too long, too busy

i'm sorry for the lack of posting. it's the end of the summer and certain things are slowing down before, no doubt, picking up again with the beginning of the cooler weather.

things like sports. i'm leaning towards playing both hockey and volleyball again this winter. keeping myself busy with sports will help slow down the passage of time. honestly, without anything going on this summer (ignoring the occasional basebal game i played in) the days melted together and passed very quickly. i very much miss having things to do, even though sometimes i wish i had nothing.

the lesson learned is this: if i don't want to go one night, i won't go. taking a game off here and there is not a crime so signing up for these sports can only be a good thing for me.

my mind is not entirely made up but you can tell which way i'm leaning. i have hardly any time left to decide on volleyball but another 2 weeks to decide on hockey. i plan on using the whole time to think about it.

but now i really must get back to work. too bad work didn't take a break this summer.

harry potter

i finally finished reading all 7 harry potter books. the 7th was published july 21st so it took me just over a month to read all 7 and just over a day to read the 7th. not bad.

i am happy with the way the series ended. everything was wrapped up nicely. the whole series was obviously so well thought-out it was amazing. i wouldn't mind if some other author came in and wrote a book to pick up where the 7th ended, just to know what happened right after.

it was a whirlwind of a month though and i'm definitely starting my harry withdrawl. i might have to peruse the internets for some more reading.

this series will probably be THE series of our generaion, and by "our" generation i mean anyone alive right now who can read. so if you haven't read it, go out and buy yourself the books or borrow them and get on the harry train!

the call

saturday morning i slept in. j set the alarm and woke early to go watch some cars racing. i stayed in bed until 11 or so. finally got up and made myself pancakes. i had just finished when i got the call.

i hurried to put everything away - can't leave anything out with our cats - and rushed out the door. the short distance felt immeasurably long, especially when caught behind people driving the speed limit. i'm close, i come over a little uphill to see flashing lights from a cop car and an ambulance. i can't get there quickly enough.

i wait while a painfully slow van passes through the intersection so i can turn left into the gas station where i know i can park. i throw the car in park and don't even remember turning the engine off. i raced across the gas station and crossed half the road to j, who was being led by a paramedic and a cop to the ambulance. we hugged hard. he was okay.

thankfully i was allowed into the ambulance where the paramedic took j's pressure and asked him some questions. after declining a trip to the hospital, we left the ambulance.

then i saw our car. it was straddling the median with a light standard on the median beside it.



he's still not entirely sure what happened. he was turning right onto the street and the back end kicked out. he tried to correct it but the throttle stuck and he ended up careening up onto the curb and finally into the light standard. in slow motion, he looked over at the light standard. it started teetering and finally fell away from him, across three of the oncoming lanes.



he turned off the car, got out and called 911. a couple of cop cars and an ambulance showed up. a cop moved the light standard onto the median. i showed up soon after.

j was badly shaken but otherwise unhurt. no cars were hit by the light standard and no charges were laid. we were able to go home just as the tow truck was taking our car away. i drove nice and slow and didn't say much. you never know with boys how they're feeling and what will set them off.

the whole time i was thinking to myself that it could have been so much worse. he could have died. he could have killed someone else. he could have been charged with reckless driving. he could have wrecked our new car. the possibilities are endless.

once we were talking again and being somewhat normal, we laughed about just having to deal with the insurance company a couple days ago, at least that's how it feels. we got rear ended only two weeks ago and still haven't sorted that all out. and now this.

we should find out today or tomorrow about the car. our insurance will pay the city to replace the light standard but not to fix our car. that will be up to us and will depend on a bunch of things. but if j sticks to what he's thinking now, he won't ever drive that car again.

we shall see. we shall see.

what happens in vegas...

my interview went well. i got mega nervous beforehand and was super hot during, but it's over and i only lied once. (i lied in my last important interview (for my current job actually) and panicked about it for a couple weeks after. this time i know they aren't going to be asking my references about it.) so it's over. you'll know when i hear back, if i hear back.

in other news, i was asked to play on a city hockey team. i'm seriously considering it but don't need to decide until september 13th, which happens to be the first practice night. good hockey is tempting!

but it's really hard to think about playing hockey or doing anything else when all i want to do is sleep. i am not sleeping enough (or well enough) and have no energy. i'm partially blaming it on the weather too. isn't august in ontario supposed to be hot and sunny and "summer-y"? well it isn't anymore. yuck, weather, just yuck.

