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Category: life

This one’s for Betsy …

You know who you are.  ;)

I can’t believe it’s been … wow.  Something like 7 weeks straight of just Twitter spew entries.  Ugh.  Sorry about that.  It’s been a busy summer.  We went to 3 powwows, ziplining, my sister and her boyfriend moved from California to Portland to Saskatoon, my other sister moved from Calgary to Saskatoon, my other sister hurt her ankle and is now on medical, my cousin had her baby, my niece had HER baby, and my kids are back in school as of today.

Oh yes, and I’m back teaching again this week.  *sigh*

Oh AND my computer’s HDD up and died on me, so I’m without a computer at home.  WOE!  As soon as I get some downtime, I’ll see if I can reformat and salvage it.  Bleh.

Hopefully, I’ll have time later for a proper update.  In the meantime, if you haven’t already, you can catch up via the Twitter feeds.  :P

No Comments by sharon on August 26, 2010
filed in life, technology, work
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Novel Update

And by novel, I mean my writing, not as in amusing.  Although, I suppose it may be amusing … but not really.

So, here’s the deal.   Every November there’s this challenge called NaNoWriMo which is short for National Novel Writing Month.  It started in the US, but has since expanded to an international thing thanks to the internet.  Now, all over the world, aspiring and established novelists attempt to write a 50,000 word novel (or novella) in the space of one month – 12:00:01 November 1 to 12:00:00 November 30 to be more exact.  (This is an annual event should you find yourself reading this and feel so inclined to participate yourself.)

I’ve participated a few times over the years since discovering it myself, but I have yet to win.  BUT … this past year is the closest I’ve ever come at roughly 10K words.  Most years I make it to about 5k or less, so I was pretty proud of myself.  Even better, I kept writing.  I’m now up to 15,000 words and counting!

In fact, I’m about halfway through my first draft.  I am already making plans for the second draft too!  I’m so exciting about this story, I can’t even begin to tell you.  :D

That isn’t even the best part … the best part is that I have plans to write MORE once I’m finished this story!  SEQUELS!  And another TWO stories separate from this one altogether!  I don’t even know where these stories are coming from!  It’s like I just started writing and all these ideas started coming out.  It’s so weird.

Of course, I may all be for naught as I don’t have any plans to actually publish any of these.  lol  I may not even get to writing anything other than the one novel I’m currently working on.  For now, I’m just enjoying the creative outlet.  I guess we’ll just have to see.  *sigh*

No Comments by sharon on July 7, 2010
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A belated Happy Canada Day to one and all!

Yeah, I’m like – *checks calendar* – 5 days late.  Meh.  I had a busy weekend.

Over the weekend I celebrated my boy’s 6th birthday, celebrated Canada Day at Diefenbaker Park with my family, helped my sister move into her new place, cleaned my room, and went to a powwow in Poundmaker.  Good times.  But as you can clearly see, it was a very busy weekend.

So, let’s go over this one at a time, shall we?  :)

My little boy is getting bigger!  How did he get to be SIX already?!  Oh, man.  Crazy!  He had a good day though.  He woke up to his first present, a video game I bought him called Ninjabreadman.  :P  He’s totally in love.  I had given him his other video game as an early present because I couldn’t wait.  lol  It was a Where’s Waldo game.  Both are for the Wii console.

On July 1st (aka Canada Day here in the Great White North), we packed our SUV with my sister’s things and moved her out to Saskatoon, which is also where there’s a big to-do every year in Diefenbaker Park with fireworks, a free concert, food booths, and all sorts of awesome things.  It was a bit pricey, but anything for my handsome little guy!

We had a lot of fun, and I got some great pictures of the fireworks, and the kids had a ball on the rides.  Not to mention, the food was aaaaaawesome!  :D

I’m sad that my boy is getting so big, but I’m also happy to see him grow and evolve over these past few years.  It’s a true blessing.  I thank his parents every day for their gift to me.

*sniffles*

Anyhoo … now that my one sister (the youngest one) is out and into her new place, I have my OTHER nephew coming in.  :)  At least for a few days.  My older sister is off to Hawaii for her brother’s wedding (no relation between that brother and I – long story), so my younger sister (the one who lives with me) are going to keep her son for a bit.  Confused yet?  Excellent.  lol

Let’s just go with this: I have a ton of sisters and lovely nephews, all of whom I love and cherish deeply.  lol  So yes, I’ve been terribly busy lately!  And in between all this, my sister (the one who lives with me) hurt her ankle and has been hobbling around on crutches, my kids finished the school year (both passed – yay!), and I went to Calgary for the conference AND to Meadow Lake for a day to teach an ITE class.  WHEW!

Oh!  And my computer at home up and died.  I still need to fix that. :/

I think I need to lie down for a bit …

No Comments by sharon on July 6, 2010
filed in life
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Semi-Update

I know I promised an update, but it’s been a very busy week for me.  Busy month, really.  And here it is, July already.  Crazy!

