feeling a bit overworked

It's busy period at work at the moment. We are buried under reports, paperwork, and parents' evenings. I am struggling to keep up with my usual lesson planning and marking. Thursday and Friday were manic; I was observed by visitors four times and I was madly trying to get a set of reports finished as well.

I went into work today for two and a half hours and, surprising, that was a really encouraging thing to do. I finished the reports (a bit past their deadline, oh, well) and did some paperwork I have been putting off. One can only put off those things so long because all of them are time-sensitive, regardless of how much work I have on my plate. Now I feel a bit more on top of things and hope that Monday morning might not be quite so hectic.

As I mentioned before, I am reading a book about work in an advertising office in Chicago called Then We Come to the End by Joshua Ferris. I was reading it on the way to and fro work on Thursday, when I was so stressed by everything and I marked this passage about motivating oneself to work in the afternoons.

Heading back from the couches, knowing we had to toss out our ad concepts for the fund-raiser and start over again in the disagreeable hours of the afternoon--which tended to stretch on and on--we felt a bit fatigued. All that work for nothing. And if we happened to case back, in search of edification, to days past and jobs completed--oh, what a bad idea, for what had all that amounted to? And anticipating future work just made the present moment even more miserable. There was so much unpleasantness in the workaday world. The last thing you ever wanted to do at night was go home and do the dishes. And just the idea that part of the weekend had to be dedicated to getting the oil changed and doing the laundry was enough to make those of us still full from lunch to want to lie down in the hallway and force anyone dumb enough to remain committed to walk around us.

Well, at least I am feeling a bit more positive now but it still irks me sometimes that I have to do all the rubbish chores on the weekend! Such is life.

so many books, so little time

Wouldn't it be lovely to read and write all day? I often wonder if changing careers would make me happy. But to what? I read a book recently about a science writer who woke up with her coffee-making alarm clock, pulled out a book (from under the pillow, occasionally) and started to read. When the coffee ran out she left the cosy bed to shower and eat, then return to read, think, reflect, and write. Ah, what a life.

At book club on Wednesday we were talking about If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor. My friends were not entirely taken by the book. But I loved the way I had to figure out who was speaking and what was taking place. I found the last hundred pages riveting and finished it sitting on a bench in the tube station for 35 minutes, eyes glued to the page and ignoring the trains and people going by. (I believe I am slightly insane! I should have been elsewhere.)

I wish that I had more time for reading. I read my Bible every morning over breakfast and this forces me to slow down a bit and actually take the time to eat and read properly (since four chapters a day takes about 20 minutes). I have been travelling by train recently due to a cold and reading a book on the train is so enjoyable! Sadly I can't continue this when I go back to commuting by bike later this week. In the evenings, Ant likes to watch TV and play Wii, but I like to sit on the couch next to him and read (or surf the net, reading online). But wouldn't it be nice to be paid to read? Or maybe this would just spoil the process. At the moment, I really like just reading and thinking over what I read.

I like to learn as I read and so I try to reflect a bit. I even mark passages in fiction books. They bring up ideas that I wish I had time to mull over. Like this sentence from If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. The narrator is talking about her stilted relationship with her mother. "My mother was polite, and responsible, and didn't always seem to notice I was there." I feel that this might somewhat describe how I am with my students. I am always polite and try to be consistent. I build routines so they know what to expect and how to succeed. But I am not really that emotionally invested in them and, to be honest, I don't always care much about them. I like the ideas of learning and I became a teacher because I love maths and teaching, not because I love children. The book made me realise this about myself and makes me want to explore this idea a bit more. Should I cultivate my students more? Get to know them a bit better (other than as mathematicians)? Try to notice them a bit?

Our new book club book is Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. It's a tale of modern cubicle life and less to my taste. But it makes me think that every person's voice has something interesting to say. A story about an employee, Brizz, who was laid off and then soon died makes the narrators say that they hardly knew him.

