Lately I've forgotten about a lot of the things that I enjoy. I feel like I'm constantly struggling to keep up with just about all the normal everyday things I usually do around now. Maybe it's because my body feels like I should be gearing up for a teaching block, or exams. But this year is an anomaly, and neither of those things will be happening.A lot of stuff has happened since I last blogged. For example, I returned to class from after exams. I did a presentation, the last of the academic-Arts class ones this year, on Austin Clarke's Love and Sweet Food and Stuart Hall's "Cultural Identity and Diaspora". I wrote my first essay for Inspiration, and was once again published in EDible News. I also got my convocation dates, and for 24 hours freaked right out about what was to be done.
We're having a big 85th birthday party for my awesome Gramma in Edmonton during the last weekend in June. It worked out really well because Mom would be done school, I would be done the AQ course I thought I was taking (more on that later) and Auntie Brenda would have been all moved home from Russia. The date was set for Sunday June 28th and it was going to be great. Auntie Bren bought our tickets using Aeroplan miles from Thursday the 25th to July 1st so we could all have some time together to visit; Auntie Reta, Uncle Jim and Maggie are coming over from Vancouver Island for the party so it would be the first time my mom and uncle had seen each other since we interred my grampa's ashes 7 years ago. I had been told convocation wouldn't be until July because of the messed up year, so we thought everything would be fine.
Well, turns out the powers that be at York managed to organize some tomfoolery and made the convocation ceremonies start on June 24th. My BA ceremony is on June 26th and my BEd ceremony, the one that is really important to me, is on June 29th. I would be in Edmonton over the whole convocation period. Crap.
After those 24 excruciating hours were up, everything had been rearranged. The party is now on Saturday June 27th and Mom and I fly back to Toronto on the red-eye flight on Monday morning. We'll sleep, shower, do our hair and makeup, and drive to school for 1:30 so I can get robed and put into the procession; the ceremony begins at 3:30, and we're invited to the Faculty of Education graduates reception afterward. Gramma, who was originally supposed to attend, will no longer be coming; it's too much excitement for her in too short a time and what if some of the out-of-towners stick around for a while after the party? It's not fair, of course, but it's what's right.
So like I said, I've forgotten about a lot of the things that I enjoy. This craziness has sucked all the fun right out of me, until last week when I randomly created the above image in Inspiration class during a particularly uninspiring discussion on plagiarism. I love to mess around with pictures and I thought the contrast between sunlight and shadows, caught on an afternoon in the watery spring sunshine, was particularly captivating. I also went out with friends for someone's birthday this weekend and my face hurts from laughing.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, kids.
-Laur
