Back to Work and Betty Boop- Self-Isolation -Day 8

Here I am with a group of my student teachers and the staff members who supported them taken several years ago.

• Well, it’s back to work for me!  Yesterday I received instructions about what I need to do to make sure my university education students qualify for completion of the practicum course I supervise.  Although I can’t go out to schools to visit them they will be writing up unit plans and lesson plans for my approval and composing reflective essays about their teaching philosophies.  I get to read and grade all this material and then write a report of my own.  
• In talking to friends and family I realize there are many university students out there whose future is uncertain because of COVID -19.  There are medical students who won’t be able to write their final exams and accounting students who won’t be able to complete their certification and future veterinarians who won’t be able to do their community placements. They say the virus may not be as deadly for young people, but it is going to be very hard on them in lots of other ways. 
• Does anyone else have rough hands?  Mine are red and sore and dry from all that handwashing.  I’ve been putting Vaseline on them at night?  Any other good suggestions?
• I finally finished the puzzle I’ve been working on since the second day of our isolation. Puzzling is a bit of a family tradition and I’ve done so many puzzles with my parents, my kids, my grandkids and my sister.  Often when I was working on this one all by myself I was thinking of the fun family times we’ve had puzzling.
• I saw this sign on our evening walk.  I am not sure what it is for but it expresses my sentiments very well.  Yes I am hearing what they say on the news but my mind can hardly grasp the enormity of it.
• The Lynda Barry course I’m working through called Drawing Comics has me drawing different versions of a 1930s cartoon character named Betty Boop. By the way, Lynda Barry was interviewed recently on the CBC show q by Tom Power. Give it a listen. 

Laura Branigan

• I am a bit sad that I finished all the Mobituary Podcasts yesterday.  I just love them!  One of my favourites was about Laura Branigan a popular singer from the 80s.  Although Laura has passed away she returned to centre stage in 2019 when her hit tune Gloria became the victory song of the St. Louis Blues as they made their historic mid-season turn around and won the Stanley Cup. I just can’t get Gloria out of my head now.
  

  Lunch at a tea room with the women I work with at the MCC Thrift Store on Selkirk Avenue

• I can’t volunteer any longer at the MCC Thrift Store because it has closed its doors.  I work there with a group of women from my church.  Our fearless leader Marj sends us a weekly e-mail update but now during the crisis, we’ve all chimed in on the e-mails keeping each other informed about how we are doing in isolation and how the pandemic has changed our lives. It is so nice to keep in touch with each other.  
• We watched the Gordon Lightfoot special aired on CBC last night. The very first music concert I attended as a teenager was one Gordon Lightfoot gave at the Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg. I used to teach his song The Ponyman to my elementary school students and then they would draw illustrations for the different lines of the song and we would make a book out of them. 
• My husband made homemade biscuits for breakfast!  They were great!  I wonder how many pounds I will have gained by the end of our isolation? 

Other posts………..

Going on a Field Trip

Mobituaries

Puzzling- A Family Tradition

You can read all my Self-Isolation Diary Entries Here