Aurora's Space

Spring has sprung!!

Of course, that’s not official for about a week or so, but it’s definitely here weather-wise! I went out this afternoon to take a quick shot of my garage for my daily photo project and ended up going on a 45 minute jaunt of my backyard. It’s really the only time of year that I’m able to roam 1.5+ acre lot freely before the brush takes over almost the entire back yard except at the top of the hill.

I usually take this opportunity once or twice each spring, making sure that there are no big gaps between the fence and the ground from erosion that my puppies can get through, and also seeing what kinds of interesting things have been unearthed in the spring thaw. One year I found the skeleton of a calf that must have drowned in the river (which was once much higher). Well, I thought it was interesting anyway. And It had been there long enough that it was just bones and nothing ucky.

This year, as usual, I started my trek at the small boat launch we have to the river (at least, that’s what I’ve always thought it to be – the distance between the trees and the rock-lined, gradual slope seem to lend itself to that task anyway). We’ve never used it, as we don’t own a canoe. I’ve often thought of getting one, but frankly, I’m too afraid of the pollution levels of the river in case I happen to go overboard! The usual flooding and thaw and erosion have created a nice, if tiny, beach area along the bank and today I walked along it as far as I could without getting wet.

I found some interesting pottery and glass that had washed up on the shore. One was the top, as well as a few shards, of a little brown jug! I wanted to take it home but until I can think of a use for a broken (albeit kinda cool!) piece of pottery, it will stay on the river bank to become a home for… whatever it is that lives on river banks. In addition to medium-sized, broken glass bottle, there were two perfectly intact (aside from missing their lids) white jars. One can always use jars! Those I cleaned up in a patch of snow and brought back to the house. They appear to be Pond’s Cream jars from 1959. I wish the tops had washed up with them!

I don’t know why I love ‘finding’ things so much, but I love it when I uncover things around the house – unearthed in landscaping or because of erosion, or even found in the basement, forgotten for who knows how long.

I just LOVE finding things like this! Don’t even get me started on the houses that were uncovered during a building project behind mine in Germany… Times like these I wish lived closer to the Bay or the ocean, or knew someone who liked to go, so I could do this on a larger scale!

The beach, the finds, and the ponds jars all cleaned up:

Many of you know that I take the bus to work everyday.  It’s about a two hour trip door to door… each way.  I’ve been doing this now for 5 years.  Longer than that, really, but before then my trip was only about 15 minutes.  It was five years ago – September 2004 – that I went back to college and I’ve been there ever since.

When I first started on the bus, I was super productive!  I don’t know if it was OMG-must-get-work-done-exams-AAAARRRHHH adrenaline, but I think I got more done between the hours of 6-8am and 4-6pm on the bus than I did the whole rest of the day.  Not to mention getting up an hour early in the morning to get work done before I left.  Once, when I had this huge campus-wide student survey to tabulate for Student Association, I even set up a little workstation each time on the bus: laptop, pile of surveys, pen to make notes, enter all the answers, put the survey at the bottom of the pile before starting the next one.  This was all in my lap only taking up one seat.

One day I’m a college graduate – YAY ME! – and still taking the bus at the same time, to the same place… no homework, no classes, no exams to stress me out, just a nice, relaxing job.  Productivity then started going down hill.  Totally weird.  I read a lot when I first started my job – I was always wide awake, reading tons of books on the bus.  Then I got back into writing fan fic and I would often read or write in a note with a pen (typing and posting in the evening when I got home).

Then I only wrote a few times a week, not being able to keep my eyes open the rest of the time.

Then I wrote a few times a month.  I sure as hell didn’t read anything, though that was my own stubbornness – if I’m awake I’m going to do something productive, gosh darnit! and if I can’t be productive, I may as well sleep!

Now… and for the last year or so, that stat of ‘accomplishing something’ is even lower AND I’m not getting anything done in the mornings, getting up just in the knick of time to catch the bus (then promptly dozing off).  I sleep from the time I get on the bus until the time I get to my destination (somehow waking up just in time for my stop – only three times in 5 years have I missed or almost my stop).  Obviously nothing gets done, other than sleep.  It’s kinda pissing me off, actually. Sometimes (like today) I’ll stare out the window, conscious enough to have my eyes open and THINK about writing, but not actually conscious enough to get out the notebook and start scribbling away.  The last couple of weeks, I have been able to stave off sleep just long enough to actually (for the first time ever) keep up with some blogs thanks to a Google Reader app for my iPhone… but that only takes about 15 minutes.

What’s changed in those three years?  (Other than getting three years older of course)  Bed time is pushed back only about half an hour.  Meals and all that jazz is about the same.  I’m still just about as busy, but it’s fun stuff and not school work/brain work.  I don’t hike as often.  That’s about the only major change.  Could going for a hike once a week again really increase my productivity?  I keep wanting to but “oh, I want to finish this project first”  I just have SO much I want to do, it’s like a viscous circle.  Having that four hours on the bus would be super helpful – that could be my writing time!

Sigh.

Are you listening, body?! Get a grip and smarten up!

——-

Listening to: Windows Weekly 145

I’ve just finished the last assignment for my second course with BCIT. I think I’ll be taking a break from that for a while when this one if finished. It’s not a lot of work, or very hard, at least not so far. Unfortunately I live in Canada and not, like, Sweden or something, so education = $$$$$ I’m still paying off trips and other things from 2008 and still seriously considering going to Star Wars Celebration 5, especially as there’s currently a seat sale to Orlando right now. Really, I suppose the trip should go (and maybe it still will) but every time I see or hear anything about Star Wars, I get all giddy about going. Well, okay, maybe not GIDDY exactly, but you get the picture… right?

