Time, does not go by, so slowly

New year!
Well, it's a few weeks into the new year, and time is flying fast.
Lot's of new happenings too. I started coaching a few mornings a week with the new program at the Airdrie club.
And starting next week, I will be working part-time for the City View as well. Doing ad design/layout and such. It's going to be awesome. :D
In case anybody is wondering, my cooking skills are significantly improving. I cooked a yummy supper all by myself tonight. This is good news, as it means I will spend less time waving dish towels at the smoke detector.
My listening favourite, Snow Patrol, released a new CD recently and I'm very much in love. I recommend checking it out. If you don't you will be hearing me singing it anyway, as it is stuck in my head and I like it there.
So other than the fact I'm about to be working three jobs, keeping up two blogs on the side (trying really hard to), and planning a wedding, I'm actually finding quite a bit of time to relax lately, now that the holidays are over.
Don't get me wrong, I always enjoy the holidays, but they seem to become more and more stressful each passing season. If it wasn't for all the good family times it wouldn't seem worth it. It could have been I had extra celebrations. That might have tipped the scales. All wonderful times though.
Speaking of wonderful celebrations, I went to see a show at Jubilations Dinner Theatre and I LOVED it.
I can't wait to go see another one, asap.
So another year passed and each one keeps flying by a little faster than the last.
I'm 23, have been with my wonderful hubby-to-be for a whole year now, and in 5 months I'll be married to him.
Yee-ha!
:)
Peace & Love
Chow

I Blame You!

For my hundredth post I will speak of something I am very passionate about. Writing.
Clearly, my passion for writing and grammar is fairly obvious, but my passion for others literacy comes in a close second.

Very recently I have stumbled across a grade nine students English homework. Congratulations to them, they received full marks.
The person I have a problem with is the teacher. Since when, in high school English, do you not grade upon spelling?
The assignment itself was a simple one, the usual defining of words from a class story, and answering a few questions about the structure of the story.

I don't want to burst this teenagers bubble, but to me, this assignment was done terribly. Not because the answers or definitions were wrong, but because there were 20 spelling errors.
The first was in the title. This one really irks me, being that it is plain laziness on the students part not to look at the title of the story to check the spelling.
The second spelling mistake was the first word defined. After reading the definition of the word, it was clear that the word being defined was missing a key letter or two.

I could go on and on about each mistake. Some are understandable, and one or two are borderline acceptable for this grade level. But when words are written twice, two different ways and both wrong, that should be a docked mark.
I'm not sure if teachers became lazy or if this is the way they are now supposed to teach, but I bet I would be hard-pressed to find a parent who thinks this a brilliant idea.

English class is where a child learns how to speak, write, and read in proper English. If a teacher is not correcting a student's mistakes the student is not learning. This would make the entire job of that teacher void.

Not only was spelling a major issue in this simple high school assignment, but so was grammar. There were very few periods and almost no commas.
There were contractions, but not a single apostrophe was to be found.
In the question and answer portion of the assignment not one answer started with a capital, some did not even start with a full word, and none had a period. I have no idea as to what questions were even being answered.
When I was in grade nine, I had to answer in full, using the question as the beginning part of the answer, so the sentence was complete. I see nothing wrong with that practice, and saw nothing wrong with it then.

I do remember hearing about this, maybe a year or so ago, of this occurrence of teachers no longer grading on spelling and such at this level. I believe one of the reasons was that it shouldn't be necessary to check a students spelling, they should know what they're doing by now.

Clearly, they don't.

At this point and time I'm not sure who the blame should be on: teachers, school boards, the provincial government, society, or parents, for letting teachers get away with this.

I may not be a parent, but if this was my child, I would be asking the teacher to personally take an extra minute and go through and dock marks for the spelling mistakes.

Like I stated earlier, I do not want to burst the bubble of this student, but I would not want my child to take pride in some half-wit work, that they don't even have to put any effort into, to receive full marks.







Peace & Love
Chow

Time to rock out with our socks out!

If I had gotten out of bed a week ago to organize the lyrics that were rolling around in my mind, I'd have written a new song. 

It sounded wonderful to, not sure if that was true, I was exhausted, but it could have been. 

