A lot of people fear the Internet's ability to invade privacy and expose personal information, but I confess I use that without compunction from time to time. I met someone about four years ago; we hit it off, but we lived hundreds of miles apart, so no chance for a lunch or coffee on a whim. Worse yet, we lost touch a few months later. I tried getting in touch with someone who knew her, but that didn't work. Finally today I found her through someone blogging about her. So even though she has no email and is connected to a website that is not indexed by Google, I found her!
The last few years it has been perplexing to come up with appropriate Christmas gifts for family members. Except for one, all are adults, and none are in need of much. That is, they are able to buy for themselves all of the usual gift items (gloves, socks, etc.) when they need them. For the past two years, I have given charitable donations and that worked well for everybody. This year, I may do it again, but I will also be regifting, as a gift to myself. Among the many objects stashed in my bulging house are new items I acquired in various ways -- books from the days when I wrote reviews, desk items from the days when I went to press events, and even Christmas gifts I bought years ago, then forgot to give to people. Many of these will be passed on this year. I just hope they don't become someone else's useless clutter.
I went to the big city yesterday to visit a dear friend who is unwell. It was another of those brilliant bonus days where the sun shines and the air is clear, not a dreary November day at all. The best part is the way the fields turn copper and gold and a field of dead corn stalks lights up as if it were full of promise.
The trouble with having enough time is that you actually have enough time to get to things you have been avoiding for months. I'm almost there. Today I spent a great deal of time catching up on one of my current courses. I still have a couple of hundred discussion messages to clear, but I am up to date on assignments and reading for it. Haven't even touched the other course yet, but I haven't given up hope.
Yesterday's bread workshop went very well, I think. We had just the right number of people for the amount of dough I had prepared and enough time for everyone to shape one or two mini-loaves to take home. One person had never made bread before, but the others had various levels of experience. I believe they all left with confidence for tackling recipes, not just the ones I provided. I'll be sending off copies of the recipe pack to Jacqueline and Gill, in North Carolina and Plymouth, UK, respectively, who really wanted to come!
Don't get the idea that just because I speak and teach about getting organized I am a paragon of organization myself. Au contraire. I like to think my ongoing experiences with clutter are at least useful for professional research. Recently I went through something most people will recognize -- I couldn't find an essential document. It was one of those things I should have stored safely out of the way, since I rarely need it. I scoured all of the out of the way spots, then everywhere else, with no success. I finally gave up and took other measures to meet the need for the document. The frustrating hunt had a bonus outcome for two disorganized collections in the house, unrelated to the missing item. I took out my aggravation by sorting, labeling and storing these things, discovering several lost treasures in the process.
This day started with a rush of unsavory liquid. Actually, it started during the night, but Bob kindly let me sleep while he dashed around mopping up overflow from our septic system in the basement. By morning, it was clear neither of us could figure out what was wrong, much less fix it, so Bob had a helpful conversation with a plumber, who promised to send someone later in the day. The plumber's suggestion allowed us to use water again without fear and he actually did show up as promised. Meanwhile we had the septic tank pumped out by the Wizard of Ooze. Many dollars later, everything is working again as it should. Functional plumbing is one of those perks of the civilized world I do not take for granted.
The day ended with a victory of another kind. Our Toastmasters team competed at the trivia contest fundraiser for two local museums, and we won!
Today's adventure was a glorious drive to Toronto, returning via Waterdown, Claire's current hometown. I was astonished to see the snow-covered fields between Holland Centre and Dundalk. While we all saw snow fall yesterday, none of it stayed on the ground where I live. My checkup at PMH was very efficient and I got a free pass for another six months. It was so efficient, in fact, that I finished early enough to celebrate my good health with a shopping spree at Sherway. Eventually, I found Claire's digs in Waterdown and we had a quick visit, where I met her new pet rat (shouldn't it be Miss Higgins? It's a she.) and Robin's two friendly cats.
I'm trying a new way to recycle herbs and spices that are well beyond their best-before date. As you know, they don't go bad, they just get impotent. My mother kindly shared a book on herbal vinegars, so I thought, what have I got to lose? So far the jar of fennel and dried chive vinegar smells only mildly interesting, but I'll give it a few more days. The very idea of dried chives leaves me perplexed, but I just couldn't throw the container out (I didn't buy it, I inherited it, really!).
