Batman was Awesome

We went and saw Batman on the IMAX screen with L&S. I was a little worried when I found out that the movie is two and a half hours long, but I made it through the whole thing. It was really good. I don't usually say that, but you should go see it in the theater.

Sharks Season Complete

Last night was the last night of baseball for the year. We opted out of the league playoffs because too many of our girls were out of town. I'm not disappointed. The league has been crappy for the past bunch of years. Not going to Provincials next weekend is kind of bittersweet after going for the past 15 or so and doing so well in the past 3 especially. The long weekend in town will be nice though.

I did end the year on a high note: I hit a homerun. Not out of the park, because no actual girl could do that at our home diamond, but definitely a homerun. And I raa-a-an, I ran so fast around the bases that my legs are sore today. It was such a nice feeling to hit the ball solidly, pull it to right field (I bat left), and touch home plate and look up to see all of my teammates on the diamond clapping and cheering and waiting to give me high fives. I haven't seen that for about 8 years. A nice way to end it all... except the crappy ground out I had the next inning. They wouldn't let me not bat and I didn't take my teammate's advice and bunt, because that wouldn't really count. Hmph.

Cottage Weekend

Work has been hectic with everyone taking holidays so it was super nice to have Friday off to go up to the cottage a day before our friends came. We went up Thursday night after a long day at work. I almost managed to stay awake for the whole 2-hour trip. I could make it to and from Kingston no problem, but the same time to the cottage is killer.

Anyways, we got settled in and watched tv and read. We slept in until the crack of 11:30 as J likes to say. We did the usual cottage stuff: J windsurfed and I read, we went into town for groceries, and lunch. We ran 6K and then we waited around for our friends to show. The finally did a little before 9pm. We had this weekend planned weeks ahead of time. It's the second year in a row A&S and S&L have come to the cottage for a weekend.

We had a bonfire Friday night complete with two guitars and songs that no one knew the words to... we have to work on that.

Saturday was a typical cottage day. There was sailing and windsurfing and tanning and eating.



The weather wasn't the greatest so we had to use towels to keep warm while trying to soak up some sun.



We went out looking for turtles. A and I paddled in the canoe while everyone else was in Flippy with the electric motor. We were not disappointed.



We decided to have our dinner of chicken and ribs on the fire. It went well, surprisingly. And almost everyone got to chop wood for the immense fire needed to have enough coals to cook 40 pounds of meat.



To cap off the night, a family of pre-teen ducks came around. I tried to feed them bread but they were having none of that. They sounded like baby birds (and then I realized that they are baby birds) chirping away the whole time.



Sunday was a pretty lazy day. I definitely wanted more sleep that I got after the beer-filled night before. We took our time packing everything up and headed back into town in the early afternoon.

I wasn't feeling the best so I napped for a bit and then laced on my shoes to run 12K. There was a huge storm and J said I was safer running through the community instead of on the roads around so I ended up doing about 10.5K in the rain and lightning and thunder. It was not the best run I've had but it was interesting with all the weather happening around me. A good end to a great weekend.

Happy birthday, Little Brother

My little brother, who isn't little at all, turned another year older yesterday. Here we are at a wedding about a month ago.



He has european hair, that a prospective new boss told him to cut but his super cute girlfriend likes. He drives me crazy because he's terrible at staying in touch and not very talkative when he does make contact. He was always the brother that all my friends liked and they would beg to come over and "play" at my house. He's done so many stupid things over the years and asked me to cover for him more times than I can count. He had better watch out when his time to walk down the aisle comes.

No matter, he's still my brother and still gives me the hugest bear hug whenever we see each other. He has a way of making people laugh and making people love him. Hopefully his 26th year will be his best yet.

Happy birthday, little brother. I love you but you're still a jerk.

Hoppy the Toad and Running Birthdays

After the enormously packed weekend last weekend, J took the day off work Tuesday. I should have, but I had things to do at work so I went in. I felt sick and miserable all day. J was home - he slept in and did what he wanted to do. He was outside in the backyard doing whatever he does in the backyard when he noticed something moving in the grass. It was a little toad that J named Hoppy.



He went inside to get the camera and was able to find Hoppy again. He got some fun pictures. Who knew this little guy would be in our backyard.

Wednesday I was smart and stayed home. It was obvious I was exhausted when I was able to sleep 13 hours straight. That night was the 20-Minute Challenge at the Running Room. I screwed up and thought it started at 7 instead of 6 so we were late. No matter, we got our hats and coupons and ran almost 4K together.



Then it was SJ's birthday dinner. We ate good food and amazing cake.



Our two little cats share a birthday with SJ so I paparazzi-ed them when we got home.



I stayed home the next day too and absolutely boiled in the house. Thankfully the cats have asked for central air for their birthday so we just might be getting one. Smart kitties.

