Last Sup with Sarah in Calgary!

Last night Janelle, Ashley, Sarah & I went to Joey Tomatoes for some excellent eats. We're getting ready to send Sarah off, back to Nova Scotia. Her new job starts next week so she will be flying out on Friday.

After that Nick and I helped Ashley to finish moving into her new place. It's really nice! Got home in time to get to bed and be up at the crack to get to school on time. I actually arrived rather early, got to meet a few new faces before the day got underway.

Things seem fine at school, still need a few instruments moved into my room and a few things moved out. This will all get done in time I suppose. The afternoons for the next two days are pretty open to whatever we want to do with them. Seeing as I have no grade planning team, I am on my own. Perhaps tomorrow I'll finish my cleaning and organizing and move on to something more exciting! I think a Dollar Store run is required before this evening is through. Until next time,

xoxo

Jess

Weekend...

First weekend back was all good. Friday I went and visited with JoAnne, Julie, Jenn & their significants :) The ladies were celebrating Jenn's probationary contract! WOO-HOO GO JENN!!

Saturday I gave Ashley a hand moving some boxes into her new place followed by bruch... delicious food, interesting situation ;) We ended up having a girls night in with some munchies and a bit 'o wine. The boys went to watch UFC and then eventually joined us. A bottle + of wine and a few shooters later we were ready for bed.

Sunday required breakfast of a greasy nature ;) so off to Humptys for a pan scrambler it was. Took it easy the rest of the day... did some cleaning and such waiting for Janelle & Troy to get back. They had a bit of an issue with their flights and didn't end up actually arriving until past my bedtime! I guess I will see them when they get home from work today.

Speaking of today, I went to my new school and started gutting out my stage/classroom. It was in decent shape but I tossed a LOT of junk and moved a TON of stuff around to get organized. Oddly enough, I realize after putting 5 hours in... there isn't ONE instrument in the room yet :S I guess that will be tomorrow's mission.

Well, I'm off for now!

xoxo
Jess

Back To Cowtown

So I made it back to Cowtown. Spent the WHOLE summer in the Cape. Did lots of fun and exciting things along with a whole lot of absolutely nothing. It was awesome.

I arrived back late Wednesday night. Flight hit some turbulence and ended up being about 20 mins late. Then the luggage carousel got jammed and that kept us late too. Finally made it back pretty much to crash. Fantastic!

The weather has cooled off quite a bit here as well. I think we hit 18 yesterday and are sitting around 20 today, but there's a twinge of fall in the air. I took a run to Staples today and that is about where my excitement ends. I had hoped to get into my school to drop off some stuff and do some organizing but completely forgot the caretakers have Friday off. That will have to wait 'til Monday now. So for the rest of the afternoon I plan on organizing some more things here and perhaps pack up a few more things. We move to our new place on the 1st -- have I mentioned I'm excited? :)

That's it for now... I have full intentions to make regular posts and plan to stick to it. :) I guess time shall tell!

XOXO
Jess

April News

After Lethbridge my break was pretty quiet. Clint arrived back in Calgary on Friday, the 6th, with the cru of boys from Spruce Grove in tow behind him. Janelle, Troy, Clint and I had a lovely turkey dinner on Easter and have been taking it easy since.

Some interesting / exciting news to share is the arrival of our new pet.
On Monday as I was checking the front of the house for mail I noticed something hanging out on our lawn. Low and behold it was a Canada Goose! We tossed him a piece of bread and well... a week later, he's still here.
He has been hanging around, patroling the grounds. He disappears at night but is always back honking good and early in the morning. Yesterday he got close enough and took bread right out of Joey's hands! Pretty crazy!

So I'll keep my eye on, as the boys have named him, Dickie. Here's a few shots for now.

Jessica

Random Roadtrip

So Jenn, Julie, & I decided that even to so "somewhere" was better than not going "anywhere" for spring break. That in mind, we packed up on Monday and drove to Lethbridge for a night away. The roads were pretty messy on our way there as we had just received about 10cms over night but we still went ahead. We arrived in Lethbridge, checked into the Ramada and set off to find something to do. Something to do ended up being crawling their local mall. I must admit though the atmosphere was nice, it was not busy, and it was very clean. A small change of pace from the Chinook Ctr in Calgary. We retired to the hotel room, lounged around a bit, then decided to take a trip to the Wave Pool. It was actually quite fun. There were tubes and two waterslides and waves galore! We stuck around for a bit but the water wasn't all that warm and the hot tub was consumed with teenage boys -- about 20 of them -- so we decided to call it a night. We had supper and a drink at the local BP's and then vegged out infront of the TV. Our drive home today was much nicer weather.

Short but sweet, good times had by all!

Jessica

Time just keeps passing us by...

Well, it's March 30th. I have finished another two sets of report cards. THE WORST REPORTING PERIOD EVER!! This stupid online report card program decided that it didn't want to work anymore. Everyone in the whole board had issues of some type or another. Some of my students marks did not print out on their cards. When I go back online to check it out, they were all there. SOOO FRUSTRATING. Some poor teachers had students comments end up on other kids report cards. I am so glad that I got through them and don't have to look back again! I survived another two sets of parent teacher as well. Last week after an hour or more of puttering around because I have no appointments I had one mom actually say to me, " We're allowed to talk to you!?" Awesome eh? I spent last night at my other school with no visits from any parents, and then again today same story. So come 10:45 am the principal told me to scram. Now I am officially on SPRING BREAK!!! It took forever to get here and man I hope it doesn't pass by quick. I have no real plans. Clint was supposed to get home sometime next week but I'm not sure how that will fair out with his work and all. We shall just have to wait and see.

