Spirit Halloween

It's been awhile since I updated! My computer's pretty broken and I've got another one coming in. Before, I would just use a student computer, but since I don't live next to the school and my account is finished, that's not a possibility. Nowadays, I just wait for my mostly-broken computer to be in a good mood. Even now, I have to worry that before I finish writing this, it will decide to start pulling up search bars and plug random combinations of letters and numbers until it drives itself crazy and shuts down.

(Edit: It started writing "vvvvvvvv" over and over and deleted half my post. Two days have passed and I've now started an account with the Kitchener Public Library and am finishing this on a public access computers. They only give thirty minutes as opposed to Guelph's full hour)

However, while my computer's behaviour is confirmed mysterious by my tech-savvy friend, I showed him my phone (which was giving all those strange suggestions) and it turns out that it was pulling suggestions from a combination of Afrikaans and another language that I forget. He re-set it to English.

I was at Conestoga Mall, where they have a shop called Spirit Halloween. As the name suggests, it is completely dedicated to the Halloween season. And apparently there's no Spirit Christmas or Spirit Easter. When the greeter greeted me, I asked her a number of redundant questions regarding whether or not it was a whole store dedicated to one holiday, and she kept saying it was.

There were these ornaments in the shape of spectres that would make some kind of motion if you stood on a button. My friend stepped on a zombie which made crawling motions at him. I stood on a button near a zombie girl, which made her sway back and forth.

I thought mine was a little unintimidating compared to my friend's zombie, and I said as much. I could appreciate th

(Edit: this is where my computer fried on me, I'm picking it up from here. And between my last edit and reviewing what I'd written two days ago, I overheard a librarian explain that the computers to my left give two full hours, and I just got unlucky and chose a half hour one)

the idea behind it, creating a sense of unease by depicting something pure like a young girl and combining it with something unnatural like a zombie. But the comparatively tame motion next to it's adult male counterpart still left it seeming a little uninspired. And I said as much.

Then it said "Help me... Please... Help me....". That gave me a chill. I could appreciate the way it appealed to the human desire to approach and help based on it's seeming fragility, combined with the urge to keep distance based on it's unnatural appearance, combined with appealing to the fear of the unknown as it urged you to question what it needed help from when it didn't seem in any evident danger.

I praised the little girl creature, and told my friend that I'd spoken too soon. My spectre was more frightening than his.

Then it flew at me.

Some of my friends like to jump out and surprise me, because it triggers an old Karate instinct and makes me bounce back into a fighting stance. It's probably not wise to provoke that, but there's some novelty in that I'm always battle ready.

But this girl... came at me in such a way that I couldn't perceive it as human motion. With my senses frazzled, I screamed, covered my face in my arms and jumped backwards off the button, deactivating it. The whole store was staring at me.

I haven't screamed in years. I didn't even know how I sounded when I screamed. I can't remember the last time I've been so terrified.

After we walked away, a staff member came and stood on the button in front of the zombie girl (presumably to test and see if it was too frightening for public display after my fit). Looking at it from afar and knowing what to expect, I was slightly humiliated to see that the girl doesn't really move all that much when she jumps at you. She just kind of lurches forward.

Worst part was when some young boys told me to try out a giant tarantula ornament, telling me that I'd think it was "cool". I guessed that it was going to jump at me too, and they were just trying to get me again thinking that I might be vulnerable to jumpers after my previous display.

I was right. Without the aspect of surprise, the gimmick has no potency though.

Seven Sunflowers

I was wrong about the DVD, VHS and board games being here when we moved in... They actually belong to one of my roommates. The house is still decorated and furnished.

All seven of my sunflowers blossomed before I left student housing. The final one blossomed on the day of the move. That's my record for successfully blossomed sunflowers, beating my previous record of one.

Remember how I mentioned that my last day of Day Program in the Summer Program was on a Blue Moon? Well, the night I moved out of Student Housing was the night a Harvest Moon. One life stage ends with a blue moon, and another with a red moon, hmm...

