A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

Jaques:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

As You Like It Act 2, scene 7, 139–143

---

Today I met Dennis the teacher again.

He's been on vacation for three months and overseas for three weeks of that. Furthermore, he hasn't taken on a weekend course for quite a few years. Teaching a seven hour class is really tiring for him and he realizes he's going to do a repeat of the show tomorrow. He enjoyed getting back in front of a classroom though.

It's really funny as I'd forgotten the skills Dennis has and the exciting environment he creates.

Labels: BCIT, students

It's already a part of popular culture. Last night CSI:NY included a plot featuring Second Life. I'm not a game player and as proof I have an original X-BOX that's sitting in the closet after being played less than a dozen hours.

Okay, they say this online experience is not really a game. I say it's a little freaky. Still, I think one owes it to oneself to keep up on what's current. I don't know how many people my age can be found running around the virtual worlds but if you happen to run across a Wendell Latte, do say hello to me.

Labels: games, Internet

Today, I spent a sizable chunk of the day at my office at the BC Institute of Technology. I knew that I'd start classes next week. What I didn't know until yesterday, is that I shall also be spending the next 5 1/2 weekends there too.

My boss called to ask if I could pick up two classes during November. I reluctantly agreed. I surely want to make things easy for our department. My usual class will meet weekday afternoons. Additionally, my weekend course runs from 8:30 to 4:30 on Saturday and Sundays! I'm not sure how educationally or physiologically sound that schedule is. Yet, I've taught it in the past and was shocked to see the great progress the students made. It just goes to show how extremely motivated some of our Professional English Language Development students can be!

I was just saying in this blog this week how I had been out of the classroom for three months. I think it's strange that I'm going to be practically living in one from the month of November. It some strange way, this feels like the hangover for being so relaxed since the beginning of August!

Labels: BCIT, relaxing

Unlike today, the weather was superb yesterday. It was clear and warm. The photo shows my building as photographed from the New Westminster City Hall. Mt. Baker lies about 60 miles away in Washington State.



I experience the, often profound, affects of living in a place where the weather can be bipolar. When the sun is out, I have the overriding feeling that I've got to get outside. It's as if I don't want to waste any of limited times of nice weather. This is followed by overwhelming guilt if I fail to walk around in the sunshine. In the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, seeing the sun is such a precious gift for about two thirds of each year!

Labels: mountains, New Westminster, weather

Quick calculation shows the blog is now is its 216th week. As I have never missed a day, that means there are over 1,500 unique days of blog postings. Granted, some of the entries may lack any throught-proking concepts and, at other times, I've undoubtedly, repeated the exact same thoughts.

Regardless, it is time to mention that even if you've arrived for the first time today, over four years of my yacking doesn't have to be inaccessible. In fact, there's an entire page devoted to sussing out my previously written tidbits of wisdom. You can check by:

typing in a search term,

picking a label,

or choosing a specific week.

Click on the screen image above. Or you may even try adding a customized IE 7 search of my eJournal and images to your toolbar by reading this entry from last year.

Labels: blogging, searching, sharing

This is my final week of freedom before heading back to teach classes. I can be quite content just hanging around. It has, however, been three months since I gave my last final examination. Next week, I'll be back to a routine and frankly am looking forward to it a little.

Interestingly, we were talking with friends a few weeks back about our recent three weeks in Central Europe. We mentioned about how we ran into elderly tourists. They are the ones with copious free time and some with the money to visit faraway places. Conversely, we ran into the Euro-youths on parade. It seems as if the tourists in our age category were in fairly short supply.



I'm really happy that we are able to gallivant around. The trips of young people must be fun but as individuals they often lack the maturity and experiences of the world to appreciate many of the things they see. The elderly have enough life behind them to understand the sights but, unfortunately, are sometimes not physically able to keep up. We saw many tour groups where disabilities prevented older folks from sprinting up the mountains or church towers.

I'm satisfied to have lots of free time at this point in my life. I feel people should be most free from obligations when 35 to 50 years old. I understand what Goldilocks meant. Being not too young and not too old means we're 'just right' for world travel. I realize being in this situation is not possible for some, but it's exactly how things have happened for me.

Labels: Eurotrip 2007, feelings

I was working on cleaning up my email this morning. You know how things can collect if one neglects staying on top of them. Even though Google Mail gives copious storage, I'm not one to archive just anything. The fact I seldom save messages with large attachments is probably due to the fact it was not common in the old days. I could now go into great detail why it's best to keep email data on the Internet rather than on one's hard disk, but I'll take on that topic in a future entry.

Consequently, because of my aversion to attachments, I had marked one email for clean up but hadn't gotten to it. It arrived from my second cousin who I've not seen since childhood. Marti is a bit of a family archivist and was named after my mother. She scanned several pages of photos and attached them to a message sent to me. That was a long time ago, probably at the beginning of the year. Finally, today I copied off the photos and deleted the message. Those scanned images included the one here.

It is my mother as a young girl. I was trying to figure out where it was taken. I think it may have been on Upper Main Street in Sunapee, NH. That building looks like what was called the Community Store when I was in high school. I believe it has all been torn down. If that was indeed the location, I hope mom had good braking ability on skates. Upper Main Street is very steep. The street runs up to Sunapee Harbor. Most people don't think of having to travel up to a lake, so that bit of geography often confuses visitors and summer tourists.

Labels: Google, Mother, New Hampshire, Sunapee