elephantine, flummery

I'm still meandering through xkcd's archives.

Here is an alphabet's worth of favourite words.

addlepated, biomechanisms, charismatic, drear, elephantine, flummery, gavotte, harken, indignant, judicious, kindle, launder, meridian, noisome, owlishly, pedant, quinquireme, rondel, squiffy, twill, untainted, 'verse, woundrousness, xenophobic, yearning, Zoroastrian.

Oh, and prac was okay. Last day tomorrow.

Forgot Something Again...

I'm finding it amusing now.
Last night, I woke up (after being asleep) terrified that my sister had been asphyxiating herself, oil-painting with turps holed up in her room for hours on end. The facts, as I saw them, were:

• It's freezing cold and raining all the time at the moment, where my folks live.
• My sister spends all her time in her room when she's not on the computer. She does all her painting in her room.
• My sister's room is likely to be all shut up against the aforementioned cold, and is not really well-ventilated at the best of times.
• My sister was all excited about doing oil painting for the first time.
• Mineral turpentine is integral to oil painting, and should not be used in unventilated areas.

Facts that unfortunately did not occur to me:

• I love mineral turpentine with a fierce, longing love. My sister has never shown any indication she feels the same way.
• Just because I'm dumb enough to give myself migraines via low ventilation does not mean my sister is.
• My sister is not an idiot.
• Even if she did hole herself up in her room with the fumes and make herself sick, she'd never do it again. Never never three days in a row.

So I tried to ring her. Then when her phone was turned off, I sent her a text message three text messages long about the dangers of turps fumes.

She definitely is sitting at home, thinking I'm a psycho.

I'm a psycho.

Grandparents: run away, run away

Was Grandparents' Day at school today. Am exhausted. Was ostensibly teaching middle and afternoon sessions, that's after the big event, but didn't do much. We just went outside and played all middle session. Which was really good for me, as unlike the teacher-aide's grown-up kids, I didn't have the option of going home at lunch time because I was too tired to stay. And really good for the kids, as they had had to sit through an hour of upper-school performances before their two-minute song, and missed all their outside time in the morning.
I was okay. Am hoping I shan't crash and burn too badly tomorrow.

Am beginning to suspect I may be able to do this teaching dealie, eventually, with practice.
It's a God thing.

My tally is up to 8 cans of V energy drink disgustingness (4 sugar-free, 4 with sugar in), but only 3 cups of coffee.
Two days to go. Am teaching all day tomorrow.

Got the letter with all my aeroplane flying details, so now I've got my trip home all sorted. Home! Hooray! For a month!!!!!

not christmas

um. so. two Good Days in a row. Am terrified, and will now run away and hide under the bed, or at least I would if it wasn't quite so crowded with boxes and suitcases and shoes and dust bunnies and such. Teacher said this was the best day I've ever had. Have got a terrible sensation of impending doom re: tomorrow, although I don't know how bad it could really be - we're making gingerbread men. Yumm. Speaking of, here are some donuts I didn't eat this afternoon except for one.

And here is a tower made of blocks.

And also I got an assignment back with an A+ grade. So, in all, good days. (That's plural because I got the assignment back yesterday.)

Must ask my mum very sweetly to book some driving lessons for me now that I know when I'm going home.

La la la.

and I forgot

That riding an excercise bike thing on Saturday went well and my legs didn't even hurt the next day. Hooray.

Garfield was wrong...

...Mondays rock. Had a great day today at prac, and it was the same last week and the week before. Mondays are easy, because you're rested, and you've had all weekend to prepare. Mondays are about fresh beginnings, untainted by last week's woes. (My grandfather is listening to 'Teenage Dirtbag' on TV for some reason. It's freaking me out.)
Have so far consumed 1.5 coffees and 2 cans of V energy disgustingness (Student: I love that lemonade. It makes me hyper.) Am expecting tally to escalate as the week progresses.
Tomorrow am teaching all day and so far, I'm not terrified. Which may be a bad sign, Tuesdays so far for me have all been about a false sense of security.

even the math

(click for larger)

Much, much cooler than Explosms: xkcd.

