Well, happy 2009. I'm sure that with me not blogging in 5 months, I've effectively lost all readership.

I haven't really posted because there hasn't been much to say. My one big news is that I now have a beautiful little niece Madeleine. Isn't she beautiful? (I ask that as if people would say anything other than "yes"). It's kinda funny...my sister is so far away and I could really only participate vicariously through the pregnancy process, and out comes this wonderful little girl. I'm amazed at how much I love I feel for this little lump even though I don't really know her. I guess I'll feel even more so if I ever have any of my own!

From some of her pictures, she looks exactly like my sister's baby pictures! But, I am proud to say that baby Maddy has inherited one key trait from Auntie Zet - abnormally long fingers. I'm such a proud auntie!!

Well, much like everyone else I know, blogging has fallen by the wayside. Is blogging an obsolete activity these days? Has it taken a backseat to the likes of Facebook? Phooey - I am so anti-Facebook! The way I figure it, if I haven't talked to you in 10 years, I probably don't have anything to say to you now! Taking a look through my yearbook is fun every couple of years or so, but I don't really have any burning desire to re-connect with anyone from high school that I don't already stay in contact with. I barely have time to keep up with everyday friends as it is!

I guess the "working life" really sucks the entertainment out of daily life. John and I both work Mondays to Fridays, and if we're lucky, we have coffee once a week with friends. John's been playing vball with buddies one night a week as well, so it's another chance to hang out. I also still teach on Saturday mornings, so that sucks up a fair bit of time too.

Tomorrow is October 14th, 2008. Voting day for the 40th Canadian parliament. It should be interesting. My incumbent MP is okay, I guess. I don't really feel one way or another about his performance, but I can't say I'm a big fan of the party he reprsents. On the other hand, I think he's going to win anyway. It's a tough voting decision.

And that ties in nicely with my personal pat-me-on-the-back for the week. I've been teaching my students about the elections as a civics lesson. The election was called on pretty short notice, so I had to whip up a lot of my own materials and stuff. Some Carleton journalism students called up and wanted to do a current affairs piece on immigrants learning about the election. Ta-da... my class gets volunteered for yet another media piece (we were recorded for RCI radio, a subsidiary of CBC, for Canada Day). Happy Elections!

Blog postings are getting more and more infrequent. So far it's been as busy a summer as any. I've been working at EC full time, playing ultimate Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and still teaching on Saturdays. Doesn't leave much time for much else! Many weekends up until now were spent out on the boat and fishing. We like fishing.

Things are getting busy lately just because John's sister is getting married in just a couple of weeks, and the usual fun stuff associated with that is picking up. Family is starting to arrive in town, and everyone's busy prepping and whatnot.

Other than that, there's really not much to blog about, just thought I'd post for posterity and in case anyone who still reads this thinks I've dropped off the face of the earth...

I'm really bad with blogging lately. I guess things have been really busy! So I finally quit my night job, only to replace it with ultimate. On Tuesdays, John plays with his more-competitive team. I stupidly went to spectate and brought my cleats. They only had 3 girls, so I ended up playing.

Other than that, it's just been work for the most part. I wanted to write about a student of mine whose story really touched me.

She was quite young and had only recently come to Canada that month. Her English was quite good and she was really eager to learn more so that she could find a job. She was looking for a job in comp eng. She shared a "dilemma" with me. She'd chosen a new "English" name for her new life in Canada, but her previous English nickname was "Iceberg." I thought I'd heard wrong, and I was like "Iceberg"?? She clarified by saying, "yeah, y'know, like Titanic."

So her problem was that she thought Iceberg was a strange name to put on a resume (y'think?!). So she wanted to put her new English name on her resume...but all her reference letters from her home country refer to her as Iceberg and if anyone called her references, they only knew her as Iceberg! She further explained that her department at university was the "ICE" department (I forget what I is, but CE for Computer Engineering) and it had meaning for her. Well, at least it was meaningful!

So I thought it was actually kind of cool, and I told her to stick with Iceberg! I thought that any interviewer might think it was cool too, and I hope I gave her decent advice. She'd handed out 3 resumes and gotten 3 interviews, so I figured she was a hot commodity. She also had a very optimistic outlook and she told herself that if she didn't get the job, it was their loss. Yeeeeah!!

She only came to my class for a couple of weeks, and I didn't see her again for a while. I ran into her just a couple of weeks ago and she was so happy to see me! She told me that she'd gotten a job downtown, and that the interviewer told her that "Iceberg" was a really cool name! I was soooo happy for her, and she thanked me for my advice. PHEW glad it worked out!

So that was my heartwarming student-story for a while. I've got a few more touching stories, but I'll save those for a future post.

