One of those days

I just had one of those days. It was pretty good day overall but sprinkled in were lots of frustrating things. It makes me forget the good parts and wish I could just stay in bed tomorrow.

At least there are two hotdogs with my name on them for lunch tomorrow. I don't have to cook them. And there's pie left over from tonight. Hotdogs and pie. I'm sure I'll find some other junk to cram in too.

Happy birthday, June babies!

Instead of playing baseball tonight, we went to the pub and ate cheap wings and salad and celebrated T and J's birthdays. SR even brought little cupcakes with candles.



That's the way I like my baseball.

Cobourg Wedding

Saturday morning my parents picked me up, after getting lost on the way to my house, and we went to Cobourg for W's wedding. W is a good friend of my brother and we all go way back. I hadn't met his wife, A, so I wasn't sure what kind of wedding this was going to be.

Thankfully, W and his family are very laid back and the ceremony was sprinkled with laughter so there was no fear of me crying.



In between the ceremony and reception, we went to Boston Pizza for beer and drinks. It was me, my parents, my brother's GF, M, and two of their friends. The four of us split a team pitcher, which is ginormous. We had to walk back to the hotel which was a good way to work off some of the alcohol.

The reception started with a fake first dance and a slide show. Very cute. Finally dinner and dessert and speeches and more slide shows. Then the dancing. And the drinking.



It was a tad wild but a ton of fun. We danced and drank and talked and laughed. We were back and forth between the reception and the hotel rooms. Let's just say that it was a great night. Congratulations to A and W! Oh my, "A&W".

Today we took the scenic route home. My parents in the front and me in the back with a very hurting N. We would stop and crack the windows so the puppy could have air. He slept the first 3 hours like that.

We did fun things like stop at the lake on the mountain. That was really neat with spectacular views.



We took a ferry.



We stopped in K-town for lunch. I hadn't been in forever and it was nice to be back, even if we didn't go by my old place. We had a nice lunch and got back on the road. We made it home around 5 or so.

J and I had a nice dinner and chatted about our weekends. I think Rolo missed me.

Champion of Change

More change around here. I was getting a little crazy about my hair growing in and therefore the dye growing out showing my roots. When I dyed my hair lighter I forgot that eventually I would have the roots of my natural colour coming out. And apparently I can't stand that.

So after two long but good days at work, a four hour round-trip to try on more bridesmaids dresses and a family dinner, I got home and went back to basics. My brown basics. With the help of my lovely J, who apparently would rather straighten my hair than help dye it, I have no more roots showing and a head of dark brown hair.

That feels better.



And not a moment too soon. I have a wedding to go to tomorrow near Toronto. It's going to be a weird one. It's my brother's best friend so my family will be there and also one of my best friends from grades 3-9 and then a whole ton of people I've never met. I'm sure it will be a good time though, if not only a flash from the past. Sometimes those are nice.

Pictures and stories Sunday or later next week. Promise.

Painting - the Before and After Shots

Painting the basement.

Before



After



I like it a lot.

No "after picture", hail instead

I'm not ready to show you the pictures of the painted basement because, well, I'm not done painting. I'm all done with the walls, but now need to touch up the baseboards and ceiling from where we spilled over. It happens. Especially when you think the baseboards have been taped when in fact they have not.

I'm hoping to finish up the white (baseboards and ceiling) tomorrow and have the furniture back in place once J gets home from work so that I can take the "after" pictures while it's still light out. Fingers crossed for tomorrow's blog post to include these pictures.

Yesterday, my painting was interrupted by crazy loud rain and then hail. Hail! In June! It was awesome!



I frantically called J at work and then my mom across town, but neither had hail. At least I was able to talk to someone when I was outside taking pictures and ran into my neighbour doing the same. Obviously, we are Canadian.

It was just incredible. The neatest thing was the little mountain of hail at the bottom of the downspouts.



My painting today was interrupted by some shopping for 1) more paint, and 2) other stuff. Other stuff included a wee present for Big T (happy birthday!) and some fun placemats for the dining room table.



For tomorrow, which is my last day off, I will be painting (as I've mentioned already), getting groceries and doing laundry. I have to vacuum the basement and move the cat litter back down there. I have to buy a gift for the wedding I'm going to Saturday and one for J's mom who has a birthday coming up. I just might top it all off with some chicken and ribs downtown with friends.

Then it's back to work and I think I'm ready. I never thought I would say that.

Baseball games and dads

My baseball team had a tournament this past weekend in Grafton. Where's Grafton you ask? Well it's near Cobourg, which is near Toronto. Grafton had some ball diamonds, an arena, a general store and The Bullpen, a local diner. And that's it. Cobourg at least had a mall and some restaurants and a hotel.



We drove down late Friday night. Played 4 games on Saturday and drove home even later Saturday night. We won one game and lost three and didn't advance to the semi finals Sunday.

My body is not used to playing four games in one day. I don't think we've played four games so far all season let alone in one day. I was mighty sore Sunday.

Getting home at 3am after a long day of physical activity and sun and driving is harsh. We slept like the dead.

Since we were home for all of Sunday, we made the most of it and went out and got presents for our dads for Father's Day. We got my dad some barbecue tools and marinade and got J's dad new sawhorses. We spent a while with my parents and then had dinner with J's family.

Father's Day was more "Rainbow Day" for us since it rained so much.



We got home around 9pm and prepped the basement for painting. Here is the "before" picture. You'll have to wait for the finished shot.

