schedules

10 hours. 882 schedules. Still standing!

Pictures from the trip

 The nice Super 8 room with 2 beds and limited wifi

 CN tower at night

 Interesting box building

 Guys changing the advertising

 New advertising shows Bell

 Conference atrium

 Me in the atrium

Berry crunch bowl from the pickle barrell

conference

The wifi at the super 8 was super poor and I gave up.
I did fall asleep watching the CN tower. But then I woke up at 4am because Toronto is so bright that it looks like 6am apparently to my sleeping self. I closed the curtains and went back to sleep.
I got up in plenty of time and checked out their breakfast room at 7am. It was full of people so I grabbed a yogurt and ate it in my room.
We left the hotel and drove out of the interesting parking garage across town a bit to another more interesting and difficult to navigate parking garage.
We then walked to Ryerson. The room we started in was very bright and well designed. The keynote speaker had food poisoning so we had an alternate speaker.
My presentation went well and people asked a lot of questions.
The day was very good to get different perspectives.
After the day was over traffic was very busy so we decided to have dinner before driving.We went to the pickle barrell in the eaton Center. I had the berry crunch bowl. It was very good!
Then we drove on the DVP. At one point, a very aggressive driver pushed in front of us. Shortly thereafter, we saw him pulled over by the police. It seemed like instant karma!
The drive back was about 3.5 hours. We stopped at the Big Apple as there was construction and we needed a break.
I had lots to do at work today!

Toronto

I made it to Toronto for the conference but the internet here is pretty weak. I am sitting watching the CN tower change colours. Need to practice my presentation.

rainy morning

This morning started with rain. The birds seemed happy and singing in the trees. Kiwi was not barking. Maybe Kiwi doesn't like rain. But a nice morning. It had stopped raining by the time I went to work though I wore my raingear because of lack of trust.

I was planning on working on my presentation for the Symposium today but there were lots of emails, I was part of a group doing some software testing for a new program that is going to launch next week and we had a course meeting.

At lunch I went to Food Basics to get some groceries. I went by the market looking for fruits but it is not the season yet. I did run into Sarah and Paul and they had found a stall that sold gluten free treats so I may visit the stall when going to see Christine sometime.

We leave for Toronto tomorrow at 5:30pm. I need to pack in the morning.

solstice

I am enjoying the more light during the day. I get to wake up early as a large white puffball dog (named Kiwi) moved in a few doors down and has recently started barking at 6am. Kiwi never barked at all until last week so I'm not sure what is going on (Kiwi moved in a few months ago)

Today we had a party for John Hartt as he is moving out east for work and for family. Al told me that there would be lots of funny stories and asked me to write the closing prayer. Which I did.

Robert North was up first and he talked about the injustice of John having to leave. No funny stories.

Then I was up. We had a good laugh about that.

Who knew you could cook Feta?

It has been quite a week so far. You wouldn't think that the summer would be so exciting, but it is. Mostly work- timetable, exams, reports. Pretty much name anything that could go wrong and it likely did.

But my garden is doing ok- the peonies are coming out.

 One pot pork enchilada bowl with rice

 This next recipe surprised me- who knew that you could bake Feta and it taste so good? Baked Harissa Chickpeas.

Another funny surprise- Tabitha and I were having a serious conversation in the street and one of my students came up to ask for a selfie with us.

3 steaks

Today I slept in until 9am, which was odd for me and I had to really hustle to get to Rustle on time. I did get my laundry out though.
After Rustle I went to Metro as they had cheese on sale.
Then I made a meal of bread (fresh from Metro) and cheese and strawberries.
Before I went out for CR I made James a steak and fries.
After CR I had crackers and cheese and strawberries and James had 2 steaks. So James had a 3 steak day!

gummi bears

Today I started the day with shopping. I used my new backpack!

 I took on Loblaws and SDM. I got a fruit tray so that I could make James a fruit cup like Keith made on his trip to Brantford. At first I had it in a bowl but he claimed he needed it in a glass like Keith had. So I complied.

Keith has "real" fruit glasses but I had to make do with a hockey one.
I also found chocolate gummi bears (my current favorite chewy thing) on sale for 1/2 price.

Today, due to buying a large fruit tray I made today a fruit day for me. So mainly just eating fruit (with a side of ice cream!) so it won't go bad.

I pulled some weeds in the garden during a break in the rain. A bit of laundry got dried outside as well.

