First day back at school

So both the kids seemed quite happy about their new school.  They liked the fact there was going to be separate music and art classes (where they would actually travel to these rooms), and my son thought it was cool that gym would be first thing in the morning.  About the only thing they weren't crazy about was the very small, overcrowded lunch room.  We probably won't know how things are actually going until a few weeks in when we meet the teachers, but this seems to be a good school, basically equivalent to the local magnet school they went to in Chicago and definitely a step above their school in Vancouver.  Speaking of Vancouver schools, I think the strike/lockout is going to run at least two more weeks and perhaps longer.  The premiere is really determined to break the back of the union, and that is going to take time.  All I can say is that the people of B.C. in their wisdom voted the Liberals in (though not Clark's home riding), and this shouldn't come as a huge surprise.  Were I still a teacher, I would be far more disappointed in the union leadership, which seems totally incompetent to me.

I experienced an unfortunate incident on the Queen streetcar where a full-fledged fight broke out in the front, and then the man who stayed on the streetcar after the other one fled insisted on filing a police report and having the driver as a witness.  So the streetcar went out of service and it was quite a long wait until the next one.  What really irks me is that the weather was dry enough in the morning and late afternoon for me to have ridden my bike (avoiding this scene and getting much-needed exercise) but it was going to rain in the early afternoon (and indeed it just poured around lunchtime).  Since I don't have a sheltered place to leave my bike, I really couldn't ride.  I just have to figure this out, since it is going to be an on-going issue.

On a more positive note, we have all the paintings hung (sans one more in the basement) and the boxes are basically stashed away.  I will need to make one more cardboard run to get a bunch of empty boxes out of the kitchen (and this might be a Saturday-type task if I don't end up working in the suburbs Thurs or Friday), but otherwise the progress feels quite real.  So two months in, this has finally gotten to be a liveable house.  So on to the basement, which definitely has a long way to go, simply because it is so hard to maneuver around the boxes that are still filled with stuff to get more stuff onto the shelves.