Tag: Pragmatism

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Life momentous events teaching

47/52 And it’s clearing out time…

New job next year: I’m back to Nambour Christian College… which was the school that I moved to the Coast for in the first place! Head of Library position, replacing an amazingly talented man who’s retiring.

So, for the first time since 2016, I find myself on Christmas holidays with one job finished and the other not yet started. It’s a weird feeling. I’ve ALWAYS done work over the Christmas break. But I can’t right now. There’s nothing to do for CCPS and I can’t start anything at NCC! So I guess by default that means it’s “clearing out of stuff” time.

And check out my inbox! I can’t remember the last time it was at less than 20. And yes now I’m down to just 13!!! I wonder if I can get it to zero by New Year’s?

Wish me luck! Have have a lucky week yourself, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
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Life Random thoughts Reading Review

45/52 on my Goodreads challenge for the 2024

This year, I decided to try a different style with my Goodreads challenge. Ever since I started, the ‘target number’ I chose was based on a specific number of books per week. So in 2015 it was one book a week (ie 52 books) which I obliterated by reading 73, then I upped it to two books per week (104 total) in 2016, for which I managed the exact 104, right on the lead up to midnight on December 31, from memory!

For the next three years in a row, I aimed for three books per week. 156 books! Okay, sure, I only achieved that goal in 2019, reading 168 books, but still! It was a pretty good goal. And reading 81 in 2017 and then 126 in 2018 is not really to be sniffed at either, when I think about it…

I must have been pretty impressed with myself because the following year I upped it again. 2020, the year of ‘four books per week’, for a total of 208. Which I achieved, reading 210… but I’m pretty sure I added that year’s shortlisted BookWeek books into that record… which included 12 picture books!

The following year, 2021, I set the challenge back to three books per week (156 total) and even though I made it, reading 157… the following two years I stepped it back again to just two books per week (104 total) and achieved it again, each year, reading 115 and 114, respectively.

Fastforward to this year. 2024, the year of one book per week again. There were a few reasons for this: not the least of which was that I was back in the classroom, teaching, instead of in the library as librarian, and the planning / reporting / marking workload would leave significantly less time for reading. And also, I wanted to ensure that every book I recorded was a worthwhile, 250+ pager, rather than the picture book or Bible book, just to bulk out my Goodreads challenge record (I try to read my Bible each year, which in itself contains 66 books… but I don’t record these in my challenge as this is a recurring thing for me!).

Currently, I’m on 46 read out of 52. And in the main, I’m happy with that. The most recent is ‘The Space Between Worlds’ by Micaiah Johnson – a book I co-read with my bothers, so we could chat about it. Quite interesting Sci-Fi, and what made it more interesting was to pull it apart with my brothers and work out what we liked / didn’t like, and why. That one before it? Passive income? Don’t bother. It’s really short (I didn’t realise that when I downloaded it) and it’s pretty general in nature. Still, it was a book I read, which is why it’s in there. And the other 13 in the image continue the ‘reverse chronological order’ thing 🙂

The book I’m partway through right at the moment? (again!) is ‘The Brothers Hawthorne’ by Jennifer Lynn Marnes… because my local library contacted me on Friday to tell me that the fifth and final book in the series is sitting there, ready for me to collect… which I’m planning to do, tomorrow! So reading Book 4 this weekend seems the most sensible course of action 🙂 Even though I only read it, 10 books ago…

Anyway, that’s my reading so far this year. How’s yours going this year, dear Reader?

  • KRidwyn

 

 

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Random thoughts Work

43/52 Christmas decorations and my exhaustion levels

This came across my feed today, and I screenshotted it. It’s something I could probably handle, given my current exhaustion levels:

How about you? How are you coping, this close to Christmas / end of year / silly season?

Here’s hoping you can have a week full of ‘coping’ yourself, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
teaching Technology

34/52 Snowed under

This post (or lack thereof, to tell the truth) is being brought to you by my marking load, which is currently threatening to overwhelm me 🙁

Reporting is due tomorrow.

Sigh. Who’d be an English teacher, huh? Lol

See you next week, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

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Random thoughts teaching Work

28/52 On the return to Term 3

Phew! What a week it’s been!

Yesterday morning, I drove Kiya, with Mum and her dog Trav, down to Brisbane for an appointment. It occurred to me that last Saturday morning (7 days earlier) I had also collected Mum… but instead, to go car shopping. We’d visited a quite rusty Suzuki Jimny, locally, before heading down to Brisbane to look at a 2020 version – which sold en route. We then pulled into Suzuki at Nundah, and ended up buying a brand new Ignis, before stopping at CostCo on the way back up the Coast.

This week was

  • the return to school (that’s right, I have a 0.9FTE teaching job as well)
  • the collection of Mum’s car on Wednesday
  • Miss 16’s trip to QldTransport to have her photo taken for her Learners
  • the (hopefully successful) migration of this website from one host to another
  • Miss 19 job-hunting and speaking with prospective employers, and finally
  • yet another big trip yesterday.