Bleh.

No post yesterday, sorry, I got distracted playing around with Meez in Photobucket. I made this one, inspired by (but bearing no actual resemblance to) my sister.

Today, I feel bone-weary in my bones. I should be preparing for next week's teaching (3 half, 2 full days) but can only lie in bed, feeling not great.

Will go ride an excercise bike for Jesus this evening.

Moon Corner

So this is what I've been doing all week.

Argument

THE ICECREAM TRUCK IS MY FAVOURITE SHOP.

no one was interested, but anyway

Five minutes on IMDb confirms that Nathaniel Parker is indeed both Inspector Lynley and Dunstan Thorne. The younger Dunstan Thorne (Ben Barnes) is Prince Caspian, strangely enough.

http://www.stardustmovie.com/

I did teaching in front of the vice-principal today, and I did it well. So that's good. Makes everyone happy. She even changed the time and came an hour and a half earlier, and I still did it well.
I am at my wits' end as to how to keep a cardboard spaceship in one piece - have gone out this afternoon and bought a twelve-dollar roll of gaffa tape, and if that doesn't do the trick I shall be vexed. (I spelt gaffa like that because that's what it says on the packet. Otherwise I'd have spelt it gaffer. Odd.)
The new Stardust Movie site is up, with enough shiny new things to make waiting for September really hard. It looks to me like Inspector Lynley is going to be Dunstan Thorne, but it could just be an uncanny resemblance in my head.

beginning of the rest of my prac

Monday was good. Except for before I got to prac, and during the interview with my uni supervisor, when I was a basket-case, leaking tears. But the actual teaching-y bits were good. So keeping that going is the trick; this morning I didn't start so well, but pulled it together during outside time and kept the enthusiasm going until the end of the day.
Tomorrow will be a good day. I promise.

please not trepidation

Getting ready to face up to prac tomorrow. Am looking forward to most of it, just not the bits that involve people judging me. Or me talking about the problems I'm having.
Quite a large part of me wants to make it the teacher's fault. Which is definitely not the case. So I just have to remember to say how I feel and not blame her because she's not to blame. It's all yukky.
Am trying to have impeccable preparation and lesson planning, so at least they can't fault me for that. And we'll see how I go.
Had a great Sunday School lesson today, and Heather F rang this afternoon and we chatted, which was good. I needed a teacher's view.
People keep telling me they're praying.
Hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight.

God can do this.

Keeping on Going

Have spent the day re-thinking lesson plans and amassing resources and generally trying to lift my game. Can think about the whole thing without crying now, which is at least partly to do with the precious comments left for me after my last post - thanks again. I'll slam-dunk my Sunday School lesson tomorrow, which should help. And I'm praying and praying. Can you all please continue doing the same? :)

Alleliua is a crappy teacher

No blog post yesterday or the day before, Blogger wasn't cooperating on Wednesday and I was too busy on Thursday.
I've been classified as 'at risk' on my practicum interim report. Which is bad. And it feels stupid, because I've been nervous and unsettled and not doing things I know to do. So am spending weekend working my butt off trying to do all the things my prac teacher says I need to do. And when I do them she'll point out a bunch of other things I haven't done. She doesn't seem to like telling me about what I should be doing until I haven't done it. Oh well. I'm just sad because I thought I could do this. I thought I was good at it. But I'm trying and trying and she's still worried, and I just can't seem to get things right.
Plus I have a cold. I'm going to bed.

Going to Bed Now

I got home from prac at three thirty and from then 'till now, bar a half hour to eat tea in, I've been doing preparation for tomorrow. Kill me now. Or possibly, since I'm finished, just let me go to sleep...

wellity wellity wellity

In a major break with the tradition of the last few posts, amazingly, my feet don't hurt, I have no headaches, and I'm not bone weary. In fact, after coming home from prac this afternoon, I had the energy to devote another three hours to preparation and organisation for tomorrow and beyond. I think I'm adapting, which is a nice feeling. Or it could be Kat's Lethal Iced Coffee. You never know.