Goodness, why had nobody stopped him? Why has we never, not one of us, stopped, turned around, and said, Knock, knock. Sorry to interrupt you when you're proofreading, Brizz. Why had we not gone in, sat down?... How many times did we end up down at our own offices, doing pretty much the same thing, preparing for some deadline now come and gone, while Brizz lived and breathed with all the answers a hundred feet down the hall?

Thoughts like this, and the endless stories of the mundane life of an advertising copywriter, make me want to form more meaningful relationships. Let's face it, life is very mundane sometimes. Knowing God and loving one another seem like the only meaningful things sometimes.

practical matters

I have several things I have been thinking about posting over the last few days. In fact, looking forward to posting. But writing them down seems to be a barrier sometimes. I am so tired that typing seems like an effort, let alone attempting to write something that will be coherent. I have successfully been battling a cold this week--with the help of my new bottle of ColdFX. (Thanks, Mum, for a very practical present that has already kept me from having a sick day.)

I have had a small timetable change this term that has resulted in a change in my marking days and now I am swamped with marking at the end of every second week. Here is the pile I was working my way through today and I ended up having to take a fair amount home this weekend. Taking work home is something I try to avoid at all costs, but I am simply going to have to do it, or use my time better in the week. I had a really profitable afternoon, though, and managed to get all the photocopying done for the next two weeks.


One thing I've been meaning to mention for a while now is that I bought a slow cooker at the beginning of January. I have used it a few times to great success. I am not a big meat fan in general but the meat cooked in the slow cooker comes out so tender and flavourful that I do enjoy it. Today I made black bean curry with gammon (ham) cubes and it was mighty tasty. Paired with a fresh salad of rocket, watercress, and cherry tomatoes it made a really nice (low fat and low GI) meal.


Well, there I got over my writer's block and wrote this post. So I will have to take the "little and often" approach and try again tomorrow to tackle some other things I want to reflect on and write about.

rememberance and heritage

I have just finished reading a book my Mother lent me, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest by Rudy Wiebe. It's written by a Canadian author who had a very similar background to my Grandpa: family from (what is now) the Ukraine, who emigrated to Canada to escape religious persecution. Wiebe's family settled in Saskatchewan and scratched out a farm family's existence in what seem like quite harsh conditions: penetrating cold, stony soil that needed constant clearing of the bush, and few technologies. Wiebe was ten years old when WW2 ended, so my Grandpa was slightly older than him, but Mum said that the experiences Grandpa had a child were quite similar to what she read in the book.

The Saskatchewan forest seems like it was a difficult place to live but Wiebe fondly remembers his family life, knit together by a strong family life. His stalwart mother propelled him through chores and was a firm moral compass. His companionable older sisters read with him and helped him with school work. His older brother was a strong, guiding presence on the farm and provided warmth and security through his large sleeping form in the childhood bed they shared. Wiebe's Mennonite faith provided a structure of church services and an inner strength that sustained him.

Wiebe is an excellent writer (and well recognised in Canada). His family focus and growing love of words is something I enjoyed reading about. His stories are plain, natural, and engaging. He has set about the task of remembering his childhood honestly and also inquisitively, in a way that makes me also look back at his time in the Saskatchewan forest fondly, if this is possible for someone who has only a vicarious experience of it. Wiebe makes it his job to remember and report his life, thoughts, and instincts. A quotation on the frontispiece says, "What do you do for a living? I asked./ I remember, she replied." It is clear that Wiebe relished the reminiscence of his childhood.

However, Wiebe also says that he felt a physical memory of some things his parents lived through, but he had never seen. "I have felt remembrance beyond words.... when after six decades of life, I walked in places where I had never before physically been:... the village cemetery where my parents met..., the village school he [Dad] first attended...." This makes me wonder whether, if I come to know more about my grandparents and our ancestors, I would come to feel the same affinity for them and their places and their words. As I read the book I felt a connection with their heartfelt faith and devotion, which I see modelled in my Mother and her siblings. I enjoyed the Low and High German passages in the book; Ant and I have been learning German for a few months and I am starting to understand a few words. Hearing my Mother sing in German at Christmas is always very moving and seems to connect her with her heritage; it makes me feel connected just to listen. The names of the families in the book also feel like a friendly neighbour, since they are names I have heard since my youth: I have an uncle named Rudy, and Wiebe's mother was named Katharina. I hope I have opportunities to deepen my connection with my Mennonite roots.

rock on!

