100 Things About Me

1. I don’t know if I can come up with 100 things!
2. I like orange juice
3. It IS possible to overdose on chocolate
4. That happens to me around Halloween every year!
5. But boy it takes a lot for that to happen
6. I’m a very optimistic person (most of the time!)
7. Sometimes I drive my friends crazy trying to see the good in things
8. Sometimes I do dumb things
9. Often I do dumb things
10. I guess that depends on who you ask!
11. I like to be silly
12. I do a mean monkey noise
13. I have pulled out all the nails on the Capilano Suspension Bridge
14. I love kayaking
15. I majored in French at UBC
16. I have lived up north in town of less than 5000 that is 2 hours from any other town
17. I have skied in minus 35 degree weather
18. I have had to keep my face moving so my balaclava/ice shield didn’t freeze to my cheeks
19. I have had a student unhappy with his quiz mark so he ATE his quiz
20. Oh yeah, I am a teacher!
21. I did Elementary Education at UBC
22. I specialized in teaching French as a second language/French Immersion
23. I now teach music grade 5 grade 1/2
24. I lose my voice constantly!
25. I teach taught music K-7 in French and in English for three years
26. I am SOO grateful for my job (hmm… most days!)
27. God dropped my job in my lap two weeks into my first year of teaching!
28. This is my second third fourth fifth year of teaching
29. I played the clarinet from grade 5 to first year uni
30. I played the alto sax in jazz band at high school
31. I was in a marching band for about 6 years
32. I have had a dog named Lucy :(
33. She lived at my parent’s place, but she was still “my” dog!
34. I have a brother and a sister
35. I have six toes on my left foot
36. Just kidding (is that cheating?)
37. I like country music
38. I like most other music, too!
39. I once slept through a car accident when I was a baby
40. I once ate a slug
41. That was a loooooong time ago, ok?!!?
42. I have been a Christian since before I remember
43. My faith became my own at summer camp when I was 14
44. I love summer camp!!!
45. I’ve gone every summer until 2002 (as both camper and staff) since I was 8, except for 2000.
46. I’m 26 27 28
47. I share my birthday with a day dedicated to rodents! *sigh*
48. I love the movie Amelie
49. “Sometimes I’m clueless and I’m clumsy”
50. “But I’ve got friends who love me”
51. I’m running out of ideas
52. I like to wear silly socks
53. I have socks with monkey, duck, and frog pom poms on them
54. I am inspired by nature
55. I think that sounds cheesy
56. Creation puts me in awe of God
57. I love the ocean
58. Being land locked is not a good situation for me!
59. I have to drive to the beach from where I live now, it drives me crazy
60. It’s not a long trip
61. (ha ha… the trip to the beach OR the trip to crazy!)
62. I LOVE my church
63. I went there as a kid
64. We changed churches when I was in grade 4, now I’ve been back for about 4 5 6 years
65. My PARENTS went there as kids
66. I’m excited to see what God has planned for me!
67. I hope I’m awake/obedient enough to know and do it
68. I need to learn to slow down
69. When I was in grade 6 I protested the Gulf War
70. I forgot to tell my parents I wasn’t going to be home after school
71. My dad found me leading a chant: “What the hell do we want? (peace!) When the hell do we want it (now!)”
72. He didn’t get mad, just talked to me about inappropriate language
73. That was the last of my “activism” attempts!
74. I tend to do things that get me teased/harassed/bugged by my parents and/or friends
75. It’s OK, though, I can definitely laugh at myself! (Most of the time it IS pretty funny!)
76. I like to tell stories
77. I love taking pictures
78. I want to take a photography course
79. On a two week road trip around the Maritimes, my dad and I took 14 rolls of film!
80. Thankfully I now have a digital camera!
81. I am very grateful for my family
82. My parents are awesome
83. It’s pretty clear pretty quick that I’m a pretty wacky person
84. I like to have fun
85. When friends who have known me a while meet my dad, they always go, “AHHH! Now I understand!”
86. Seriously! That happens all the time!
87. I once put a cat in the fridge (again, a loooong time ago!)
88. I thought it wanted to be alone
89. I don’t know if I’m going to be a teacher forever
90. I could eat a big container of yogurt in one sitting
91. Me and some co-workers once measured our mouths (yes, we were very bored at work one day!)
92. My mouth was 40% bigger than anyone else’s (3.5 inces compared to 2.5!)
93. My friends all laughed their heads off saying that now they had scientific proof for what they had been telling me all along!
94. So I like to talk! So what?!?!
95. I think I’d like to try skydiving one day and learn to scuba dive. Not at the same time.
96. I once repelled down a cliff in order to pull weeds
97. “I love this crazy tragic, sometimes almost magic, awful beautiful life!”
98. My favourite colours are blue and green (they reflect the outdoors!)
99. My goal: To know God, to glorify Him, and to share Him with others
100. With regards to my goal… boy, am I ever grateful for GRACE

