Happy Tuesday everyone! I'm very pleased to announce that after last week's depressing post I have good news! Although I've still been sick and it's not all happy-fun-town over here, I'm really glad things are finally starting to look up and get better, (hopefully).
The first big thing is that I FINALLY got a call back from the coordinator at the YMCA and they officially offered me the job as a Group Leader! I will be employed as of Thursday after signing all the necessary paperwork. I'm excited and glad to be starting a new chapter in my work life outside of retail and, even though the money is not terribly great, I know I'll be a lot happier and a lot less stressed here than I would be anywhere else. I've always wanted to use my educational degree towards my job and now I get to do that. It won't be a lot of time, just two days a week, which may or may not kill our finances and drive my husband crazy, but I'm hoping that I can grow with this company and next year move up to a higher paid position for more hours. I'll just be glad to get out of the house and play with kids after school! I'm super pumped and I can sort-of relax for now.
Speaking of my husband, I do feel bad about not pulling my weight around here. It's not that he minds, but I can see how much pressure he's under to provide for us while I've been out of work and I just wanted to take the time to let him know how much I appreciate all of the support he's given me during this difficult time and all the praise he's given me for sticking to it. I have no idea what I would do without him pushing me and reassuring me that everything will be alright. He has been the absolute best and I hope that someday I can repay him for all the kindness he's shown me, but for now I just love him unconditionally like any wife would. I love you Bear:)
Ok, so moving on out of Sapville, I also have some not-so-good news regarding my internship. For the past two months I've been visiting and observing teachers in their natural habitat, looking for a classroom to call my own for next year. It felt a lot like The Bachelor in the sense that I was seeing all these potential matches and looking for one to give my final rose to, not knowing how the other teachers felt about me. Well, it looks like I won't be proposing to anyone yet... Out of the three top teachers I chose to move forward with, NONE of them wanted to pursue a relationship with me. So I'm back to square one, scratching my list and waiting to hear from the internship coordinator about my options. I have no idea who is left to chose from, or if I'll be outsourced to a completely different school district, but I'm so over this process that I just want to be done with it. I spent all that time for nothing and now I don't even know where I'll be. I don't know if anyone will like me, but this time around I will probably do things a little differently. Before I was focusing more on the relationship between me and the teacher and I should have been focusing on what age group I prefer and the area I'd like to be in. I need to put more of an emphasis on the educational aspects and less on the personal aspects in order to get a match and I feel bad that I ruined my chances with mostly everyone already... Hopefully they can find me someone I'll enjoy spending a year with. We shall see, but now I have to wait even longer, until the end of April, to find a match. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it...
That being said, I do have some TV reviews to get to, so strap on your spoiler helmet and let's get cracking. First up is The Amazing Race! I can't say I was sad to see Luke and his mother go, but they did alright. I felt like it was their time to go and better now than further down the road when it gets even more difficult. I think that for someone who is deaf they had a really great communication system, (only flawed by Luke's inability to keep his cool during certain situations). Overall I feel bad for them, but my new favorite team is still in it! The Globetrotters have made this race so much fun for everyone and they just keep bringing the smiles, so I hope they make it to the finale. I would also love to see them get out of the third-world countries sometime in the near future, so hopefully that happens soon.
Once Upon a Time was also new Sunday night and boy am I lost. Rapunzel, although an important fairytale character, just felt kind of shoved in there and the whole thing with Zelena is getting weirder. I was talking with someone last week about how Rumple is back and that must mean someone has his dagger, but I wasn't entirely sure. Now it turns out that Zelena has it, but how did she get it? Why is he spinning gold for her? Where the hell did he go at the end of the episode? Why does Zelena need David's courage sword thingy? Where are all the flying monkeys being held? What does Zelena want with Snow's baby? WHAT'S GOING ON?!? I'm just really confused now and this episode wasn't one of my favorites, but I'm sure the next one will answer at least one of my questions. The whole scene with Regina and Henry was adorable, so I hope he gets his memories back before the end of the season, although I think they might need Rumple for that. Who knows? God knows I don't anymore. This is really an interesting development.