"the look in your eyes says the day had darkened skies 

the sentence in your sighs says more than words shared 

take a breath and make it count 

Each moment is a piece to the puzzle and we don't know the picture yet 

When the effort doesn't equal what you get back 

Remember life's not about the math" 

"So when the exhaustion takes you over and there's nothing left to do 

Take a breath and hold me tight 

we'll set the pieces into place and time will show the puzzles 

grown a little clearer in the morning light" 

"I can see it when you pause to think 

The questions form and reason falters 

Why does that voice continue saying it should be easier than this 

but easy doesn't satisfy and the days closing down

shake yourself back to reality and know it will be worth it" 

"The sentence in your sighs, says more than words spoken

Take a breath and hold me tight

See the night through to the other side 

The days are short and the nights are dark but let's not drift apart" 

I think if I had taken the time to write it down, it would have turned out like this.

I used to write songs and poems all the time. When the emotions just had to get out. 
During high school when every detail was all that mattered.

I found that writing my thoughts and feelings down helped me deal with the happenings and to move on.

Journaling was the main thing that kept me going. 
Letting it all out and giving my mind room to breathe and think about the constructive things.

Now I blog. So I hope you enjoy this, because this is my new... release.

I'll talk more later, I'm off to knit and fold laundry.

Peace&Love

Chow

Well, at least I won't have to worry about songs skipping.

As I sit here in my living room, built in lights twinkling on our fake Christmas tree, I've come to the conclusion that CD's are a way of the past.
I'm sure at this point most of you are going, duh.
Trust me, I switched over from a discman to an iPod years ago, but I just realized how much I really don't touch my CD collection anymore.

Recently organizing and rearranging my house, I recycled my big stereo, because well, it was useless. I haven't had an antenna for it in years, and it would take me 15 minutes to change a CD.
Now as I look at my perfectly alphabetized CD's, I'm wondering why I haven't put them downstairs in box.
I have all that music on my computer and iPod, and I don't actually have anything to play the CD's on anymore.

I will miss them though. The album art, artists notes, and printed lyrics always made the hardcopy worth it.
Now, all they do is take up space.
Oh so sad.

 And the funniest part is, CD's have become popular and then faded away in my so far, short life.

What's next? And what will I get in my stocking this year?

Peace&Love
Chow

tbh

In all honesty, I have NOTHING to write about.
That being said, I'm sure there's somethings I just don't feel like sharing.

So if you would like to keep up with the happenings in my life, here goes.

I've started watching Friends again.
Yes the addiction is back. I love this show, I will watch it over and over as much as I can.
The good news is, using our new dvd/blue ray player, the discs work a lot better than they did when using the xbox. So I get to see more episodes. Yay!

My knitting is coming along, slowly, but surely. I need more yarn though. Canmore trip may be necessary. (strictly putting that in for my Momma)

Recently, I've rearranged my entire house. It took a lot of work, heavy lifting, and a few touch ups on the walls.
Turns out my old dresser BARELY fits up my stairs. Yet it is possible. I'm handy with a tool set. And, Ava and I made it fit up the stairs. We're tough girls, don't mess with us.

Other than that, I've started decorating for Xmas, but my work week started again, so who knows when I will get around to finishing it.

Basically, I'm just trying to keep on writing, to keep writing. Have to keep the fingers moving.
I am working on a new article though, so stay tuned. It will be out, before the week is up!

Peace&Love
Chow

What I've been doing...

I may not be writing a lot lately, but that doesn't mean I'm sitting on the couch watching TV.
This is what I've been up to...

Jason's Socks

And when I finished those I moved on to a few other things, since I've decided to knit all my christmas presents this year.

And when I haven't been knitting, I've been quilting!

Mav's Quilt

The quilt I didn't really have a plan for to be honest. I picked out the material almost a year ago though,

and finally got around to it. It took me two mornings to put the top together and half a morning to stitch it all together. Nothing fancy, just a simple quilt to keep the little man warm.

I will be posting a few more pictures in the next couple of weeks I'm sure, just to brag about how cool I am, especially when I take my knitting out with me. :)

Peace&Love

Chow

Clouds

To understand, I have always defined.

If I didn't know, I grabbed a dictionary. What does this word mean? How do I use it?

From then on, every thing seemed to need a place, to be defined. To be pinpointed down to its root. From there it can be built back up, reaching it's full potential and truest meaning.

But some words, some things, some emotions, are harder to define.

They don't have a clear base, no logical beginning.

What do I do with those? How do I understand?

Like standing on a cloud, there would be nothing solid, just falling through a mist. Which looked intriguing, but with nothing to grasp, it's empty in your hands.

Yet, they are natural.

When your tire of digging, and your mind gives up with searching, you fall back.

Letting all around you melt away.

And it comes to a place where anything will make sense, and one thing falls into the next.

It's simple.

By letting it be, it makes sense.

Not needing description or definition, but just by trusting.

Trust is laying on that cloud and believing it won't let you down.




Peace&Love
Chow