Outdoorswoman extraordinaire... do they pay well for that?

This weekend the boyfriend, the dog and I went for a walk/hike in Hemlock Ravine, a hidden treasure in Bedford. I like, on the weekends, to try and walk somewhere other than the usual weekday half-hour loop, and the Ravine happened to be close to the Chinese place I wanted to go for supper. As we walked I was playing nature guide for Trevor, with "name that bird" and "name that tree" and "hey look at that!," observing the forest recovering from Hurricane Juan, and playing nature photographer. It got me wondering if I would enjoy a job that allowed me to work outdoors and/or with nature. The answer is a qualified yes: on warm sunny days. However, on rainy days (like about 10 minutes after we got back to the car, when it started to downpour)... not so much, thanks!

... but not fine arts.

And now, a post about things I am NOT good at.

Tonight I went to a junior high fine arts cabaret. Aside from once again being in the school environment, which I really enjoy, the kids were AMAZING! I felt so inferior watching a 13-year-old girl who has been invited to the National Ballet School summer camp doing a ballet piece, listening to a girl play guitar and sing a beautiful practically radio-worthy love song, listening to a very accomplished grade 7 flautist, and more and more and more! The kids were fabulous. (And Trevor's improv team did a great job too...). It makes me wish I had had the opportunity to explore music, dance and art in junior high but then I think, I already have too many interests - I don't need any more! Plus, I tried to learn to play the guitar once and discovered that my fingers and especially left wrist do NOT bend that way. So, I guess I will stick to marveling at talented teenagers.

Being at the school tonight also made me excited to start volunteering with Junior Achievement, facilitating the "Our Business World" seminar with a group of grade 6 students. It should be very interesting to see what they come up with when asked questions like "where do you get the money to start a business?"

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Amazing Race Party!

Last week was the season finale of one of my favourite shows, The Amazing Race. When I was in England a group of us would get together in my dorm room every week to watch the show. Two of the girls live in the city so I invited them and their boys over to watch together. Which, of course, gave me a ready-made excuse to indulge my creativity. I bought some bright red and yellow felt and made replica Race route marker flags to hang on the outside of my house, to mark important areas like the tv room and the bathroom, and to hang on the tv for decoration. I also made a trip to the Freak Lunchbox, an awesome candy store, and bought some “creepy crawlies” to imitate some nasty food the racers had to eat during a previous leg. Some chocolate covered ju jubes served as larvae, served up on a skewer. Gummy spiders, also on skewers, were in place of the crickets and scorpions the racers had been asked to eat. Next door at Pete’s Frootique I bought some cheddar Babybel and a wheel of brie, to serve as miniatures of the huge wheels of cheese the racers had to carry on their backs in the first leg of the race. Along with Cindy’s “Happy Amazing Race Day” cake, it made for quite a feast!

Back to school... sort of.

From the time I was in high school, people have told me I should go into teaching. Mostly it was the teachers at my high school, who I think were trying to a) give my unfocused intellect some direction and b) recruit new members to the cause, and the parents of the kids I taught in swimming lessons. I always resisted, thinking I would hate it. Then I moved in with a teacher, whose brother and sister-in-law are also teachers, and my best friend became a teacher. I was suddenly surrounded by teachers, and all of a sudden I could see what it was like "from the inside," as it were. I watched Trevor marking papers, saw student work, started meeting and spending time with other teachers, and volunteering at the school, chaperoning dances and school trips.

After the demise of the proposed MUN-Dal partnership which seemed to be the perfect program for me, teaching seemed to get pushed to the back burner. This year, Trevor is a literacy coach, so there are fewer stories about classes and students, and no marking being done at home. He (and therefore I) has chaperoned fewer dances this year simply because he is working at three schools instead of one. Combined with a promotion at work, it has all served to push the idea of teaching toward the back of my brain.

However, this weekend my interest was rekindled, through something as simple as a yard sale. The yard sale was put on by the Grade 8 class at one of Trevor's schools to raise money for their class trip. Last year we had gone to the sale and enjoyed it, so this year we decided to buy a table and sell some of our junk. Being at the school, interacting with some of the students, and even helping to carry tables after the sale was over all reminded me how much I have come to like being in the school atmosphere. So much that I didn't even care that we ended up spending more money than we made!