Finally, we're down to I think ONE episode left of How I Met Your Mother and I'M DYING. We FINALLY get to see Barney and Robin's wedding and for a second I really though she would run away with Ted, but now Ted is a wise one and he talked her out of it. Did anyone else think Robin looked stunning in her dress?! Marshmallow and Lily pad made me cry a little, thinking about my own husband and how much like them we really are. I'm sad we won't get to see little Daisy grow up like Marvin, but I'm glad things are getting settled. I love how "the mother" has helped everyone in the group, (except Ted, obviously), find some balance in their own lives. Hopefully I can keep it together next week for the finale... All of this closure has to be bad for you, doesn't it?
One last thing: there is a new trailer for X-Men: Days of Future's Past out now, so if you haven't seen it yet, the video is below. Enjoy! I know I did!
That's it for today. Along with my internship anxiety I also have about half a book to read, a four-page reflection to write and a couple revisions to spit out before the end of the week, so I'll be pretty busy by Thursday. I'll be happy to start my new job soon and get back into the swing of things. I'm not sure if I have a break in April, but I'm kind of hoping I do at this point. After the semester I've had already, I can safely say I'll need a vacation ASAP. If you have thoughts about this weeks TV recap, let me know in the comments below. I'm nearing the end of my March photo challenge with the North East Blogger's Network, so if you're not following me on Instagram yet, now is the time. Also, if you ever want to see me live-tweet The Amazing Race, I do every Sunday, so you can follow me there too. All my links are up at the top! Until next time, I remain your faithful correspondent.
Here we are, on a Friday. I apologize for the lateness of my post, but I was busy all day with reading, then a much-needed family night. Trust me, it was entirely worth it.
Speaking of family, I have some great news! My sister-in-law is being induced tomorrow and will have my highly anticipated nephew this weekend! I am so happy for her and I'm very excited to become an aunt. My only hope is that when I have my first child I am as lucky as she is to have all the love and support that her family has given her. They've had a pretty rough time the last few months and her family dropped everything and made room for them and the baby, gave them a place to stay and a new job to help support them. My in-laws are the most selfless, honorable people I've ever met in my entire life. They surprise me every day with their unwavering kindness. I suppose that's sad for me to think that that kind of love is unnatural or special when it should always be that way. Regardless, I have no doubt that that child will be brought up in the best of circumstances.
On a less emotional note, I have started classes this week, as you all know, and have been engrossed in reading and other preparations for future projects and case studies. I will be posting on a new page later today directly connected to my Special Topics course about our readings pertaining to participatory culture. I have also been making preparations to start an observation case study on a student at the school I substitute at. I already have consent from three different parties, so as soon as I get her class schedule we can start! I'm super excited to start looking at her writing and see what connections and inferences I can make.
http://wiobyrne.com/walkmyworld/
In addition to the blog posts and readings for my Special Topics course, we are trying to participate in the "Walk My World" challenge, which is a research study created by William Ian O'Byrne, (you can follow him on Twitter here). The purpose of this project is to explore the use of digital texts to see how people connect and communicate with each other. For ten weeks, I will be posting a picture or video snippet of my life accompanied with the hash-tag #walkmyworld in order to provide a glimpse into what my "world" is like. There are no guidelines or requirements to the posts, but it has to be about your life. I take that to mean I can continue to post random pictures from various moments of my life, but more diligently. That is to say I haven't been keeping up with my Instagram as of late, so I will be posting at least once a week for the next ten weeks or so, starting next week. Should be fun, and I'm excited to be participating in someone else's research! If you'd like to participate or learn more about Will or the "Walk My World" challenge, you can visit his website here.
**SPOILER ALERTS GALORE**
On a completely different note, I did get to watch the latest Bachelor, Bones, Castle and How I Met Your Mother episodes from this past Monday. So far my current Top 3 ladies for The Bachelor are Renee, Andi and Nikki, but we'll see how long that lasts. I'm just glad that Lucy Lewd went home, finally. I really like these girls because they seem really down to earth, they're not too young or immature and they seem to really have his best interests at heart. Again, not sure how it'll turn out, (my father insists that he never picked anyone at the end), but I feel god about this Top 3.