Today, I’m playing violin at church, then spending the afternoon with my parents and godfathers who are visiting from NZ.

Phew! again…

Hope it’s been a productive week for you, too, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
Random thoughts Work

27/52 On habit creation

So June ended, and with it, the challenge to publish a daily blogpost for #blogJune.

And it took a number of days before I stopped thinking ‘oh! I haven’t posted yet… and this’d make a good post!’ so… I guess that means I’d created myself a daily blogging habit?!

But it’s definitely July now, the first Sunday of, so it’s time to resume my Sunday blogging schedule. And today marks 27 of the 52 posts I had set myself back in January 🙂

So keeping with the topic of ‘habits help you to get things done’ I just wanted to post this photo right here:

That’s right. For a mere $25K you could own your own barrel organ. How cool is THAT?!! (Ooh! I’ve never seen one of these intact before, as Nemo’s teacher would have said)

Seriously though: it’s incredible to think of the dedication that the creation of this instrument must have taken. Not only the mechanics of making the instrument actually work, but also the incredible craftsmanship in the painstaking attention to detail in the instrument’s decorations! A true work of art.

And such incredible-ness can ONLY happen through habit-creation. The dedication of doing small amounts consistently, day by day by day by day by day.

Without this, the instrument wouldn’t exist.

And this day by day process is not just for weeks, nor months, but YEARS.

Inspirational dedication, that. An aspirational habit.

And with that thought, I’m off to go be productive for the rest of my day.

Have a great week, dear Reader, and I’ll see you next Sunday!

– KRidwyn

 

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#blogjune

#BlogJune Day 21

Today’s been big. Master15 had his Athletics Carnival, necessitating a 90 minute drive each way, and now I’m waiting outside a fitting room in one of our local shopping centres while Miss16 finds clothing suitable for a week of ‘Uni experience’ next week. We’re going to start the ‘formal wear’ hunt today too, I think.

Phew! Bring on the weekend, I say!

Hope you’re having a great end-of-week too, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

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#blogjune

#BlogJune Day 19 and it’s COOOOOLLLLLDDD!

It’s just a few days to Winter Solstice, and I am SOOOOOO glad about that! The idea that the days start getting longer again is completely and utterly BRILLIANT because I find this cold weather so darn paralysing 🙁

I think I mentioned that Hubby and I bought Kiya a coat. A couple of them, actually (we’d never bought animal clothing before and had no clue what we were doing). The wrap-around, velcro-secured ‘jacket’ was a size too small, so that was an immediate donation to Mum’s 10 month old border collie Trav. The woollen-style ‘jumper’ was the correct size, but our clever gurly worked out how to get out of it… without ripping apart the ‘arms’ at the seams! So she was able to wear it for over a week before the seams came apart and it became a rag.

Fast foward to yesterday. Temperature feels like -2C with a wind chill of -957C or something. And poor Kiya with no coat. Necessitating a trip to the store, and now: a new, brown, wrap-around ‘jacket’ to match Trav’s army-green one.

And just in the nick of time. On Wednesday nights Kiya and I have a sleepever at Mum’s / Trav’s place… and check out the two of them in their snazzy coats!

(Sorry for the blurry-ness of the photos, it was dark already and we’d only just arrived and the two pups were so excited I couldn’t get them still enough!)

Still, I reckon they’re cuteness personified. And that patch of white near the bottom of Kiya’s brown coat is *not* a rip, courtesy Trav, where the stuffing is coming out. It’s actually a white, embrodiered, paw print 🙂

Here’s hoping you also get a cuteness overload today, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
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#blogjune family anecdotes Life

#BlogJune Day 10

So my Miss16 has 6 months left of school. And what does she do? Join in with the Senior Assassin game, of course!

Wear goggles? You’re protected. Floaties on your arms? Also fine. On school grounds (school bus seats included in this definition) or heading to or at your place of work? Also unable to be eliminated.

Anything else? You’re fair game for being eliminated (shot by a water gun, the evidence caught on video) and no longer able to win the hundreds of dollars in prize money awarded to the winning team.

My girl’s latest obsession: looking over her shoulder anywhere we go. Oh, and the goggles wearing, of course.

Let’s see if she’s a few hundred dollars richer by the end of the year!

Have a goggle-free day yourself, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

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#blogjune

#BlogJune Day 8

I have Reynaud’s Syndrome… meaning that in cold weather or whenever my body cools too much, blood stops flowing properly to my extremities. My fingers and toes turn white from lack of blood. It’s annoying (and sometimes painful).

So I wear gloves. A few years back now, I lashed out on an expensive pair of ‘UGG’ brand gloves and now I wouldn’t be without them when the weather gets cold.

 

This morning, they only came off after 10am. Winter is well and truly here, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn