Another Week in the life of…

Another busy week last week, though thankfully I was in the office all week. Just not my regular office. I had Friday off which was fabulous. I actually felt like I had a relaxing weekend for once, but it made getting up yesterday morning a little hard.

D and my Dad (and step-mom) came up on Thursday night to see our new pad. We had a quick visit with Dad and N, because they had to be back in Belleville by dinner time on Friday. D stayed and we went to London to go shopping. We went to the bridal store and checked out “the London dress”. D liked that one better than “the Belleville dress” but that didn’t really surprise me all that much. I’m going to wait until I get the verdict from Sister K next weekend. D and Sister S have been pushing for fancier and pouffier dresses than I would personally be attracted too. We spent the rest of the day Christmas shopping which was nice. I’m 99% done my shopping now, just one last little thing left to get.

Saturday we were busy running errands as we usually are – Dry cleaning, cat food, shopping for Christmas baking, Home Depot, Canadian Tire, lunch… by the time we got home it was getting pretty late. The snow started while we were out and for a little while we thought that perhaps driving to Kitchener for A’s Christmas party wasn’t such a hot idea. We looked at the forecast though and decided to go, but to leave when it started snowing again.

Sunday ended up being a wonderfully lazy day. I was supposed to be going to Burgers for our annual “Holiday Baking Extravaganza” but it wasn’t in the stars. Instead we were quite literally snowed in (our subdivision wasn’t plowed until 11 pm). A mounted our new speakers onto the wall (he’s very proud of himself) and we shovelled out the driveway, addressed our Christmas cards and visited a bit with some neighbours.

Yesterday was an uber fun day. I really should have just stayed in bed yesterday morning. First off I had to buy my breakfast and lunch ($20) since we had no food in the house – since we were snowed in we couldn’t go grocery shopping. And then somewhere between Woodstock and London I got a flat tire that cost $150 to fix. On top of that, I had to miss 2.5 hours of work yesterday dealing with my flat tire which came out of my banked overtime. All in all, I figure I lost $80 by going into work yesterday. Boo.

Now, only 3 days left of work before my long break. Yay!

The Busy Bee

Gee, I’m really bad about updating my blog these days . Sorry for being so neglectful, loyal readers ;)

I had a great time at the company Christmas party in Late November. I stayed over night in London at one of my work friend’s. It was a good time. I probably had a little too much to drink, but I guess I managed to hide it pretty well. The rest of the birthday week was fab. We had a great time with Jen and Christine in the ‘borough and then it was back home.

The following week (2 weeks ago now) I was in Mississauga for most of the week for work. A good time was had by all, but it was a busy action packed week. I was there attending a “course” for work, and networking. Since there were people there from my company all over North America we did a tourist dinner on Wednesday night – Dinner at the top of the CN tower!!! That was pretty cool since I had never been up before. I was in my hotel room from 11 pm to 7:45 am and 9 pm to 7:45 on the two days I was there, no chance to visit with Nej.:(

Last weekend we were busy around the house. Put up the Christmas lights, cut the thresholds for between flooring and what not. I wanted to go into work on Sunday but the weather was bad, so that didn’t happen.

Last week I was in Windsor for most of the week. Field work in cold weather is always a good time *roll eyes*. I had wanted to go across to Detroit to do some shopping, but halfway to Windsor I realized I forgot my Passport. Fun stuff.

This weekend was another busy one. On Saturday we went to Kitchener to do some Christmas shopping. We went out for dinner at the Maharaja which was nice since we miss ethnic foods… not much selection in the ‘stock ;). We wanted to call burger to see if they wanted to join us for dinner, but we didn’t know their new number. In the evening we went to one of A’s coworkers for a Christmas party. On the way home – at 1 am, with A drunk, we got a flat tire. I was very impressed when A managed to change it in his state, and equally impressed that the spare was a real full sized wheel, not a doughnut, so A should be able to drive safely on it until he can get the other one fixed. Sunday we were very productive. Almost finished with the thresholds, went grocery shopping, bought a tree, decorated said tree, cleaned the house – top to bottom and did the laundry. Yes. We were busy!

Today I’m working in the ‘saug. I didn’t have a fun drive in this morning. Tomorrow I’m in Barrie and will be until Thursday. I’m taking Friday this week off – D and possibly my dad and stepmom are coming down to see the house on Thursday night. On Friday D and I are going to London so that I can show her the dress I like there.

Next week, I’ll be at home every night. I’m excited already ;)

In the lane, ice is glistenin'

the title is in honour of the freezing rain advisory in oxford county this morning. I had a couple of mm on my car this morning and it was "raining" my entire drive in this morning, despit the temperature in my car saying -2C.

So, Niki inquires what am I up to?

Man, I’m busy. That is all I can say about that. The last three weeks have been a blur in which I’ve worked around 50 hours each. Ugh. Good news though is that I now have 26.25 hours banked, banked hours don’t expire either which is good since it will allow me to take off some extra time around our wedding next year.

Last week I was out in the field Tuesday – Thursday. And they were long days. As in being at the refinery in Sarnia by 7:30 (had to leave the office by 6:15 which meant I had to be there by 5:45, which = leaving the house by 5 am.). yes. Exhausting. Worked 11-12 hours every day for three days. Friday wasn’t much better. No overtime, but no time to breathe either.

The weekend was good. Nice and relaxing which I needed. Saturday morning we mulled around doing nothing, but by 11 am, we were outside taking care of our lawn. I finished getting the bulbs planted and weeding the garden and walkway (we have a cobble stone walk way, so this involved actually lifting up individual bricks to get at the roots system. Work intensive but it looks much better now. A mowed the front yard one last time and raked the leaves from the front yard. By mid afternoon we headed inside. I made dinner for burger and her DH while A cleaned the house. We tag teamed it, and were done about 10 minutes before they got to our house. We had a nice visit and CH enjoyed getting to watch the Leafs-Sens game in High Def. I didn’t much enjoy the leafs winning at the expense on my Sens, but I guess the leafs need to be thrown a bone once in a while ;)

Sunday I was lazy and read my book most of the day. A was busy studying for his exam. When we woke up on Sunday morning the tree in the front yard had magically lost all of its leaves overnight so it looked like we had done no work. Meh. The bulbs are planted so we will have a pretty garden come spring.

This week has been a little less hectic so far. I’m still uber busy with work, but at least I don’t have field work. Tuesday I went to the Guelph office and hung out with Burger. I’m going to start doing some modelling with their group to help lighten the burden while they are looking to hire someone new. Before my boss approved, he made me promise that I wouldn’t try to transfer offices. It’s nice to know I’m appreciated :). Yesterday I was so busy trying to get stuff done, that I didn’t even take a lunch break!!!

Upcoming: Christmas Party for work on Friday night, and then it is off to Peterpatch to visit Nej and C-dub to celebrate our birthdays. We’ve been heading up there for our birthdays for 4 years in a row now (I think).

I will also post on my other blog about wedding related stuff

Short weekend

I was in traffic until almost 8 on Friday night. In woodstock! There was an accident on the 401 right before Woodstock. Yeah. It sucked. Took me 40 minutes to drive 2 km. Yuck.

Saturday and Sunday were pretty busy days. We got a lot of yard work done. Collecting leaves, mowing the lawn (back lawn anyways) one last time and planting some of the bulbs that we got as an engagement present. We only got about half of them planted yesterday before it got dark. Our garden was left in pretty rough shape by the previous owners. Half of it is looking pretty good right now though.

So, other than that, not much. Except. I think think I have a UTI. I have this urge to go to the bathroom but when I go there is nothing, so I'm pretty much certain that is what it is. Problem - I don't have a family doctor. And the walk-in clinic in Woodstock isn't open tonight. And tomorrow I'm going to be in the field all day. Oh, and apparently walk-in clinics don't open till 5 pm so I can't even go in London now. (I'm surveying in brantford this afternoon so I can't go in london at the end of the day either. Man, this is going to be miserable. Not to mention dangerous - a UTI can spread pretty quickly to a kidney infection if it isn't treated and that can be serious.

A cold Week.

So, this week I was up in Barrie doing field work. Annual landfill monitoring. Fun stuff. Only problem was that it is November which corresponds to cold cold rain.

Monday I had to be in Barrie for 7 am. Which meant up at 4:30 and out the door by 5. No biggie because of the time change (insert rolling eyes here). Oh well. That was only the first part of it. It was pretty cool on Monday. A little rainy too. Luckily no snow yet though. It still took me a bit of time to defrost when I got back to my hotel room. 9.5 hours in the field.

Tuesday the Snow came, and so did the wetness. Another cold, miserable 9.5 hours of field work. I seriously considered quitting on Tuesday. And I cried. I had to bail out 130 Litres of water out of a very deep well (60 m?). The bailer was attached to a very light weight string which kept getting stuck to the side of the well and it would take me 10 minutes to get the stupid bailer to the water level. Stupid well. Anyhow, after being frustrated, cold, and wet for 2.5 hours, I had bailed exactly 45 liters of water from the well. Luckily the field parameters stabilized and we figured that was good enough. Man. I was upset with that. Another 9.25 cold cold hours.

Wednesday – was wet. And cold. Again. Woke up Wednesday morning to 4 inches of snow, and they got another 2 inches while we were working. Now. I love snow. And normally I would prefer snow to rain. The problem is, when it is 0 snow is wet and melts and gets you soaking wet. I think my toes were boarderline frostbite most of the day. Another 9.5 hours of cold wet field work.

Thursday – More snow, more wind, more cold and wet. Although, I did go out on Wednesday night and invested in some warmer socks. Luckily it was the last day and when we were done at 5 pm (10 hours of work) I got to drive home from Barrie in a snow storm (luckily the snow wasn’t sticking when you got 10 minutes south of Barrie, so the roads weren’t all that bad.)