This summer I bought Ant a Wii for his birthday. Then Matt bought him Guitar Hero 3. Then Ant bought Matt Guitar Hero World Tour for Matt's birthday. Then Ant and I bought us all rock mullet kits for Christmas. Our conversion to rockers is complete!

family time

Ant and I have really enjoyed all our family and friends time over the Christmas break this year. Mum learned to blog this week! I helped her set up her blog and she has made two posts so far. I am very proud of her.

This is her new tablecloth, which looks very striking with the octagonal plates and cups that she has. We have has so many tasty and fun family dinners over the last fortnight. We are very sad to leave today and look forward to seeing them again soon. Keeping in touch electronically is good, too, so I hope my Mum can keep up with her blogging from time to time.

New Year's resolutions

The fewer resolutions, the better, eh? Last year I only made one resolution, and this helped me do a better job with it. I resolved to keep in touch with my friends and family better, and I did make some progress towards this goal. I think I reply to emails better than before but I still need to keep working at phone calling especially.

This year I am going to set three reachable goals.

1. Keep in touch with my friends and family better. I am determined to continue improving at this and would welcome the occasional chastisement if necessary.

2. Do 10 minutes of non-cardio exercise each day. I get plenty of cardio through my weekday commutes. I need to do ab work, strength work, and stretching. I think ten minutes is an obtainable amount.

3. Read the full Bible during the year. I was inspired to do this by my friend Sarah in Ottawa. Last year when I didn't have a Bible reading goal I really floundered. So this year I am going to use the M'Cheyne plan to read through the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice over the course of the year. The link above includes a printable page that I will keep in my Bible.

Over to you. What are your plans for the New Year?

happy new year!

How will you remember 2008? What about the leap second that was added yesterday evening? Apparently the leap second keeps the atomic clock in time with the earth's actual rotation time. Ant and I were spending New Year's with Kevin and Sonya. How would you use an extra second? We were discussing early in the evening and I decided that the best use for my extra second would be to grin at everyone around me for a full second. And I took this picture for you to see.


Max celebrated the new year by wearing this lovely hat.


Claire and Ant have been playing a game where they build a cake (in three shapes: circle, square, heart), then choose its flavour, decoration, and icing.

visiting

Ant and I have really enjoying visiting with friends this week. We have been out to see Sonya and Kevin and play with Max and Claire. They are really good kids, the kind that make you want to have kids of your own (almost).

vegetables

Paul gave me a new cookbook for Christmas--yay! That means more tasty ideas for meals are in my future! And I went out and bought two new kitchen gadgets; one was this new palm peeler. It slips onto one finger and then you hold it in your palm. Ant and I both tried it out and found that it worked well once we got the hang of it.


And we also bought a lovely mini mandoline--which has a very sharp double-sided blade in the centre. It makes perfect eighth of an inch slices, as seen in these photos.


On Christmas Eve Ant and I were out with Mum buying our vegetables for our special dinner. We were at Farmer Clem's and we saw this fantastic squash! I wish we had bought it but really, we would be eating squash for days.

happy birthday to Matt!

Matt's birthday is on Monday and tonight we celebrated with this wonderful pi cake that Lucie made. Wow--impressive. Also very tasty.


In the background you can see Guitar Hero World Tour, which we bought for Matt, but the guitar is broken. :( I hope that he can get a replacement soon so Ant and Matt can play together (and maybe Lucie and I could occasionally try it as well).

Matt's 9*pi birthday is coming up in the spring, so we plan to celebrate that as well, of course!

