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.

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.

I am officially getting old

So much has happened in the past few weeks since we got home from Europe. All these things have stopped me from fully going through all the pictures from the trip. I will get through them all eventually and once I have I will link to the set on Flickr of my favourites. I won't ask you to look through 1200+ pictures.

So let's list it up so I won't forget to tell you something important.

1. I dyed my hair. It's about time I see for myself whether blondes do in fact have a better time. I've wanted to go blonde for a long time now and finally did, the day after getting home. Here is a picture of my freshly-dyed hair and my pretty orange cat:



2. We bought a new lens for the camera. It's a Sigma 10-20mm. We've wanted a wide angle lens for a while and now we have one.



3. We went to Andrew Hayden Park to test out the new lens.



And we saw baby gooses!



4. J's sister received a medal for her work in Afghanistan.



5. Race Weekend. I didn't run for the first time in 4 years, but had fun cheering everyone on.





6. Beach volleyball season started. J played pairs Monday night and we played 4s Tuesday night. I have bruises on my legs and arms and my back hurts from being barefoot, but it was fun. I like our 4s team.



7. S asked me to be a bridesmaid!! It's my first time and I'm so excited! Ask J who's had to put up with me pestering me all the time saying bridesmaid over and over. S hosted the girls at her place for dinner and drinking Wednesday night. L and I got to meet J, the third girl. It was a really good night. And for the record, I think this is a great picture of the three of us.



8. My baseball team hosted a fundraiser at Absolute Comedy. We didn't make a ton of money but it was a good night. It was nice to be out with some coworkers and some friends and some family.



9. The biggest news, which I've been holding in for the past 3 weeks while I finished blogging about the Europe trip is that I went to the optometrist and found out I need glasses. I only need them when I'm at the computer for extended periods of time (i.e. at work) but the whole idea makes me feel really old. When I found out, I immediately called me mom. I didn't even know what to think.

To combat the getting old feeling, I got a pair that are fun and purple. At least I can stay hip and fresh while getting old. What do you think?



10. Hmm, I don't have another point, but I couldn't leave it at only 9. Right, I guess that tells you something about me. Anyways, I feel better now that we're all caught up. Don't you?