Tag: Pragmatism

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Blogging challenges Life teaching Technology 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 occured 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
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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

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#blogjune Blogging challenges teaching Work

#BlogJune Day 3

I left home at 6.45am. Arrived back at 6.15pm. That’s an 11 1/2 hour day, people!
No wonder I’m tired. And my photography skills aren’t as sharp. But hey, it is what it is 🙂

I hope your day was a shorter one, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

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Random thoughts

17/52 On waiting

We wait for lots of things.
To be old enough to join the ‘big kids’ at school.
For that first tooth to fall out so we’ll be like our friends.
For Christmas morning.
For the high school bus.
For the weekend.
To be old enough to get our driver’s license.
For the boss to give us more shifts so we have enough money for that thing we want.
For that University acceptance letter.
For the right date for our wedding.
For 9 months to be finally over.
For the kids to be old enough to go to school.
For the ‘lack of school lunches’ that holidays bring.
For the kids to graduate and live lives of their own.
For…

Are we wishing our lives away?
And what happens when our final day comes?
How much will we look back and regret?

And will realising this, be enough for me to change a so-far-lifelong habit?

That’s what I’m pondering this week, dear Reader.

And, as always, I wish you an amazing and wonderful week 🙂
⁃ KRidwyn

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Life Random thoughts teaching Work

11/52 On marking

It’s a lovely feeling when it’s done! But my current marking is still firmly in the ‘present’ tense, so when it comes to writing this blogpost I’m rather time-poor, I’m afraid.

So here’s a photo Mum found the other week – me when I was 5, in Bristol, England – for you to smile at:

and I’ll see you next week, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn

 

 

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Reading Review teaching Work

9/52 On reading

Books I’ve read recently:

H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. I figured it was time; that I should read it at least once in my life. And it *was* good. I can see why it was such an influential novel in its time… but it was the introduction by Orson Scott Card (in the version I was reading) which impressed me more in its insight and readability. He’s an impressive writer, Orson Scott Card!

The Joy Luck Club: I picked this one up because again, it was one of those “I should really read this at least once in my life” moments. Halfway down the first page, I realised I’d already read it, probably a decade or two ago now! And I’d enjoyed it… but seeing as time is fleeting, reading takes it up, and I’d already read it before: I finished the first chapter then skipped to the final chapter for a quick re-read before putting it down. It’s the mark of a brilliant writer, I think, that Amy Tan can make me cry in just those first and last chapters! Although maybe, being half-Asian myself, the story resonates with me more…?


Hangman’s Curse by Frank Peretti. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would! The Christian overtones weren’t as ‘in your face’ as other Christian novels I’ve read, and as for the depiction of bullying in high schools: I don’t know if much (at all!) has changed in the intervening years since it was published in 2001.

And now: The Janson Directive by Robert Ludlum. Considering his Bourne series has been one of my favourites since my teens, this is proving to be quite an easy read. Again: what a writer, huh?


And that’s it from me this week. Now I need to go and get through those class sets of draft marking which are waiting patiently for me!

Have a great week, dear Reader 🙂
⁃ KRidwyn