Hard To Believe

It's been one year since Claire and I were last in Ireland. More than that now, as I didn't feel much like blogging about this last week. We've had a pretty spectacular time of it here in Vancouver this past 12 months, and we're looking forward to spending more time enjoying ourselves in the coming year.

My job has been nothing short of incredible. The children, families and staff are all amazing and the job itself is rewarding. Claire's web design business has really taken off, and it's not unusual for her to be working on two or three sites at the same time. Of course, right now, we're between work permits, which means that we're on a holiday visa in Canada. We can stay and have a good time, but can't work until the new work permit arrives.

I've been making the most of this free time by catching up on some TV series, most notably Battlestar Galactica, a show I started watching with the Pilot in 2003, but never got around to finishing. I flew through the remaining two seasons over the last few days, and finished watching the grand finale at 1am this morning. Having been effectively watching this show for over eight years now, it was sad to see it all end.

We also went to Seattle at the end of January to visit our friend Cian. That was just way too much fun for me. I had a blast hanging out with him and his friends, and we even did a group breakfast Saturday morning. I felt like I had been transported back to Cork for the morning again, sitting in Puccino's having our weekly Sunday breakfast get-together.

I was hoping to get a lot of reading done while I'm home from work, but I find myself distracted by Xbox, the internet and watching TV shows. I've done a huge amount of reading since we moved here, but most of it is done while sitting on the bus on the way to or home from work. I may have to start taking the bus into twon for no other reason than to get some reading time!

Right now I'm off to take a walk. It's a beautiful, if cloudy day here, and I'm going to get out and enjoy it. I need to. Yesterday I watched nine hours of Battlestar Galactica! I was having Cylon dreams for the night!

Weekend Work

Most people enjoy their work-free weekends, going hiking, relaxing at home, or visiting family.

My weekends are usually filled with sleeping in late, going forwalks to Granville Island, or around the beautiful Lynn Valley, hanging out with friends, going for dinner with friends, watching movies or playing Xbox.

But I love getting woken up at 7:30 Saturday morning with a phone-call. It's happened four times in the last two months, and it's always the same.

"Hi Denis. Sorry to call you, but can you work for us this morning?"

Shower, shave and out the door for four hours of working with smallies and their parents on a Saturday morning. I love it.

When work isn't even work, it's easy to enjoy and look forward to. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Friday is my Monday. I look forward to Monday morning like most people look forward to Friday at 5pm.

Discussions Of An Abstract Nature

Short one today, but here goes.

Yesterday I worked in the after school age program. It's a nice change of pace moving from the little ones up to a group consisting of six to eleven year olds. They are much more independent and capable, such that most of my day is really about just being there for ration and insurance purposes, but they rarely need me for anything specific.

The other major difference is the topics of conversation. Over the course of the day I discussed endangered species, hunting, conservation, Santa Claus, and eating bugs with one group, and later the formation and physics of black holes with a different child.

I love my job.

We're Like The Postal Service In That Way

Hail, rain or shine, we always take the children in the daycare outside every day, either for a walk around the community, or at the very least, to the program playground.

On the sunny or dry days, that just means wrapping them up against the seasonal temperatures, either layering on sunscreen, or sweaters and jackets.

But it's the wet days that are the most fun. Every child has boots in their cubby, but more importantly, they also have rainproof covering, affectionately called muddy buddies. These are, as seen at the link, one piece waterproofs, with elasticated wrists and ankles. They can be a bit of a pain to put on, especially if you have a group of eight children all asking for help, some having mastered putting on their boots, while others struggle valiantly to put their leg through their sleeve, a task that is as hilarious to watch as you can imagine. But once they are on and zipped up, once the ankle elastics are pulled over the boots to stop rainwater flooding their feet, they are awesome!

On my second day at work way back in May it rained the proverbial cats and dogs. My group were playing in the yard, all safely zipped up, splashing in puddles, riding trikes in the rain. They were also sitting in a pool of water about a foot deep. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this, but the other staff assured me they were fine. "The worst that can happen is that we change their clothes when we go back in. They all have spares. This is good for them." I was stunned, and impressed.

I've already seen some of the snowsuits that parents are starting to stock their little darlings cubby with. They look like the muddy buddies, but with a much thicker lining. I'm looking forward to seeing the toddlers struggling to play in the snow, their arms stuck straight out from their sides by multiple layers of insulating clothing, beads of sweat building on their little faces, as they slowly heat up from the inside. I've been assured that this too is just as funny as it sounds.

All this post was inspired because of something else we did today that I just could never imagine being let do back home in Ireland. As it was a beautiful, cool, dry autumn afternoon, we took the toddlers outside after snack time, and stayed out there as the evening light faded. In fact, by the time we came back in, it was after 5pm and it was as dark as it was going to get outside. The toddlers had been outside, enjoying fresh air in a playground lit by soft lighting long after sunset. They loved it, and so did I.

