March Break

It's now Day 3 of March Break - the greatest, most glorious idea in the history of mankind, at least from the perspective of a professor or teacher.

The break comes at the most perfect time possible -- just when you're about to turn into a homicidal maniac wielding an axe, the break comes along. February may be the shortest month of the year, but it literally feels like the longest month of them all. It's the time of the year when ideas turn to mush, the shine and anticipation of a new school term has completely worn off, the learners start to get rooted in their same old habits, coworkers start to get complacent, and after weeks of crappy snowy weather, people in general start to get super-cranky. Boom, it's break time. I can put away the virtual Uzis now.

It helped, too, that Pene and I went down to Niagara Falls for a two-day, one-night visit to Niagara Falls this past weekend. We found a nice deal at the Courtyard overlooking the Falls - the low price included a $45 voucher to The Keg Steakhouse and an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet - and the Courtyard has a very nice buffet, not like these cheaper places you'd find all over town. The weather was perfect as well, so we did a lot of walking around, just left the car behind at the hotel and strolled down the main street, into the casino (netted a profit of $5 when it was all said and done - I didn't go solely to win $ though), to the Hershey chocolate store, and picked up a few souvenirs to take back to the kiddos. Then we went up to the outlet mall and picked up a few useful things for home, then finally took a drive up the Niagara Parkway to visit my great-great-great-grandfather's printing press museum and eventually ended up in Niagara-on-the-lake. Walked around Niagara-on-the-lake and browsed around in shops, loaded up on birthday gifts for my mom and other members of the family.

I'm currently holding off on doing must-do items around the house for as long as I can - hey, you only get so much time for yourself during a March Break! - before I'm off to Rochester, NY, for the day on Friday as I'm taking two learners there for an open house at R.I.T. Should be fun at R.I.T. - not only will it be good for the learners to get a look at the school they'll be attending next year, but also an opportunity for me to meet up with the international admissions counsellors to open up a pipeline for future learners to go there and see how we can adapt our program to facilitate learning opportunities for prospective students. With the economy in the crapper, we've got more and more people interested in upgrading their technical skills (and no, no plans to immerse learners in the writings of Anton Chekhov).

Five freakin' days left till I'm back in my classroom again.