Yet another possibility... sigh.

Smoke on the Water

Today provided a hard-to-resist opportunity for photography. There are some pretty big brush fires across the harbour (which unfortunately are apparently also consuming some houses) which are creating some pretty impressive smoke plumes. They can be seen all over the city, including from my office and from the beach at the end of our street. So, Loki dog, my roommate and I went down to the beach to a) enjoy the unseasonably summery day and b) take some pictures of the smoke.

Loki didn't seem fazed by the smoke; she was just happy to be running and chasing seaweed and digging in the sand and running. Here's hoping they get the fires out soon.

Last Thursday was one of the biggest events of the year for the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, the Spring Dinner. While I am not techincally part of the events team, on days like this I get to indulge my event-coordinator side and help out. We spent most of the morning tying chair covers onto 600 chairs in the room. It's impressive to see the room come together from bare tables and uncovered chairs to a fully set, green-and-champagne, film-themed spring "zen garden," as I called it. And the food and speaker were pretty good too - with a beer company sponsor, everything was cooked using beer, and Steven Brandman was really interesting talking about the film industry in Halifax. Unfortunately, he didn't bring Tom Sellick with him (Brandman is the procuder of the Jesse Stone series which shoots in Hali). But, RBC did bring the real Olympic torch (right)! It is admittedly a great advantage of my job that I get to try and experience such a variety of things. Not many jobs offer you the opportunity to get experience planning and executing large events without that actually being your job! More photos can be seen on the Chamber's website.

And as an ending point, as a follow-up to my last post: today's sporting event on tv as I write is Canada vs Czech Repubic World Championship hockey, on repeat on TSN.

Jenn of All Trades Was Taken....

When I was in Europe studying for six months in 2005 I blogged about my trip. I had built-in things to write about since there was a field trip of some sort almost every weekend and I was seeing and doing new things every day. Since then I have missed writing regular updates, even if the only people reading them were my family members. So, at the encouragement of a blogging coworker (check out With Bite!), here I am.

I have been musing recently about the direction I would eventually like my life to take, and have been spending a lot of time making mental lists of the things I enjoy doing and/or am good at. The problem is that the list of things I'm interested in is long and hugely varied, from writing and jewellery making to database management to a burning desire to drive a rock truck before I die. These things are pretty hard to successfully combine into a career (unless you manage to get a job as a tv show host on the Discovery Channel), which is probably why I went into university as a Bachelor of Arts student not knowing what I wanted to take, and why I ended up with an honours degree in German and History (do you want to hire me now?).

A huge advantage of my current job is that I get a chance to do and try a pretty decent range of stuff and no two days are really ever the same. I have pretty much come to the conclusion that most of the things I enjoy can be successfully pursued as hobbies, and hopefully some of the stranger 'bucket list' items can be accomplished through my rapidly expanding and varied network.

So, that is what I hope to write about here: the miscellany of things in which I am interested and my efforts to pursue, engage in, and learn more about those things.

In that spirit, here is how I spent my creative energies today:

This necklace of ribbon, freshwater pearls, faux pearls and various sizes of chain was inspired by a design in Nathalie Delhaye's book beads buttons and bijoux which my parents surprised me with as an "I couldn't resist it at the bookstore" present the other day.

I often spend the evening either watching, ignoring or pretending to ignore sports on tv (depending on the sport: if it's Ottawa Senators it's watching; everything else is ignoring or half watching) while spreading my beading supplies out over the whole sofa. Today my boyfriend was watching the Toronto Blue Jays lose and I was working on this.

This is part of the collection I am trying to build up so I can sell some of my jewellery at a) my hairdresser's salon, since she so kindly offered to let me put a display there, and b) at Christmas craft sales next fall. So far I have 3 necklaces and 2 pairs of earrings - a slow start, but it's coming along!

Phew. I thought this was going to be a short introductory post. So much for that!