Day for Night

I figured I should update my blog today, partly because I haven't in awhile, and partly because I actually want to blog twice in one month. How different this is from my days of blogging several times a week. ;) I'm also hoping I can get into the writing mood as I have a paper I need to work on for my Global Policy class. So this blog entry is serving as a regular update, something to prime the writing pipes, and a procrastination tool. Go me! :D

I've really enjoyed my Global Policy class. The material can be depressing and overwhelming at times, especially if you have not any previous experience with the material. We talk about how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are serving to keep the rich nations rich and the poor nations poor. We talk about various interlocking forces of oppression and world strife. So why did I enjoy the class? Because in the midst of all the difficulties, there is still hope and stories of triumph. I see part of my work as a social worker to be hanging on to that hope and fostering it in others so we can all overcome these many adversities. I don't think all social workers feel that way, but I do. And the longer I can hold onto my belief in hope, the better off my clients will be. See? I'm already writing stuff down for my paper! :D

While I'm not waxing poetic about the nature and future of social work, I'm knitting and surfing on Ravelry, a knitting/crocheting social/networking/pattern-sharing/etc site of uber awesomeness! You can share your projects, in progress and completed, and find patters for just about everything. You can keep track of your yarn stash, of how much yarn you used for a given project, keep a virtual bookshelf of your pattern books, swap notes with crafters with similar interests - I'm deeply in love with this website. I highly recommend it to all the knitters and crocheters out there. Let me know if you join and I'll say hi! :D

My plans for moving are still on track. I can't tell you how excited I am about this! While I'll be living in a city I've never lived in before, I'll be so close to so many friends that I've been missing for years. I just wish I could pack up all the good friends I have here and take them with me. :P That's always the thing - I'm so excited about moving, but I don't want my friends here to think that I'm excited about leaving them. They made living here again worth it, which is really saying something for a place to which I didn't want to move back. I'm going to miss them dearly. But they'll always be welcome to come and visit! :D

If the weather holds out I'll be visiting the GTA for about a week next week! I'll be looking for work and trying to sell my parents' car (as it just has not been selling here), and using those two things as an excuse to see my man. ;) Yes, I know, I'm moving there in about a month, but what can I say? I'm in love, so I'm doing rediculous things. I'll also feel much better if I pass out some resumes as well so as to at least have a start on job hunting. And yes, I can rationalize anything. ;)

Well, herein ends this update. I'd also like to hear how YOU are doing, so leave a comment would ya?

Labels: education, general, knitting, moving, trips

I figure if Elad can do it, so can I. :)

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1. Where is your cell phone? jacket
2. Your significant other? Ontario
3. Your hair? brown
4. Favourite type of music? 80'sUKelectropop
5. ?? No number 5
6. Your favorite thing? sleep
7. Your dream last night? iPod
8. Your favorite drink? pinacollada
9. Your dream/goal? counsellor
10. The room you're in? Parlour
11. Your ex? several
12. Your fear? failure
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? happy
14. Where were you last night? bed
15. What you're not? finished
16. Muffins? lemoncranberry
17. One of your wish list items? job
18. Where you grew up? Canada
19. The last thing you did? walk
20. What are you wearing? clothes
21. Your TV? attic
22. Your pet? snoozing
23. Your computer? streaming
24. Your life? improving
25. Your mood? good
26. Missing someone? YES
27. Your car? temporary
28. Something you're not wearing? stilettos
29. Favorite store? n/a
30. Your season? n/a
31. Love someone? YES
33. When is the last time you laughed? 5minago
34. Last time you cried? 7daysago
35. Who will/would re-post this? anyone

Labels: friends, memes

Hope you all had a loverly Hallowe'en. :)

It's a gorgeous, sunny, chilly day here on this first day of Daylight Savings Time. I really hate Daylight Savings Time. I don't like the fact that it gets dark at 4:30pm and I feel like sleeping soon after. I all but count the days until the Winter Solstice when the days start getting longer again. Mind you, even though I don't like DST, I am glad it is now starting later in the year and ending earlier in the following year.

So I guess it's time to update everyone (all 4 or so of you who read this ;) ) on the important going's on in my life. I promised about a month ago I'd update you on the education situation, so here it is. I'm doing one course this term (global policy - I really like the material and the prof) and it's going well. I have a group presentation due tomorrow (hence my procrastinating by writing this blog entry!), and will be meeting my group later in the day to put the final touches on the presentation. Then it's just one paper and I'm done the course!

As for my outstanding coursework - well, it's a little complicated. I will be completing all the outstanding work by the end of the term, but I won't know if that will mean I'm done my degree yet. "How does that work?" you may be asking yourself. Well, even though I will be handing in the work, the department has given me no guarantee that my work will be marked and credited. So I might be doing all this work for nothing. Yep, that's the situation. They are leaving the decision up to each individual prof for whom I owe work. If a prof decides they aren't going to mark the work, then I don't get credit for the course. And keep in mind these are courses for which I have one outstanding assignment for course completion. If I don't get credit for a course, I need to take another course aaaaall over again. *sigh* What this ultimately means is that I have no idea if I'll be finished my degree come the end of December. If I'm not, then I'll just keep plugging away until I'm done.

Regardless of whether or not I'm finished my degree in two months, I've decided not to stay in my current city any more. I'm tired of being here, and it's time for me to move on. So I'm moving back to Ontario at the end of the year!! If I still have work to do on my degree, then I'll be completing it either by correspondence or by taking courses at another university.