Prep is doing the letter 'a' this week, as in 'a says a-a-a'. Tomorrow I'm doing an activity with them, so I think we'll be astronauts, and moonwalk around a big letter A on the floor. I have the Star Wars theme at the ready. Much more difficult to find is a sound effect with a countdown and rocket blastoff, for free on the net. So eventually I settled for just a rocket blastoff, and we'll D.I.Y countdown.

otherwise known as Skuzz

The Garden Party. Which began with one of the lesser Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Treading In Dogshit, and did not greatly improve from there. I developed one of the worst headaches I've ever had, mostly from the glare. And of course, I was running around on gravel paths with no shoes as a result of the aforementioned horseman.
But the girls from the singing group outdid themselves, and the food was well yummy, and the customers seemed to enjoy themselves (customers isn't the right word, but I can't think of what is.) And the lady it was held to benefit, I think, benefited. So that was all okay.

Even so, I'm sure one of the circles of hell is a garden party.

the mother of all parties...

Today at prac we had a Mothers' Day party in the evening, which we were preparing for all day. Psycho mess, I swear. My head hurts and my feet ache, but the mums all loved it and a good time was had by all, which is the Main Thing.

My phone is not currently recieving text messages, which would not normally be a problem, but of course whenever my phone is out of commission everyone wants to talk to me. I should get to be nearly popular in the month it will take me to save for a new phone.

Tomorrow my prac supervisor from uni comes out for a meet-and-greet, which I'm a little apprehensive about, considering I've been doing too much actual work to get a lot of the rubbishy paperwork done. Oh well. I'll see how I go.

This week in the evenings after dinner and before 8:30 or so, I've read the first and last volumes of Dave Sim's Cerebus. The first was considerably more fun than the last. Gigantically more fun, really. I'm not even sure why I read the last one, actually.

just me wittering on again

I feel like a zombie. And as far as I can tell, that's not going to improve anytime soon. The weekend will not provide a reprieve, I've stuff on. Oh well.

I got stickers at the cheapo shop today, hippo ones that say 'Hip Hip Hooray' and dinosaur ones that say 'Dino-mite.' They are for Sunday School - the children's church type thingy at the beginning, not in my class. My Sunday School class this week is the story of Naaman, as told with red sticky dots and a spray bottle of water.

Prac was good. I know nearly everyone's name in my class, and all the troublemakers from the other Prep as well, which comes in handy. Generally they are the names you need to call out in a stern voice.

Also, yesterday I bought glitter hairspray.

PRAC

My four weeks block prac began today. It was a reasonable beginning. I don't know how I'm going to survive the whole thing; by lunch-time today I was ready to fall on the floor in a heap.
Spider-mania reigns in the prep classroom at the moment. Four-year-old children are telling me about Norman Osborne's brutal demise. None of them have even seen the third movie, but the first two have been on telly over the last couple of weekends, and they've all seen the movie promos around the place. They run around and one of them is black Spiderman and one of them is red Spiderman and one of them is Hobgoblin and, generally, one of them is a tiger.

catches theives, just like flies

Today I went to see Spiderman 3. It was mostly good, with bits that make you laugh (admittedly, mostly Emo Spiderman) and bits that make you cry and bits that make you gasp. So there were only two things I really didn't like about it. Number one was Gwen Stacy telling a crowd of people "I'm here today because I fell sixty feet and someone caught me," which seems a bit tasteless, since the reason Gwen isn't here today is that she fell and somebody caught her. The other sucky thing was a very very lame, badly acted Stan Lee cameo (he actually said 'Nuff Said.) All the things I like, I can't say because they would mostly spoil the movie. But I do heart Harry Osborne.

Tops Again

Like pretty much anyone, I go through cycles of confidence. After my third lead-in day at prac, I was sure I was going to be the crappiest teacher in the world. I was no good with kids, I can't teach, etc, etc.
Today is the opposite. Had to do a Sunday School thing on the fly, and survived (with Joel's help) - I'm going to be an excellent teacher, hooray. But that could just be the adrenaline speaking.