Rock Lobster

I've spent the last bunch of days kicking myself. Kicking myself for not even thinking about wearing sunscreen on Saturday. See, J wanted to go windsurfing. That happens at the beach. With me so far? Good.

He packed all his gear into and onto the car while I got myself ready doing whatever I do. We got to the beach, the extremely windy beach, and set up shop - J in the water and me on the beach.

It wasn't 20 minutes when J was back on dry land saying the wind gusts were too much for him. But don't worry, he went out two more times and ended up having a good time.



I read a whole bunch of my book. After a while We packed everything up and headed home. We went to S&L's for dinner and then out to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It was a good movie, somewhat predictable but good. The whole night we knew we were burnt. Our skin felt tight and dry. It wasn't until we got home that we saw the extent of the burns. My skin is bright bright red, bordering on purple in places. I hurt.

Sunday was an uncomfortable day. And then so was Monday and Tuesday. We spent most of those three days in the house, hardly moving. The poor cats have never been thrown off my lap more times than in the past couple of days.

Tuesday night we were finally able to sleep almost normally and decided to go to work Wednesday. So Wednesday was my appearance at work since I've booked off today until next Thursday as my ME time. I rushed around to get everything ready for me to be gone. I wasn't able to get everything done and have already heard once from my boss, but that's okay. At least I'm not there.

And J has decided to try biking to work. We were worried about some of the roads between home and work but he said they were fine. And they will only get better once all the construction is done.

So last night I grabbed one of the fortune cookies that came with my Chinese food from last week and opened it up to find this, the best fortune I could have gotten:



Definitely time for some ME time.

Who doesn't like babies?

Spring 2008 has been full of babies. But let me clarify - full of non-human babies. No one around here is full of babies.

We saw baby gooses at Andrew Hayden park a few weekends ago.



And then we saw baby ducks at the construction site we pass every day on the way to work. I tried to get a picture as we zoomed along but was only able to get daddy duck.

The latest is the baby groundhogs that I can see from my window at work. You better believe I was standing at the window with two coworkers watching the baby groundhogs when our director walked up. What are you doing, she asked. Looking at baby groundhogs. Aren't they cute, we replied. Thankfully she thought they were cute and wasn't upset that we were wasting our time staring out the window.

I don't think I've ever seen a baby groundhog before. Walking to the parking lot today, I saw a little guy and his mom. When I dropped my camera case in my haste to get a snap, the sound scared the baby back into the hole. I took a picture of the momma groundhog:



Then I waited. I was sure the baby would come out again. I was not disappointed:



And then they kissed because they knew I was watching:



Honestly, aren't they cute?

Family, Friends and some gardening

Family

My brother came home from being in Europe for the past year. After a lazy Saturday morning, we went to my parent's place to see him. The first thought that crossed my mind when I laid eyes on him was "long and curly hair!" It was nice to see him. He had a passport full of stamps and more foreign currency than I had ever seen.



He's off again to the big city but we'll see him again at a wedding in just over a week.

Friends

Last night a van full of my friends pulled up to my house driven by A's mom and whisked me away to the country and a bridal shop so we could try on bridesmaid dresses. And did we ever. Between L and I I think we tried on 30. 40? 50? I don't know exactly but it was a LOT of dresses. There were some that were beautiful on the hanger and looked horrible on us, some maybes, some potentials and some like this one L is wearing - looks great from the front but the back is a disaster:



We narrowed it down to three potentials and decided that more shopping was in order. Not last night though. I can't believe how tiring something like that is. Besides, by the time I got dropped off it was almost 9pm and the van still had another 30 or 40 minutes to go before settling into it's driveway.

Gardening

I don't garden. When I lived with my parents I was young and never home and gardening was something my parents did. In university, well, I was in university. The only thing I could keep alive were basement bugs and five different types of mold. When we were living in our last place, J's parent's house, it felt so temporary and not ours that the most we ever did outside was mow the lawn (J) and trim the hedges (all J). So you see I have very little experience gardening.

My coworkers LOVE to garden and are constantly asking about my garden (what garden?) and telling me all about their plants and grass and dirt and flowers. The great thing about this, besides me honing my ability to appear interested, is the hand-me-down plants that my coworkers feel obliged to bring me.

Last year, I passed the plants along to my parents since we were still rocking the mud lawn. This year, I decided I was going to make a garden. The idea was so daunting that I almost let my new plants rot in the garage, but I didn't. J and I put in our first garden.

Voila!



And just so you know that I definitely didn't last the whole time without killing something, here's a shot of the grub graveyard formerly known as our driveway:



We are proud little gardeners.

Raining on my parade

I'm feeling very much like I'm in a rut. I know that I just took a huge trip and am playing all sorts of sports and there's no way I should be feeling this way, but I am. I'm feeling the days pass by over and over and they all blend into one long super day. I guess you could say I'm in some sort of funk.

To combat this feeling, I'm doing a few things. I've been running twice - once Saturday and once today. And I plan on keeping that up. And I plan on going to the gym again. A month-long hiatus thankfully didn't much affect my body but I don't feel strong and I would like to feel strong.

I've also booked some time off work. Just a week, but a week of nothing. I can do whatever I want and there are certainly things I would like to do so I'm making a list. On my list so far is painting the basement and moving our cell phones from Telus to Rogers. You see how exciting I am? I'm also hoping to get some gardening done. I don't garden so this will be interesting. And maybe the weather will be nice and I can work on my tan. The options are endless. Endless.