And why did school get tossed? Well, I might do some courses here and there (hey, it’s always good for the taxes!) but I don’t think I’ll go ‘full steam ahead’ like I had planned. I was taking a web design course. Well, I have plans to ever be a designer of any kind as a day job. I’d just like to do it as a hobby, or on the side gig, or AT my day job. So I’m not sure I can continue to do the formal courses, at least as often… at least right now. I just need to TAKE THE INITIATIVE and buy books and red the web (instead of just adding links to Delicious and forgetting about them) and learn on my own. Cheaper and all that.

But wait, I tried that once before.

Hopefully I can schedule my ‘free time’ better in the future. You know, to cross stitch, learn and experiment with design and photography, travel, hike, update this site, write, work, deal with the house, communicate with the outside world… sleep. And that’s not including all the other things I want to do but actually ARE already on the backburner.

Yeah, I know. I REALLY need to cut something out. I’ve gotten better with Twitter. I no longer feel the need to read every tweet from every one of the 880 people I follow… though I still feel like I’m missing something. I just have really diverse interests and LOVE to learn and LOVE to be productive.

Anyone else feel the same way? Have you cut out something you REALLY love to do?

January…

In January I officially became “Aurora Lee”.

Well, on the internet anyway.  I got the nickname “Aurora” last year from a fellow RPer – well, was given to my character by her character, but it sort of stuck with me.  Not to mention that it is a much nicer name than my previous online handle, though I still use that old handle on fan boards.  When I looked at using the name in a more official capacity, I found that “Aurora” is more popular than I thought so I added the Lee.  In January 2009 I officially adopted Aurora Lee as my ‘personal’ handle and purchased aurora-lee.ca! With the new domain name came a new host (www.netfirms.ca) and, well, a ‘host’ of new tools to play with.  WordPress, Joomla and more.  I integrated many of these tools on my new site to experiment and learn new things.  It’s still a work in progress and when I get some time I’ll be streamlining it. (more…)

So, today Mandy (@MandyBu on Twitter) started a “My Favourite Things”… thing on Twitter.  Thought it would be a good idea and also make me post here more often, so I thought I’d try it.

I thought today I’d go with the obvious.

I LOVE the Aurora Borealis!

For those of you that aren’t really sure what that is, check out this wiki article.

And some drool-worthy pics

Flickr

This week has been an interesting one… Two classes started on Tuesday and it’s been interesting trying to get back into the swing of readings and homework in amongst everything that I’ve added to my life since the last time I took any formal classes… especially as these are online courses.  Time Management!!  So far it’s been going well, of course, it’s only the first week!!

My first course is “Web Publishing”, part of the Web Technologies program offered at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT).  This is an online course focusing on XHTML coding with no synchronous learning.  This is your regular online college course, so I’ve paid $$$ for it and it will be my focus.  It is also the introductory course to the program, which I hope to continue on it.  So far we’ve just had a few readings and some coding practice.  I need to do that assignment, though it’s not due until next week.  Looks like an interesting course and program and I’m looking forward to it!

The other course I started this week is ECI831 – Social Media and Open Education.  This is a graduate university course with 20 registered, for-credit students and approximately 200 (including myself) ‘auditing’ students.  There is a synchronous Elluminate session every Tuesday and various readings (both assigned by Alec, the instructor, and user generated, either through blog posts written by the students or links, videos, tools, etc. we have tagged), videos and activities to work through as the week progresses.  Twitter is a big part of the course.  It’s very interesting and an excellent format for learning this subject matter – jump into the deep end, I say!

An Introduction

The main assignment for this week was to post an introductory video.  You can view mine below:

As I didn’t really want to have to look at a video of myself or hear myself talk, I chose this format.  Let me tell you a bit more about myself then I was able to in this video.  I’m not a teacher.  I am an administrative assistant with the Nova Scotia Community College.  My office works specifically with educators of children.  My job is fairly flexible; I’m able invent and modify tasks on a regular basis to suit my talents and interests.  I’m always looking for new ways to try and market our services.  Currently I’m experimenting with social media and trying to make our established web site more interactive and user-friendly.  Starting this semester I will also start to deliver workshops around my areas of expertise and I’m looking for new and interesting ways to engage our clients and make the ifnormation more accessible.  In general, I’m simply interested in learning about ways to make learning more engaging, fun and useful for learners of all ages, while still being aware of security and privacy.  I believe the subject matter in this course, and the topics that will come out of it on the ‘back channel’ is a huge step in that direction.

Got this email forward and had to post it here.  Hopefully a real blog post will come soon!

So, What Do We Canadians Have To Be Proud Of ?

1. Smarties

2. Crispy Crunch, Coffee Crisp

3. The size of our footballs fields, one less down, and bigger balls.

4. Baseball is Canadian – First game June 4, 1838 – Ingersoll , ON

5. Lacrosse is Canadian

6. Hockey is Canadian

7. Basketball is Canadian (more…)

I just felt like saying this… and it was too many characters for Twitter. 

I really dislike this movement toward paying for plastic bags at the grocery store.  I mean, I’m use to it.  I had to do it in Winnipeg years ago, and Europe.  But I just don’t see the point.  It should be a cost of doing business… If it’s an environmental tax, call it that.  If I’m given the option I shop where they don’t charge me.  I use plastic or reusable or nothing depending on my needs.

But see… (more…)

So I agreed/offered/whatever to go into the city (an 8 hour bus ride round trip) to get two of my American friends a Canada exclusive version of Twilight.  Note that I have never watched, nor am I interested in, Twilight.  I’m such a nice person. lol But it was nice to have a day out by my self.  A nice quiet bus ride and a QUICK walk around town.

I got there and had about 50 minutes to get to HMV, buy stuff and get (more…)

lol I couldn’t really think of a better title… my apologies.

I just thought I’d write about a few things I’ve come across online this week. (more…)