Day 98 -a cold day at home

Spent a few hours in bed today on my day off battling flu type symptoms - feel a lot better now. Ventured outside in the late afternoon "winter" sunshine and snapped this pic of our productive little cumquat tree - not that we do anything with them but they're pretty to look at.

Day 97 Home time

Here's a shot of a section of my school as I was leaving last night. Yes I'm cheating but it's only one day out and I didn't have my camera with me today even though there were some good photo opportunities.

Day 96 Our street and driveway

This pic was inspired by another daily picture blogger's @ http://djimenez-daybyday.blogspot.com/, Day 13. When I first looked at it I thought it was my driveway for a second - without all the nuisance agapanthus that we planted about 20 years ago before we realised what an intrusive and invasive pest they were. My horticulturalist friend Sue periodically tells me I must get a bobcat and skip and get rid of them - it's on the "to do" list.

Day 95 - New School Pics

Coming home today I found this year's school photos of my 2 grandchildren lying on the diningroom table. I just sat and stared at them for ages - how grown up they are becoming. My grandson is a bit of a dreamer and his sister knows her mind exactly - can't you see this in their faces?

Windy Day 94

Stayed inside mostly today - very windy outside and cold. Pics show the big autumnal tree of our neighbours that I can see from my work area. Other trees are swaying over the back of our house. Also had some fun with Comic Life preparing an activity for my Literacy support class tomorrow following their viewing of ET the Extra Terrestrial (when I was at the yr11 Expo on Friday)

Day 92 A Quiet Saturday

Not much happened today, very relaxing, a bit cold for a change. Registered online for the ICTEV conference next month and posted up an event notice on our school Ning. Made a screen capture of the conference logo using Jing, of course.

Day 92 - VCE Career Expo Day

I accompanied the yr11's to Caulfield Race track to a career expo day. It was fairly frenetic but exciting if your life is stretching out in front of you.The bus drove through welcomed rain to get us home where I waited on the hill to be picked up - back to the hills.

Day 91 - Vale Basil

My grandchildren's beloved cat Basil (who was also the kindergarten cat) died today. He was a most extraordinarily affectionate cat - and will be sadly missed by all. This photo shows him smooching up to Penny and Isaac - last year sometime.The other pic is the entrance to our home - which I did take today.On my day off I did not manage to do all the tasks I wanted to do but did rearrange and tidy up our front door area. Nick even noticed it when he came home.

Day 90 - Another Carlton movie

Another trip to Carlton for an atmospheric meal at Tiamo's and a devastating film at the Nova about a young indigenous couple - Sampson and Delilah. On the way home we called into Josie's boutique video shop of arthouse movies.

Day 89 Morning tea and an aussi cocky

Every Tuesday, we treat ourselves to a morning tea in out staffroom area - lifts our spirits a bit. Later in the day Sue alerted me to the cockatoo on the Australian flag totem pole just outside our staffroom, so it's really her pic - even though she is not presently keeping up her daily blog.

Day88 - Home again

What a relief to sit at the kitchen bench, sipping coffee and chatting with Nick. First day back at school after a break is always a little challenging - seems to get harder as the years go by. Gazing absently at some of the objects on my kitchen bench I suddenly experienced an artistic moment and seized the camera.

Day 87 - Orthodox Easter Sunday

Today was Easter Sunday according to the Julian Calendar which the Orthodox Christian churches of the world follow.As my husband is Greek, we have always celebrated "Greek Easter" as well as "Australian Easter" as we have always distinguished them. My pictures however aren't quite the genuine product - they're last year's. I forgot to take my camera today! But really, things don't change much from year to year -although the children change more than the adults.

Day 86 - In the garden

At last - I got to the garden. Some mowing, lots of weeding, some replanting and pruning, lots of raking. I'm feeling a little sore - but pleased with myself. Really must do this more frequently.

Day 85 - Last day of holidays

After spending a considerable amount of time setting up blogs for my students on 21classes, they have just informed us they will be charging us for every blog we have over 20. As I have 26 students in my yr7 class, bless their little hearts, I had to look elsewhere. Sue Waters suggested globalstudent would be our best bet -and I think it will be pretty good. I liked the way 21classes allowed you to preview entries before they were published and the way you could personalise the appearanc eof your blog. Edublogs doesn't appear to allow these functions - but apparently it has lots of other great features. Needless to say I have now spent a considerable amount of time on the last day of my holiday, setting this up for my yr7 students. Oh well...if it works, it's worth it.

Day 84 - Summer's farewell (not the season)

We said goodbye to a young woman on our staff called Summer today. She's a member of that generation who, if they're not happy in a job, move on to try something different.Something my generation rarely contemplated. So you have to admire these adventurous young things. We had a wonderfully pleasant morning tea that overflowed into lunch for some of us. I think we could have just chatted away the afternoon, the atmosphere in this lovely old restaurant in Belgrave, was very conducive to doing just that.

Day 82 - 15th April, Wednesday - feeding chooks and modelling new clothes

We were up in the chook pen and I snapped these of Ishaa in a new outfit. The photos are a bit blurred because my camera was on the wrong setting.

