foolfillment: the blog

Well, I thought I was fairly safe from this meme but Armin Grewe who writes Ministry of Propaganda and the Islay Blog tagged me to come up with 5 things you don’t know about me. This is hard because of the varied (if limited) readership that I have, my parents read this, as do two of my brothers - so not unsurprisingly they know a lot about me, let’s give it a shot anyway.

1. I was once (2001 maybe?) the 39th fastest person in Britain over 200m breaststroke and 45th over 100m breaststroke, or thereabouts, It doesn’t sound much but I like to think it was pretty good. I was in similar positions for the years around that time.
2. I took part in the procession at the opening ceremony of the Scottish Parliament, flanking Robin Harper
3. I once served a desert at work with Brown Sauce instead of chocolate sauce because the chefs hadn’t cleared the cold kitchen completely before dinner service - and I didn’t check.
4. I’m a natural blonde, I just dye my hair ginger to continue a national stereotype.
5. The first single I bought was ‘The more you ignore me, the closer I get’ by Morrissey

Now, I was scratching the barrel there, so one of those aren’t true and it’s up to you to guess which one, although it’s fairly obvious. Now, the next challenge is to come up with 5 people to tag. Let’s go for Ollie Bray, Robbie Alexander, Christine McIntosh, Gordon McLean, and Neil Winton.

[tags]5 things tou didn’t know about me, brown sauce, Scottish parliament, Morrisey, Meme, swimming, breaststroke[/tags]

This strength of belief should be commended:

“My immediate thought was that it can’t be Father Christmas because it is a day too late, but it was really frightening.”
Source: BBC NEWS | Dumfries is shaken by earthquake

I lent my desktop PC to my parents when theirs went belly up a while ago, shortly after that they managed to get mine to stop working too, so since I’ve been home I’ve been trying to get it back to some sort of useful working order for them again.
As well as all the hair-tearing moments there have been waiting for it to do things (one stick of memory died so it was fairly slow) I also managed to stick my thumb in the the CPU fan last night by not looking what I was doing. It could have been a lot worse though, it didn’t catch my nail or draw too much blood.

I recently heard about a school where they are missing their technician after he had a similar lapse of concentration and lost the end of his pinky. It makes me shudder to think about it. As teachers we are expected to be able to use all the machines in the technician’s store but we don’t really get the experience while at uni and even when out on school placement I’ve found that none of the teachers ever used the planer/thicknesser or the table saw.

Anyway, on that cheery note I’ll wish you all a Merry Christmas and I’ll be back in the New Year.

[tags]school, woodwork machines, CPU fan injury, Merry Christmas[/tags]

It’s all dawned on me. Again. I’m adding my details to the GTCS website so that I can become registered. One of the first screens is this one.

I think I might leave it until next week. It’s got a certain feel of finality to it. I’m pretty certain I know what I’ll put down but I still can’t bring myself to do it yet.

The other day I phoned up my teacher from when I was a pupil to ask his thoughts about returning. He asked me a question that caught me off guard : “Are you any good?”
It’s funny, I was really nervous while the phone was ringing, I don’t know why, my hands were visibly shaking. As soon as we got talking though I felt fine about the whole thing, while I don’t think I answered his question very well I feel comfortable enough with what my answer would be if I were asked again. Maybe that helps me make up my mind. I’ve got a similar nervous feeling now, I don’t normally get nervous about anything in this way.

It seems like such a big decision that I’m not prepared for, despite the fact I have been considering it for a long time. My mind hasn’t changed drastically recently so I’m just going to go ahead and fill in the form, wish me luck.

Update:

Well, I’ve done it. No £6k bounty money for me. All I can do now is wait until May when I should find out which council I get allocated to.