It's Official

Well, the dissertation has been printed, bound, and submitted!!! Now we wait to get a date for his viva...

Sock Puppets

Somone along the line came up with this brilliant idea...... get all the badly behaved children in a school and put them into a "Social Skills" group with the learning support teacher. Yep, that's my joy of Friday afternoons. Well, as childish as it sounds, I've convinced this group of hooligans (or neds as they are called here in Scotland) that it'll be fun to make sock puppets and use our puppets to share any school grievances from the past week. I guess if you think about it any kid would jump at the chance to complain about school in a lesson. So as we're going around the circle we get to a certain 10-year-old, my daily source of stress, who prefaces his grievance session with the question, "Are we allowed to complain about you, Mrs Oldfield?" Of course I'm thinking "Oh here we go." Well he goes into a VERY long rant about how he gets soo mad at me when I'm off work with a migraine and how it's not fair that he has to have stupid supply (substitute) teachers who don't understand him the way I do. He then finishes with the comment, "I really like you, Mrs Oldfield, and I get really sad when you're not here." Kind of makes up for all the other stuff and reminds me why I bother doing this job in the first place. :-)

Go Ricky, Go Ricky...

Wednesday night we went down to Edinburgh to see Ricky Gervais live in his third ever stand up comedy show, "Fame." It was brilliant! The tickets were part of Jeff's Christmas present...but just between you and me, I think I was far more excited than Jeff could ever be. I absolutely LOVE Ricky Gervais. For those of you who may be a bit British comedy challenged, he's the one who created and starred in the original British show "The Office." He helped write for the later American "Office" and is now doing a new comedy show called "Extras." Still lost? Well, he also played the museum director in "Night at the Museum" starring Ben Stiller (who he met, by the way, during the filming of the first episode of "Extras"). I, personally, think he is one of the greatest comedy actors of the 21st century...so far. He'll be hard to beat. :)

A Prayer to Remember...

Heavenly Father, Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in
traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day
and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry
and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man
who can't make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college
student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of
not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the
same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to
addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through
the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this
m oment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last
week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us,
the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with
those we hold dear. Open our hearts not t o just those who are close to
us, but to all humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive,
show patience, empathy and love.

Back to life

Well, I've successfully made it through the first week back to work. Actually, the first week of the term went fairly well. We've got a new headteacher and he seems pretty cool....I'm really looking forward to sharing all my thoughts on how to better tackle some of the behavior problems of the kids I work with. The school's behavior policy has basically been non-existent so I'm seeing this as an opportunity for change. :)

I hear that it's actually snowing in Riverside....words cannot express how jipped I feel. We've had absolutely no snow this year here in Scotland. In fact, it hasn't even been that cold and the wind....oh my gosh, the wind. It has been absolutely insane....I'm talking knock you over, push your car off the road - wind!
The bridge into Dundee, where I work, gets closed when the wind is really bad. Usually they just close the bridge to semi-trucks and motorcycles, but Tuesday morning the wind was soo bad that they closed the bridge off to all traffic. So I get to go back home and not go into work, right? NOPE! I had to drive an extra hour and a half, the long way down the river into Perth and around into Dundee. Just for some perspective, check out the map. On the right side is the bridge that goes north over the river into Dundee. I had to drive all the way to the left until the river ended and then all the way back to the right once I was on the north side of the river. Do you see it? It took almost an entire tank of gas. So I've been phoning the bridge control throughout the day every day since that fateful morning dreading that the bridge will be closed again. So far all's been well. I just can't wait until this wind leaves....I want normal winter weather! I WANT SOME SNOW, DANGIT!

Take Two

Okay. Since my mom could not live knowing that her daughter is Saddam, I've retaken the test answering all 45 questions this time as honestly as I possibly could and I think my mom will approve of the result. I'm Gandhi! Whew....that feels better.

What Famous Leader Are You?

Honestly, I think it was all the organization, tidy freak questions that threw me last time. Seriously, I may be a little Obsessive/Compulsive but that shouldn't make me Saddam!

Who'd've thunk it?

I'M SADDAM HUSSEIN!!! Out of control!

What Famous Leader Are You?

Hogmanay

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone!!! Oh boy did we plan a great evening of events for our New Year's Eve celebration (also known as "Hogmanay" in the land of the Scots). In Scotland, Hogmanay is bigger than Christmas... I mean people from all over the UK travel to Scotland just to be part of one of the huge New Year's Eve parties. Our friends Keith and Carla came up from London to hang out with us for Hogmanay so we bought tickets to go to Stirling to the third largest Hogmanay celebration in Scotland (just after Edinburgh and Glasgow). We rented a car for the two hour drive since we weren't too sure how the mini would hold up. Well, it was quite the drive...we were in the middle of a hurricane...rain bolting down and from all other directions...gail-force winds...tree branches falling into the road...you name it. We finally made it into Stirling safe and sound just to find out that the whole Hogmanay party had been cancelled due to the weather!!! I mean, seeing as how Hogmanay is soo dang huge in this country I thought for sure they would've just found a way around the whole weather issue (move inside somewhere or something) but oh no. So we figured that after a two-hour drive we might as well find a place to eat...so we wandered through the wind and rain hunting down any place that wasn't already booked and finally came across a Jimmy Chung's (our favorite Chinese buffet place). We of course were bummed that we were stuck celebrating New Year's in a Chinese restaurant (See picture) (January 1st isn't even the Chinese New Year anyway....the irony). We then decided that heck we came to Stirling to have a good time and dagnabit we were going to make sure that happened so we decided to be the life of the party in that little Chinese restaurant and boy did it show. (See next picture). :) So after all our Chinese buffet partying we decided to head back home. The hurricane had picked up quite a bit by that time making it quite the ride home. All I've got to say is that there is no way our mini could have made it. The biggest disaster of the night (way worse than the party being cancelled) was the tragic death of a poor wild pheasant which Jeff (who was driving) didn't even see in the middle of the road. I, however, saw the whole thing....the poor little bird was just trying to find some shelter from the wind and rain when it found itself in the middle of the road...it's poor little head turned in shock as it saw our car fast approaching and that was that...under the car it went, complete with a thud as the undercarriage hit the bird's head and a bump as it went under the tire....I was mentally disturbed for the rest of the drive home and am still upset by the catastrophe. What a sad way to end an already sad evening. The rented car did manage to make it home with only a few tree branches dangling from the wheel well and the undercarriage and just a few pheasant feathers. (How sad!) We did, however, temporarily cover up our worries with a few glasses of champagne at midnight.