-micro SD card, so I figured I'd lost them all. For about a day, I had no contacts, and then randomly, most of them appeared on my new cell phone. Since my old cell phone had long since lost charge and its SD card was incompatible, I've no idea how this happened.

I hate going shopping for laptops because some salesperson inevitably talks me out of my intended purchase and gets me to buy some high-tech piece of equipment that turns out to have a short lifespan. This time however, I went to the store, stared at the selection for a good 15-20 minutes uninterrupted. Then I went up to one of the employees, told them what I wanted, and they got it
without question. Much prefer that sales style.

New laptop is an Acer. I know I've had issues with this brand before, but it fell right in my comfort zone of functionality and affordability. It wasn't the cheapest, and it had the most memory for a relatively frugal price. I feel like I'll regret this. Acer laptops and Deskjet printers are brands that have in the past offered consistently poor products, but because they fall into my comfort zone, they have brought me back repeatedly.

In the end I dropped like, $500 on the laptop and $200 on the phone, putting me back $700 when I was finally getting ahead financially. That's a gloomy way to think, though. Instead of thinking "My tech malfunctioned at just the right time to keep me from saving" I should think "Both those pieces of tech were going down and I knew that, but they held on until I could afford to replace them".

I started my garden. Last year, I had to take a plot in a community garden because my roommates owned a young, not-so-expertly trained dog that would inevitably dig it up if I grew it in the backyard. This year though, there's no dog and so my plot is on my property.

People have told me the land is no good for growing, but I really think that's because they didn't bother to prep the soil. If the community garden right next to the complex is fertile, our land should be fertile too, it just hasn't been worked over. I dug up two plots in the backyard, pulled out all the roots, mixed in planting soil, and built a couple of chicken wire fences around them. I'm keeping it pretty basic this year, only growing cherry tomatoes, zucchinis, snow peas, and sunflowers. All hardy plants that have yielded strong crops in the past. I'm growing everything from seed except the cherry tomatoes, which were transplants. Still too early to say how the seeds are doing, but the cherry tomatoes are showing positive, fanning their leaves toward the sun, showing a zest for life after overcoming the shock of being transplanted.

My roommate moved out. No bad blood. I could have obligated him to stay based on the sublet agreement, but forcing someone to live with you who doesn't want to sounds miserable, and since I'm working as much as I am, I really don't need the financial support of a roommate.

I recently did my First Aid recertification. Because of my association with Extend-a-Family, I got to attend this training for free. Eight hours total, two days, four hours a session. By coincidence, I happened to attend the same sessions as a girl that I did them with three years previous when I got my last certificate. During that session, I panicked and botched a roleplay where I was supposed to save her from bleeding out after she severed one of her fingers. This was in front of the class, and the
instructor basically had to talk me through it. Afterwards, I apologized to her.

Me: I-I'm sorry


Her: For what?

Me: I... killed you

Her: Oh my goodness Gryphon, if that actually happened, I would help you!

Me: No, you just lost a finger! You're in shock! You can't do anything! You rely on me! I can't gain composure, and you die, and it's my fault!

So about a year later, in another province, she chainsaws her leg. She's bleeding out, and apparently her last thought before losing consciousness is me attempting to bandage her hand and failing, "Gryphon would be no help right now!"

She tells me this after we become reacquainted. "You were right, I wasn't about to help myself"

So this time around, I'm keen to heal her proper and make up for my past failure. My compressions are on point, I do mouth-to-mouth like a boss, I handle the AED like a champ. When it come to scenarios, I get the severed finger again, but this time I have to do it on some random guy I don't know. Still determined,  but in the previous session I had been panicking enough that I didn't retain any information. This time around, I managed to step through it while retaining information, but I didn't get to be the flawless hero that I'd been hoping to be.

Mom's Birthday and Mother's Day

 It was my mother's birthday a couple days ago and today is mother's day. I found out I was scheduled to facilitate two days of Safe Management training, the first falling on the twelfth, so I had to miss it even though it was on what would usually be my day off. I thought I'd scheduled to have that day free but apparently not. And then I was working direct support today. I work too much nowadays.