HOPE-ing and Cottage Partying and Finishing Up the Weekend

Let me start this post by saying that our last partyers Friday night left at 3am. We arrived at the beach at 7:30am so neither of us got much sleep.

This past Saturday was the HOPE Beach Volleyball tournament.



J's games started at 8 so we were there bright and early.

I played on a corporate team with T and C. We didn't do so well, but had fun.



J's team did really well. They were in the competitive division and won all five round-robin games. They lost in the court final.



After 10 hours of being at the beach, we headed back home for quick showers and then drove an hour to my family's annual cottage party. It's always nice seeing my family but I think the highlight of the night was when Kong, my cousin's pug, was shown a fish and he started licking it. Hilarious!



I lasted until 1:30am or so and then went and collapsed in bed. I got up kinda early Sunday morning, J was woken up later. We had to rush back into town so J could make the Rapids (the new Lynx) game. I had BC's wedding shower to go to. The wedding shower was fun - lots of great food, the games weren't too cheezy and I got to see all the girls. I think the highlight (sorry girls!) was JP's bunny.



After the baseball game and the shower, we had a BBQ at L&S's place. We got home at 10:30pm, more exhausted than I can remember being, and went to bed. That was probably the busiest weekend we've had... ever. I'm very much looking forward to this weekend with nothing planned. But first I will continue to update you on the goings-on of this week. Soon.

L'Anniversaire

Happy four years to us!



I just went back and re-read what I wrote about our past anniversaries (2005, 2006 and 2007) only to realize that we are creatures of habit. This year was a little different. Our anniversary fell on a Thursday so we took that afternoon off. We didn't make any plans for the free afternoon which turned out to be a good thing since I wasn't feeling well and napped for 3 hours.

I redeemed myself by getting up so we could spend the evening together. We went to dinner at Baton Rouge. My chicken and fried apples and J's roast beef were really good. We walked around the Centrum for a while and found ourselves in Walmart. We bought some blinds and J installed them when we got home. Precariously.



Doesn't sound like a very romantic day, but it was an "us" day and we had a good time. Two very funny things happened. 1) We were sitting in the computer room. Rolo was lying in the hall and I told J that Rolo wanted J to go pick him up. J says OK and gets up, knocks my metal water bottle over making a loud noise and by the time he got over to where Rolo was lying, Rolo was long gone. J: "That didn't go so well" in a defeated little voice. I laughed so hard! 2) After installing the blinds, we were in the kitchen putting the stuff away. J grabbed a bunch of plastic and spare pieces and went to put them in a plastic bag. They fell right through making another loud noise - the bag was actually a sleeve. I laughed so hard I had tears streaming down my face. We may not be romantic but we definitely have lots of fun together.

And we still need to decide on what to get. We always get something for the two of us: years 1 and 3 were new sheets and year 2 was a tent. What will year 4 be?

Friday night we had a party that was well-attended even though it was planned at the last minute and Bluesfest was going on. Thanks to everyone for coming!

Downtime

Work has been slower than usual the past couple of weeks, but I am not complaining. It was so busy from January - April that I developed a nasty eye twitch that has only recently left. I'm using this downtime to, well, relax a little. Things are going to get hectic again real soon.

And besides, I cram full my personal life so I still don't get anywhere near eight hours of sleep a night. Does anyone?

Monday night was an early baseball game and if you can remember Monday at all it was a scorcher. It was one of the first Mondays that it didn't rain so that was good, but I was as wet as if it had. It was gross. Last night was beach volleyball and again it didn't rain but it was so muggy that a little rain might have been nice.

I cannot believe the weather so far this summer. I heard that it rained 22 days out of 30 in June and now it's more humid than ever. And somehow I have the best natural tan I've ever had. I really like being tanned and I know that it's bad for you and skin cancer and everything, but there's something so nice about spending some leisure time outside and having some colour....

I've been good so far with my 1/2 marathon training. I'm keeping track of everything I've done using Google Calendar which also has my personal schedule on it. It's all very handy. What isn't handy finding my shoes - we went to the Running Room last night only to find out that no RR store in Ontario had a pair in my size. But today when I phoned a local Sports 4 I was told that they not only have a pair and will hold it for me, but that the shoes are mega on sale. Awesome! New shoes for me!

So with my new shoes and my lack of work to do, I'm a happy camper. A tired happy camper.

You might be happy to know...

You might be happy to know that I finally got around to making all the pictures from our trip to Italy public. I still need to go through them and get rid of some of the bad ones so the warning is this:

1) There are a LOT of pictures.
2) There are a lot of pictures of the same thing.
3) Proceed at your own risk.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Pictures of Italy

The usual weekend update

This past weekend was a little strange because J left Saturday morning for a cottage party with the car. I've been away the past 3 weekends and desperately needed some time at home, but time at home WITH car is much different than time at home WITHOUT car.