(the title of the post has nothing to do with anything. just so you know.)

i feel creative

i'm an awesome procrastinator. maybe i'll use that as one of my weaknesses in my interview today. don't you just hate that question? well, i'm terrible at this and that... but you should still hire me. please?

okay well, my point was that i left making onesies for mm until last night even though i knew i would be seeing her today for probably the last time before her new baby is born. but i think they turned out okay.

blue hippo:



red pig:



i think the hippo is the cutest little guy.

anyways, my weekend is starting to come together, filling up with things to do and people to see. that's the way i like it but i also like sleep and after this week i'll be sleeping lots.

back to work. interview afterthoughts next post.

not too busy

i'm home now and i'm not too busy to get rid of the pink settings. back to blue. i likey.

talk about busy

work is incredibly busy. but where i work is a nice place to work - they provide us with things like the free corn roast happening tomorrow at lunch. it's a good deal. you get your "ticket" and you go outside for lunch time, play dodgeball and talk to everyone and get two free cobs of corn and a drink. i don't know how they do it, but it's nice. (there's also the annual bbq, but i was in bc for it.)

i was begged to play dodgeball with my team from last year. it's a bunch of people that work on my floor. you have to have at least 3 girls on the court and that's always tough, finding enough girls. i said yes, but didn't really want to. especially since it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

and then an excuse came and plopped in my lap: i have an interview tomorrow afternoon. it's for the bi-03 i wrote mid-july. i'm currently a bi-01 so it's a little up there for me so i'm not nervous (or serious, really) about it. i'll dress all fancy and answer as smartly as i can, but won't be too worried if that's the end of the road for me in this competition. apparently, it isn't the only interview - whooo, we're in the big leagues now.

last night i read and read and read and finally finished the 5th harry potter book. i even cracked open the 6th and am very much looking forward to it. but really, it's the 7th that i'm all excited for. it will be brand new. i've read all the others before so every now and then i remember what's going to happen and it kinda sucks. but the 7th.. brand sparkly new. and no one has ruined the ending for me yet, thankfully.

sore loser

thursday night was my baseball year-end party at my place. two birds with one stone since none of them had seen the new place. it was a pretty low-key night.

i couldn't get out of bed friday morning. i had a feeling j would want to take the day off and i was right. he stayed in bed for most of the day. i dragged myself to work for 10am (3 hours late) only to leave an hour later for our team lunch in my hometown. lunch was good. it was nice seeing some of our coworkers who have left on mat leave.

i didn't go back to work though. i went to see my parents. i wasn't convinced that my mom was "okay" like she said she was. so we talked in their backyard for almost 3 hours. i finally got back in the car and drove home.

i was exhausted. i slept from 6-9pm. j went out but i stayed in. he was out with some guys getting our friend, dL, drunk. dL just broke up with his girlfriend and was in need of some beer and some dirty jokes (that's what guys do when they get together, right? drink beer and fart?)

saturday was a very lazy day. we had sylvia's party to go to that night so we took it easy all day. i can't even remember what we did. but there was the party. j decided he was going to go out with other friends and left with the rx-7. i got myself to my hometown a little late but it was okay. i got to see some people i hadn't seen since highschool and some others that i only see at these parties.

and then j showed up. apparently my friends are better than his. we spent most of the night talking to s&l. it was good. then we drove home separately.

sunday i promised to meet tania at the dog park. i didn't think 1pm was too early, but then i slept in late and was kinda rushed. we walked and talked and i saw some of the biggest dogs i've ever seen. it was nice being outside. i found out that a blog i had been reading a lot last year is actually a girl i went to high school with but who was a year behind me. i still can't believe it's her.