Which Homestar Character are you?

Not sure I'm too thrilled with this... uh, I mean "Bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble"
(At least I'm not the poopsmith!)

Which HomestarRunner.com Character Are You?

PS. Check out the sidebar, I've added some new pointless (but fun!) games :P

Yikes...

OK, is my life so boring right now that I really have an entire post about FUNRITURE? What can I say, it's the simple things that make me happy, apparently! :D

It's Hammer Time

Well, I set out tonight to set up my new entertinment unit. The TV I got for my birthday needed an appropriate home, and so did all the stuff in random corners and piles in my living room! So like a grown-up, off I went ot buy my first piece of new furniture... and like a grown up in the new millenium, I bought it online. It's a very nice addtion to my living room, I must say.

Even better is the fact that I put it all together with no problems at all - even with all those pre-drilled holes and strange hardware peices that look like they're leftovers from when ET's spaceship crashed and weird picture directions and everything. There are a whole lot of parts left over, though... I'm just gonna assume they gave me extra! ;)

Here's the progression of my TV situation, from "Redneck setup" to "What the heck am I going to put this giant thing on" to "Yay! A real live grown-up living room!"

......

......

"Leapfrog," eat your heart out!

Ok, I must say, I miss my speak and spell! I loved that thing! Even after the raised buttons kinda broke and I had to push the button really hard and kinda wiggle my finger around for it to register. I distinctly remember learning how to spell "neighbour" on my speak and spell. How weird is that?

I ask you, where are the quality toys like that these days?

What was your favourite toy of the Eighties?

Escaping with my pride (mostly) intact

Ah, it's a good thing I've had lots of practice embarrassing myself, or yesterday would have been a whole lot worse. :p

"Busted" would be a good word for it.

I was out at Regent College yesterday for a meeting, and then decided to stay and do some marking (too many distractions at home!). I was pretty much falling asleep over my books, so I decided to take a walk around UBC to clear my mind and help me wake up a bit. As I was walking, my friend Dave caught up with me. He was heading over to one of the libraries across campus so I went with him. While at the library, he found his book and I checked my email. I decided to check one of the accounts I don't check very often (nobody emails me there anymore) and was surprised to see one new message waiting for me in my inbox. Well, guess who it was from?

Internet boy.

Subject: Hello Hillary Lynn/Walking Cartoon

*GULP*

I was busted. bus-TED. He had found me out!!! Not that I was trying to keep myself hidden, play games, etc. It was just one of those things that was maybe kinda sorta odd at first, but when mixed with a lot of time, got to seem a whole lot worse. (Don't know what I'm talking about? Read the story here and then the follow-up here) Anyway, he didn't seem mad or anything, and had apparently suspected me for a while. I think he was kinda weirded out a bit, but at least my "confession" on the blog was honest. Anyway, what eventually made him put the pieces together was that he decided to check out my website again, to see if I had updated it at all. Well, he saw the link to my blog, started reading, and it was only a matter of time...

