As the title would suggest, I go back to school tomorrow. As my colour-coded schedule would suggest, I've got quite the awesome (and at 4 courses, slightly light) schedule, with most of my mornings not starting till late and all of my days finishing early. Ever since midsummer when I built this schedule, the question has been tugging at my mind: why not get a part-time job this year, or at least this semester?
The past week and a half of being between work and school has been filled by a variety of household projects, which I will get into in a moment. However, the art of living without any schedule or structure can sometimes be hard to transition into. Granted, life working as a raft guide, living in a shed in the woods is not exactly what most folks in the white or blue-collar world would consider structured, but for the month of August, it seemed that way. We had been flat out since the very first day of the month, riding the wave of optimism from the amazing weather that the entire island had been graced with for the entire month of July. So despite how busy I have managed to keep myself over the past ten days, I am eager to fill my days as productively as possible.
Perhaps with a schedule releasing me by 3:00 pm everyday, an after-school job is an excellent idea. I have a hard time, however, getting past the notion that such an extra-curricular time-commitment would invariably affect academic performance. Perhaps this is just my personal hang-up, or poor time-management skills making me nervous about losing my potentially fluke-y academic average. Whatever the case, I have decided that the give it a try attitude toward part-time work is probably the best approach at this stage in the game. What's the worst that could happen?
The past week and a half of being between work and school has been filled by a variety of household projects, which I will get into in a moment. However, the art of living without any schedule or structure can sometimes be hard to transition into. Granted, life working as a raft guide, living in a shed in the woods is not exactly what most folks in the white or blue-collar world would consider structured, but for the month of August, it seemed that way. We had been flat out since the very first day of the month, riding the wave of optimism from the amazing weather that the entire island had been graced with for the entire month of July. So despite how busy I have managed to keep myself over the past ten days, I am eager to fill my days as productively as possible.
Perhaps with a schedule releasing me by 3:00 pm everyday, an after-school job is an excellent idea. I have a hard time, however, getting past the notion that such an extra-curricular time-commitment would invariably affect academic performance. Perhaps this is just my personal hang-up, or poor time-management skills making me nervous about losing my potentially fluke-y academic average. Whatever the case, I have decided that the give it a try attitude toward part-time work is probably the best approach at this stage in the game. What's the worst that could happen?
The Whitelaw Struggle Shuffle.
As far as what I have been keeping myself busy with here in St John's over the past week, all I can say is that though there are some real gaps in our furniture inventory, the place is certainly coming together. Aside from a somewhat messy night out on the town that ended in falafel heaven and Cam and I hiking from Pouch Cove to Cape St Francis (approx. 7.3 km), most of our time has been spent on the Oxford Embassy and her furnishings.
First of all, the main floor of the house was already well furnished; thanks to Cam's parents helping us out with their rented mini-trailer when they arrived, we had several large pieces of furniture that would otherwise have been pretty tricky to tie onto the roof-rack of Cam's Ford Focus. In fact, looking around me now I can see that the only thing that has been added to the living room is a leaf in the dining room table and the following series of photos along the wall in the hallway.
We are not yet finished with the living room/dining room area though. As I type this, sitting at the dining table, there is a stack of newly purchased, dollar-bin Marvel comics that will soon be dressing the surface of the table. We did the same thing with a chair we recovered from a neighbour's garbage heap, except instead of comics, we used something even more familiar to us: beer labels.
One of these things is not like the other...
This little beauty is currently sitting in our basement, receiving a few coats of varnish as we plan out how we to do the same thing with a smoother finish on the table with comics.
While all the cool stuff was happening in the living room, I also managed to finally finish off that desk of mine. After four coats of varnish and some modification to the length of its legs, it is now taking up nearly half of one of the smaller bedrooms upstairs, which is serving as our office. However, my bedroom was still remarkably bare. I had not even gotten around to hanging anything on the walls. I remedied this by picking up a $10 dresser, can of paint and some brushes. Just today I picked up some nice blue rope with which I will tie some fancy knots for handles (the dresser came without handles, but was otherwise solid, hence the discount price-tag). Now at least my room has a bit more colour to it, other than my bright orange sheets, that is.
While all the cool stuff was happening in the living room, I also managed to finally finish off that desk of mine. After four coats of varnish and some modification to the length of its legs, it is now taking up nearly half of one of the smaller bedrooms upstairs, which is serving as our office. However, my bedroom was still remarkably bare. I had not even gotten around to hanging anything on the walls. I remedied this by picking up a $10 dresser, can of paint and some brushes. Just today I picked up some nice blue rope with which I will tie some fancy knots for handles (the dresser came without handles, but was otherwise solid, hence the discount price-tag). Now at least my room has a bit more colour to it, other than my bright orange sheets, that is.
Speaking of a splash of colour.
The home-decor spree that has been my hobby since returning to St John's will hopefully continue, it is a lot of fun having the space for arts-and-crafts time and some people around who also enjoy doing it. However, I also look forward to getting out and enjoying the trails and rivers that Newfoundland has to offer over the next year. There is still so much of this island that I need to explore and so much of that lies way away on the west coast. Many more adventures await.
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