Bones made me cry AGAIN this week. I'm not sure what it is with all these TV shows tearing at my heart strings, but apparently they're in a phase. Wendell was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal bone cancer, so he now has a 10% chance of living through chemo and other treatments. I died a little, not only because he's been on the show for so long and has been an undeniable asset to the team, but because Brennan SHOWED EMOTION. If you've watched the show for as long as I have, you'll understand that when Brennan shows emotion, it's a big deal. Her being sad at his diagnosis, which SHE discovered, shows that it's definitely a hard pill to swallow. I wish him all the best in this season, but I'm definitely expecting him to die in the finale...fingers crossed I'm wrong.
Castle was your typical Castle plot again. After the tumultuous burning building episode we kind of needed a break from the drama. I was happy to see Alexis (hopefully) break it off with Pi, seeing as he brought nothing more to the story and was basically dead weight in her life. We'll see if she caved next week, but I'm guessing they're officially over. It's sad that that was the highlight of that episode for me.
How I Met Your Mother is getting more and more daring with their story line as we saw Lily and Marshall finally had the fight they needed to have, but it ended in disaster. Lily ended up leaving in a random vehicle after calling an unknown person for a ride out of the inn. She didn't say where she was going either, so we could be following her anywhere next week, but I'm most curious to see who it was that she called. Marshall will most likely be heartbroken so close to the wedding, but we all know from previous episodes that Lily makes it back in time for the ceremony with everyone else, so we'll see what happens. We haven't seen the mother in a few episodes either, not since she helped Marshall, so I'm eager to see her during the wedding reception.
That's all for this week. I'm expecting to post pictures of Tanner when he arrives, so look out for those on Tuesday, but for now I'm going to try and enjoy my weekend. Here's to more reading and two blog posts today instead of one! Until next time, I remain your faithful correspondent.
Hey all! Welcome back:) It was a nice weekend for me, despite working, (and then realizing I have almost the entire week off...lame). Still no baby boy from my sister-in-law, but we will definitely see him by the end of next week if it doesn't happen soon. Can't wait to be an auntie!! Other than that, nothing really exciting has happened yet, so unfortunately it's another Tuesday rendition of Boring Blog, which, apparently, a lot of you actually like, so maybe I'll keep this going.
Also, this is currently happening in the classroom I'm in today...not sure why someone would keep something so obviously creepy in a Social Studies classroom, but who am I to judge?...
First things first: I start my final semester of courses today! First class on deck is "Special Topics in English Teaching" with the wonderful Alecia Magnifico. I am most looking forward to my classes this semester, especially this one. The class I have tomorrow is "Teaching Writing in the 21st Century," which sounded very interesting to me. I'm looking forward to broadening my horizons as an educator and learning more new and captivating ideas this year to prepare me for my internship this fall.
Second thing: Pokemon update. I have now obtained all eight gym badges and have made it to the chambers of the Elite Four, (FINALLY). It literally took me about four hours to get through just that section, battling all of the trainers on the long and winding road up to the Pokemon League. After reviving at least three of my top Pokemon about six times, I made it to the Pokemon Center before the main building, (thank God for that, because I don't think I'd make it very far without one. I thought it was a little ridiculous to have THAT many trainers on the road just to enter the area where the Elite Four are. Then each of them have four Pokemon each level 63 and higher, plus the Champion who has a whopping SIX Pokemon level 65 and higher, so I'm in for a rough night if I try to take them on. The gym leaders were too easy and Victory Road seemed a bit too difficult for the amount of preparation I was given, so we'll see how that goes. I might try to level up a bit more before attempting to take them all out, (I'm currently at about 75 with my top two Pokemon and around the mid-sixties with the rest of my party). I am most proud of the legendary Pokemon, Yveltal, who I was able to catch on my first try, which almost never happens. Props to me!
In general, I'm a huge fan of water and fire types, however I can see now where it would benefit from having a grass or psychic type in combination with these types. This is the type of strategy and planning I was looking for when researching this game as a type of literacy. There are different kinds of people who play: people who play to get through the game, people who play to catch all the Pokemon they can get their hands on, people who want to get higher level Pokemon as fast as they can, people who want to find all the hidden items, artifacts and other gems around the game, etc. Game play ultimately depends on what type of person you are, and it's interesting to see me categorized among them. I haven't played like this in a very long time, so I'm still getting used to immersing myself completely in the game, (much to my husband's dismay). Since I've played older versions before, I went into this thinking differently than someone who would just be starting out fresh without ever having played the older versions. There are also people who have played every single version up until this point, and they are used to playing a different game than I am, having experienced some of the newer versions that I have not. I'm interested in continuing to log my progress and even write in a journal to gather data so I can maybe turn this into something beneficial. We shall see, but I'm enjoying myself nonetheless.
