Friday Fun

Happy Friday and Happy March Break to all those now on vacation and/or have their kids home for a week! Yay Hooray! However, if you are going somewhere warm and sunny, I shall not be wanting to talk to you (just kidding…)

Today’s theme for spirit week was “CW Spirit” for the students, but Hawaiian for the teachers. Hawaiian day is an annual tradition and like many spirit days – is taken very seriously. I had on my Hawaiian shirt and a lei. I left some extras on the desk for others to have if they forgot to bring something fun to wear. Sorry, no pictures today. I wasn’t too terribly exciting.

I did manage to take a picture of the snack I had after lunch – SPRINKLE DONUT

Speaking of cameras – some of the kiddies decided to grab my camera and take selflies. Funny, they do not grab my iPhone ever, yet they were all over the camera. They did take some nice selfies, but I shall not post them here – this time…..

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In other news – the Robotics Team is away at their East Toronto FIRST Robotics tournament. They are doing well – but the big news is that they won their first award ever tonight. They won the TEAM SPIRIT AWARD. Well Done!!

I *may* have had the webcast of the tournament running on my computer most of the day. Max and I watched the last couple of matches at home and we tried to “find Daddy” on the TV, hehe. Here is some lovely screenshots:

By Rebecca|Random, school|4 Comments

CW Basketball Alumni Game

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday – I was fairly busy as we were short-staffed in our room (everyone has been getting sick again) and after work there was a basketball game, dinner and a haircut to attend to!

Speaking of the basketball game – it was the current CW team vs. the alumni. It was nice to see all the alumni back, even though they stop by quite often! This was the first year that the alumni game happened, but it will hopefully be a regular thing. I did have to leave the game a bit early (dinner was calling), I believe the alumni beat the current team. Well done!

Max came with me to the game and he spent most of the time looking at the players wondering why they had his ball and chasing the school mascot (no joke). He walked around and said hi to people and went up and down the hallway numerous times. Max also said hi to all of his friends (many of my students know him).

Before the game, a few of the alumni brought a tea for my co-worker/their Volleyball coach. But, he was sick at home so they gave his tea to me. Yay! I do have to say that I definitely prefer no sugar in my coffee I did let my friend know that I drank his tea, and he was ok with that

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I recently signed up with Netflix since many of you use the service and have said nice things about it. I browsed through the selection and there are many movies and shows that I would want to watch. I saw that “How I Met your Mother” was on and put that on the “must watch list” as I haven’t seen a single episode.

Question for all you Netflix people: How much does it affect your download usage Especially if you are with Rogers? I have high speed lite and get about 25G each month. I have no plans on upping that. Thoughts? I am going to monitor my use though!

By Rebecca|Coaching, Random, school|2 Comments

Snow Day – Again…

Happy Friday Everyone!

Rare “work day” post as I am currently a little bored at school. We are currently in a “winter storm” which means the buses were cancelled and as a result of that: there are barely any students here. As I may have mentioned before – my school board never closes, so while some school boards in Ontario closed their schools this morning (meaning everyone stays home), some never close and everyone is expected to make it in. It was a little annoying to see everyone’s “woooo school is closed, I am going back to bed” posts on FB and Twitter this AM. I hate you all….well not really, but blah!

The drive in wasn’t that bad this morning. I find that on a weekday, Ottawa does a decent job clearing the roads. However, I heard that the level of clearing depends on what part of the city you are in – Orleans was pretty clear on most major roads. But there were still some drivers who were driving in an unsafe way. I personally only saw one car in the ditch, but apparently there were a few. One guy was a little too close to my bumper when I was making a left-hand turn this morning. Of course – if you were on twitter this morning, you may have heard about someone from Vaughan mistakenly tweeting from the wrong account

Tonight is “Take Out Friday” – what delicious take out food should I order tonight?

Is it snowing where you are?

By Rebecca|Orleans, Random|5 Comments

Good evening!

As you may have realized – Monday evening posts happen when I am crazy busy all day and don’t really sit in front of my computer until the evening. This is especially true on exam Monday when I have an exam to supervise. This morning started a wee bit early as Mr. Max woke up crying at 6am. So while Daddy took a shower, Max stayed in bed with me and played with the iPod for a bit. Poor guy is growing another tooth and was a bear all day! I am preparing for being woken up tonight as he tends to wake up screaming when his teeth bug him.