Christmas preparations

Presents: for my tutor group (27 tubes of confectionery)


Shopping: at the German Christmas market on the South Bank near Waterloo


Shopping: at the South Bank book market


Church event: the Good Neighbours Christmas Party


Trying out my outfit for the staff party tomorrow evening (complete with domestic scene in the background)

brief update

My friend Tawnya is staying with us again for a couple of weeks while she is here in London auditioning. On Wednesday this week we went out with my bookclub girls to a pub in Camden to hear some folk music. Although, it I'm honest, I really went for the international vegetarian tapas! It was delicious. The music was suitably folky--the band we saw had a guitar, a banjo, drums, other percussion (including donkey's teeth) and a small keyboard with a blow tube attached--which made it sound a bit like an accordion. It was very much foot tapping music.

I'm off to do some tutoring this morning and then Tawnya and I are going to head into the city for the Cologne Christmas Market near Waterloo. We also are hosting house group tonight and in between all this I hope to make some gifts and also mark a set of books. Here's hoping. Oh, and some cleaning, and relaxing, too.

visit with Raye

My friend Raye was here over the weekend and we went into the city last night. We were walking along Regent Street and saw these amazing lights strung over the road. These are my kind of Christmas lights: simple, monochrome, and geometrical.

We turned onto Carnaby Steet and saw that it was hung with huge snowmen and snowflakes.


We got tickets to see Sound of Music at the London Palladium. (We got ripped off, though. I will happily give several useful tips to anyone hoping to buy cheap tickets for a show.) The show was really good and we both enjoyed it loads. We were sitting in the top row of the Upper Circle and actually had a decent view. We bought the theatre ice cream (£3 each!) at the interval.

recycling and fashion

My friends and family will be forgiven for describing me as a recycling dictator. But really, what is not to like about recycling? It's good for the earth, and it feels good for me. It's not really that big a hassle. I am dedicated to recycling paper, bottles, cans, and plastic bags. I have a favourite type of recycling, though: buying second hand clothes! There's a brilliant second hand charity shop near me that I often pop into on the weekend. Hopefully I will take some more photos to show you what I have bought there, but let me try to describe some purchases. Three things stand out over the last year. I bought a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress there--I admit I pulled it out originally because of the label. I know that DVF was the inventor of the wrap dress but never thought I'd try one on, let alone own one because of the cost. I tried it on to find that it fit and actually looked quite good. It's a graphic print design, mostly black and white.... Really a picture would help so I'll get one soon.

Then a little while later I found a Jigsaw suit--it's an expensive high street brand that is above my usual level by a long way. It's a very smart brown suit that came with a skirt and trousers. The trousers were a a bit too tight and also much too short. But the straight, slim skirt was perfect and I love the jacket. I bought a light rose blouse at the same time that I tried on with it. It's been such a good purchase and I've worn it on parents' evenings a few times. I feel very professional wearing it.


Today I stopped by on my way home to find a Zara black tweed suit (above) that I am so excited about! It's got a line of piping around the top of the skirt and the lapels of the jacket. The skirt has a little set of pleats at the back just above the hem. So cute and very much the business. It's great that someone decided to recycle such a lovely outfit. I also send donations there and I hope that others enjoy my clothes. (And in the process, the charity benefits, too.) Isn't recycling great?

learning

Pretty much my favourite thing to do: learn. New ideas for learning:

1. Download podcasts from iTunesU, a part of the iTunes store that has thousands of free lectures, audio files, and videos about loads of things.
2. TED talks. I have seen a few now and they are brilliant and so diverse.
3. Maths Ed connections. I went to a day conference on Saturday and started networking. I heard some interesting talks and plan to continue attending day conferences once per term. The next one is in Cambridge. I also plan to start attending seminars at King's College London as well.
4. The Cornell method of notetaking, that Paul told me about. I love listening to people teach me things. Why doesn't it happen more often?

recent cooking

In my continued quest to find meat dishes I enjoy I have discovered this recipe for lamb kofte. My recipe books has it as "middle eastern meatloaf" and one of its variations is to grill it it in small cylinders to use in pittas. We like the taste better than the ones we buy at the kebab shop.

