Ecology Is Worth Studying

I just finished teaching my grade 10s Ecology in science class. To help make it relevant to them, I asked them to write a paragraph describing their favourite places in nature. Then we had a little class discussion and I asked them to send me pictures of their places. I figure, if they have some connection to a natural place like their family's cottage or a park, then studying ecology has a point--to learn about and preserve that natural place they love so much. Here is the slideshow we put together:

The TANGLE of the Century

This Christmas Holiday has been a fairly productive one. I got home to North Bay almost two weeks ago with a Yaris full of laundry, homework and Christmas presents.

Homework-wise, I managed to organize my teaching binders and mark an assignment and a test (having 83 students makes marking pretty boring!).

I helped my brother Sam change a tire on the van (a long story involving snowy road conditions, a median and a flat).

I got measured for some new cross-country skis at a store here in North Bay called Big Wood. The skis were a fantastic Christmas present from my mom which I tried out yesterday.

My patience was tested by my brothers trying set up the movies they downloaded for us to watch. Every single night there was a conflict over HDMI and VGA and USB wires and picture quality.

All this aside, I must say that my very best accomplishment this break was conquering the TANGLE OF THE CENTURY. Very shortly after arriving, I realized that my little sister Randi had been wearing her long hair loose and flapping in the breeze for about four days. Now, for the ordinary observer, this might not seem like a big deal, BUT for Randi, this means disaster. When I looked at the back of her head, she had a very big tangle. This tangle was threatening to take over her entire head, then her body then everything else in the house. Good thing our cocker spaniel was smart enough to stay away from the it, otherwise he could have been sucked in!

We went down to the mall, waded through holiday shoppers and found some detangeler spray and came back home. After supper that night, I gave Randi a shower, used lots of conditioner and we settled down to watch Wal-E and wage war on the tangle.

After the movie was done, we had finished about one quarter of the tangle BUT Randi had to go to bed.

The very next morning we started bright and early at 8:00. It took us until almost lunch time to subdue the tangle and restore Randi's smooth and luscious locks.

So far, this has been my top achievement this holiday:

CARla a CAR and South CARleton

One month into teaching and I still love it. It's challenging but I am seeing the pay-off already (and not just because I got paid on Friday!). I love the challenge of getting the kids to learn stuff. The hardest thing for me is to get into the groove of disciplining the students and keeping them in line...but we teach so we learn right?

To enable me to get to work I had to get a car. So here's some shots of me the day I got my little blue Yaris. It sparkles in these pictures! Currently it's covered in salt and dirt which is the draw back of buying a car in the winter.


Ok...so I could never be a car model!

Poor, Poor Neglected Blog

It sure has been a long time since I last payed attention to this blog. I sort of feel like Mary did when she first discovered the Secret Garden and was facing a whole garden full of overgrown vegetation. Except the key difference is that the blog didn't become overgrown during my neglect. So maybe this blog is more like my sea monkeys whose food I lost when I moved and who are trying to scrape an existence out in their algae-filled jar. Well technically, the algae grew during this time as did the sea monkeys so this is also an inaccuracy...

I suppose this situation is mostly like a blog that I forgot about for almost four months.

I must have been doing something during this neglectful period. And indeed I was--just look at this list:
- I supply-taught at various high schools around the city (involving many bus adventures/misadventures)
- I worked some evenings and weekends at the Expedition Shoppe (involving much laughter at inappropriate things and ridiculous customers)
- I visited my family quite a bit, going down to Guelph once and up to North Bay in early December
- I saw Craig Cardiff, Two Hours Traffic and Joel Plaskett in live shows
- I purchased Joni Mitchell's album Blue which I absolutely love and highly recommend
- I went to North Bay for Christmas and had a fantastic time with the family: movie watching, laughing, cooking, eating, corn-holing, toboganning, snowshoeing and the like
- I applied for tonnes of teaching jobs
- I had two job interviews
- I got one job!
- That's right blog-land! I will be teaching at South Carleton HS in Richmond ON on Feb 1 until the end of the school year. I'll have grade 9 science and grade 10 math...fun, fun, fun!