Safe Management was fine. Small group. Started with eight students. Two of them didn't know they were scheduled to join us (I was almost in the same boat), so they didn't attend. Then due to further scheduling complications, two more were not able to attend the second day. They will be attending the second day of training with us in June, which I will also be facilitating for. But day two wound up with only four students of our original eight. June might be heavy if we have the entire Summer Program, on top of the regularly scheduled individuals, on top of these four who couldn't sit in today.

I did both days, while we had one other person co-facilitating with me the first day, and a different person on the second. This is the first time I've done it on a two-person team, as last time it was all three of us, which gave me more content to cover. It went alright.

My laptop charger broke again. Do you remember that I have a weird laptop that requires a charger you can't just get from a universal charge set, or buy at any local store? About half a year ago, the tip that inserts into the laptop stopped working, and I had to special order a new one. Well, now this one exploded. I plugged it in one day, heard a pop, saw a flurry of electricity, looked at the cable and saw it was severed in one spot, exposing a lot of fried wiring.

Everything turned out okay, though, because the cable is made of two connecting pieces, and the piece that had just exploded was different from the one that had stopped working. Luckily, I'd kept my previous, non-working charger, connected the still-working pieces and so I still have a functioning laptop charger. Based on how long it took mine and my brother's charger, and his replacement charger (we had the same brand of laptop at one time) to stop working, I'm betting I've got another half-year of use in this charger before the tip stops working again.

My laptop is able to hold about an hour of charge before it dies, so it really becomes almost immediately obsolete without access to charge.

One of my neighbour's units went up in flames in a grease fire. Just a cooking accident, everyone was fine. It sounds bad, but it was almost a relief for me, since I've long wondered what would happen in the case of a fire, since all the units are connected. They lived in a lower unit, and only that one was affected, despite being burned through.

Youth Media, First Paycheque, Safe Management

Kids these days are so unoriginal.

Everyone turns on the TV in the morning for some cartoons before school, and what are they watching? Reruns of Spongebob that came out when I was a kid. I'm like, "This was old when I was your age". Harry Potter is still as popular as ever despite the final official novel of the series having been published a decade ago. Pokemon is still updating, even hitting record levels with Pokemon Go (although that's died down a bit). I've been considered "cool" for having opinions on Dragon Ball Z. I watched that show because it was being released weekly when I was watching. These kids are all watching reruns.

As far as new content goes, I've seen kids watching "Nearly Naked Animals". I want to see how a writer pitches that concept to a team of publishers and gets it approved. It's a bunch of hairless animals with body stubble, wearing underpants and getting into slapstick comedic situations.

To be fair, my generation wasn't exactly devoid of bad cartoons either. "What About Mimi", "Brace Face", "Bein' Ian", "My Life as a Teenage Robot", "Monster by Mistake", etc. It's not exactly fair to judge a generation's media by one example, there are always flubs. But it does feel strange that I'm still so in the loop

Hunger Games and Maze Runner came closer to the mark for main-stream youth media, I guess. The one movie I watched for Maze Runner was off the chain. Just ridiculous action piled on action. Like, running away on a tightrope from people who are following you on the same rope, with music playing which will set off an explosion when it ends, and then falling off the rope from the explosion from a skyscraper only to fall onto a pane of glass which slowly starts breaking, but then a fast zombie falls onto the glass pane so he has to fight the zombie while trying to get off the glass panel while it breaks. Just ridiculous.

Finally got my first real paycheque. Whenever I'm really poor, I cut corners hard on my spending. Like, I'll only use bar soap, I don't buy condiments etc. I just got myself some shea butter handsoap and upgraded from yellow mustard to dijon! Got myself a fruit bowl too. Nutrition kind of becomes an after thought when you're only thinking about living to tomorrow, and not five years later. But I got apples, pears, bananas, and mangos! Gave my wardrobe a much-needed update, too.

I have a deep freezer now, too, but that's not something I got because I have money. I just lucked out that a neighbour wanted to get rid of her deep freezer. My unit is really well furnished and it's basically all from getting things from my neighbours.

