Wacky Bikes!

Saw this on a friend's blog:

Stop the Violence

A local kid created this video in response to violence in his North End Winnipeg neighbourhood.

Let's give him some "views" to show our support.

How Appropriate

A few minutes ago, I cleaned the toilet. Then I came in my office to cross it off The List. When I sat down at the computer, I noticed I had some e-mails to respond to. One was on Ravelry. So I checked the forums while I was there. A friend of mine had posted the following video link:

Age-Activated Attention Deficit Disorder

It was funny. So I posted a response, saying that I must have early-onset... but I was combatting it this break using my List. Then I remembered that I had come in the office in order to cross something off The List. Uh... whoops! I guess The List can't fix everything! ;)

Potato Cannon

Heh... family entertaining itself:

Cats Have Pause Buttons!

Wow....

My Cousin's Video

A video that my cousin helped make:



There's a people's choice award for the GIFTS video with the most views... so if you like this, can you send your friends to watch? :)

Straight, And Rainbow Friendly

I once had a roommate who had been disowned by her Catholic parents when they found out she was gay. Bigots suck. In a way, I kind of feel sorry for people who can't see how wonderful their children are, just because of their orientation.

If you are currently surrounded by bigots, remember that it will get better. There are places with fewer bigots and more friendly people. Hang in there.

How To Be Alone

A friend e-mailed me a link to this... it's lovely:

I hope you enjoyed it. :)

Cute Wool Commercial

Found via Madly Off In All Directions.

Grumpy

Harumph. For some reason I'm grumpy. The day started off lovely, but in the last couple of hours my mood went south. I'm grumping at a student, which is not good. (I'm not actually grumping at him, but I think perhaps I'm also not putting the same effort into gaining his understanding that I otherwise might.) *sigh* An hour and a half to go, and then I won't have to worry about whether I'm grumpy until Monday afternoon. Not that I'll stay grumpy that long, but that I won't have to worry about my ability to explain while grumpy.

Yay! I apparently managed to successfully explain something, even while grumpy. :) (Whether or not I managed to explain it in a way that will be memorable in the exam, I don't know. I normally want to *teach* for understanding, rather than just get past the current program bug.)

*sigh* He keeps saying "okay", but I don't think he really understands.

Knitpicks sent out another pretty e-mail. I went over, and added a whole bunch of things to my cart... which brought it up around $170. Then I clicked "save for later" until it got down to around $100. Then I was good, and put the rest in "save for later" and closed the window.

I want to watch some short YouTube videos, but I'm allowing a student to work in my office between questions... and sound would probably disturb him. (I don't want to use headphones.) I'm not in a lab, this is my "office", and he's here because I let him be here... and yet I don't want to disturb him with my goofing off. (There's nothing wrong with a bit of goofing off between when I'm needed, and I stop the instant someone has another question.)

Grump. I wonder if it's the gloomy weather, or the fact that I'm not getting true understanding from my student? *sigh*

Happy (fill in the blank) Day!

Happy Independence Day to my neighbours to the south!

Did you see that set of giant carved stone busts in the background? That's in South Dakota. If you head north from there, you get to North Dakota. If you head north from *there*, you get to Manitoba... the friendly province I call home. We celebrated Canada's birthday several days ago, back on the first. (Happy belated Canada Day!) I hope you are having a lovely Independence Day, and/or had a lovely Canada Day. I spent Canada Day sleeping late, then working in the garden (both my mom's, and the neighbour's). Today I slept late, and am now doing laundry and other chores. (Well, at the moment, I'm avoiding the other chores, but the laundry is in progress.)

I love the muppets, don't you?

Ah, Spring...

Ah, spring... melting snow, mud, road grime, dust, snow mold, rain, flood warnings... yep, not my favourite season. ;) However, the daffodil shoots are poking up in my mom's garden, so the nice part of spring shouldn't be that far behind.

My computer is running slow as molasses, and since I haven't bought more ram yet, that means it's time to close a bunch of browser tabs... and the fastest way to do that is to get caught up on my "found on flickr" posts. Before I start the flickr posts, here's a YouTube video I found recently:



How awesome is that? I love the comments too! :)

I can relate to these...

See also this Savage Chickens cartoon, on how to detect burn-out in your teachers.

On a more cheerful note, my ADD student was doing really well this morning! :)

Unbelievable!

This has got to be the most amazing dog I have ever seen!

Hilarious!

...but possibly not for younger viewers:

Thanks for the link, prairiedaun!

Wow.

Cool Video

Tighter Purls

Oooo...

Looks like she has lots of other cool tutorials too. I'll have to watch them all... but not tonight.

Weather Magic

Here's the hat I'm working on in order to get the heatwave to break:


Here's another photo (taken before I started the brim) that shows the top:


And my weather magic worked (or, coincidentally, the weather broke). Last night was a dark and stormy night. Well, it was more like late afternoon or early evening, but the clouds made it as dark as twilight, the wind was crazy, and it *poured*. It didn't rain for long, but dad's rain gauge said we got half an inch in that short time. Parts of the city got hail, and there was lightning too. There were tornado warnings, but I don't think we got any of those. Here's what it looked like after the worst abated and it occurred to me to grab my camera:


Today the temperature is *much* cooler, although it was still rather damp out this morning when I left the house.

The The Impotence of Proofreading

Aside: strange... Blogger's create-a-post page is now back to how it was.