Hidden Talents Round 4

Last week was Hidden Talents themed. Our special guest was a couple of painters who instructed us as we painted a sunset/sunrise with something silhouetted against it. As you may know, I developed a taste for painting last year, and while I'm not much compared to other members of the family (common interest that I picked up late) and I kind of learned to hate the art world (Artworld?) between my Art and Society class, and my project on Malevich  (Black Square guy) for Russian Studies, I still have fun. I got absorbed enough in it I felt more like a participant of the program. Participants around me were cheering me on, somebody said "Try not to startle Gryphon, I don't want him to make a mistake when he's doing such a good job" and the instructor wanted to take a picture of me with my painting. That kind of encouragement and acknowledgement is usually directed toward participants, not leaders, so it was a little weird. I really did like my painting though. I did a silhouette of a tree and some birds. I made the colours darker around the sun, though, and made them fade lighter with distance, which doesn't make any sense. Oh well.

Our day trip was bowling and a movie. Last week we did bowling as well, so I was a little more practiced this time around, and I think it showed. Last time, I got one strike which bounced off a bumper, and this time I got four strikes with one that bounced off a bumper. So basically, I got three strikes this time, and I didn't get any last time.

I feel like I hit the bumper more often than I'd get gutter balls if the bumpers weren't there. The security of having the bumpers seems to take away some of the pressure, and it hurts my game.

For some reason, everyone on my team would only use pink bowling balls, so I had to stock up on those. Somebody from the lane next over bounced their bowling ball and it flew our direction. I thought their ball would end up in our lane and stealing someone's turn, but instead it wedged itself behind a bumper. Someone managed to get a gutter ball when the gutters were blocked.

The movie we watched was Ant Man and The Wasp. I'd never seen the original Ant Man, but it didn't hurt the experience too much. They had a kind of creative way of incorporating a synopsis of the previous movie partway into the film, which helped. Definitely one of the more lighthearted of the Marvel superhero movies, and the most obscure superhero that they have decided to highlight.

At the end of the movie, one of our participants pointed to Ant Man and said "I want to be just like him". I said, "Yeah, he's your hero?" and he said "Yeah, I want to be just like Iron Man!"

I flipped, "He's Ant Man! We just watched a whole movie on him!"

I support a guy who is into the Marvel superhero movies, so I've seen most of them. I was depressed to realize that, when one of the participants brought in his extensive collection of Marvel action figures, I was able to identify each one.

A big draw to Hidden Talents week is our talent show, where everybody takes a turn making a performance. 90% of them decide to sing (just like my high school's talent show) but we had that one participant do his action figure show & tell, and we had somebody shoot basketball hoops.

One of our guys wanted to dance to Shake it Off by Taylor Swift, but he wouldn't do it unless I was his backup dancer. And then when we got there, he kind of hid back shyly and I was stuck as the sole dancer. If you don't know Shake it Off, it's a highly energetic song about a woman who gets over negativity by shaking it off on the dance floor. Not something I would volunteer to dance to on stage.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM

Thankfully, he got his confidence partway through and started doing somersaults and spinning and breaking out dance moves and I got to fade into the background like a proper backup dancer.

The leaders got put in costumes as well, so this is what I was wearing.

I haven't mentioned it, but in years previous we have had a bus and a van to transport everyone for swimming days and day trips. Depending on the week, we would would sometimes have more 1-to-1 workers, which would make it difficult to arrange transportation. This year, we don't have the van, but we are using two buses to get everywhere. This makes things way more convenient.

One of them is a regular yellow school bus and the other is a white accessibility bus. For whatever reason, I usually wind up on the accessibility bus. I used to shout "WHO'S EXCITED TO GO SWIMMING?", "WHO HAD FUN SWIMMING?", "CAN I GET A BIG THANK YOU FOR OUR BUS DRIVER?" etc., but for whatever reason, the accessibility bus tends to get chosen by quieter types, so I haven't been able to shout.

We used to have a very specific bus driver that we would special request every year. He took the time to get to know the leaders and participants, and would sometimes attend our field trips and would go to the I Choose Dignity rally, so besides being a bus driver, he was also active in our cause. Last year, he wasn't able to work for us, for unknown reasons. So this year, we have two new drivers. Yellow bus driver is more energetic, and white bus driver is more chill.

I forgot to mention, but during our training weeks, we did an Escape Room. That's where you're locked in a room with a bunch of hidden clues and as a team you have to piece them together to escape. We did this in my last year of Summer Program, which was two years ago, and they did it last year, although I wasn't around. You have an hour to complete the challenge. In my previous attempt, we only made it 55% of the way. Last year, they almost made it out but didn't manage it. This year, we made it! We used 58 minutes and fifty three seconds of our hour, but we did it!

Get Your Game On & Vibrant Volunteers Round 4

Alright, so I know that I haven't updated for the previous two weeks, but let's see if I can get at least three done for this month. One big reason that I haven't updated is because I've had to arrange for a pretty cool interview. I don't think I'll expand on it right now, but I'll go into more details when they get back to me, whether or not I get chosen.

During Get Your Game On week, our special guest was an Australian athlete who went by the name of Naps. He instructed us on how to play Cricket and other Australian games. Our Friday event was bowling and then swimming at the Swimplex in the Rec Centre. My whole life I've been bowling using my thumb, index, and middle fingers, but apparently you're supposed to use your thumb, index, and ring finger, to keep the ball balanced between your index and pinky fingers. I thought this would be my secret weapon and drastically improve my performance, but unfortunately, I only did about as well as usual. We had bumpers up, so you couldn't get gutter balls. I only managed one strike that game, but I got it after it ricocheted off a bumper, so I knew it was actually a gutter ball. Everyone cheered for me, and I couldn't discount my success, because if I did it would discourage those who used the bumpers for support.