we had another couple over for dinner sunday night. it was a nice, relaxing end to the weekend.

but then i took yesterday off so my weekend just kept going. i stayed in bed with the cats until mid-morning and then lounged around. i finally got myself put together and went out to get some estimates for the damage to our car from being rear-ended. everything was going well until i got to the last place. the guy obviously though i was a dumb girl, said he wouldn't give me an estimate, that i was wasting my time, that i couldn't get the car fixed without going through insurance, to have my insurance company call him. what an ass! he isn't getting our business.

i spent the rest of the day reading the 5th harry potter book. i'm in the read-until-it's-done zone so i should be finished pretty quickly. i'm really excited to get to book 7, but obviously book 6 still stands in my way. i'm glad i started back at the beginning. i don't remember 99% of the books.

and that's my story until now. i heard today that people have been called for interviews for the bi-03 competition that i'm in. i haven't got a call yet but i'm hoping that isn't because i'm not getting an interview. we'll see. i'll keep you posted.

on death and dying

it's impossible, when faced with death, to avoid thinking about your own mortality. absolutely impossible.

the good thing is that i feel very alive. did i need a death to feel this way? surely not, but it helps.

my grandmother passed away yesterday. my mom's mom. they weren't close and so we weren't close. no matter how much the death doesn't effect me in a day-to-day sense, i still find myself thinking about death and about dying.

i don't know yet if there will be a funeral. my mom didn't seem to think there would be. but then i'm not even sure i would go if there was one. if it was in town then i definitely would, but if it's across the country then maybe not.

i owe you one (or a ton)

i haven't posted pictures in a while. let's break it down.

first, our little accident:



you can't even see the damage in this shot. what you see is how much higher the jeep is compared to our car and hopefully that makes it easy to understand that when he hit us, he went right up on our bumper.

this is the pot plant that was outside the police station where we went to make a statement about the accident:



i think somebody played a trick on the cops.

then there's the new couches and new projector:



this is not a good picture and i apologize for that.

and the cottage weekend. i learned how to windsurf:



we saw ducks:



we saw turtles:



and we went boating:



good times.

j had to work last night. i'm talking we got into work at 7 and he's still there 25 hours later. apparently he took a break from 4 - 7am and sleep at his desk. what a trooper. i brought him some clean clothes and some food this morning when i came in. i spent the night by myself - i went shopping and did some errands and then cleaned the house. i was very productive. now it's time for hot chocolate.

i wasn't talking about marshmallows

the cottage was good. really good. we got up there around 8pm friday night i think and set ourselves up. most of the night was spent in the cottage sitting around talking. saturday was full of boating and windsurfing and reading and lying on the beach. a guy from bell was supposed to come to look at the phone so everyone but me went out in the boats. they came back all excited because they saw turtles. i was mad! so later on, j and i went back to that place and i saw 5 turtles!! we also saw a bunch of baby ducks right at the beach. (pictures soon!)

after dinner saturday night we decided to go into the big town of killaloe. we parked across the street from a building with a bunch of old people out front. they were wearing name tags but the building had the word "funeral" on top so we weren't quite sure what they was going on. we walked around the town seeing no one else and when we were almost back at the cars, an old man on a scooter had stopped up ahead to ask a random guy what was going on in town that night. the man said that there was a dance at the legion and a wake at the funeral home and some people walking around (the people were us). there were three things going on in the city and we were one of them. how sad.

and i'm sure the dance and wake were in the same building. odd.

needless to say, we didn't stay long in killaloe. we went back to the cottage and had a bonfire, roasted marshmallows and watched the meteor shower. i have to say, I WAS RIGHT!! the meteor shower peaked sunday night, aka. monday at 1am, not saturday night. we didn't miss the big show by going to bed earlier than 1am. we did get to see lots of little meteors and one huge one. i wonder what the peak part of the shower looked like.

sunday was a whole lot of the same as saturday: lying on the beach reading, j windsurfing, eating and finally heading back to town. we went straight to j's parent's place for dinner and only got home around 9pm. the cats were happy to see us and i was happy to shower. we didn't stay up late because we were both exhausted from the weekend.

