God looked around his garden
And found an empty place,
He then looked down upon the earth
And saw your tired face.
He put his arms around you
And lifted you to rest.
God’s garden must be beautiful
He always takes the best.
He knew that you were suffering
He knew you were in pain.
He knew that you would never
Get well on earth again.
He saw the road was getting rough
And the hills were hard to climb.
So he closed your weary eyelids
And whispered, ‘Peace be Thine’.
It broke our hearts to lose you
But you didn’t go alone,
For part of us went with you
The day God called you home.

~Author Unknown~

It’s that time of year again. Autumn has officially arrived and with it comes the screaming pages new header graphic.

I’ve always loved the fall. Growing up in the maritimes, autumn was a riot of colour – leaves shone in red, gold, brown, orange. Skys were bright blue (when it wasn’t raining of course). Lazy days of fall seemed to last forever, as the summer gave it’s final gasp and headed off into the sunset.

Here in the north west, autumn runs by a top speed and it’s nearly impossible to find a good display of fall foilage. The days are significantly cooler and frost began appearing on the ground weeks ago. Darkness falls earlier with each passing day and soon sunlight will be a memory. It will be dark when we head to work at 7am and when we head home each evening. Bundled in winter gear and huddled around fires, we quickly become mole people with no memory of the sun and it’s warmth.

But still it’s hard to let go of the fondness I once had for the season. It passes into winter too quickly here.

Technorati Tags: autumn, fall, seasons

I know. It’s been a while. If the few nasty-grams I got via email are anything to go by, I actually have a few readers left who miss my writing *grin*

Yesterday was a good day all around. I received my PLAR assessment from school and (pending passing my current course) I’m to receive 12 transfer credits from previous university classes to count towards the current degree. Yippee! Of course, instead of working on the paper that’s due on Monday, I’m blogging. So, perhaps I shouldn’t count my chickens before they’re hatched…

Last night we headed out to see the Leafs play the Oilers in pre-season action. If last night’s game was anything to go by, I predict a short and disappointing season for the Oil. Sure, they won in overtime, but the 3rd period goalie was lucky they managed to get out alive. It seems that stick handling is still a challenge for the Oil. Add to that some unnecessary showboating instead of the requisite teamwork and it made for a pretty disappointing game.

On the other hand the starting goalie, Mathieu Garon, was a pleasant surprise and I’m looking forward to seeing more of him during the upcoming season.

I’m not a hockey player *shame on me* but there’s a few pieces of advice I can’t help but share with my beloved Oil:

• See those hard black things with laces on them? They’re called skates. You put your feet in the end with the hole and the shiney metal bit connects with the ice. Try it sometime…
• And that black hard rubber round thingy is called a puck. Use the wooden (or composite) thingy – otherwise known as a stick – to shove it around the ice.
• Speaking of the puck, if you don’t chase it you’ll never catch it.
• If you don’t shoot the puck you’ll never score.
• Pass the puck to the guys wearing the same colour jersey as yourself. It’s one thing to lose the puck on the boards of have it swiped from you. It’s another thing entirely to PASS the puck to members of the opposing team!
• Records are great and always meant to be broken. However, there’s no need to set (or break) the record for having the most penalty minutes in a game. Try keeping all the players on the ice and see how many times the puck ends up in the net.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope they iron out the bugs. I’d love another cup run in my backyard.

Technorati Tags: hockey, edmonton, oilers, university

Some classes started at college last week and I was pretty swamped getting everything ready for the new batch of students.  This week the remaining students return to school and as of tomorrow, I too start plugging away at my latest batch of classes at university.  There’s an increasing level of excitement as the students return to the buildings and our quiet domain that we lorded over this summer has become a hive of activity as both the instructors and students begin filling the halls.

After completing the course I was designing and getting the remainder of the course sites on-line, I’ve shifted my focus in the evenings and weekends to attempting to complete some pre-reading for my own class this fall.  From what I’ve seen so far I’m certain this will be one of the more difficult courses I’ll be attempting to complete this year – mostly because I’ll need to keep my opinions in check and attempt to behave myself during discussions. *sigh*

There are days, like today, where I wonder why I’m heading back to school at all…

Our phone number is similar to that of a local school. Occassionally we get calls from parents who have transposed two of the numbers. Today we got a call from a woman who was trying to register her kids in grade 7. Despite the fact that the answering machine messages says “hi, you’ve reached name and name lastname, we’re not home right now. leave a message after the beep” we continually receive messages from parents to frazzled or lazy to actually listen to the message.

Tonight, the hubby tried to call the woman back to let her know she’d called the wrong number and give her the correct number for the school. The fact that the call was at 8pm should have been a hint to the woman that it wasn’t a school calling. The conversation (which I got to listen to on speaker phone) went like this:

Him: Hi, you called our house and left a message on our machine about registering your kids in school. You called the wrong number. You need to call ###-####.

Her: I’m trying to register name for grade 7.

Him: We’re not a school. You need to call the school to register. The number is ###-####.

Her: [interupting at the end of his sentence] But I need to register my kid for school. He’s going to be in grade 7.

Him: You didn’t call the school. You called our house. I’m trying to let you know you called the wrong number.

Her: He needs to be in grade 7.

Him: We’re not a school.

Her: His name is XX. What do you need for registration?

Him: We’re full. We’re not accepting any registrations.

Her: [angry] What?

Him: We’re full.

Her: What about grade 6? I can hold him back a year.

Him: We’re full.

Her: I have another son I need to register in grade 9.

Him: We don’t have a grade 9.

Her: I thought you were grades 6-9.

Him: No, we’re not a school. You called a house. You need to call the school. If we were a school, we’d be k-8.

Her: But…

Him: We’re full. [hangs up]

So much for trying to be nice and do someone a favour. During the school year, we receive 5-10 calls a week from parents who never listen to our answering machine messages and leave messages about doctor and dentist appointments, ill children, etc. If the message sounds urgent and not too much time has passed since it was received, we do try to call the parents back to let them know they called the wrong number and give them the correct one. Never seems to resolve the problem.

Oddly enough, I get more angry parents as a result of their mistakes than I get grateful ones. I have a feeling we should just stop trying…

Technorati Tags: phone calls, parents, school, wrong number