Explain to me why this is seemingly not possible under supposed health and safety regulations in Ireland. It makes no sense! You are making us worse, not better, HSE!

Preschool Teacher By Day, Movie Editor By Night

As we reach the end of another school year, I find myself once more stressing out over things I know will be fine and work out easily in the end. Mostly, it's the video we put together using all the photos we took during the year to show parents all the work their kids did and how utterly adorable they are. Except... well... go back and read the last sentence, starting at "mostly" and replace "we" with "I".

I've done this every year that I've been working in the preschool, and every year I run into new problems. The first year it was all the teething issues. Video files not playing nice with the software, having to find appropriate codex's to edit proprietary video camera movie files (oh, while I'm on that subject: Fuck you Sony), recording too much background noise and then having to try to clean up the audio as best I could, and many, many more. The second year was more of the same, but with the added stress of having to one-up myself from the previous year, coupled with how attached to the group I had gotten. It was the first time I had to let go kids I had been teaching for two years, and they were an amazing bunch of kids.

This years problems started and finished with Windows Movie Maker. In past years I have had the luxury of using advanced, expensive, professional and complicated software to help edit or re-encode the video. This year, however, may be the last year that I do this, if plans fall into place (See future blog), and the preschool manager wants to be able to do this herself next year. The preschool manager is, however, very computer illiterate, and advanced, expensive, professional and complicated software to help edit or re-encode the video is far, far beyond her abilities.

So I decided to limit myself to three programs.  The bulk of the work was done between Movie Maker, Windows free built-in basic movie editing tool, and Picasa, the awesome, free and simple-to-use photo editing tool. Let it be said here that I love Picasa. It is far from a professional tool, but it's great for the amateur photographer who doesn't really care too much about the final product. And it can produce very slick looking video compilations of your photos in a widely accepted format with zero hassle. But enough ass-kissing, back to the point. The third and final program was a simple and free video converter program I needed to convert the video files we shot using the camcorder from a proprietary video format to a Movie Maker readable format (once again: Fuck you Sony).

I could do everything I needed to do, and in record time, using only these three programs. AVC would re-encode what I needed to, Picasa would put each sections set of photographs together into a beautifully presented clip, and then Movie Maker would add the soundtrack and produce a single, 12 minute long movie to be shown on this Friday. Except... It didn't.

No matter how often I tried, Movie Maker would not produce a movie. It got to 25% every time and then froze, the "Estimated time remaining" figure slowly climbing upwards as no further progress was had. After three failed attempts at getting it to work, I eventually produced each section individually. Picasa had produced three photo compilations for me, and those, along with the video segment of the children talking about what they want to be when they grow up, meant I had four sections that needed a music track. So I produced four segments of photos with soundtrack in Movie Maker, each one working perfectly, then I put them all together and produced a completed movie. I have no idea why Movie Maker refused to edit the segments together and put the soundtrack on at the same time, but happily edit the four segments with the soundtrack pre-attached without complaint.

Either way, it's all done. I set the whole thing up and showed it to the preschool manager today and we both got all teary-eyed. That's why I don't have my projector or Xbox here tonight and instead I have time to blog. They're in school waiting for Friday. I would normally wait until Thursday to bring all that stuff up, but I'm going to a friends wedding tomorrow instead. Two days left in school, and I take one off! Ha!

Happy Irish Day!

It's March 17th, and I've posted a grand total of twice now in 2009, including this one! We are as good as a quarter of the way through the year already, so I have some serious catching up to do.

Because today is the feast of Ireland's patron saint, I have the day off of work. Because it falls on a Tuesday, I also got Monday off work! So far today, I have put on a wash, dried the dishes that Claire cleaned, did some light tidying, and surfed the net, all climaxing with this post right now. The sun is beaming in the windows of our new place, so I hope to head out and spend some time outside later today as well.

Yesterday was far less productive, but much more enjoyable. Claire had work, and was up early. I got up soon after, turned on the Xbox and spent the vast majority of the day playing Burnout Paradise. Since last I blogged about Burnout, I not only got that elusive Burnout License, but managed 100% completion. Life without internet for six weeks can drive a man to extraordinary heights of accomplishment! I also tried my hand at my first online combat in Tom Clancy's Endwar, and learned that I am not a very good general, despite what my single player campaign suggests.

Finally, last night I put in a few hours on Gears of War 2, a game I really need to post about. I love the game, and have made some great friends through it, all of whom I really enjoyed playing with again now that I'm back online! Horde mode is the best fun ever!