Proper update tomorrow.  I SWEAR!  I have a whole whack of interesting things coming up this week month.  I have an entire backlog of cool posts planned, and I cannot wait to get them out!  Just see what I have planned:

  • Conference in Calgary with Cisco
  • PC v. Mac debate: Yes, I’m a PC
  • My boy’s birthday! He turned 6 on Canada Day!
  • My novel(s), and what I have planned for them
  • A webseries I want to write/film some day
  • Creative Commons Licensing

I have a whole lot to say on each of these, and I can’t wait to get these posts out.  I’ll probably start with the birthday one tomorrow.  :)  My little man.  *sigh*  When did he get so big?!

Until then …

No Comments by sharon on July 3, 2010
filed in life, technology, website, work
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sharonangus.com is back! Woo!

Well, I didn’t win the lottery.  Boo-urns.  The jackpot for the LottoMax was $50+ million, but I kept forgetting to buy a ticket as I’m not a big lottery player.  My sister did buy a ticket, but only bought ONE!  *SIGH*  Then when I checked Twitter this morning, the CBC headlines said the jackpot would be split between a ticket here in Saskatchewan and one in Labrador.  I got excited for a second.  :P

But it looks like I’m going back to work on Monday.  *woe*

Anyhoot …

So, the site was down for a week and it looks like I lost a post or two.  Nothing groundbreaking or super awesome, so that’s cool.  I was mostly concerned about my Steampunk post, but that made it out alive, so I’m happy.  :)  I did lose my last Twitter backup, but I’m pretty sure I can do that one manually later today, so you may see two “Weekly Twitter spews” in a row for this week.  Just ignore them.  ;)

What happened was, I moved servers as my totally awesome host (and I’m dead serious about that, he’s totally AWESOMESAUCE) decided to close down his seller account, and move onto his friend’s hosting account.  And his new host agreed to take me on as well.  So now I have a new TOTALLY AWESOMESAUCE HOST.  <3  I am surrounded by AWESOMESAUCE and I can’t believe how fortunate I am in this regard.

So a huge thank you goes out to both Mark and Brian!  <3

Oh, but anyways, what happened with the site going down … that was TOTALLY MY FAULT!  lol  When they moved the servers, I ended up having to go to Calgary for a conference and wasn’t around to switch the DNS to the new servers.  And when I got back, I then had to head up north to Meadow Lake to teach a class for a day.  When I got back from there, I was totally brain dead and kept trying to log into the wrong place to do that.  DUR.  I felt really stupid.  When I finally did realize my mistake (after being corrected so sweetly by Mark lol), I forgot my password to my GoDaddy account.  Good times.

But obviously I have finally figured everything out, and things are now a-okay.  WHEW!  *kermit flail*  Yaaaaaaaay!

And hopefully, once I have recovered my last Twitter spew, and I’ve cleaned up my living room (it’s chaos up there!), I’ll do a proper post about my trip to Calgary because it was totally interesting in all sorts of ways as it was a conference about Cisco Telepresence and its role in modern education.  Oooooooh.  ;)

No Comments by sharon on June 26, 2010
filed in life, technology, twitter, website, work
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It’s mah birfday!

Woo!  I’m 33 today!  *shimmies*

And as an early birthday present, my baby sister came home from the States last night!  I went and picked her up in North Battleford.  It was awesome.  I missed her so much!

I am so tired today though since I’ve actually been home sick for the past two days.  I have to head to work so I can catch up on some stuff.  Then tomorrow, we’re off to Saskatoon to pick up my comics I have on order at my favourite comic shop, watch the A-Team movie which comes out today, and have dim sum!  Wooo!  Can’t wait!

I hope everyone has a great day. <3

1 Comment by sharon on June 11, 2010
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Wow, that’s addictive …

And that was a bad pun.  lol

Yes, I’m talking about World of Warcraft, (aka WoW).  When I first started, I had about 3 or four characters that I played off and on, no real loyalty to any of them.  I did favour my two elf hunter characters, the Alliance night elf and the Horde blood elf, but I played both equally in the beginning.

Friends who have been playing forever, one in particular, have told told me that “everyone eventually goes Horde.”  At first I believed him, but then I saw the fallacy in his argument because it seemed quite a few of the Alliance servers were full to maxed out.  So that seemed somewhat inaccurate.  Not to mention, I have fallen head over heels for my Night Elf Hunter, which is an Alliance character.

Sure, my Blood Elf Hunter is pretty cool too, but she just didn’t grab me the way the Night Elf did.  Not sure why.  She even has all the cool stuff: a dragon pet, better professions (which I just learned yesterday thanks to a sick day), and a nicer haircut.