and now it's monday and it's back to work. i have a feeling this is going to be a long week. i got news from my mom this morning that my grandmother is very close to the end. i'm not close with my grandparents so i'm not feeling much of anything, sadly enough. my poor mom has to travel to bc though to tag-team the situation with her brother and sister. i just hope it's quick.

cops and couches

we went to the police station yesterday after work to report our collision. apparently that's what you're supposed to do. the cop was nice and made the report for us and told us what to do about the guy from brockville. thankfully they can take care of everything by phone and fax. i was wondering how that was going to work. so next week we'll take the car in to get some estimates on fixing the bumper.

but the big excitement from yesterday was that we got our new couches delivered and they made it into the basement! they look less red down there and look really good. we have the whole set up now, minus a decent coffee table. we're using an old bedside table that's not big enough. it works but so will a new one from ikea. yay ikea.

we're heading off to the cottage tonight with 2 other couples (hi a&s and s&l!). i'm really looking forward to relaxing, even though part of me wants to stay home and clean. i feel like we've been neglecting the house and we have, but being away for three weekends in a row will do that. especially when it was too hot to do anything but lie around for a couple of weeks there.

i don't think the cats are going to be very happy with us when we leave them again. when we get back after being away for a weekend they die with happiness, which is nice, but makes me feel bad for leaving them in the first place. but thankfully they are cats and can be left alone for a couple of days at a time.

now i'm just rambling. okay, back to work!

crunchy crunchy

we left work a little later than usual yesterday. we both had some things to finish off around 3pm. our drive home isn't farg and doesn't normally take very long, about 15-20 minutes. it's only three main streets and some side streets. we do it every day without incident. until yesterday.

we were stopped at the second set of lights we come to when we get hit from behind. i wasn't driving, but j said that the guy behind us who hit us was stopped so he was very surprised when we were hit. he thinks the guy must have just taken his foot off the brake. needless to say we weren't hit hard.

we both got out of the car. the damage isn't bad but it's there. the other guy was driving an suv so his bumper basically just went on top of ours. our poor little car. j and the man exchanged information while i took pictures. we didn't know what else to do so we left.

we drove the rest of the way home in disbelief, still not sure why he hit us. j spent a while on the phone last night with the insurance company and has to call them back today. i really don't know a lot about car accidents and the aftermath so we'll see how this all works out. pictures as soon as i've taken them off the camera.

ketchup catch up

j went away for 3 whole days to a new and exciting place and came back with two presents for me. what could they be, you ask. well, they are these:



and he didn't even have to buy them. the guy staying in the room across the hall from them ordered room service and didn't use his ketchup or mustard. i'm not joking.

back story: we stayed in the chateau laurier on our wedding night and ordered room service late that night (who really eats the food at a wedding?) our chicken burgers came with a little ketchup bottle that j thinks is adorable and so calls it the k ketchup bottle, using my real name of course.

so when he saw these he thought they would be perfect. you know, nothing says "atlanta" like two mini condiment bottles. but really, they are perfect.

sharks take the silver

turns out there were some injuries this weekend:

one girl hit the ball right up into her face. luckily she just got a goose egg on her forehead. she stayed in the game.

another girl slid into home and dislocated her shoulder. she came out of the game.

the third girl did the same as the first and hit the ball up into her face. she wasn't as lucky and got hit in the eye. thankfully her eye is okay, but her face is looking a little messy. here she is trying to open her eye:



all this to say that i got to play. we had three games on saturday and three on sunday. i only played in one and a half but the way my body is feeling would tell you that i played in about 12. i can't believe how sore i am.

but it was a good weekend. we won the silver medal and almost got the gold. the last game really could have gone either way.

and i was able to get myself to the toronto airport okay. i only had one crazy guy come up to me while i was waiting for j. i can still remember how he smelled... yuck.