400g lamb mince
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t allspice
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t ground coriander
Mix and then shape into cylinders. Grill and serve in pitta pockets with tomatoes and parsley salad.
--From Simply in Season

I made Borscht, a Mennonite dish, for the first time yesterday (also from the Simply in Season cookbook). It is made with beetroot and so it comes out really pink in colour. It's really easy to make with chicken, carrots, potatoes, dill and parsley. Justin is staying with us for a while and we enjoyed it together last night with toasted pitta.

i <3 my washing machine

This is the first time I have seen the bottom of the laundry basket in months! Our new washing machine has a bigger drum and is so much quieter!

tiring but profitable

This year I have had a little promotion to Gifted & Talented Coordinator in Maths. And this week was the first time I ticked off some of the things on my job description. On Monday we had an INSET day. In the morning there was a whole school session, half about More Able, Gifted, and Talented education and half about Learning to Learn (shortened to MAG&T and L2L respectively). In the afternoon I led a session in the maths department about how we wish to choose to identify our gifted students. We did a little card sort activity in pairs and used the results to agree as a group the criteria we felt most delineated which students we would consider gifted in maths. I wrote this up and added it to the MAG&T policy that my Head of Maths and I wrote while we were part of the G&T action group last year.

One provision we make for the more able and gifted students in maths is to enter them into the national Maths Challenges. The first of these was on Thursday, for students in years 11 to 13. I organised two lunch time training sessions and then the event on Thursday. It was really good to see that everything went smoothly and I sent the completed papers off to the University of Leeds on Thursday afternoon. The challenge was 90 minutes long and we had 35 students participating. I think one of the students may have out-scored me, which is indicative of his ability! I'm sure he'll get a certificate and be passed on to the more advanced rounds.

This was a really tiring week with all this extra stuff going on as well as teaching, prep work, reports, and marking. But it was profitable and I feel like I will be more ready for organising the next Maths Challenge. Working with gifted students is really what I love and I hope my career will continue in this sort of vein.

kensington palace

I had a lovely day sightseeing at Kensington Palace. The Palace grounds have been made into a park and I saw some coloured leaves there today! I have been craving them. They seem to be very uncommon here in London. One day the leaves are green on the trees and the next day they are brown and lying on the ground. It makes me really sad and I feel homesick for the colourful leaves of Nova Scotia.


Kensington Palace was bought by King William and Queen Mary to be away from the centre of London. They had Christopher Wren fix it up into a palace and today half of it is open to the public (the other half is still used for residences for members of the extended Royal family.


I walked through William's and Mary's suites of rooms, a lot of which was original and other parts very well restored. Victoria lived there as a Princess and her rooms very very interesting (and smaller). This sculpture of Queen Victoria is outside the Palace and was made my her daughter, Princess Louise.


I went into the Orangery restaurant for lunch--a conscious decision to enjoy a more luxurious meal than usual for me when I'm out on my own. I have never eaten at a table for one at a restaurant, but I had a really enjoyable time, helped by the delicious food and the calm surroundings.


Each table had a little orange plant. The whole restaurant was light and white; one can imagine rows of citrus trees growing here.


In order to keep spending down (a bit), I ordered two starters and a cup of tea. One was a delicious salad that I can definitely imagine making myself.

Items in my lunchtime salad:
rocket
curly endive (also called frisee)
goats cheese
plum poached with lots of cloves, skin on
walnuts
honey dressing
Served with not too sweet raisin bread

I had courgette and sweetcorn soup as well served with "artisan bread", one slice of which had garlic pieces baked into it. Yum, yum. I ordered tulsi mint tea to drink, which was a proper English pot of loose tea served with a cup and a strainer. I ate my lunch very slowly, enjoying each mouthful and the view out to the manicured gardens. I also was reading my book (the book club selection for November, The End of Mr Y).

I walked through the park and then nipped over to the V&A for an hour to complete a really relaxing day of culture and history in London.