But in the end, I just liked my Night Elf better.  I like the friendly Alliance players (a lot of them will just run past and heal you for fun); there’s a sense of camaraderie missing from the Horde players. Plus, I got a wolf as my pet!  His name is Mahihkan!  :D  It’s corny, I know, but I’m wolf clan and I gave him the Cree word for wolf.  :P

As for the cool haircut and professions, I stopped in at the barber in Stormwind City this weekend and got a snazzy new hairstyle and I think I’ll just unlearn my crappy professions and learn the cool ones.

That’s right, I have a main!  My Blood Elf is now my alt.  Woo!  I’m officially a WoW nerd.  Go me?

No Comments by sharon on June 1, 2010
filed in life, pop culture, technology
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Happy Treaty Day!

Treaty Day

Treaty Day

Well, Monday today is Treaty Day here in Thunderchild, Saskatchewan!  Happy Treaty Day, Thunderchild! This year is a little special because it is also Thunderchild’s Centennial here in this particular spot.  AND it’s National Aboriginal Day on Sunday!!  Yaaaaaaaaay! (I’m re-posting this from last year. Most of the information is still and always will remain relevant, just not the Centennial part.)

When the Treaties were negotiated, they bestowed rights and responsibilities on both First Nations and Euro-Canadian settlers – we are all treaty people.

- OTC website (http://www.otc.ca/ABOUT_TREATIES/We_Are_All_Treaty_People/)

Thunderchild First Nation is located in Treaty 6 Territory.  First a little history lesson:  In August 1879, Chief Piyesiw Awasis and his headmen signed an adhesion to Treaty 6 at Sounding Lake.  Chief Piyesiw Awasis was one of Chief Big Bear’s followers, but starvation and sickness eventually led him to adhere to the treaty.

Well, when he signed adhesion, he was given land for his people, but it was not the land here nearby Turtleford.  No, the original Thunderchild First Nation 115A was located by Delmas, Saskatchewan.  But that land was desired by farmers in the area, and we were moved out into this land in 1909.  Which is why this is called Thunderchild Indian Reserve 115B.

There is a whole book about the story called Outside the Women Cried written by Jack Funk.  I totally recommend it!  I have a copy if anyone wants to borrow it sometime.  :)

Now, traditionally, Treaty Day was the day where the people gathered and received their Treaty materials for the year.  Including their $5 (big bucks back in those days, thank you inflation), their flour, snare wire, lard, bullets, etc.  These days, it’s pretty much a day of solidarity and a pretty show.  We are celebrating our relationship with the government, our continued rights – as long as the grass grows, the sun shines and the rivers flow.

Treaty Day now is less about the survival for the year, and more about face painting, neckbone eating contests, informational tables and packets, and reminders of the past, jokes about the box of bullets and snare wire.  I just wish people would take more time to stop and remember what it really is about, learn the source, read the Treaties.

And in case you haven’t, here’s your chance:

Read the full post »

No Comments by sharon on May 18, 2010
filed in life, linkedin
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Bloggers Without Makeup

So today there is some meme thing going around called Bloggers Without Make-up Day. The idea is that while we as bloggers are honest with our lives, but not always so honest with our appearance. We are often familiar with not only the internet, but our computers as well and we can and do take advantage of that. well, that and old-fashioned make-up.

To better love ourselves, we as a blogship are making today special. So here is me:

No Comments by sharon on May 14, 2010
filed in life, pop culture, twitter, website
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Happy birthday to us ALL …

It’s that time of year again!  Yeah, my birthday.  I do this every year; I start reminding everyone that my birthday is coming up.  It’s an old habit from when I was a kid and someone forgot my birthday.  ISSUES!  lol

Anyway, I think I’m going to change things up this year.  Rather than remind everyone it’s my birthday so I’ll get tons of presents (which is never my reasons for reminding everyone), I’m going to run around reminding everyone so they’ll donate to charities on my behalf.

While I’ve been pretty broke over the last few weeks, I have to admit that the past year has been been pretty amazing for me.  I’m a really lucky woman.  I may be an aboriginal woman from the reserve, but I’m also an intelligent person, born to upper middle class parents, and I have the skills, training and opportunities that have allowed me to lead a pretty amazing life so far.  I may have my problems, but they aren’t insurmountable.

I want to show my appreciation for my life by giving to others rather than for asking for more.

Of course I want presents (I’m not lying here), we all want more, but really, do I need more?  No, probably not.  If I’m honest, I could point to my Etsy wishlist, or my other wishlist with my dream bike and stuff, but those are all things I could probably eventually get for myself some day.  Why put the onus on someone else?

Why don’t I just donate money myself, you may ask?  Well, I have!  I donate all throughout the year, in fact.  This is my chance to get a lot of people to donate a little all at once, which will hopefully equal a lot.  And it will make me feel all warm and fuzzy.  And will hopefully make you feel warm and fuzzy as well!  We all win!  Woo!

Happy birthday to us all!

LINKS

Canadian Red Cross

Doctors Without Borders (Canada)

Sanctuary for Kids

No Comments by sharon on May 12, 2010
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