Thursday 10:15 AM: Technical Difficulty

 

I was having a class, this morning, with a student in Moldova when I suddenly couldn’t send him typed messages — I type to help the student understand me. The sending of messages was disabled by the AI for a bunk reason.  I needed human interaction to restore it.

I have been showing the students that there a lot of ways to use the word “cross”.  It can be used as a verb, noun and adjective.  I used this lesson years ago in China around Easter time.

Orthodox Easter is a week later.

During this time, I’m reading my Gueranger.

There’ll be no grocery shopping today unless I go myself.  The scheduling of my online classes precluded our being able to do it in the afternoon.

The Wheat Kings look done. They’re down three games to none in their best of seven series with Calgary.  That triple overtime loss was a killer.

I asked Weiming Zhao what he was up to and he told me was being interviewed by CBC.

Reading the Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McCluhan.  I can now understand what he meant by saying the Medium is the Message.  The Phonetic alphabet, for instance, changed the way we perceive.

Second order thinking.

Maundy Thursday: 6:37 AM

 I’ll be talking to my student in Moldova soon.

Annoying day logistics wise, I have to slot in some grocery shopping amongst all the classes I’m teaching today.

Wednesday of Holy Week: 8:10 AM

 

No snow last night.

Today, I’ve already talked to Urumqi, prayed the Rosary, extended my Duolingo streak, and did some Twenix onboarding. I still have some planning to do for my classes with Chile, Toronto, Fredericton, Alberta, Istanbul and Moldova.  With it being Easter, I can do an Easter plan, talking about secular Easter and uses of the word Cross.

I got a welcome to the BSD email.  Soon, I’ll be saying where I was teaching.

Tuesday 8:31 PM: Moon

My son Tony drove us around Brandon in the afternoon.  We did a little shopping.  We saw that the snow that had fallen overnight was melting and the streets were annoying to walk on because of all the puddles and slush.

A shop, near the Real Canadian Super Store, that we walked into had a wall of shame: a wall full of photos of people who were banned from the store.  Asking the man at the till why these people were banned, he said he wished that they were just shop-lifting.  These people, druggies in fact, were acting bizarrely and were even more hard to deal with than just petty criminals, he continued.  Looking at the photos closely, I saw some lost souls who looked absolutely demonic.  How can this be happening in Brandon?

This shop wasn’t far from a section of Victoria Avenue where I witnessed some strange behavior.  I saw a man, with hoodie, crossing the street, so I slowed down. As the man crossed the street, he seemed to give me a one finger salute. The gesture was made in my direction, and so I thought that he was maybe fingering me because I hadn’t come to a full stop.  But he then continued crossing the road to the lanes where cars went in opposite directions to mine — he was giving the finger in the direction of non-existent traffic.  Clearly, he had a grudge against the world or was crazy or was on drugs.

Anyway, I am reading Josef Pieper, Anthony Trollope, Alec Guinness, and Marshall McCluhan.

Tuesday 12:20 PM: Shoveling

 We shoveled the driveways, walkways and puddle points around my Mom’s house.  When I say We, I mean me & my son Tony, who went out and shoveled without my having to prompt him.

Tuesday of Holy Week: 5:28 AM

 I just awoke. I have crossed myself and extended my streak by doing a Mandarin lesson.

Now, I’ll talk to Anhui and maybe Kashgar and maybe Nanjing for 2 hours.

Ugly

 Hate to say it.  But it is.  I was walking in the snow and was ready, in theory, to enjoy it but when I saw the wetness  left on a sidewalk after it had been shoveled, my spirits sunk.

And then there was this;

At the bottom of the snow is slush 

And this:

I suppose it is the price to pay for yesterday’s nice drive.

*I just showed the photos to a man who is in Chile.  Looking at the second photo, he asked if roads were paved in Brandon.  

When to shovel?

 It is morning.  The snow won’t stop till evening.  My son Tony tells me he will do some shoveling today since he doesn’t have school to attend.  Of course, he won’t start shoveling till the snowing stops which may be around dinner time.

I may take an early stab at the shoveling so as to clear the sidewalks.

Just now, I see Dreadlock Man, Brandon’s most well-known homeless person trudging down the street in front of my Mother’s house.  Where did he spend the evening? I wonder.

*Tony, to his credit, did do some shoveling in the day.

Monday of Holy Week: 6:50 AM

 

It’s snowing!  I don’t appreciate it! I liked the look of snow receding.

But it’s not that much, I suppose.  Unless, it continues.  One person has told me a snow storm is coming.

As usual, I extended my streak:

Or a I set a new record.

This morning, I didn’t talk to China.  Tomorrow, I will.  I won’t go so crazy with the classes this Holy Week.

Plans of Holy Week: Prep for the Easter Vigil, finish Twenix onboarding, keep my son Tony usefully occupied (he’s on a spring break), teach the online classes I do have, monitor the news, continue my Lent penances, read, maybe prep for the BSD, pray, be mentally prepared for the fires and wild cards that life throws at me, be ready for the unexpected, pray, and pray.

Road Trip

Riding on mostly empty roads on a Sunny Sunday afternoon, my son Tony driving, was nice.  I had a moment where I just felt at peace.

 We drove through Bossevain, Deloraine, and past Hartley.