Now, of course, you'll ask "But why are you not moving back to Ottawa?" And the reason for that is, well, a man. :) This summer I met a wonderful man who was living out here in the Maritimes but was planning to move "back home," which was, for him, Southern Ontario. We ended up hitting it off much better than either of us could have imagined, and I'll be moving in with him at the end of the year. I'm excited and nervous and sure of everything all at the same time! I've only ever lived with one other person before (relationship-wise), and this relationship involves two adorable kids which is completely new to me as well. Okay, kids aren't new to me, but being involved with someone who has kids is new. :) I'm thinking it will be a marvelous adventure!

As of yet, I do not have a job lined up for when I get there (due mostly to the fact that I don't know if I'll be finished the degree), so I'll be looking immediately when I arrive. I hope to do some investigating of jobs in November when I'm hoping to visit the man again (I was there in October for a week) and to hand out CVs and such. So anyone in the GTA, please keep me posted if you hear of any social-worky type jobs that you think I'd even have a remote interest in! Even if the job description says "BSW required," please let me know as I can tell them I'm close to finishing my degree.

I think I've hit all the major points. Anything else you want to know? I also want to thank you all for updating your blogs - I really love to hear how you're all doing, and I can't wait to actually see you all again.

Labels: education, employment, family, general, moving

Happy October 31st to you all! Hope it's filled with lots of fun and candy. :)

Hallowe'en here has brought me closer to where I want to be. I'm getting my school work done (more on that in a future post), and I'm heading back to Ontario soon! That's right, folks, I'm finally getting out of this one-horse town and moving West, closer to friends and family. While it won't be Le Capital, I figure the GTA region won't be too far away from my River Valley friends. Weekend road trips will take me there easily! I'll be moving at the end of the calendar year, and hope to find work by early in January. So if you hear of any social work-y jobs in the GTA (preferably East of the city), then please pass them my way.

I'm heading off to our local Samhain rit soon, so I'll bid you farewell for now. Miss you all, and will be seeing a bunch of you relatively soon!

Labels: education, friends, general, moving

My poor, neglected blog. I guess time flies when you're having fun.

And for the most part, I have been having fun. I had a great summer, got to visit friends in Nova Scotia, hang out with friends here, all while still working the night shift.

Now I'm back in school for what is (hopefully) my last course! I say hopefully as this past Monday I was going over my transcript with the current chair of my department, and there seems to be some issue as to whether or not I've taken the right amount of courses in the right topic "streams." This is very aggravating as 1) I've been over and over this very thing with the past department chair and was assured that I had all my streams covered, and 2) I desperately want to move back to Ontario this winter, at the end of this term. I just do not want to stick it out here any longer. While I enjoy my friends here, I do not want to work the night shift for an extra 4 months for yet another course. It's really high time for me to move on.

On the topic of work, things aren't terrible, but they aren't great either. My migraines are back with an increased frequency, which I fully attribute to working all night while staring at a computer screen for 8 hours straight, and then sleeping all day. My head was not built to work at weird hours and in front of a computer screen all the time. It's strange - I was in front of a computer less when I worked in IT than I am now in a call-centre type job. So I'm really looking to end this job soon.

On a happier note, I have vacation time from work starting next week! I'll be in Southern Ontario for this event over the Thanksgiving weekend, then heading down to the States to visit my brother and sister-in-law for a few days. I'm so excited!! The time away will be great.

Those are the major things going on right now - well, the ones I want to talk about here anyway. :) I'll probably be posting here when I know more about my course situation. I hope I hear back from the chair before the end of the week.

Hope all is well with you out there! Miss you all, and hope to see you in the new year.

Labels: education, general, trips

Wow, I've not memed in this blog yet, so here goes:

Unconscious Mutterings, August 2, 2008

1. Crankiness :: annoyance
2. Backpack :: camping
3. Clone :: wars
4. High ground :: higher
5. Dreams :: living
6. Lovingly :: give
7. Mistake :: amends
8. Carson :: Daly
9. Errand :: Boy
10. Dozen :: Baker's

Labels: memes

Okay, folks, where did June go? It went by faster than May did, and I thought that went by pretty quickly. *sigh* I think it's time to mindfully root myself in the present so I don't keep losing track of time.

I just got back from a quick walk to the local farmers' market. I only live about a block away, so even laziness is a poor excuse for not going. I treated myself to one of my favourite coffees - raspberry cream. I haven't had coffee in about two weeks, so this really was a treat. Of course, my cat thinks I got it for him and is trying to sneak sips every now and then. But now I think he's mostly distracted by the people going to and from the market. He enjoys sitting in the window and watching his "adoring public" go by. :)

I've noticed lately that I'm having a bit of a hard time with a lack of daylight. "LACK of daylight," you say, "but it's the middle of the summer!" Yes, that's true. But when you work the night shift, you don't get the benefits of all that daylight. I keep the shades down during the day so I can sleep, then it's dark all night when I'm awake. I've found it harder to sleep after work because the sun is already high in the sky at 6:30am when I finish work, which puts my schedule even more out of whack. I'm just glad I know I won't be doing this night shift forever.

A fun bit of news this week: Kay and Jay are visiting from La Capital area! YAY!! I can't wait to see them! And Jay will be on an actual vacation this time, i.e. he won't have to work all day like he used to have to do on his "vacations." I hope to see them a few times this week, at least. There will be some of this and hopefully some of this, and maybe just some hanging out, too!

There are a few other things I want to write about, too, but I think they deserve their own separate entries. So watch for those. Hopefully they won't take a month to be written down. :)

Have a great weekend, all, and HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Labels: employment, friends