Well, a lot has happened since I last blogged. I've turned 27, and I've made one of the biggest life decisions. Last week, I got a job offer for an exciting opportunity at my community centre. It was for a new youth program, which combines English class with other teaching methods like art, fitness, and drama. It was for 25 hours/week, which in LINC circles, is considered "full time." That was actually kind of a bad thing, because it meant I would have to relinquish my night and Saturday classes as a result.

But at the same time, I was started to really get involved with my job at the cube farm. My contract is currently until June, but it's looking good that it can be extended. And possibly sometime next year, there will be a competition for the position - at which time, fingers crossed, I could potentially land a permanent job. I've been doing a lot of different things, ranging from the mundane to the high-stress-time-sensitive stuff, so it keeps things interesting.

After thinking long and hard, I decided to put most of my eggs in one basket and stick with the possibility of working for the feds. As much as I truly have a passion for teaching and as much as I know I am a great teacher... the ESL industry is low on the payback. As soon as there are not enough students, or if funding ever gets cut, I could lose my job (again!). This could happen whether I've been working for 2 years or for 15. What incentive is there to put my blood, sweat, and tears into career when I could easily find myself in the same unemployed position after 20 years of work?! Why should I work towards being in the same position as I am now? It doesn't make any sense.

And in that same line of thinking, if I lose my job - then what? It's fine now while I'm not paying rent, but what about when I have mouths to feed and a mortgage to pay? What if John also has a bad month at work? The job security (or lack thereof) is just underwhelming.

I decided that my safest option was to pursue a career in the government. Although it's not necessarily my dream job, it's still something that I can do quite well and I don't *hate* doing it. It will also allow me to do the other things that I would like to do (like perhaps do my M.A.). But, since I can't possibly give up teaching - I enjoy it too much - I will continue to teach on Saturday mornings. For the joy of it.

Okay, well, I guess I still have a couple of readers, but I've been too busy to blog lately.

Since my last (depressing) blog, I was unemployed for a couple of weeks. Or rather, my full-time job was to look for a full-time job. I spent my days scouring the job bank for postings, writing up whiz-bang cover letters, tailoring my resume to each job posting, etc. Nothing really panned out, until a job landed in my lap.

A few years ago (2004 to be exact) I worked for Environment Canada for a couple of weeks in the summer. Now I'm back. So I went from working 9 hours/week to 49 hours/week! So now that I've got some f/t hours, I may have to cut back on my teaching hours because it's just exhausting to do both. I guess it's kind of a "I'm doing what I have to do so that I can do what I want to do" sort of deal, but I'm almost too tired to do what I want to do. Does that make sense? I haven't been getting enough sleep, so I think it's all starting to catch up to me in my old age.

I woke up today thinking that it's kind of like every other day. But it was dark. I checked the weathernetwork and there was a freezing rain warning in effect. It said it would change to rain in the afternoon. In actuality, it was snowing at a good clip. It was hazy and rainy all day. Happy birthday to meeee!! The day brightened up when I got a call from Phill (yay!) but unfortunately I had to cut him short because I had to go to a meeting. Lots of people expected John to take me out to dinner or something "romantic" like that.......but truth be told, I'm just too tired. Some of our friends wanted to do something as well, but..... I'm just too tired. I figure we'll have a bbq when the weather gets a little nicer (I was hoping next weekend, but I guess not). And.....as I say this, my phone just rang and I just got talked into going out for cake at Perkin's. I'm a sucker. :)

I've officially quit my crappy "new" job and it feels great. It hasn't entirely sunken in yet since Monday was Family Day, our newest provincial holiday. I suppose we and our group of friends have hit that time in life where we have to start looking at potential housing.

On Saturday, on a whim, we went condo-shopping with some friends. We went to look at some models which were still relatively in town. They were pretty nice, but entirely out of our price range. We've pretty much decided that condo-living isn't really for us, and that our lifestyle needs a townhouse or bigger. Unfortunately we can't afford anything bigger, so townhouse it is. The new developments in the Ottawa area (and I use that term loosely) are so far out that I would kill myself during the daily commute. We'd also never have any friends visit us.

We now find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. Our next best option is to dum-dum-dum....live in the "dark side" otherwise known as Quebec. Sure it's a whole 'nother province, but it's technically a 10-min walk across the river. Commute time would be comparable, just that we'd have to fight the bridges rather than the highways. We probably still wouldn't have any friends. But the same house would cost up to $100K less. We'll see how this pans out - the newsflash today is that they might start charging to see doctors and that Gatineau's ER service is the worst in Quebec.

Step 1 is to find a new job. Step 1.5 is to buy a lottery ticket and hope for the best.