It was definitely nice to wake up and not have anything planned. I went for a bike ride around the neighbourhood.



I can go farther on a bike than on my feet so I was able to go down streets I've never been down before. I got to peek at other people's houses and backyards and gardens... something I love doing. After 15K though it was time to head home. At home I cooked myself some KD and read my book out in the sun.

SJ came over bearing a bright blue slushy to hang out for a while. Then we went to test drive a City Golf. Pretty nice little car but after some internet research, I found out that the gas mileage isn't as good as our current car, the Mazda 3, or as good as the Yaris. I guess we won't be getting one of those.

Our whole goal for the day was to go shopping. We finally made it to the mall sometime after 8pm so we didn't have much time. We both found some things but the whole trip felt rushed. We have to go back sometime soon since everything is on sale.

I was shown some Oakley sunglasses and now want a pair. Oakleys are expensive though and I would need a bigger purse to lug them around with everything else that I currently carry with me. I need some more time to think about such a big purchase.

After I was dropped off at home, I spent the night watching tv with the cats. Sunday played out much the same except exchange running for biking. I'm toying with the idea of running a 1/2 marathon near the end of September. I've made myself a training plan with this past week being week 1 in a 12-week lead-up to the race. 12 weeks is just long enough to build the distance up to 21.1 K so I started with running at the gym twice last week, the bike ride Saturday and then an extremely hot 6 K run yesterday. Extremely hot in that I thought I was going to puke right afterwards but instead I ran the water as cold as it went and lay in the bath for a while then showered and was still sweating for about an hour. Gross. But I made it 6 K and actually felt pretty good.

The rest of the day was pretty lazy: I watched some tv, I vacuumed, I looked around on the internet. J finally got home just after 8pm. We talked for a bit and then I took the car and got some groceries. And that was my weekend.

This is probably going to be a pretty busy week and weekend with lots going on but that seems to be the way of the summer.

Construction and Canada Day

The weather this July 1st was better than in the past who-knows-how-many years. It was sunny and breezy and in the high twenties - beautiful. I rewarded myself with a four-hour lie-in-the-backyard-with-a-good-book. The plan was to bike downtown to take in some of the festivities but I was completely zonked. Instead I had a nap and afterwards we had S&L over for dinner. We walked around the neighbourhood in search of fireworks and were not disappointed.



A lot of our area is still under construction which means that there are random construction vehicles scattered around. I cannot pass up an opportunity to get in one so when we came across a pretty small diggy guy, I jumped in. It had an amusement-ride type bar thing that I lowered over myself. It was so small that while sitting there you have to straddle a jerry can at your feet. But I loved it!



Those construction vehicles can apparently be pretty cheeky too.



It reminds me of two things: 1) the I'm a little teapot song, the part about tipping it over and pouring it out, and 2) I'm sure you've seen this teeshirt that biker guys wear. The one that says: If you can read this, the b!tch fell off. I do love me some construction vehicles. The wee-er the better.

I was mentioning hotdogs...

I admit that when writing my last post I was cranky. Cranky happens.. they should put that on a t-shirt. Anyways, the thought of free hotdogs and pie was the silver lining in my not-so-great day last week. Well I did have my hotdogs, two of them. They were part of the annual BBQ at work. It was nice to have free food and nice to sit outside in a park instead of in the lunch room like I normally do. There were also events happening but I didn't take part. I had a meeting that afternoon that required I stay dry and not heat-stroked.

The meeting went well. Work overall is busy but going well. It's going to be a packed summer with a lot of things coming due and not a lot of time when everyone is at the office at the same time for meetings and things. But I guess that's typical of summertime.

The big news from last week was the arrival of our new cellphones. We were with one company and wanted to switch to another. We were waiting until our contract was over, but turns out it was over last fall. So we got sparkly new phones and were able to keep our old numbers.



My new phone is an LG slide phone and is pink. With SJ's help, I've named her Scarlett. I've already read the entire user manual and scratched the screen. That's just how I roll.



J's phone is the same but silver. I don't think he's come up with a name yet. We're both excited for the new phones but I will definitely miss Ruby. Almost 4 years together.. that's a long time.



Friday night, after stopping in to help a friend move, we headed out to the cottage. The weather forecast wasn't great and turned out to be surprisingly accurate. It rained a lot of the day Saturday and wasn't that great Sunday either. But it was nice to be away from the house and responsible for absolutely nothing. I read through the entire user guide for my new phone and read a lot of my book. J loved being in the water and doing cottage-y things, including windsurfing, putting in the dock and swimming raft, getting attacked by leeches and teaching his sister how to windsurf. He was in heaven.



I have more stories but no more pictures to accompany them. I went to upload the pictures only to find out that the video card in the desktop is fried. So we'll start the week (for the second time, once before Canada Day and now afterwards) with the promise of more posts and more pictures and more stories. Let's just hope this week isn't as full as last.