Bob has set up his music-making objects in the rec room in anticipation of practice sessions with partners in artistic noise. He's doing test expressions as I write this to help me ascertain whether I need to move to the sunroom for tomorrow afternoon's conference call. Fortunately, this house seems to be solid enough between floors that I won't need to.
I moved a great many of the wood chips today, thanks to Bob's suggestion to use a pitchfork to load them into the wheelbarrow. He was standing by to drive the mower with its attached cart, but couldn't do much else because of severe back pain. We got a lot moved anyway and now have a soft path around the pond and several side paths here and there. Much more to be shifted, though. My mother's accomplishment for today was also a very physical one, but much more impressive in my opinion. She did a 3 km hike with friends. Not bad for an old lady, eh?!
Anyone who knows me may be surprised to hear that I invested in old technology today. I bought a sewing machine without a computer in it. I don't do heaps of sewing -- although I hope to do more now -- and I have resisted for years the latest in sewing machine technology: electronic machines. They look wonderful for people who do a lot of fancy stitches, maybe they're great for quilters, too. I am not one of those people. I do plain sewing on a variety of materials, the odd buttonhole or two. Years ago, I took a workshop in free-arm machine embroidery. My 1960s Bernina was more than equal to the technique. Now I have a replacement for that old beauty, and I'm very excited!
This being my birthday, I was prepared to embrace a day of sloth. I actually made some headway with an email backlog, read some course material, updated software and made bread. With some of the afternoon still ahead, I was preparing to go out into the garden when I noticed the hydro crew clearing trees from the pole on the corner of our front yard. I had been expecting them for months since the advance man came around to let us know what would be done. After a brief conversation with the friendly crew, I arranged for their buddies coming along behind with the chipper truck to leave me a great birthday present -- a whole truckload of wood chips! Bob was not quite as thrilled as I was, but joined in anyway to start shifting them to the back yard, where they are already becoming a path around the pond.
It's starting to look and feel like fall -- chilly nights, and brisk mornings down by the pond -- with breezes that shake down dead branches and loose leaves. Today was divided between my landscape design assignment and making grape jam. The former was a very enjoyable though demanding effort. I had collected enough photos on the weekend to illustrate 10 critiques, but the writing took a long time. My jam efforts were tasty, but there is still more fruit on the vine. I've just about caught up in the design course, but I'm still way behind in the Connectivism course. At least in both courses, the material will wait for me online. The grapes have a frosty deadline though.
I've had visits from two of my children this weekend (unfortunately not at the same time, so they didn't see each other) in honour of my birthday. The actual day, Tuesday, doesn't matter whole lot, because I already feel that I've had the best of gifts, but there is more, because my sister is coming to town to help me celebrate then. In my genealogy work, I often have only the birthdays of people to record, none of the events of their lives such as the dinners with friends and loved ones. Unless someone writes it down and the record survives, the memory will expire with the person who lived it. This is poignant, as I know these events must have happened and must have been as important as mine are to me. All we can do is share in whatever ways we can, I guess, as I am sharing with you.
We have an enterprise in town called Curry in a Hurry, who offer food at the market and meals delivered. Tonight we got to try a selection at a relaxed buffet dinner at Mudtown Pottery, the venue for several concerts we've been to. No need for anything but background music because the food was the whole story. I confess I filled my plate twice with helpings of almost everything, but I don't regret one bite. Because of the date, we considered it a joint birthday dinner for Bob and I. My son Evan graciously treated us and came up from Aurora this afternoon to enjoy it with us.