I was pretty much mortified. I knew I had to either email him back or call him, and I thought calling would be better, cause there's tone of voice and some interaction that can happen, too. So it took a few goes, but I finally bit the bullet and dialed the whole number. We chatted, I explained myself and apologized, and while awkward, it was good. He was very gracious about it, laughing about it. He said he understands, believes me when I say it had nothing to do with him, and doesn't think I'm a freakaziod! :D We ended up chatting for quite a while, catching up, etc, and I think it's all good. He invited me to stick around the site, too. I don't know if I will or not. I guess we'll see.

Whew, I'm glad that's all over with! Even though it makes fro a pretty hilarious story (boy I'm glad I don't take myself too seriously!), there'll be no more secret identities for me!

Grade 4 Vocabulary Activity

There ARE times when marking kid's work is fun...

Students had a list of words. They had to find the context the words were used in in the novel, look up the definition, and then use the word in a sentence. Here are some gems:

gully:
- My gully is over filling.

derringer:
- All of the cops has a derringer to shoot and kill people. [Parent has crossed off "to shoot and kill people" and has written "protect." Funny they didn't catch the verb, though!]

legal:
- It's all legal to Sue a girl.
- I heard weed is not legal. (grade 4!!!)

ricochet: the dictionary said "the skipping or jumping motion of an objects as it goes accross a hard surface." No wonder some kids got confused...

- Ricocheting is the thing I do best.
- The cat ricochets accross the room.
- My pee ricocheted off of the toilet and on to the floor.
(Well, at lease he gets the meaning of the word!)

I love this city!

It's been beautiful all week! I was driving to work this morning and noticing the blue sky, the new snow on the mountains, the rising sun reflecting off the buildings downtown... Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Things like that just put me in the best mood! And, to top it all off, I had a great day at work. Kids were receptive, lessons worked, fun was had by all.

I've been doing some wandering around lately around Kitsilano and near Canada Place the last few weekends and have been taknig some pictures of this beautiful city. Sometimes I can't beleive I live here! There's really no place like home.

Enjoying a lazy Saturday at Kits Beach

View of English Bay and the West End

Andrew is also my hero

He got me all hooked up with some more fun HTML tricks. But this is probably of no interest to you. I just figured I'd give Andrew credit, too!

(By the way... Andrew, I don't have any pictures of you... if you want a better one than this, you gotta send me one! :))

Brad is my hero!

Yay for Brad for helping me (yet again) with my various website woes! I now know how to put pictures on my blog (scroll down to see some)!

Hip hip hooray for Brad! (Roll your mouse over the picture)

Well now, THAT'S a first!

Man, you just never know!

I was at Resonate last night, our church's young adults meeting. I do the announcements and send out the mass emails, so often people know me better than I know them (or at least they know my face and my name!). There are lots of people I have those "in the lobby after church/after Resonate" conversations with - you know the kind: "Hey, how are you, how was your week," stuff like that. Small talk. It's kind of fun, cuase I get to know lots of people that way. Like J. J came up last night after Resonate to say hey, how are ya, that kind of thing. I'd talked to him a few times - maybe 3 or 4? - in the lobby. I don't know him very well at all. Two or three of those times I had to ask him is name cause I kept forgetting! :( Anyway, he then proceeds to tell me that I've been popping into his thoughts a lot lately, and would I mind giving him my number and going out sometime?

Woah!!!

It was all I could do not to fall over from surprise! It's funny, cause he had never even "entered the radar" (arg, what an awful expression!). I thought, ah, why not? So we were talking for a bit with another guy, and then I went to help with the clean-up. J came to help, too, and then asked if I wanted to do somthing that night, like coffee or dessert or something. It wasn't too terribly late, so again I thought, hey, why not? We went out and talked for maybe an hour and a half or so. He even won me a purple stuffie dog from one of those "insert-a-quarter-to-guide-the-claw-to-the-stuffie-you-want-and-hope-it-picks-it-up" thingies. (ha ha, it felt like I was at the PNE or something!) He definitely made no secret of the fact that he's interested and wants to get to know me!