So what other things have happened that I have not mentioned...

Oh, well we had a birthday party for Troy early in March. It was good times and messiness all around. Had some people over for St. Patrick's Day as well. Janelle and Sarah were both on crutches from separate sports injuries. Janelle to Volleyball and Sarah to Skiing. Both are well on the road to recovery and doing well.

Wednesday past we went to see Sarah's wedding gown. It is BEAUTIFUL!! The dress is everything she ever imagined it would be and she looks awesome. The wedding is only about 4 months away now. Exciting times!

Speaking of weddings... Tara & Buck's is only 3 months away! The bridesmaid gowns have been ordered but I'm not sure when they expect them to arrive. It looks like I will arrive in NS a couple days before the big day to see my gown for the first time. In the mean time I'll be hoping and praying that it fits well LOL fingers crossed for me.

The only other news to report is that my "temp" position teaching music (Thursdays and Fridays) will be ending right after spring break... however; I have a contract that says I'm employed until the end of the year so it just might look like I'll be working day to day subbing maintaining my "salary" pay. This could get interesting. I guess I have some mixed feelings about it. It was only this morning that I was told it was a "mistake" that I had received a full time contract and that the lady would be returning so soon. I kinda feel sorry for the kids. None of them see this coming at all and I'm sure some will not be too happy about it either. I'll only see them for two more classes after the break and then I'm gone :( I'ts kind of silly to me that the board made a mistake and they will interrupt classes with like 2 months left. A similar situation happened with a staff memeber at my other school and they made the decision to leave the current teacher in the position and have the returning maternity leave teacher do additional "resource" work. Now that makes sense. ANYHOO~!

I am not sure what I want to do with my break at all now. I hope something exciting happens. I'm thinking now that I might run up to my school and watch the kids & parents "Shave their lids for kids". A fundraiser in support of children's cancer. Other than that, I'm pretty dull.

As promised before, I WILL try to keep up on this more often.

Cheers!

January News

Well January is here and gone and I can't believe how quickly it went! I got back into the groove of teaching and had my evaluations completed. Things went pretty good as far as I can tell so that's a relief.
I figured being Januray that I should call and check my current balances on my loans and well, let me tell you, Interest is going to be the Death of me! I realized after a few quick calls that I'm paying out about $9 (give or take) every DAY!! With that, I realized I should probably do something about it. So... I took a walk over the hill to Boston Pizza and was hired to start the next evening. I work taking the deilvery orders. Answering the phone, packing up the food, and basically re-stocking shelves when they're low. Nothing serious, pretty much a no-brainer. They had neglected to see that I'm a FULL TIME TEACHER, and have thus scheduled me to work both Friday and Saturday nights for the past two weekends. This isn't flying well with me, but, being an additional job, I really don't need to stay. I will have to talk to the manager regarding this, becasue my school job comes first, then my life. So.. that is that!

Other than that, I haven't been up to too much. Janelle, Jan and I started playing volleyball on Thursday nights through the YMCA. It's really fun. We're pretty much the youngest people there by years and years, but it's all good! Some excercise and fun to get out once a week.

I guess that's the updates for now, I hope that February is more interesting!

Bye for now,

Jessica

Princess is Back

So I finally got my car back! The princess is looking good and I'm so glad to have her back. She had been in the shop having a deer pulled out of the side of her. Back in November I was heading down to visit Clint at work and a deer bolted out of a cow pasture and slammed into the side of me. Fantastic I know. But she has been repaired and is now back in my custody :)

We were out this morning with Julie on the hunt for the Wedding Dress and there was Success!! She found a beautiful gown and is going to look just fabulous when she gets married this summer! This is going to be a busy summer for weddings indeed! It looks like I will be back in Nova Scotia for most of the summer. I'll do my best to get to them all but we will just have to see.

That's about it for now. It's snowing again so I'm off to make a cup of tea!

Jessica

Back to School

Well I didn't think I was ready to go, but the time has come to go back to school. Teaching that is. After enjoying such a relaxing break it took a lot of energy to get me interested in the thought of heading back to the music room. Monday, January 8th came, and after getting back into the building I realized that maybe I was going to be okay.
The other part about going back this time is that I have to have my evaluations completed by the end of the month. So, the principal needs to come and supervise me teaching three times in the next month. I hope it's quick and painless.
In other news, I've gotten into this Facebook website business. It's actually quite addictive as I had been told. I have gotten in touch with a number of people whom I haven't seen in ages including two girls who left my elementary school in grade 6 and moved back to their homes in North Carolina and Japan! It's rather crazy!
Over the weekend we got together at Sarah & Mark's place and played some board games with some drinks. It was good times!
I guess that's about all that's new and exciting for me right now. Peace out!

Jessica

2007

Well it's a new year and I thought I would try something new, so here I am.

Starting 2007 in Calgary has been good so far. We had some visitors for New Year's Eve and we ended up with a group of 10 -- 9 Capers of course. We hit up 17th ave for some drinks and dancing and all eventually crawled back home.

I made a trip to Edmonton to visit my brother and his fiance and her family. It was short but great to see them.

What else... Well I'm getting ready to go back to school which is fine, but I'm really enjoying my break. Not looking forward to having to get up early and such, but thats life. I guess I'll try to keep this updated so you all can know what I'm up to. Take care for now,

Jessica