Moving Day

Well, yesterday I moved out of student housing, where I'd been living for two years and had shared living space with a total of twenty different roommates over that timespan. When I showed up, I had only two suitcases and a backpack. Now that I'm leaving, I've got three suitcases, two backpacks, five garbage bags and some miscellaneous stuff. And I threw out a lot of stuff and made a number of house donations to future students because I couldn't be bothered to move it all. It's crazy how you build up possessions. By the time I'd moved all my stuff out, it didn't even make the house look much different, just showing that everyone's got a similar kind of buildup. And of me and the two people I'm moving in with, I wasn't the one with the most stuff either.

And even though three people just moved in with their own stuff... the place is furnished. Really nicely, too. It has a lot of neat personal touches and the impression of a family that had been here a long time, although I hear the family before us had only been here briefly. There are decorations, board games, books, a DVD and VHS collection etc,

I finally took the industrial-sized panini press and beer machine from the house, which belonged to my first generation of roommates.

All of my delicate stuff survived the move. My stick from Chisasibi, my drum, masks, and animal carvings from Mali, my paintings from the Summer Program overnight, my certificates from Ways2Work, Katimavik, Canada World Youth, and Human Services Foundation and my diploma from Social Services. My spice rack. My raffle-won French Press, wine glasses and cheeseboard all made it.

But by some twist of fate, my spice rack did not survive the night. I'd successfully gotten it to the other side and had propped it up on the counter. It had survived in student housing propped up on a counter just like it for months, and then after everything was over, one of the people that helped us move bumped it and one of the glass bottles broke.

Do you remember me blogging about how I got this classy spice rack with specified bottles that had the leaf of their respective spice engraved in metal on them? And that I got a bunch of spices just to fill the rack? Tarragon and turmeric were the only ones I didn't know, and tarragon was the most expensive and hardest to find on the rack. I got it in a little glass bottle the same size as the bottle I wanted to put it in, just to complete the collection. It was my show spice.

As soon as I heard her say that one of the spices broke, I said "It better not be tarragon".

It was tarragon. I don't even know if I want the spice rack anymore, since it's now incomplete.

Prep for September

Recently, I went to the school and backed up everything on my student account that I want to keep, since it will be shut down as of Tuesday. I also bought a city bus pass for September, the first one I've purchased in literally a year. My last pass was dated August 2014. On the September pass, there is a picture of an apple to represent the month, which I took to signify the supposed tradition of students giving apples to teachers as a show of gratitude (never actually saw it happen...). It appears that even though I got an Adult bus pass, the association of my birth month and the beginning of school will always be a thing...

I updated ,my resume recently. Since I'm gainfully employed, I don't expect to use it anytime soon, but I hadn't updated it since becoming an Independent Facilitator and Direct Support Worker, or since my second go as a Summer Program Leader, since my stint at Healing of the 7 Generations, or since graduating. I just did it for my own self-esteem, and it was really gratifying to be able to make all those changes at once. I sent in an application to the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers. Provided nothing unexpected happen, I should soon be able to legally refer to myself as Gryphon Sibbald, RSSW.

I also finally created a LinkedIn account, which is like a social networking site, but focusing on professional stuff.

Check it out, I have a bio on the Facile website (I'm third from the top): http://facilewaterlooregion.ca/who-we-are/our-staff/

Three more of my sunflowers blossomed. That's five out of seven, now. The other two have two days before I move, although since one of my friends will be living here, he's offered to oversee my garden and allow me access to it, so I don't feel so much like I'm abandoning it.

End of Summer Program

Today was the last day of Summer Program. During the evaluation week, we wrote our perspectives on the summer, we discussed it in-depth with the program coordinators, we got our personal assessments, we compiled data from participant evaluation sheets, we made house calls to get feedback on participant experiences during the overnight, we sorted through photos taken throughout the summer, we designed a collage from participant art based on their overnight experience, we picked up clay art that had been made during Wacky Water Week but took time to finish, and we cleaned the accessible van.

We all got a special lunch ordered in for us this week. We gave a gift to our supervisor, and each of us received a framed sheet with a collection of praise given to us by our coworkers.

I feel like I'm finally "psychologically graduating". After I graduated I kept living in student housing, I went back to my old student job, I kept using my student bus pass, and I kept going to the school to use their printer.