Today was spent supervising an exam, marking that exam and then starting to create report cards. Which meant I had to spend too many hours in front of the “windoh’s” computer

After work, I went to the gym to do a quick 1 mile run (8:55 pace) and some upper body weights. Saw many of the regulars there, including a friend of mine. It is kind of funny – when I get there, I am usually one of the few on the treadmill, but as soon as I leave, the government workers come into the gym and almost every treadmill is taken!

Unfortunately gym time was short as I had to book it to daycare because as you can probably tell, we got a bit of snow today! It is supposed to change over to freezing rain tonight – greeatttt. Just what I love! The snow I can deal with, freezing rain is just nasty! Here is the view outside my office today:

Speaking of offices, I am moving downstairs on Thursday where I have no windows *sigh*. I will miss my lil office that backs out onto the Ottawa River path!

Max and I had some leftover pasta for dinner and then he went promptly to bed. He was tuckered out! I am not about to start a twitter party chat with Starbucks! I am also about to have a David’s Tea and eat this:

Hope everyone has had a good day!

Did you work out today?

If you were a danish, what danish would you be?

Is it snowing where you are at?

By Rebecca|Random|5 Comments

Friday: Exam Central

It is exam time at my school – so mornings are busy and hectic, with afternoons spent doing lots and lots of marking and eventually, report cards! My duty today was to be a scribe for one student. We finished in about an hour and 40 minutes and now I am sitting in ‘Exam Central’ waiting for my office to be free (someone is writing an exam in the office). People are talking about their March Break plans which is torturing me just a bit! We can’t really afford to go anywhere this March Break, so my “big plans” = cleaning and organizing a basement. I’m also thinking about growing up and purchasing proper adult bedroom furniture. Although our bed mattress is new – we have no headboard and both of our dressers are from our childhood.

Temporary set up at Exam Central

This morning, I decided to stop into Starbucks for a Vanilla Spice Latte. The line up was really long today. I saw the usual people in there with a pile of others. But by the time I had my latte the line up was gone. Weird!

Not sure what the plans are for this evening. P is home tonight. This weekend I have zero plans other than the usual laundry, grocery shopping and mass playing weekend activities.

What do you all have planned for the weekend?

How is your work day going?

By Rebecca|Random|9 Comments

Busy Busy Busy

Good evening!

Yes – it is the evening! Today was a busy, rushed, “go a mile a minute” type day. Dropped Max off at daycare, and zoomed to the school. I then taught my first period class. After that was prep time where I had to do too many things. Then another class and boom! Work day was done! My plan was to go to the gym and get a treadmill run in, but I had to do some errands instead. Boourns! I am going to try and run tomorrow. After errands, it was time to pick up Max – then zoomed back home, made dinner, played a little and tada! Bedtime routine time. About an hour later I am at my desk getting to start the “second shift” of work time. I have some lovely final projects to mark tonight.

school work

My days usually go back fairly quickly. Because computer time is scarce – when I am on the computer I am doing things a mile a minute. Another further complication is the fact that my grad school course has started up again. This time it is an interesting course and NOT program evaluation (yay!). I’m hoping that it will be a more stimulating course. I am not happy that there are lots of group projects though. Because I am a “virtual student” for Fall/Winter semesters this year, I do not go to a classroom and I do not know the people in my class. This makes group work really annoying! But in my grad program, group work happens in every class, so I’m a bit used to it.

photo that I took while writing a paper last semester

So while I was looking at the course online classroom, I saw that the prof has assigned us a small paper that is due on Saturday. We were just allowed into the online course on Monday – yeah, thanks for that one. Guess I am going to spend tomorrow night writing that one. Luckily it is small!

Well – time to get going on stuff – Have a great evening!

How was your day?

Do you have to do work at home too?

By Rebecca|Random, school|1 Comment

Snow Day!

Hmmm

The classrooms are empty

No one is sitting in the hall chatting

The hallways are surprisingly clean

Where is everyone???

SNOW DAY!!

