Saturday, January 26, 2013

Writing Space


I pushed open the door and was immediately embraced by an overwhelming superfluity of light. This light wasn't just there to work by – it contained the space in multi-faceted clarity of spirit, spilling from the north and east-facing windowed walls with all-encompassing generosity. After the cool dimness of the corridor, so much brightness was overwhelming, and for a moment I fought my eyes' instinct to close themselves against the brilliance.

After a period of adjustment though, I realised that the light was far from the harsh, uniform light of necessity. Instead, it was made up of shadows and shades, a patchwork quilt of colour exquisitely worked in the delicate lattice work of lead edging in the windows. Diamonds of blue and green interspersed with clear glass repeated their barely perceptible pattern infinitely over the warm wooden floors and up the smooth, unadorned walls. The only exception was in the north-east corner of the room – where a large wooden worktable stood sturdy and simple, unpatterned by diamond light or human handiwork, optimally placed for uninterrupted work. Beside it stood a straight-backed chair, pulled back invitingly, and before I knew it I had taken two eager steps into the room towards it.

Thank you to NaNoWriMo - Facebook for today's writing prompt!

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Attack on Weathertop - LEGO

I heart LEGO! Recently we've been going a little bit LEGO crazy, especially with the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit series (since I also heart LotR) - this is our newest "investment"...















Saturday, January 12, 2013

A Note on a Theorem of Euler


By Diogenes


NB: Euler is pronounced "oiler". 

We found this wonderful piece of literature a few years ago via Prof John Webb - thanks Prof!!



Saturday, January 5, 2013

Lunch at Redberry Farm

On Friday we went strawberry picking at Redberry Farm! It was a marvelous outing, and very reasonably priced at R15 for a small bucket, and R25 for a big bucket.


It was nice and shady in the strawberry tunnels...


Unripe strawberries - the farm utilises crop rotation to make sure there are plenty of ripe ones in all the open rows though - and the beautiful strawberry flowers. But still more exciting is when you strike gold, with some perfectly ripe, juicy fruits.


Bingo!



 Yarhar, don't be stealin' my strawberries matey!


Buckets of strawberry goodness... Have I overloaded my container?



As you can see, the small buckets were quite large enough, but they didn't last long when we got back to the tearoom. There is something magical about still warm, freshly picked berries.


And then, because we weren't already spoiled enough, we had a simply delicious lunch, eaten against the spectacular backdrop of the Outeniqua mountains...



And although there were strawberries with everything (check out the strawberry garnish on my chips!), my favourite was still the jam-packed fresh strawberry milkshake.







Friday, January 4, 2013

2013? Really?

Hello everyone!

So apparently it's 2013 already - and the internet is full of focus words, resolutions and general planning goodness. Far be it from me to buck the trend.

(Some of you may have noticed that I've killed Out of Perspective - splitting my attention was a silly idea in the first place. But I did import all the posts, so nothing lost!)

So, on to some of what 2013 holds for me:

teaching english


Yes, this year I am teaching THREE English classes (grade 8, 9 and 10) and only TWO Maths classes (grade 9 and 10). While this is a good thing (I've been wanting to wriggle into English teaching, and yay! no grade 12s), it is also a VERY VERY stressful thing. I've been teaching Maths for almost three years. How much experience do I have teaching English?? Zip, zilch, nada...

Prep time!

teaching maths


So I'm still teaching a fair bit of Maths though, and will continue to lead the grade 9 Maths team at my school, which means a lot of resource creation and general admin. I'm pleased with the plans we've set in place to tweak the ordering of the syllabus, and this year I will be teaching a top-set grade 9 class - yay! Last year I had all mixed groups in terms of Mathematical ability - pretty demoralising when at least half my kids failed every exam. So although I enjoy teaching kids who struggle with Maths, it will make a nice change. 

As good as a holiday? We'll see. This past holiday will be pretty hard to beat.


family


...which doesn't only consist of my cats, believe it or not!

My younger sister is getting married in April (yikes), and then moving to England with her beloved! Very exciting times, but also a bit sad and definitely stressful. So this year will be full of family things, at least for the first part, and I want to try and prioritise them as much as I can...

"Family" also covers my mini family (husband + two cats) and home, and trying to leave work earlier as often as possible (5pm, please? maybe??) so that I can spend time at home and hopefully not leave such chaos behind me when I go to bed at night.


creativity


Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and absolutely LOVED it. So come November 2013, all else being equal, I will NaNoWriMo again! Yay!

But I also want to get into the routine of getting creative work going regularly throughout the year, starting with the editing of Mending Hedges (my NaNo novel from 2012). I've also got some other interesting plots and plans up my sleeve but we shall see... dum, dum, dum...

ALSO, I want to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. To that end, I want to stop putting pressure on myself to create one type of post or another at any particular time - just to write and create whatever springs to mind based on current events. Realistically, I will be trying one general post and/or one writing post per week (depending on work situations). Mainly posting on Saturdays, as far as I can make out my schedule, but obviously trying to gather material throughout the week and mainly construct the posts over the weekend.

Anyhow, I'll give it a decent effort for the first little while, and hope to hold up my end when the school work gets tougher.


sjoe!

I think that's quite enough resolution-type things for me for one day...nap time?