Dealing With The Unexpected

It is always hard to know how to react to something that is dropped in your lap. Whether its school related, money related or related to your living situation. Today seems to have been a day where all three were an impact for me.

First off the positive. I finally got my Bursary money!! If only it had come a couple weeks sooner, then I would have been typing this on a macbook. Oh well.

School despite only being two days in looks like its going to be a killer. There seems to be a focus on readings by the profs this semester with a ton of group work to make up the majority of our marks. In fact in one course alone all of my marks are group related, even the self eval. But with a little focus and some many pots of coffee I should be able to follow up my 2 A+’s, 2 A-’s and one unknown mark without concern.

Lastly my living situation. I came home exhausted, I think jet lag may have set in today, to be met by a house guest moments later. A house guest that will be here for a couple weeks (said the roomie vaguely). A house guest that has four legs. Yes my roomie is dog sitting. Did I mention that she didn’t even have decency to ask if I would be alright with having a dog here. I told her that I was having no part of it and that all the responsibility is on her. My biggest problem is that she didn’t ask and that it is making me feel even less at home here then I already did. I have very limited personal space, and now with a dog roaming around that is cut down even more. Not to mention with our busy schedules, I am expecting there to be many presents left by the dog around the apartment. Heaven help if this dog wakes me up during my four day weekends. I will not be a happy camper.

Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs. I would have even said yes to having a dog here for a short while, but two weeks without advance notice is a bit much. I guess all I can do is wait and see. If it becomes too much I guess I will voice my opinion and hopefully the dog will go home.

So that has been my day thus far. I am going to keep this daily posting going until I get swamped, but hopefully now that I have lappy working on campus I can be blogging during class. Yahoo for wireless…boo for Win2K.

Back in Ottawa

So I have finally made it back to Ottawa. No help from Air Canada. Rather then rewriting the story I share with you my email to Air Canada:

While attempting to check in at the Edmonton airport for a flight to Ottawa the flight was canceled due to fog. After waiting in line for a fifteen minutes, I got the counter and the Air Canada Staff was very rude and unhelpful. His name was XXXXX, he was working on station 44 at 1130. While attempting to sort out my possible options, I had my mother on the phone. She happens to be a travel agent, and has been for over 30 years. She was trying to help me out by giving me some flights to ask about and the Air Canada Staff told me “You can deal with her or you can deal with me, and I am the only one who can do anything for you so you should hangup on her” This was very rude. He then continued to treat me with absolute disrespect and didn’t even make an attempt to get me on a flight today or explain the options available to me. I was able to get my flight changed to tomorrow morning instead. After having dealt with him I called my mother again and she told me that while I was at the airport I should get my seat assigned. While waiting in line again to do this, I was able to observe this staff treating other customers in a completely different manner and getting them on flights later in the afternoon for the same day. Once I got to the front of the line again, I was helped by a different staff who had trouble assigning me a seat because she had difficulty in locating the rebooked flight and assigning me. She eventually did confirm my seat 29D and I thought that everything would be fine. However when I went to the kiosk to check in for the flight as I was within the 24 hour time frame I could not. By this time the lines were very long and I opted to leave the airport and try to check in later in the day. When we tried later today we still could not access the reservation so we called Air Canada and after 30 minutes on hold spoke to a very helpful agent who advised that the reason we could not access the reservation was because the ticket had not been reissued. This means an even earlier departure tomorrow morning so that I can stand in line once again to have my ticket issued, when at my first visit to the counter my reservation should have been changed, ticket issued and seat assigned in one transaction in a courteous and efficient manner.

So that was my Monday afternoon. Thankfully my Tuesday flight was a lot less eventful, in fact it was very smooth sailing, if you could sail on clouds. I had an empty seat next to me and a nice Carleton girl in the other seat. Once in Ottawa I made the decision that food was more important then catching an hour of my class. Of course to continue my luck it was pouring rain when I came out of the grocery store. But I had a nice evening of Californication (an entry on its own…later) and an early sleep to get ready for the semester ahead.

2008…Will it be different?

Well it is time to say goodbye to the year that was and say hello to the year that will be. 2007 was a very strange year for me. I went from working full time, to camp for the fifth year, to teacher’s college across the country. Each step has been an important one in the process of finding out who I am and what I want to be doing. I have met more people, good friends, this last year then I ever would have expected to. I hope that I will be able to take these friendships and continue to build on them in 2008. This year is going to be yet another year of transition for me. I will have my education degree within four months, will be moving back across the country shortly after that and hopefully starting a teaching position come September. The summer will also be a change for me. For the first time in five years I will be home for the summer. I hope to take advantage of that and finally get some of my projects underway. I plan to get the jeep running even better and get the truck brought into town so that I can begin to get to show quality.

I hope that 2008 is a great year for everyone and that we can all find the time for each other. Cheers to another great year!