Singular Scene

So Singular in Each Particular

It’s not Flesh and Blood…

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—It is not [only] flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons [and aunties and nieces]*.  ~Johann Schiller

I am blessed. 

I live in a fantastic place, surrounded by ocean and sky and the hum of the city.  I have a life that some may call crazy and others a dream, and I love it.  I have a tidy brain and a messy home, a faith in a God who is as real to me as the cat here on my lap.  I have a family whom I love who are clever and funny, a little bit nuts but who all in all are utterly marvelous people who I am thrilled to call mine. 

However.  They live an ocean away.

THAT is the price I have paid for this life.

I have friends in Sydney and a network of people in a faith community commonly called ‘the church.’ This community extends far beyond any building and includes people all over who call my God theirs on whom I could call at any time.  So, while I may be isolate from my blood, I am no island. 

In fact, I am doubly blessed.  For I, have been adopted.

It is at this point where I could trip over into dangerously sappy territory so I’m going to use this picture to speak its 1000 very own words (click to embiggen).

Like I said, blessed.

I have two families.

*parentheses mine…

Specs-taclular ~ A Cautionary Tale.

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I come from a family whose eyesight has served them well all their young adult life, at least as far as I’m aware, certainly my parents didn’t get spectacles until they reached their mid to late forties, maybe even later, and none of us 4 children required such things in our youth or childhood.

Much to my disappointment.

I thought glasses were great, largely I suspect due to the perceived increase in intelligence they portrayed.  Such childhood notions were dispelled along with those of the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus by the wanton display of stupidity I later witnessed in both spectacle wearers and non-wearers alike, but in spite of this, the desire to own a pair remained.

By way of proof I submit the following somewhat embarrassing picture of the author as a 20year old sporting a pair of tortoiseshell frames containing nothing but plain glass ‘uv filtered’ for her protection [coughs].  I believe this was taken Christmas of1988.

In about 1990 I was living in London and decided to avail myself of the National Health offer of free eye checks and got my eyes tested for the first time.

I was told I had the nearest thing to perfect eyesight anyone ever gets.

Colour me a touch disappointed.

Fast forward to 2004 and the beginning of my career as a web developer and deep abiding love for my laptop, then further forward to 2009 and the beginnings of a niggle about how things were looking out of my right eye.  So I took myself off to avail myself of a free medicare provided in Australia (oh, how I love national health) and sure enough, the years of abuse at the screen of my computer have taken their toll.  I am long sighted, and have an astigmatism!!  Lucky me!!

So, now I’m the proud owner of the following spectacles – and I heart them quite a lot, though it’s taking rather longer to get used to them than I’d like…

So, do you wear specs?  How long for? How bad were your first pair??  Links to pictures in the comments VERY welcome!!!

Agitator Cycle

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So, here I am once again launched into the first week of the semester. 

The break was wonderful and a glimpse of what life could look like when this is all over…  I’ve held up well under the pressure of assignments and essays and my marks, while not as high as I might have hoped were nonetheless respectable in that I scored 3 credits (69, 73 and 74) and a distinction (83).
 
Satisfactory indeed.

I had a very clear idea before I started this semester of the classes I was taking and the timetable looked as though it would work well, Tuesdays from 3-7 and then Wednesdays from 5-9. Wednesday has turned into a huge day as I was offered 4 hours teaching (and not concurrent; with a 3 hour break in between) and I leapt at that before I’d actually finalised the uni timetable.  But an hour to get from one side of town after teaching to the other for the learning was workable and while a huge day in the middle of the week may not be ideal the class is for 8 weeks and I’m already 2 weeks down on that…

Clearly, my inherent inclination toward biting off more than I can chew is still intact…

In any case, the subject dealing with Flash animation which I took last term (remember the bunnies?) didn’t look like it was going to work into my schedule and so I’d dropped it in favour of a Linguistics Paper, Electronic Discourse.  I was sad to lose Flash, but based on the course outline for ED thought it a good option, and as the teaching I’m doing is Flash related I decided I could continue teaching myself…

So, the week begins,  Monday with the night school singing class I’ve been teaching, on Tuesday I rock up to the appropriate classes and after 2 hours of ‘Computers as Culture’ I was excited again to be back in class.  However, after about an hour of Electronic Discourse immediately following that I think my brain short circuited… 

Discourse analysis… having had little idea of what it meant or was about prior to this fateful hour I am now  in possession of more knowledge than I ever though I’d have need.

Consequently today was a day of administration and rearrangment of timetable and classes in order to re-enroll in the multi-media class.

So, here I am, sitting once again in the library at Sydney College of Art waiting for time to pass enough to go up to class… I figure it’s better used time to be here early than to be sitting in 5pm traffic to get here… and you win… you got a blog post out of it…

But the pay off is that I’m now in class 3 days a week instead of two… and once again it’s the singing class that has to give.  Just as well I’m singing in church on Sunday so I can get a fix that way…

14 weeks… I love this studying lark, don’t get me wrong, but today it’s 14 weeks and counting till I can have my life back.