In the front yard a few weeks ago there was a fallen bird nest in the front yard. It seemed to be empty so I thought the young ones had left the nest and it fell out. Today it looked like part of a nest had fallen in the same place. When I went to clean up the nest this time I saw 3 little dead birds. I don't know if they fell because of poor nest building, a predator or the weather.

Travels

It has been a busy few weeks. The last few days I got to see my parents!

James looks like a giant in the picture but I think he is just sitting up more. Or he is a giant.

A swallow on a nest in Port Dalhousie from one of our walks

Oriental peonie

My pictures are so backlogged I don't know that I will catch up. Same with my writing. So maybe just today. I woke up at 5am. Got ready, spent some time in the back yard. A lot of burrs had grown up in the time I was away. My email was backlogged, though I got through it by the end of the day. Today for lunch we had the "Principals lunch". I had a burger (choice was burger or eggplant parm on a burger) and 2 slices of their raspberry cake. Then I went downtown and picked up my new backpack! Lots of work. The student emails were supposed to be functional but they are not yet. Hopefully they will run their process soon as we have a lot of information to get out. Final exams for J-section are next week so there was preparing for that. And the timetable posted to the computer system and I need to check that. Came home pretty late and cooked steak and a new thing of potatoes in the microwave (they were really good) and salad.

Also got some hedgehog dryer balls in the Book Depot and they noticeably decrease the dryer time. They are supposed to reduce static as well but I still noticed static. The reduction in dryer time is great though!

Happy Birthday to my mother!

I downloaded all the photos from my camera to see if there was a good one for her. (I had not downloaded since February) So this is the birthday photo I have found. I call it: Winterscape from  office window:

Hope you have a great day!

Booming

Last night I had to laugh as the fireworks started at 9:30pm and so the booming was heard across the skies. The city had posted that the weather was good for fireworks. At 9:50 I heard the downpour of rain and the fireworks went silent. I had to see some humour in that.

The robins on the back porch have babies that are growing now and spend more time away from the nest finding worms so I did sneak in and take a quick picture. I just haven't downloaded it off my phone yet.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Rustle still had a pretty robust attendance despite it being a holiday weekend. In the afternoon I dug dandelions. There are still many more. We had a good celebrate recovery session in the evening.

This upcoming week looks busy:
Wed - meeting with Christine in the evening
Thurs- Kim's Church has a fundraiser (can't remember for what) so I said I would go with her and Rustle has a prayer meeting later in that evening
Sat- Kim's Church is doing a community dinner for the Rustle neighbourhood so I'll go over to help with that

Spring-ish

While still a bit chilly, things are looking more spring-y. I hung laundry out but due to the robin nest on the back porch I had to use a ladder to attach the connectors as I didn't want to use the porch to disturb the robins.

I thought Loblaws would be busy this morning but it really wasn't bad at all. I had no wait at the check out and there weren't a lot of people in the aisles. They are open both Sunday and Monday so maybe that takes some of the pressure off. Just it seemed quieter than a typical Saturday.

The grass is growing

The start of May was a race to get the grades in. I worked most of the first weekend. And on Monday all the grades were in! Tuesday I was wrapping up loose ends. Wednesday and Thursday we took a Rustle trip to a prayer retreat at an amazing cabin. It was tiring but good! Yesterday, there was a lot to do as the timetable came out.

There is a robin on a nest on the back porch.

The grass has grown enough to need a first mowing. It has been very wet so it may be difficult to mow. Hopefully the robins don't mind!

taxing

Tax time was very stressful as I thought I was missing a slip. I wasn't but it took me a lot of calls to sort it out. I wasn't missing a slip, so that was all ok. Then I had issues with the calculation. First I was having to pay. But then I found an error and I didn't have to pay and thought that was right for most of yesterday. But when I was doing the final calculations I found another error and I DID have to pay. So at 11pm I finalized my number and went to pay. I had checked  the options for paying and they had a Visa option so that seemed simple but when I keyed all the info in I found out that there was an additional charge so I decided to pay through my online banking. But that meant I had to find the payee. And it didn't show up when I searched the CRA (revenue) so I had to call the online banking help and he helped me find it but when I add new payees my bank always gives me a confirmation phone call before it allows me to add them. Long story short I paid just minutes before the deadline and I hope it was right!

My summer students started today and we did a special teaching and learning day. Then I tackled my email.I did not get to the marks that I planned to do. Tomorrow is staff appreciation day so I won't get my marks done tomorrow either. This likely means that I will need to work on the weekend, so I'm not sure that this is a good time to appreciate the staff!