So that's basically it. Nothing exciting or substantial happening with me this week. Starting my courses, baby maybe and possibly taking on the Elite Four before I get dragged into the homework routine again. I will be catching up with all my shows today and tomorrow, so there might possibly be another TV review on Thursday if I have nothing else to talk about. Also I've added two more tabs to the top of the blog: "Open Letters" and "ENGL 889." The first tab will be dedicated to various individuals/situations I find particularly interesting/amusing/annoying/etc. while the second will be dedicated to responses for my new Special Topics course in English Teaching, which will be linked to my class' blog page. Feel free to check both tabs out and I will keep you updated on posts via Twitter, etc. Until next time, I remain your faithful correspondent.
I hope everyone had a fabulous post-holiday weekend! It definitely feels like January now... These frigid temperatures are set to stay with us up here in the north east for awhile, so I'm trying not to skimp on heat. That being said, I have spent a great deal of time indoors as of late and I am not ashamed of it.
Whilst inside, I have been paying close attention to the drama that has risen out of YouTube lately dealing with Grace Helbig. For those of you who don't know, Grace is a YouTube personality and classy individual who, until recently, uploaded video blogs to her main channel "DailyGrace" on the MyDamnChannel network. Since her contract with them seems to have expired, Grace has chosen to start over on her own channel, thus preserving her content, (since MyDamnChannel wouldn't let her keep her old content on the "DailyGrace" channel siting copyright issues). It seems as though Grace and MyDamnChannel had a falling out of sorts, however everyone seems to be happy now and Grace has her new channel from which to control her own content.
This is all well and good, but when you move channels and go from over two million subscribers to less than 500,000, it takes a bit of wind out of your sails. Grace has not asked any of her original subscribers to switch, however the Internet has taken it upon itself to educate the masses and let them know what's going on. Grace's many friends through YouTube, including author John Green, Mamrie and Hannah Hart, her brother Tim, and many more came together to draw awareness to this change. The amount of YouTuber support throughout this ordeal has proven to be very beneficial for Grace and extremely uplifting. I've never seen this type of support before from an online community and it was great to get to watch all these people support Grace in her endeavors. She still has a long way to go, but if she stays true to herself she should be just fine, if not better than before.
As you may know, I've been following the YouTube community closely since the beginning of last year, (it feels weird to say that...). I have 52 subscriptions and watch a few vloggers religiously every day, including Grace. Seeing as my viewership has varied over the course of a year, I plan on experimenting and exploring with new channels and people this year, including Grace's new channel, in order to track her progress. It's been an exciting year for YouTube and I can't wait for what this year brings, including the YouTube documentary Vlogumentary, which is set to come out this year. If you want to know what's happening in the YouTube or online community as a whole, check out Tubefilter, "the curator of online video," including news, reviews and more.
In other news, because of the new year, my husband and I have decided to implement some new rules and goals for our lives this year. One of them being the "no spend" rule for January. This idea came from my wonderful mother-in-law, who practices this rule as well. All you have to do is not spend any money you don't need to spend. Obviously bills and groceries are necessary, but going out to eat, going to the movies, shopping for clothes, etc. are off limits until February. That way we have money to save for more important things. It also teaches us to appreciate the things we have and enjoy ourselves from home, which I have no problem with.
That's it for today. I'm in the middle of a Star Wars marathon with a cup of coffee and I plan on continuing throughout the day. I've also started reading Divergent, so if you have any questions for me about the book, or anything about reading in general, I will be answering them on Thursday through my Twitter account with the hash-tag "#LaxDivergent" Tweet me your questions, comments and predictions! (if you are reading it with me for the first time) Until next time, I remain your faithful correspondent.
PS: For your viewing pleasure:
Jimmy Fallon Late Night with Justin Timberlake: "History of Rap"