anyways, the whole weekend was good, but what was better was that yesterday was a stat holiday. i was able to sleep in and sleep some more and do what i want. we ended up finally leaving the house late afternoon to see what stores were open. we went and bought some couches (to replace the ones that didn't fit down the stairs to the basement) and a projector with the couch money. the projector is already set up, not in the exact place we want it but it's working. and the couches will be delivered thursday. thursday! no nine months of waiting for these puppies... thursday!

only 3.8 more work days left until the weekend.

bruce willis has nothing on this guy

after a lovely dinner in airconditioning (thank you, j&m!) i stopped to get groceries. i needed some things for my big road trip and this weekend. i stopped at the grocery store in our neighbourhood and was going around when i spotted a guy who looked a lot like bruce willis.

i was going up and down the aisles when i see him up ahead, coming towards me. and he says this:

what did you eat to make you so good looking?

i couldn't have heard him right, but i did because he said the exact same thing when i asked him to repeat himself. and then he told me that was called "flirting in the aisles".

okay buddy, i know exactly what flirting is, but that was the WORST pick-up line, ever!

but who knows, maybe bruce said it in one of his movies.

------

off to toronto after work today for the baseball provincials. i'm going to help out my team. back in may, i put my name on the roster in case they had some injuries or something. and of course, they did have one player injured and one isn't able to play tomorrow. they still have enough without me but i'll be on the bench in case someone else gets injured. i'm nice that way.

i called j last night to get him to show me how to update kevin (my ipod) with the harry potter book i'm reading. i figured that listening to the book will be good for the drive. i don't drive often anymore but will be finefinefine.

i'm a little worried about navigating the toronto airport by myself (that's where i'm picking j up) but it'll be finefinefine too.

okay, back to work for the last day this week. it's been a long one.

captain of the alone

status update, food: i ate only 2 cookies yesterday and no ice cream. i went to kelsey's for pasta (it's too hot to cook inside these days and pasta doesn't work on the bbq) and was treated well by the server who, i think, felt sorry for the single girl with the magazine.

status update, sleep: i didn't nap but i didn't go to bed early either.

status update, work: my meeting with the director had another coworker too so i couldn't talk about money. but i was given more responsibilities.

status update, kitties: the cats are my alarm clock. they woke me up on time this morning. i set my alarm and everything (j normally does the waking up) but didn't think to check the AM/PM business and would have been mega late for work without my purring heat balls. why do they insist on sleeping on me or touching me in some way when their little bodies are so hot?

status update, weather: it's freaking hot! it's finally summer. and we have a long weekend. we'll be spending most of it in toronto, but monday will be a nice, relaxing day at home. i can't wait.

exhausterated

when i'm really tired, i say that i'm exhausterated. that's like exhausted ++, you know, mega exhausted. this week, and i know it's only wednesday, is turning out to be a bad sleep week. i've been getting to bed late and napping after work. needless to say i'm exhausterated.

and then work is just running me down. good news is that i'm meeting with the director this afternoon (an hour after i'm supposed to leave for the day, but what can you do) so maybe i'll ask about the added responsibilities turning into added money. it's always such a tough topic so my bet is that i won't be able to bring it up. but you never know.

i got a flickrmail (email on flickr) about my pictures from the fire last saturday. i've been asked to submit them to an online magazine. once i've sent in the pictures and story, i'll post the link. it's an incredible feeling, especially since i was only using the little point and shoot that was running low on batteries. i'm very excited!

but i'm feeling a little lost: j left for atlanta this morning. he has training for work tomorrow and friday and asked to take the camera. MY camera. at first, i said no then i thought about it a little more and realized that him taking the big camera didn't make sense so i sent him off with my little camera. i'm feeling a little naked without it. i've spent the past 200+ days carrying it everywhere with me so maybe you can understand what i'm feeling. but at least i have the big camera.

and don't you worry, i'm not feeling lost because i'm by myself. it's kinda nice. i can stay late at work and not have to feel bad about making j stay late too. and i can eat ice cream and cookies for dinner and just tell him i made a three course meal, which he would never believe anyways. ice cream and cookies it is! single k goes crazy when left to her own devices.