Got my tax return. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't a student in the previous year. If you're a student, they burn you for like, two thirds of your return for some reason. So I got something nice this year.

I ran my first Safe Management course! I got to do it with the two other more seasoned facilitators, which was nice. I was super nervous but it turned out okay. Twelve hour course, six hours over two days. I was only going to be running courses like, three times a year, but there was suddenly an increase in who is required to be trained, so now we've got courses almost monthly. Used you be an eight hour training too, but it got upgraded to twelve. I'm not doing every one, but I am doing most of them.

I need to update my 1st Aid and CPR soon, too.

Buses, Phones, and Clothes

So recently my phone broke. I discovered this when I got an unexpected paycheque, and to celebrate, I  decided to order pizza. It was past 12:00 midnight and so there were only a few franchises open, but since I've ordered past this time before, I knew what was available. First location answers, I state my order but they continue to repeat their greeting as though they hadn't heard me, and eventually I hang up. I try again, same result. I try another place, same franchise, different location, but the same thing happens.

It just so happens that at midnight, things crossed over to April Fools Day, so I wonder if management told their employees to pretend they can't hear customers that call in, as a festive prank (terrible for business). Plus the unexpected paycheque only would have added to this festive theme.

Unfortunately, April Fools passed and I still couldn't use my phone. I could text and go online with it, I just couldn't use its function as an actual telephone.

Around this time, the buses decided to go on strike a week after they had stated that they would not, saying they rejected the prospective terms they had come to with the City. This time they're saying it's non-negotiable, and the strike will happen. Lots of people don't know if they should buy a bus pass or not, since it's near the beginning of the month and they don't know how long the strike will be, or if they will be reimbursed.

Around this time, our laundromat was busted into, which is something that routinely happens nowadays. People break in to smash open the machines and harvest their coins. The most recent bout left two washers and two driers operational, but only if you know a trick to make them work by poking around the exposed area left when the robbers smashed open the coin slots. This makes the complex real excited, because it means we can do our laundry for free, but since we only have two of each and everyone's jumping to do free loads of laundry, it means they're constantly busy. Especially since the new Super has put a new time restriction, so the laundromat is open from 8 AM to 8PM, which is really incompatible with my overnight schedule.

So I finally have a bit of money, but I can't bus, or use my phone, or wash my clothes. Things can't just go my way.

But the buses backed out of their bus strike again, which again happened the day before it was going to happen. They said it was a sure thing this time, but they did some behind-the-scenes negotiating and they wound up getting what they want.

I'm of two minds on that. I've always said that being a city bus driver has to be one of the most difficult jobs, because people expect you to be on-the-minute exact with your timing, when there are so many different factors that could slow you down or speed you up, such as the number of riders getting on and off, the whether, detours etc. And people only come to you with their negativity, blaming your for ruining their day by being early or late, or missing a stop request or forgetting to open the side door. You don't often see people compliment a driver for successfully completing an expected route.

But all their complaints about health and safety concerns, about how they're getting disrespected and have to worry about being assaulted... That's my regular job, and they get paid twice what I do. But I don't threaten to close an essential service like they did. Lost a little respect for them for pulling the strike threat twice, especially after they'd agreed to terms after their first threat and later thought they could get better based on how everyone reacted.

I brought my phone in to see if it could get replaced, since it came free with my plan and had a year-long warranty, and it broke down in under a year. But there's a smudge in the centre of the screen that apparently indicates that it has been water damaged, and even if your phone is damaged in an unrelated way, if it's ever been water damaged, they won't repair it. It's not like I ever dropped it in the toilet or a sink or anything, it must have gotten that way from me walking through the rain or something.

But you can buy a headset with a mic to replace the one broken on your phone, which I have. So now I can use my phone again, I just have to be wearing head phones.

And I learned the trick on the broken washing machines and managed to get a couple loads done. So I can bus, phone, and wash my clothes again.

I got accepted to Brantford Laurier for Bachelor of Social Work, so that's another option if I decide to go that route.