The Swimplex was fine. I know I've mentioned it before, but between my roles as a Summer Program Leader and Direct Support Person, during the summers I swim 3-5 times per week. Between all the pools we use, I find the Swimplex a little awkward. The shallow end only reaches my waist. The deepest of the shallow end is in an area called "the horseshoe", which is a transition from their wading pool ramp and wading pool to the regular shallow end. Why would it start shallow, get deep, then become more moderate? Shouldn't it be a consistent graduation of depth?

There is a small deep end, but it isn't attached to the shallow end, and most of it is reserved for lane swimming. The deep end is actually so small that I thought it was just another lane for the longest time. They have a hot tub, but it's huge and not very hot. It's more like a "warm tub". But regardless of what I think, everyone else seems to love the place, so whatever.

To be able to enter the deep end, we were required to do a swim test, which was performing a front crawl from one side of the shallow end to the other without touching the floor. I was mildly proud when I passed the test, as I don't have much in the way of formal training. None of us went to the deep end though, so it was kind of pointless.

During Vibrant Volunteers week, our special guest was a Mennonite group who helped us build care packages for people in third world countries. They couldn't get a person to come in though, so our "special guest" was our Summer Program Coordinator, who relayed their message and instructed the group.

Our day trip was to Hacienda gardening facility. I ran a group that pulled defective lettuce. Then we went to the Swimplex again.

Usually when I work for the Summer Program, I buy a pair of shoes right before it starts, then note the shape they're in before and after the program. This year it was impossible because even though I bought a pair of shoes right before the program started, they only lasted three weeks before falling apart. I had to buy a pair on my way to work one day because the sole completely detached. I'd like to judge my new pair by the same criteria, as they seem to be holding up better, but it wouldn't be right since they got off three weeks easy.

During a game of Mission Impossible, which is an activity where you have to hide behind barriers and steal items while people look for you, I managed to shatter my phone's screen. I had army crawled up to one barrier, and when the moment was right, I sort of sideways summer saulted to the next one. This cause me to hip-check my phone a number of times. It still works, and I know other people use phones with shattered screens, but this is the first time I've cracked the screen before the rest of it broke.

Usually during the Summer Program, something goes wrong with the first paycheque and we have to wait for the second pay period. This time, we were paid on time at first, but they missed the second. This is frightening to me, because I relied on that cheque to pay rent, and the next pay period was past the first of the month. But somehow our On-Site Director twisted their arm and we got paid today.

During the time where I thought I'd have to survive until the next pay period, I broke out my piggy banks. I'm pretty sure I mentioned them once about two years ago. Well, this isn't the first time I've opened them, but it is the most lucrative. I found out I had $557 in change!

My garden is doing well. The cherry tomato plants are beating the regular tomatoes in terms of height. I've got green tomatoes growing on both of them, though. My bell peppers and cucumbers aren't producing right now, but my banana peppers look like it won't be long before harvest time.

All Around The World Round 4

If you saw my last post near to when it was published, you should probably check it again. I edited it so that most of its current information is new. I added most of the information about training week, and some stuff about my personal possessions.

I got an air conditioner. Just a one-room window-installation type thing, but it's been a life-saver in this past week's heat wave. A neighbour was selling his old one for $50, which I took him up on. A window air conditioner at Wal Mart costs about $200, and then I'd have to worry about transportation, so a $50 one was a steal for me.

I get that it will hike up hydro costs, and that it's environmentally unfriendly and will just heat up the outdoors in the long run, but heat rises, and my bedroom was easily the hottest room in the unit. It had been nearly impossible to sleep and the AC has changed everything for me.

It's kind of like when everyone was saying that those space heaters would cost us more when our electric heaters broke. The electric heat was already an expense, it didn't make a ton of sense that it would cost more when channeled through one device than another. And it didn't make a significant change.

My roommate has also installed an AC into his room. Apparently, a friend of his gave him one, but he hadn't thought about the details of installing it until I got mine. After I got mine installed, it motivated him to figure out his. So now there are two air conditioned rooms in the unit.

I have an Air Miles Rewards card now. Last time I tried for one, I got rejected because I hadn't lived in the same place for over two years. This time around, somebody gave me a card without question. I signed up, spent a few weeks telling people I didn't have the card because I wasn't sure how to use it. Today I used it for the first time.

This week at Summer Program, we had a special gust come in and give us an exotic animal show. In previous years, we have had presentations on more fear-inducing animals such as snakes and spiders. The goal was to freak everyone out a bit. This year, we chose a show with soft, pleasant animals, such as a cockatoo, a chinchilla, and a tortoise. The goal was not to overstimulate anybody, so this time I didn't get to drape a boa constrictor around my neck or have a tarantula crawl all over me.

Our end of week trip was to African Lion Safari. Me and a coworker wound up being left behind to deal with something. We didn't think we'd make it to the tour on time but the bus driver was super cool and waited for us. When me and my coworker boarded the bus, we got cheered by the group.

Last week I was asked to cover for someone, so I wound up working evenings as well as my day job. Whenever I work in both capacities, I shift on at 8:30 AM for my first job and shift off of my second at 9:00 PM with only enough time between them to travel. That's thirteen and a half hours, and it takes me an hour at the beginning and end of the day to travel. I usually do this twice a week, but last week I did it four times. My shortest day was when I had to decline a direct support shift because we were having a staff meeting, which was the longest day for everyone else. Only worked ten and a half hours that day!

All week I only got to see my garden by flashlight.

My sickness came back a bit too. My throat became sore, my cough came back, and my eyes even redeveloped their infection seemingly for a day. Didn't exactly get to spend the week resting though. I work on the weekends too, but far fewer hours, so at least I've been able to rest a bit.

This cough has been with me for about a month now. Ugh.