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.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Thursday, May 4, 2017
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.
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.
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