My school has many students that are bussed in, so we usually have very few students at school. The staff are always here and it is a good day for everyone to catch up on work! So that is what I am doing today – catching up!!

Hoping that everyone is having a good Monday and if you are on Snow Day today – enjoy!!!

By Rebecca|Random, school|2 Comments

Three Things Thursday!

Happy Thursday! Today’s Thursday comes with a brand new episode of Grey’s Anatomy – HOORAY!

Thing #1

Max’s daycare/nanny (Max is currently the only kid in full-time, so it is like a nanny) is sick today so Max came to school with me in the morning. Yay! Paul can’t miss school today and we really have no one else to watch him at a last moments notice, so he had to come in with me. There is an emergency child care service at my school board but a) not sure if I qualify because I am not full-time and b) Max is 10 months old – not sure I want to leave him with a stranger in my house. We are at home now as I have a huge gap in my schedule today. I will probably go back later.

Thing #2

It is 19 degrees and sunny today! Woohoo! I may just bring my afternoon class outside! Might also go out for a run later on too! You cannot waste a day like this!

Thing #3

Bacon Mushroom Melt!

Sorry, excuse me – Bacon ‘portabello’ Mushroom Melt…..It is that time of year when Wendy’s has this most delicious sandwich. I used to work at Wendy’s and when it was Mushroom Melt time – I ate one every day! I had one last night – it was scrumptious!

By Rebecca|Max, Random|0 Comments

Adventure at the Lusk Caves

Yesterday the Geography classes went on our annual field trip to Lusk Caves. We loaded up the buses at 9:15pm and headed out to Gatineau Park. To get to the caves, we had to walk 5K up a trail. Since it was a proper NCC trail, it was super easy and didn’t really require hiking boots. I wore mine as it is slightly more comfortable for me rather than running shoes (I don’t have a pair of ‘trail shoes’).

When we got to the caves the students kind of split in a couple of groups. There were some that didn’t want to go in the caves, which was fine. I headed in with one group in the first part of the cave. Oh my, the screaming and random F-bomb droppings! The water wasn’t even that cold! The first section features a stream with some nice caves. There is one part where you do have to go in the water up to your knees. It wasn’t too bad. I hung around waiting for the students to get through before heading into the second part.

The second part is the more fun cave. First you have to go down a small little waterfall. It is pretty tricky to get down and you pretty much have to get down on your butt and scoot. Of course you are thinking “oh shoot, I’m wet!”, but you know very well you are going to get even more wet in a few short moments!

So the last part of the cave is pretty much under-water. When you go into this part the ceiling gets very very low. If you don’t have a helmet on you need to keep your hands above your head to make sure you don’t bump the ceiling. The farther you go in – the deeper it gets and the ceiling continues to drop. The last part you have to go all in, and you only have about a foot in between the ceiling and the water. So you have to tilt your head and get out without bumping your head. At this point I definitely started feeling claustrophobic and wanted out as quickly as possible Somehow I walked on a loose rock and fell a bit and splashed our lifeguard Lauren – she may have screamed…whoops!

My students had a great time – so much fun that the went in the crazy part of the cave twice. Apparently it was a ‘super awesome trip’

Some pictures!

By Rebecca|Random, school|0 Comments

Tuesday Update

This shall be a hodge podge type of post as it is Tuesday and I feel very scattered today!

After work we are trekking it to the Apple store to take a look at my iMac and P’s iPhone. My iMac’s fan has been very noisy lately so I want to get it checked out. I have run iStat and everything is well in the normal range in terms of temperature, fan speed and CPU use, so I am thinking that the fan is either dirty or needs fixing. I can always hear the fan running. It is quite annoying and it does sound like something is loose. I’ve already had a nice chat with an Apple Support rep via the phone and completed a bunch of easy-to-do remedies – but it is still noisy. To be clear – this isn’t a noise that sounds like the fan is running overtime. It is different than that. Poor iMac!

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In a rare moment of talking about my job – I am starting my fave unit in Grade 9 Geography – Physical Geography. I made my intro powerpoint last night and decided to have a bit too much fun with the pictures. I’m pretty sure nobody but me finds this funny – but here is one picture that I made last night