So that's the long and the short of my life over the past while. Here's some pictures to prove it:





(Mom celebrates turning 50, Andrea and I snowshoeing, Rory, Lucy and Andrea playing Cranium, Sam, Randi and Sarah at New Year's)

I felt so symbolic yesterday

Yesterday was my silver birthday. I turned the big 2-5.
Since it is Thanksgiving weekend and also the weekend we're celebrating my Mom's 50th birthday, I rented a car to drive up to the new family home in North Bay.
The car was silver.
My dear friends the Brocks also gave me a silver necklace for my silver birthday.
While I drove from Ottawa to North Bay I listened to one of my favourite CDs of all time, August and Everything After by Counting Crows. I know that silver and grey are different colours and that one is a metal and one is just a shade but I couldn't help feeling symbolic yesterday anyway.

I will paint my picture
Paint myself in blue and red and black and gray
All of the beautiful colors are very very meaningful
Grey is my favorite color
I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I knew Picasso
I would buy myself a gray guitar and play

Re-kindling an old flame

It's been a while since I've posted, so long in fact that my internet browser no longer had beautifulidiom.blogspot.com in it's cache of frequently visited sites and I had to type the whole address in all over again.

Just in case you got all excited over who Mr. O. Flame might be, you can remember that in order to have an "old" flame you have to have once had a flame...

My old flame is my love of biking--or cycling if I want to try to impress people. Since my family moved out of town when I was in high school, our main source of transportation was biking and this is probably where my love began. For several summers I biked to work, I would bike out to Trent every day until it got too cold or icy, I was even able to borrow an ancient 10-speed from my housemate in Kingston while I was at Queen's this past year.

In Deep River when I worked at AECL I would bike in to work and home each day. It was about a 45min ride down a sunny dirt road deep in bear country (I'm not kidding!) but it was nice because I could have a shower once I got to work. That was so handy especially on rainy days when I would arrive covered in mud. One of my favourite comments from people when walking to my office, biking clothes and backpack looking like a puddle attacked me from behind was "did you bike in the rain?" I always wanted to respond with something like "no, the mud is my latest fashion accessory"

In Peterborough, I was a frequenter of the Rotary-Greenway trail. If you live in or near Peterborough you really should take advantage of it. You can bike all the way from downtown to Lakefield, it's quite a nice ride and there is ice-cream at the end!
If you are around Peterborough and are looking for an exciting challenge, try biking to Lindsay. You can look it up online but you pretty much just follow the old railroad in Jackson's Park until you get there. I did it once and it took me about three hours to get there and a little bit less on the way back. This trail is actually part of the Rotary trail too so technically you can bike from Lindsay to Lakefield if you want.
Here's me looking buff and tough on the way to Lakefield with my dear friend Terri.


Now I'm here in Ottawa and working at a shop downtown. I don't like biking of busy city streets and I also don't have any place to clean up before selling camping equipment to people; therefore I have been taking public transit (also eco-friendly) to work every day. I have been missing my bike-rides though.

I've come up with a new plan: get up and go for a bike-ride before going into work. Today was a day off so I decided to test out the plan and check out the National Capital Pathways. I biked from my current house at St. Laurent and Donald out to Mooney's Bay and down the Rideau Canal to Ottawa U and home in about 1.5hrs. I went past both universities, a beach, some cool houses and two water-ways--it was brilliant! If you're living in Ottawa, I recommend the Pathways. You can check the map out at http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/bins/_flash/biking/_pdf/map.pdf . The paths go all along the Ottawa River and into Gatineau Park too.

If anyone ever wants to go on a big bike-ride I’m in (unless I’m working or already have plans!).

Duck or Chicken?

Yesterday I was hanging out with my friends the Brocks and my buddy Gavin brought up a year-long debate: Is Donald Duck a chicken or a duck?
This perplexing question has been rattling around his mind ever since he saw Disney's The Three Musketeers. Apparently there is a scene where Donald is accused of being a chicken and momentarily turns into one.
After some stunning displays of logic and reasoning on behalf of Lesley and I, we got Gavin sorted out--I think.
What do you say he is? Duck? Chicken?