Personal stuff

A little over a week ago, my sister-in-law died. And over the last week or so, I must have retold the story of how she and my brother met a half-dozen times. (I should note that he's claimed, before, that it's not my story to tell. Given that the story takes place at my pseudo-wedding party, though, I think it's fair to suggest I have some ownership of it.) It's short, but it's worth repeating and recording.

At some point during the night of this party, my brother and his friend started to talk about how cute one of the servers was. They were, of course, all talk - neither one actually had the guts to say anything to her.

Finally, the wife of another friend, who was tired of listening to them, decided to approach the girl and tell her that both of these guys were interested in getting her number. But she had to choose just one of them.

So, she asked her co-worker, which one should she choose: 'the cute guy or the one in the suit?' (Her co-worker said you should "always" pick the suit.)

She chose the cute guy.

*     *    *

My daughter - who's now closer to four than she is to three, but was born in January and can't start school until next fall - was moved to a new classroom in daycare last week. The daycare has (i think) four different levels, and she's graduated from the third (pre-school) to the fourth (kindergarten - thusly called because the kids are at least three-and-a-half and because the majority of kids in the class are actual kinders, doing half-days at the school and the other half here).

For the most part, she's been really excited about this - she has a couple friends in the class (though the number of kids is much smaller and the number of friends is, accordingly, lower) and the daycare decided to acclimatize her first, having her visit for a couple hours every day for a week beforehand.

But now she realizes that the move is for keeps, and she mentioned both yesterday and this morning that she wants to go to "my classroom" - meaning the pre-school room. It's not that she doesn't like the kinder class, it's just that it doesn't feel like home, yet.

The funny thing, for me, is that I'm feeling the exact same way. This fall is the first in more than six years where I'm not teaching at York University. (Before May, I had taught there for more than four years consecutively, with a break of no more than a few weeks in any one year.) But I am teaching at the University of Toronto, though in a very different faculty (Engineering vs. Humanities) and a somewhat different capacity (a few not-quite-traditional teaching roles).

I actually really like it, here, and the work seems interesting... but it doesn't quite feel like home.