Day 81 -Tuesday 14th April birthday present - yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

I'm minding my grand daughter today and we went shopping for her birthday present - she'll be 6 early next month. She picked out a new doona cover and some bedroom accessories. For her 4th birthday she was very "into" fairies. Her 5th birthday she was obsessed by horses. Now she is very taken by pirates - so this was her choice of theme. No girlie hearts and flowers for her!

Day 80 A parrot in the garden Monday 13th april

Saw this beautiful green, red, yellow,blue rosella outside the kitchen wondow this morning and raced for the camera. He was quite pleased to be photographed - enjoying the acacia leaves too much to fly away in a hurry.

Day 79 - Easter Sunday

Spent at the home my son, oldest daughter and her partner have bought in Warburton. Lovely roast lamb and vegies and lots of hot cross buns for desert. Next week we will celebrate the Orthodox Easter with my husband's family and this will have a distinctive Greek flavour to it. We're a bit of a multicultural family with my daughter's husband having a Dutch connection. One of my brothers married a Kurdish Turkish girl and they're expecting their first child in 2 months - that will give me some fun photo opportunities, all going well!
Pics today show aunty Penny reading to her nephew and niece and a jumble of Steiner toys (my grandchildren attend a Rudolph Steiner school.

Day 78 - An activity packed Saturday

We set out early this morning and finalised our choice of new appliances for our new kitchen and then visited the factory where Carlo, our cabinet maker is working on our new cupboards. We dropped in to see Nick's aunty who lives in Noble Park - such an exotic, multicultural place these days. Then to Oakleigh to collect mum who came back home with us. During a short interlude before heading out again, I finished some yr7 correction on the novel, Hitler's Daughter. If you can double click on the pic you will see the vast range of ability demonstrated by the written responses of my students.You can also pick up errors that I have left uncorrected - don't want to demoralise the kiddies too much!

Day 77 A new rug

Here's our new rug from Afghanistan.My daughter has met an Afghani family near where she lives who sell rugs made back in their homeland. Apparently the man's father acts as a middleman who organizes the collection and exportation of these rugs. My daughter has been assured the rug making industries are home based and do not use exploited labour - but that's hard to be totally confident about. Anyway, hopefully our purchase of this beautiful rug will go to helping someone in that poor punished land.

Day 76 - back to Carlton!

When I went to pay my osteopath this morning, I realised I didn't have my credit card. I remembered the last time I'd used it was the night before in Readings in Carlton. I rang them and yes, it was there.Funnily enough they had a big stack of unclaimed credit cards in their lost property drawer. So back I had to go - at least I had not driven the night before and the run is much quicker in the morning. And East Link is a big help. My pics today are of Readings and my 2 purchases - One for my grandson (Wimpy Kid diary by Jeff Kinney) and I've been wanting to read the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne.

Day 75 - a visit to Carlton

a holiday treat - movie and dinner with friends in inner city Carlton. Saw "Milk" with Sean Penn - it was excellent. Dinner at Shakahari - very delicious Asian vegetarian.shakahari is hindi for vegetarian

Day 74 - Home Day

Pretty much stayed home all day and waded through my mountain of correction - I made some progress today which was comforting.I went in search of something interesting for my blog pic and this is what I decided on. Old pics show our mothers as young women and our parents' wedding photos. One wedding took place in Alexandria, Egypt in 1946, the other in Rockhampton, Qld, Australia in 1945. We never know what destinations the future will bring our way.

Day 73 -New shoes

Grand children's daddy came and picked them up this morning - he's a lovely son in law. My mother and I then drove to a shoe shop in Bentleigh (far from my house but close to mum's) where they stock very comfortable shoes at reduced prices. I bought a pair of black boots, a red pair of sturdy slip ons and some wonderfully cosy slippers.Roll on winter....

Day 71 - a day at Ceres (East Brunswick)

Ceres - Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies, pronounced ‘series’) is a model of a sustainable society located in Melbourne, Australia. CERES shares its name with the Roman Goddess for agriculture.It was the Harvest Festival and Michael was playing so mum and I took the g'children for the afternoon. It was very pleasant with lots of yummy locally grown, organic food.

Day 70 First Day of term holidays

We went to see The Gondoliers at the Alexander Theatre, Monash Uni. Presented by the Savoy Light Opera Company, this was a fun outing. I think Ishaa and Baya enjoyed it, we adults certainly did.I didn't take any pics of this however. The outside shot is our driveway early in the morning and the inside pic is in the evening just before bedtime.

Day 69 - Last day of Term 1

I would have preferred to show you a picture of the heavy rain we experienced today but I did not have my camera with me at the time. Best I could do is this slightly goofy picture of myself in front of my yr11 class this morning. They were earnestly working on an essay test based on the lyrics of Paul Kelly and I was meant to be marking. Just to entertain myself I took this pic but I look a bit like a stunned mullet. It's a bit hard to smile into my computer screen- the kids would have thought I was going a bit nuts.

Day 68 - a Day off to work

This is my day off but all I've done is work! I've got this big pile of year 12 English essays to mark. My year 11's are scheduled to complete a test essay in class tomorrow. I've got lots of year 7 assignments on their first term novel. I don't want to spend the first term holidays correcting papers but that is the reality. In the meantime, I gaze up from my table of work and look longingly at the beautiful day outside and the trees swaying gently in a warm autumn breeze.