Someone suggested I have a themed blog

Actually, I do have one themed blog. I don't entirely agree with that suggestion. Call me lazy if you will. I just wanted to be able to freely journal here and if someone stumbles upon my blog and gets something out of it, so be it. If not, so be it also. I do send the link to this blog to numerous friends and family members from time to time. As the title says, it is for friends, family, and anyone else who is interested in my random posts.

My Bubble Burst

Malaspina got back to me and told me that I would have to reapply and pay the application fee again. (North Island College didn't do that, but they may do it now). That would cost at least $30. Then they told me they could not guarantee that they would accept my Associate of Arts Degree from NIC for credit towards a Bachelor Degree at Malaspina. I am sure the course will cost at least $150 tuition and if I study instead of working I will lose at least $1,200 of earned income for six weeks. The upshot is, it was a wild whimsical thought and not worth going into debt.

My decision at this stage is to watch for workshops and enrol in one of those instead. I might join NIC's Eldercollege after all.

I am on a writing frenzy

My creative juices are running freely at the moment. I am so excited, because I am planning to enrol in a creative writing course online through Malapsina University College. I contacted the "advising" department by e-mail and they sent a reply stating that e-mails take about two business days for a reply. For once, I am inquiring far in advance. In the past, I seemed to get enthused too close to the deadline for enrollment only to be frustrated at not being able to get in. Mind you, at Malaspina they have been accepting applications in November for the following September, so I may still be too late. However, since the course I am looking at is offered online and no subsequent courses are shown online yet, I must be on time.

I eagerly await their reply. Then the challenge will be to see if I can fund this course - it is going to cost a lot, I believe. Maybe too much. I may find myself working my buns off and getting overtired. I don't think I can get funding aid unless I committ to a certain work load. The other option might be a bank line of credit for studies (BMO?). Money has always been a huge issue with me. I have not totally given up hope that I can earn decent money as a writer.

If not, I will just have to keep working as a medical transcriptionist. If I study, I will be happy that's for sure. I will also be more skilled and better equipped to write my book more effectively. I do want to learn more skills. My writing skills are very strong in non-fiction and in narrative, and in essay-length. I think I can pull the book project off that I am working on, without further courses, but the courses can help. I am at least going to check into it.

Wouldn't It Be Nice If....?

Canada had a nice warm spot of it's own. I mean in winter. It's too bad we didn't somehow manage to wangle at least one island in the southern hemisphere to call our own. Of course, the United States has Texas, New Mexico, California, and Florida, not to mention Arizona for people to visit when the weather gets cold.

Too bad we Canadian "snowbirds" can't travel to warmer climes within our own country. And with the U.S. requiring passports for us to enter their country, the already nearly inaccessable destinations (for those of us just getting by from payday to payday) are even more difficult to reach.

Up until now I have managed to travel using Airmiles that I have earned simply by shopping at Safeway (something I choose to do anyway) and Zellers. I rarely get Airmiles from any other source now. I used to gas up at Shell, but I would rather save the 10% at the Safeway pump because I shop Safeway for most things. I get a lot of my Airmiles there from the Pharmacy too.
Even though the BC Govt. Fair Pharmacare Plan kicks in for a lot of my Rx's, I still get the Airmile credits, which is a really good deal come to think of it. (Mind you, I don't think Campbell needs the Airmiles).

Anyway, I don't know what happened that we didn't manage to get an island of our own south of the equator. Too little money to spend to purchase one? (Not all land was obtained through wars, I understand the US purchased both Alaska and Hawaii. )

It sure would have been nice......

Teachers have it pretty good

Yes, I know. My title has poor grammar, but just this once, I will break my own rules. I have been pondering careers (and I have to admit, am still bugging my sons about postsecondary education).

Teachers gripe a lot and go on strike and few of us have sympathy for them. I have a friend (a teacher) who told me that the supply of paper and basic things like that is short and it leads to fighting among teaching staff. I have to agree that basic supplies should be adequate and teachers, on a matter of principle, really should not have to buy them from their own pay cheques.

However, overall, they are well-paid in my view. One friend who is a retired teacher used to complain to me that she grossed $50,000 /year and only took home $30,000. Well I have news for her, I will most likely never gross $30,000 in my career of medical transcriptionist. If I sell my book (gotta write it first, of course) I might top $30,000, so I am open to a miracle.

Also, teachers, as we all know, get long holidays over the summer months, when they can, if they wish, pursue an alternate way of earning a living, or just take a holiday and/or a trip. They can afford Hawaii or even England on their salary. Trips like that are only pipe dreams for me (Airmiles to the rescue for me). They also get long Christmas and Spring breaks.

Yes, I know, they take homework home with them, but so do many other people who earn less money - managers of various sorts. Many managers have to work at least half a day on Saturday too.

Several of my teacher friends are retired at 55 with tidy pensions and money for a comfortable lifestyle. The thing that really got to me about this is that I just recently learned that my cohorts (high school friends) only had one more year of university than I did! They earned their Bachelor of Education Degrees here in British Columbia one course at a time over many years. I had no idea about this for many years. Perhaps if I had known this, I would have gone back to SFU for one additional year prior to getting married. The only strings attached were that the teachers had to be willing to teach in rural BC (I was living in Sointula so I could have qualified for that). Oh well, they say "What you don't know won't hurt you." Well at least consciously it didn't hurt me, but I have been hurt financially.

To be truthful, I would not trade many parts of my life - it certainly held an amazing amount of variety, despite the fact I lived in an isolated miniscule town (Sointula) for 20 years. I did travel during those years - to Oklahoma all by myself (to attend ORU for a weekend), California, Calgary, and many, many times to the lower mainland of BC to visit my mother and family members.

That's my blurb for today. Nite all.

Photos from Christmas

Long overdue to post

Where have I been lately? (Not sure anyone notices my absence here). I have yet to figure out how to attract traffic to my Blog and, am too busy to do much about it. I have been incredibly busy, but it's all very positive. Though I am doing a lot for my family lately, I do not feel at all put upon. They are all helpful to me and we get along very well.

I have been babysitting my six and four-year-old grandchildren regularly lately. Yesterday, I tied a skipping rope to a fence post and helped Alysha jump rope. She got up to 12 by counting jumps and when she recited the alphabet she jumped up to the letter "L." I counted on my fingers up to the letter "L" and it was 12 jumps!

I was hoping to help Alsyha with her printing and reading, but we ended up outdoors, which really was a good thing after all the times being "cooped up" inside the house. Usually I only get to see them at dinnertime, and the short time before bedtime, but this time I stayed the night and babysat all Saturday morning.

I made KD for lunch, which they thought was wonderful. My kids are easy in some ways! I made sure they ate some apple to balance things out. They liked that too. Suprisingly, Alysha wanted to eat a red grapefruit so I halved one and cut all the sections with sharp knife and cut all around the circle of the skin to make removal of the sections easier for her. Then I tipped the sugar bowl on its edge and carefully poured a thin layer of granulated sugar over the surface of the half grapefruit. She decided she wanted the second half as well. That is a good thing, since kids can be picky about food and grapefruit is a healthy food to like.

Ethan wasn't as enthused about that, but he loves yogurt and I try to buy some little yogurts for them as well. (They both like that).

Well, I could go on and on, but it's late and it's going to be a busy week again.