Our student pastor did a children's talk with shoes this morning, that I immediately wanted to steal. I'd love to do it as a team talk with my sister, actually. Between us we could come up with a reasonably entertaining variety of shoes...

whew. it's over

So. After handing in art assignment yesterday, I finished off behaviour management and started printing out and putting together, only to discover I'd left my reference list on Grandma's computer. So, instead of wasting two hours going home and getting it and coming back, I wasted four hours putting it back together from in-text citations, often muttering things like "Barkley? Who on earth is Barkley? And where did I find him?" And the uni internet server went down. For an hour. So I couldn't access digitised readings I'd cited. And of course I had off-line copies of them - at home. Grr.

So after I handed that one in, I felt completely ready for something fun. So I went to see Tales from Earthsea at the Dendy - that's the new Studio Ghibli film, which unfortunately rates somewhere down in the Pom Poko doldrums for me. So disappointing, after Howl and Spirited Away. Not that it was bad - it just wasn't excellent. And I've read the books - I have a sneaking suspicion it's a lot less fun if you haven't. It didn't entirely make sense as it was.
But the ending wasn't entirely un-awesome.
Oh well.

the little uni student that could

Yesterday was exhausting. Apparently the preps were psycho, but I had lots of fun. Then I got home and kind of fell in a heap.
Just handed in my art assignment. It took 45 minutes to print and organise and bind and submit, which is yet another reminder that time never does what you want it to. Have to add some stuff from yesterday's prac to my behaviour management assignment, then I'll hand that in too. After presumably even longer printing and organising and binding and submitting. It's a hugely dense assignment for 1500 words, so everyone has like 17 appendices because they're not part of the word count.

Have figured out perfect presents for my brothers' birthday and mothers' day, but am not telling.

Gold Star

This post is my reward for finishing the first fifth of my assignment. You may think, huh, one fifth, that's not much, she needs someone to stand over the computer and lash her with a cat-o-nine-tails, but the thing is, the first fifth is the hardest, because to start, I need to figure out where the heck I'm going. So as a friend said yesterday when I took notes in the tute instead of doodles, Gold Star for me. I know where I'm headed, and I'm going there, I promise, I just needed a little teeny eeny break, etc, etc, whine whine...
Must ring home and find out what I should buy for mother's day and my brothers' birthday, both of which are happening soonish.

I found both these new obsessions a few weeks ago, but didn't think they were worth blogging. The fact that I'm still obsessed with them is reason enough to blog them.

Firstly, a Regina Spektor video that was on the Fabulist. I'm obsessed with it because I can't sing it. And that, for me, is really frustrating. The chorus is stuck in my head with no way of getting out.


And the other obsession is a website, Linda Bergkvist's website to be exact. Who is she? I hear you ask. She is a digital artist, and her stuff is well pretty. Check it out at Furiae.
Now, back to assignment. After I finish the next fifth, I've promised myself lemon-lime sorbet. Which is not my favourite as much as rose petal gelato, but is still pretty good.

Happy Happy

Well, I got 25/30 for the assignment I forgot to hand in last week. So I'm feeling much happier with the world than I was an hour ago. If I believed in luck and made a habit of profanity, I'd say I was a lucky bastard.

I've posted quite a bit today and yesterday. Anyone would think I was avoiding something, like maybe a behaviour management assignment...

margin monsters

My favourite Buffy quote to actually use in conversation is something Willow says in the episode "Gingerbread" (and I know that because that's what it said on the page when I googled it):

'It's a doodle, I do doodle. You too, you do doodle too.'

Partly because it works for non-Buffy fans (unlike, say, "Well, we could grind our enemies into talcum powder with a sledgehammer, but, gosh, we did that last night.") and partly because I am always having to explain about the little pictures that magically appear in my notebooks and pieces of paper that I use in lectures and tutes. I accidentally drew on someone else's paper the other week. I was so embarrased.

Here's my doodles from waiting for lectures to begin yesterday. (Note that the girl in the dress on the right is a fairly accurate representation of my smock dress, but not of me.)