I'm not saying all this to be like, "Ooh, ooh, look at me," it's more like I'm in total shock! :P I don't know what to think or to do about it. It's not like I was interested in him before and he's finally asked me out! He just litterally tapped me on the shoulder and asked for my number! I have no idea how I feel about him. I don't know him! Very surreal. I guess we'll hang out a bit and get to know eachother.

Wacky!

The End

You know you've done too much surfing when you reach the end! (Thanks Zenon)

Yay for God!

The "After Christmas Crunch." We all know it. This month was looking reeeeally tight, thanks to the Christmas mastercard bill. I was doing my budget last week, and was somewhat alarmed that I was going to be short a very large chunk of money. Like a few hundred dollars short. I was thinking that I was going to have to use some of my summer savings money to make ends meet (you have to understand here that that money is sacred. I don't get paid in the summer, so I have that money to through the summer). BUT, today at work, another teacher gave me a receipt I had passed on to her before Christmas. Basically, I had bought something for her class and I hadn't yet been reimbursed for it. So that sparked my memory that I had a few other receipts that needed to be submitted (two from last year, when they didn't have money to cover it, and one from September). Also, I ordered a music resource in December, and when it came, it wasn't what I thought it was, but didn't know if I could return it. So I called today, and yes, I could. And I'm submitting receipts from two professional development workshops I went to that I'll be paid back for. PLUS, I got a cheque in the mail yesterday or the day before from my medical plan reimbursing me for my glasses...

I added all this stuff up today, and GUESS WHAT??? It's about $30 more than the amount that I was going to be short!!!

YAHOO for God providing just what I need at just the right time! He keeps doing that (one day I'll have to post my crazy story about what happened the first September I was out of school)! I really have no need to worry about money. He always provides a way.

YAY GOD!!!

Procrastination and birthday tidbits

Why on earth can I not get anything done? I have stuff to mark, worksheets to prepare, all for tomorrow, and yet here I am! Bah! May as well make the most of my procrastination! Click the bold text to see pictures.

So I had one of those "warm fuzzy" moments on Wednesday (on WEDNESDAY?!?! you ask... "But I thought you hated Wednesdays!" Funny, I know! Normally I do, but this Wednesday was amazing!). After my grade 4's had come in and settled down, a bunch of them were wishing me happy birthday (I don't know how they knew!). They all started singing to me. They were all off key and singing at various different tempos, and it was wonderful! Then two girls have me a card. Cards from kids are the best!

Even my afternoon was great. The kindergartens were (relatively) calm, and the nasty grade 6 class was (relatively) good. I learned how to get one of the ringleaders to smarten up, and boy did it work. So the day on the whole was great!

AND, to top it all off, I got a copy of my "wish list" (about $300 worth of various instruments for the music program) in my box from the PAC, with a note telling me they'll cut me a cheque next week! YAAAAAY! It's like Christmas! Ummm.... or my birthday. Heh heh.

The fun continued at small group with yummy birthday cheesecake...

(Check out the stylin' sockies!)

... and a surprise gift. The chairs from my dining room table set are getting old. That's not an issue, really, except for the fact that twice now at small group someone has been sitting on them, and they've broken! I must be giving my friends complexes! Poor Steve was the lastest victim last week, so he got the idea to go out and get me new chairs. The one he found are incredibly like the ones that are slowly breaking. It's uncanny! Could they have been separated at birth?

Old Chair ^

New Chair ^

A few of us went out to Baru, a great Latino restaurant out near UBC, for drinks afterwards. Very funky.

My Birthday Margarita

Ole!

Spelling police beware!

(taken from somewhere in cyberspace...)

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

Happy Birthday to me!

It's my blog, I'm allowed to be shameless! Happy birthday to me, and Happy Groundhog Day to all of you! :D

Check out my birthday present from my family! (click the bolded text)