My rollercoaster life...

My tame life suddenly became quite active yesterday. With some high highs and some low lows. And it doesn't look as though it will calm down for a while, or a least for another few days.

I have been applying for jobs in the local school district here, and got on the substitute teacher listing about two weeks ago. While that was exciting, I have yet to receive a single phone call from a teacher looking for a sub for a class. At about the same time a few part-time jobs surfaced within this school district. Seeing that substitute teaching wasn't quite as fulfilling as I had hoped it would be (ie. me sitting at home doing exactly what I did before I got on the sub list) I applied for both of these jobs. I got a call to be interviewed for the first job last Thursday, as a 0.5 (that means I'd be working half time) teaching job in a 5/6 split class teaching mainly Language Arts and Social Studies. I was hopeful, but didn't get my hopes up too high for this job. What I was really hoping for was the second job: a 0.65 teaching job where I would do the random odd jobs around the school, as it would seem, including Grades 1-6 Music, Grade 5 Math, Grade 1/2 Language Arts, and one afternoon a week of Kindergarten. On Sunday night I got a call from the principal of the first school to say that although, they really liked me in my interview, they had chosen someone with more experience. It was a bit sad, but I wasn't crushed.

At this point I was just hoping that I would get called for an interview for the second job. And this happened. On Monday evening, I got a call from the Principal of Busby Elementary School to come in for an interview. She said that she had spoken with the principal of the other school I had interviewed at and that they thought maybe I would be a good person to interview for this position. So we arranged for an interview on Tuesday afternoon...aka yesterday. When Julian came home for lunch, I drove him back to work and then took the car for the half hour drive to Busby, AB. The interview went well. I was pretty nervous, but having already gone through the process once, I was feeling fairly confident. The principal and secretary of the school were both very nice (the principal is also the Kindergarten teacher of the school...how mean could she be?) and I felt pretty comfortable there. So I interviewed, and went home again. About 20 minutes after I got home, I got a call from the principal and she OFFERED ME THE JOB!!! Of course I excitedly accepted and made tentative plans to go in tomorrow to shadow the teacher I am taking over for. The job isn't supposed to start until Oct. 16, but apparently the lady I'm taking over for is pregnant and her baby dropped on the weekend, which prompted her to insist that the principal find someone to take over ASAP.

So yes...much rejoicing occurred in our little apartment, which included me dancing and jumping around excitedly and telling random people on MSN that I am in fact EMPLOYED!!! Now at this point I must explain that this was shaping up to be one of the best days in a long time because not only did I get the job I wanted, but also, one of my favourite a capella groups, a Finnish group called Rajaton was coming to Edmonton and we were going to their concert!! It really couldn't get much better at that point.

At 4:30 I went to pick up Julian from work and told him my great news. Immediately we started talking about how we would need to get a second car so we could both have convenient transport to and from work. On our way home we were going to stop by the recycling depot to drop off some cardboard boxes that had been sitting in the car. As I went to turn into the Recycling Depot the car stalled...and then it wouldn't start again. This was bad news. But not terrible. We had a similar problem before and last time we just left the car for about half an hour and then when we came back it started again. We were supposed to meet the rest of our jazz choir at 7:00 in Edmonton, and if we left by 5:30 we could make that. So we carried our boxes out and then tried the car again. Nothing. Okay...so maybe it just needed to sit for longer. Meanwhile we figured we would start to make our way home, me steering and Julian pushing the car. This went well at first, until we came to a stop sign, directly followed by a slight incline. We got about 10 or 20 feet before we gave up pushing the car up this now-not-seeming-quite-so-slight incline. At this point we figured we'd give it one more chance and give it a good half our to calm down before trying to start it again. Julian would stay with the car, while I walked home (about a 25 minute walk) and got dinner started. At this point we could see that we were going to miss our 7:00 meeting time with our group, but this wasn't the end of the world. The actual concert didn't start until 8:00 which gave us another hour to play around with. So I went home and put a pizza in the oven while I waited for Julian to come home...best case scenario, he would wait the half hour, and then would be coming in the door about the time when the pizza was coming out of the oven.

Sadly, this was NOT the case. I got home, made the pizza, called a few people from our choir to say we wouldn't be meeting at 7:00. The pizza came out of the oven, and Julian still was not home. At this point I was starting to get a bit worried. I ate my pizza while I waited...and waited...and finally around 6:15 Julian came home with the news that the car didn't start. However, he was able to go back to his office and call a co-worker who lives nearby to borrow his car for the evening. It takes about an hour and a half to drive from Barrhead to Downtown Edmonton, so we still had time to get there before the concert started, Julian ate his pizza, we checked on the car one last time (it didn't work...surprise!) and to fill up this new car (a badly rusted 1981 Toyota Celica that did not lock) with gas. We raced down the highway, with mixed feelings of excitement that we might actually make it to the concert and worry and disappointment in the performance of the beloved purple Neon.

We pulled into the underground parking lot of the Winspear Centre at 7:56 and ran up several flights of stairs to grab our tickets and race into the auditorium and make it to our seats just as the lights were starting to dim. This is where the story gets happy again, because Rajaton was everything I expected them to be. It was a really fabulous concert and they sang most of the songs I expected them to sing and a few that were a new and pleasant surprise. The highlight of the evening was when my old choir, Kokopelli, was invited up on stage to sing 2 songs with the group, and a good friend of mine Jen Kinghorn got to sing a duet with one of the men of Rajaton. It was absolutely incredible!



So that was yesterday...today was quite a day too but I still have to do several things before the day is over. My choir gets to do a workshop with Rajaton tonight...much needs to be done...i will let this post be continued soon with the events of today...once they finish happening...