The peach marathon continued today, but I decided to fit in a batch of bread, thinking that having cartloads of jam without it would be dismaying, to say the least. I've been working my way through my old standards in bread recipes, in anticipation of the bread workshop I have committed to in November. Kneading bread is a repetitive, physical exercise that stimulates calm, reflective thoughts, in my experience. I'm not sure it's possible to do it while worrying. That is, you may start out with anxiety, but it somehow dematerializes once you begin. Anyway, today I was musing on the vision of doing all this canning and bread making as it must have been done on the farm a century ago. I'm guessing it would be a group effort, where big families would be a plus. Kids who could manage a bucket would help fetch the gallons of water for all the washing and boiling, and maybe the older boys would be tasked with bringing wood to keep the stove stoked for endless hours in the sweaty summer kitchen. I wonder if any of them were picky eaters.
The two women I am running this week's internship program for are a dream to work with. They are inquisitive, interested in the material, and quick, both to question what is unclear, and to draw their own conclusions and connections. My role is that of mentor, rather than teacher; thus I think it's my job to expose them to ideas and information, make some suggestions about how these are connected, and then maintain a supportive role. If I can promote their inquisitions in relevant directions, if I can provide supplementary material in answer to their questions, then I guess I am doing the right thing. There are a lot of gaps in this process, some significant constraints we have to work with, but overall, I think I am meeting the client's objectives, and I certainly am getting personal satisfaction. And how do the interns themselves evaluate what's happening? I just hope they will tell me.
I've spent the past two days mostly on the phone with the interns I am coaching, and fitting time into breaks and late afternoon spots some efforts to keep up with emails from the connectivism course. Not easy, when there are just under 2000 people in the course, posting their introductions and greeting others they know, plus engaging in some discussions of the course ideas. Every message goes to the group and all of them come into my inbox. I debated allowing this, and decided that if I didn't, I would probably never go to the online forum to read them. As it is, there are other threads of discussion starting up and I am not subscribed to all of them. Of course, this problem is directly relevant to the course itself. How can we connect within a group this large? Is it feasible? Or desirable? Already, a subgroup has formed of Ontario people with a separate list of discussions. Meanwhile, in my other course, landscape design, there is also a pile of introductions, but at least there are only 42 people in that one.
Fear not, blog fans, it's late in the evening, but I have not forgotten my commitment. Today was a teaching day, so I spent about six hours on the phone with my interns, who are absorbing all I know as fast as they can. I really enjoy my role evangelizing information architecture to people who have enthusiastically signed up for the indoctrination. Among other things, today we talked about designing web spaces, and I tried to convey the idea that there are many right answers to certain problems. I thought later that while there are many good designs you can come up with, or at least, many adequate designs, there are actually very few exceptionally well-formed designs. If we can at least aim to achieve those exceptions, we will be doing our job.
The market this Saturday morning, plus the loaded peach tree beside the garage, inspired me to spend the day in the kitchen dealing with fruit, vegetables and flour. The peaches became jam, my second batch because I did a sugarless one for Bob yesterday; the vegetables became ratatouille, destined for various uses; and the flour contributed to butter and egg bread. The latter is part of my preparation for a bread class I plan to give in November. I'm gradually working my way through the bread recipes that I used many years ago for a beginner class I held in my home. This one will be at a local bookstore. It's been a while since I made bread regularly, but I'm enjoying it just as I used to. Today's celebratory sandwich was made with delicious market tomatoes!
I am starting two online courses next Monday, but I'll leave discussion of them for another post once they're really underway. Just preliminary stuff happening in them this week. Today was really mostly about peaches. I have been monitoring the crop on our tree and decided that enough were ripe today to go out with a basket and ladder. I took enough for a batch of jam and a pie that we will share this evening with Mum and Uncle Roy. The jam I'm not optimistic about because it is made with sugar substitute and doesn't appear to be jelling. However, even a failed jam is good on ice cream (sugarless, of course), as Bob pointed out. And there are lots more peaches on the tree.
I finished enough of my office redecorating to hang a few pictures, including one by an acquaintance of mine from an editing job a few years ago. Hanging her lovely watercolour made me wonder what she was up to and, as she has a name that is a little out of the ordinary, I looked her up first on Facebook. Imagine my dismay when I discovered, not her profile, but a group formed to honour her memory at a service in Toronto just over a month ago. Dear talented Laura, way younger than me, died from cancer. What a sad shock. I can't do art like you did, Laura, but I promise to spend more time in my garden.
