To wrap up Autism Awareness week

Sam included me as a guest author for today. Now I have to go sob in a corner after re-reading that.

Kids in the Hall

Thanks to a friend and her facebook, I've rediscovered a brilliant piece of cinematography from Kids in the Hall. For your enjoyment I submit to you "Sausages"



Reminds me of the movie Kafka, one of my all time favourites. The trailer doesn't do it justice but you can watch it below.

Taking the plunge

Starting May 1rst a new Wardrobe refashion period starts, so I'm pledging to buy no new clothes between May 1rst and July 1rst. This probably won't be too hard for me since I have a tonne of clothes and don't buy a lot these days anyhow, but I've already been doing this kind of thing for awhile, particularly recovering yarn from un-loved and languishing thrift store sweaters. Feel free to join in with me!

Undead on reading, more like

Maybe I'm too picky. Maybe I'm a book snob. I grabbed a book from the library last week from the "what's hot" section called Undead on Arrival. I thought it looked pretty crappy but kind of trashy, perfect for a girls' weekend at the beach. I didn't get around to looking at it again until last night. I barely made it through the dedication and I was already biased against it. I forced myself to read the first chapter but had to put it down in favour of crappy Friday night T.V. after that. I was cringing at her writing style, her limited vocabulary, and the fact that she apparently used a thesuarus without knowing how to, in order to beef up said limited vocabulary. I chose this book from the rack of "what's hot" because it says on the front it's a New York Times best seller author, so it couldn't be that bad, right? Unfortunately it can. Turns out she had one book on the "extended" best seller list.

I don't know if there is really something wrong with me, or with society. I suffered through the bad writing of the Twilight series, in fact I loved it, because she really had a story to tell, a way with words, something. Yes I'm a book snob but I can put that aside for a good story. I think this was written on a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom stall of a dive bar when the author thought up one good idea after a night of drinking.

If this crap can get published, I really need to finish my novel.

Budget cuts

Our school district is facing some pretty massive budget cuts (as I'm sure most around the country are). Unfortunately for us one of the programs on the chopping block is preschool, and our son will be entering his last year of preschool in the fall. He's in a special blended classroom (with one day a week in a class with all kids on the autism spectrum for special instruction), and I've been told multiple times that he would not do well in a typical community preschool. I'm really not sure what we'll do if there is no preschool program next year, I'm really concerned that all he's learned in the past 2 years will be undone in a large part.

Beyond my own selfish reasons for wanting the preschool program to remain intact, I want it to be there for my younger son. He will not need the program himself, but when it comes time for him to enter kindergarten I want his peers to have had the chance to be in the preschool program. If cutting funds for classroom size keeps the preschool program, I believe that the tradeoff would be worth it. If there are one or two special education students in his classroom that have not had the opportunity to learn the skills that come with the special ed preschool, that will more than negate the lower student to teacher ratio.

The cost for a year of preschool is slightly lower than the cost for two days of teacher training (professional development days). This boggles my mind.