But now my student job is ending, I'm moving out of student housing, my student bus pass is expiring, and my student account will be shut down, so I can't use the printer. When I graduated, it felt like summer vacation. But now summer vacation is ending, and I won't be going back to school/

I had a Facile meeting tonight, and I was getting a ride from my Facile mentor. Right after I said my goodbyes and left the building, she had just arrived and was ready to take me to my meeting. It was exactly like leaving my old life behind and being carried directly into my new.

Impeesa and Kimbercote

Sorry it's been so long guys! I just finished two weeks of overnight camp, in which I couldn't update because I was gone 24/7. I was home during the weekends but my computer is (mostly) broken, and since I have two other jobs, I just didn't have time to access something to update the blog.

First week of overnight we stayed at Camp Impeesa. I went there last year. To review, it's pronounced "Impessa", it's usually a Boy Scout's camp, and it's named after the guy who invented Boy Scouts' nickname when he was fighting in South Africa. It was given to him by his enemies and he said it meant "The Wolf that Never Sleeps". However, it actually means "Hyena"| in Ashanti. It's supposedly haunted by a ghost named "Drumbo Dan" who was killed there after losing his feet, and who therefor cuts off peoples feet off in an attempt to reattach them to his ghost body.

Second week was at Kimbercote. Last year was the first that Impeesa was used, and for at least three years prior to my joining Summer Program and likely more, Kimbercote was the go-to location for overnight. I'd heard plenty of stories about how much rougher Kimbercote was, so I was very eager to experience it myself. It wasn't so bad. The location was far more remote than Impeesa. The cabin seemed older, and had a number of personal touches and quirks, but it was fine for our purposes. It's near Collingwood, it's at the top of a hill, and the view is spectacular.

Over the two weeks we had campfires, went on hikes, went swimming, watched movies, played games, held a dance... A staff at Extend-a-Family has a farm near Collingwood and we went there for a day trip. We also had a day trip at Bingemins water park on the last Friday (scheduling difficulties landed us in Kitchener a bit early in the second week, but we got an extra day trip out of it). At Bingemins we did the wave pool, warm water jet stream, water slides, and mini golf as well as a few games the staff led nearer the end of the day.

It was a good two weeks!

I have a place to live next month! Moving in with a couple of friends. I was getting pretty nervous when I had half a month to find a place and knew I was spending two weeks out camping.

And two of my sunflowers blossomed! I'm calling it a good omen and naming them after my two future roommates.

Wacky Water Week

Last week was Wacky Water Week. We did clay art, we went to a water park, and we played Reverse Paintball (staff got painted by participants, then had them shoot the paint off with water guns).

For the water park, we went to the Wild Water Works in Hamilton, which had a wave pool. water slides, and a lazy river (floating down a river in an inner tube).

The whole week was pretty awesome!

By some quirk of fate, I wasn't doing either of my other two jobs on Saturday, so I managed to visit my home in Guelph for the first time since Summer Program started. I haven't seen them since convocation started, actually.

But the way time lined up, I had to go to the Greyhound station right after work. And since I hadn't had time to change, I was still wearing my swim suit. The first bus that came was supposed to be going through Guelph, then Toronto, but apparently that day it was a Toronto Express, so all the people with regular Toronto tickets got upgraded while the Guelph people were asked to wait. We were told the Guelph bus would be half an hour late, but by that time, it was already half an hour late. We were told the next bus would be going to Guelph, but it was going to London. And then we had to talk another Toronto Express into taking us. Finally got on a bus an hour and a half past schedule.

My phone hadn't properly charged the night before, so it died while I was lined up. And even though I had brought a cell phone charger, there was no outlet and I couldn't leave because I didn't know when the bus might arrive. So I wasn't able to phone home and tell my mother and brother I would be late.

Night of the blue moon too. Felt powerful that my last day of Day Program would be on a blue moon night.

And yeah, Day Program is over! I'm now doing a prep week, followed by two weeks of overnight camp, followed by an evaluation week, after which the Summer Program is complete! Time is moving forward.

Got a pretty significant crop of string beans recently. Since my first batch of tomato plants didn't work out and I replaced them with a set of partially-grown ones, I've found myself in need of tomato cages when no place sells tomato cages anymore.. They're just falling over each other right now. My flowers are flowering, but sort of weakly.

I brought home some snow peas for my mom to make something with. She made them as a side with ramen.

Got my beer machine on the chilling process. Will get one more crop before I move.