So yes, 4 days of ~10 hours in the field with a maximum temperature of 5C and a min of -3C. Rain, snow, wind. Fun times. I’m very thankful to be in our wam (?) office today!

So yeah. I made it through this week without quitting my job, so I think that is quite the accomplishment. I haven’t had to work outside in the winter since my first co-op term, so I think I need to build up a bit of a tougher skin.

The Water Un-tower

The water Tower that was formerly at ground level has now been raised to it's full glory. I'm working in the 'saug today (proposal. yay). And drove by the tower this morning and it is up. A crane was still holding it up, but it looked all shiny and new!

The Long Awaited House pictures

Here are the house pictures. Still a lot of things that need to be done, but it is starting to look like a house!!!

Eco Auto

So, the forms are now up on the internet for the eco-auto program. Someone was posting in response to me a while back as "anonymous" not sure who that was, just wanted to let whoever it was, I just wanted to let you know.

I'm still waiting for the 2008 list to be published.

October? Where did you go?

So, it has been a busy busy month in my life. Well, scrap that, it has been a busy several months. Excursions almost every weekend meant for lots of general chores and home improvement projects during the week. We now have most of the big things on our list completed. Doors are painted white and back on. Kitchen painting is complete. Baseboard is installed. There are several small projects left to do (ex. Fix-up painting, fix-up caulking, doing something between flooring types, changing out light fixtures, getting curtains, making a duvet cover, etc), but all the big projects seem to be done (until we decide to tackle the downstairs… dunh, dunh, duuuunnnnhhh).

So my goal for tonight will be to tidy the upstairs a bit and take pictures to post on my flickr account, so that you guys can see the before and after pictures from our house. We had the before pictures out on the weekend to show J&C, and Wow, is there ever a difference! It was hard to really remember what the house looked like before we moved in. Huge change if I do say so myself ;)

Other than that, not much. I am busy with work. I am busy with renovations.

Somehow wedding planning has gotten onto the backburner. I think I really need to start doing some real wedding planning instead of just looking at bridal magazines ;). Mind you, this isn’t the place for this discussion. I will update my other blog instead.

To have an election or not, that is the question.

So Nej asked my opinion on whether we will be going to the polls again in another short 6 weeks. Long story short, no. Keep reading if you are intrigued on my stance ;)

Okay, first off, I think that right now not too much has changed from the previous federal election. I think the Conservatives might have won a little more support by not doing anything too radical (despite the fact that they COULDN’T since it was a minority government). They played that card well, and have kept most of their radical members gagged over the last two years. That being said, I think they have probably lost as much support as they gained from the left leaning voters who supported them in the last election instead of the Liberals (like say the former PCs). I think that the conservatives KNOW this and didn’t put anything all out crazy into the throne speech that would force the liberals to decline it.

On top of that, I think that the liberals are flailing a bit right now. The party brass is falling hard and fast and I think the restructuring the liberal party needs is right around the corner. That said, they are in NO position to fight an election right now. They need to make up huge grounds in Quebec, and at this point that is not happening. The provincial quebec liberals are also having a rough go at it, so that won’t help the liberal cause at all.

The three parties that have the most to gain by an election today are the Bloq Quebecois (liberals flailing in quebec) and the NDP which stands to pick up a few seats in Quebec (Outremont went non-liberal in the by-election for the first time in several decades and one the NDP their first quebec seat in years). The NDP would be very appealing to quebecer’s right now who are traditionally further left than the rest of the country and wouldn’t vote for the current conservative party but that aren’t separatists and don’t want to vote liberal. A few of the Liberal Quebec seats that went to Tories in the last election could easily go to the NDP if there were an election today over liberal protest and anti-afganistan sentiment in Quebec. The NDP will probably also pick up more seats in the rest of Canada by liberals who see their party in distress or people who voted conservative in the last election but don’t agree with the management of Afganistan. The Green Party is also in excellent position to pick up a seat as well. Never have Canadians been more in tuned to what is happening with the environment, and with the recent strong showing of Jolly in Ontario, more Canadians will likely see that the Green Party could actually win seats in some ridings which would make it more likely for people to vote for them.

So yes, I think the Liberals will guardedly vote for the throne speech. Basically, it doesn’t mean that they have to vote for all the things the conservatives say they are going to do, it just means that the liberals are content to sit back a little longer and see where exactly the conservative are going with this. Basically, the throne speech didn’t include anything new, it was just more of the same conservative rhetoric that they have touted for the past 2 years. Tougher on crime, “better” to the environment (ha!), etc. Most of the points of the speach were actually bills making their way through the house and senate currently that got scrapped when Harper decided he would have a fall throne speech (not traditional). For example the Clean Air Act, which many people think the conservatives wanted scrapped because they had conceded too much to the NDP whose support they counted on to make the bill pass.

If we were to have a federal election today, I would have to think long and hard about who I would vote for. I like Stephane Dion, I think he would make a great leader and a wonderful prime minister, but I’m not sure that the rest of the liberal party is ready to be in charge yet. They talk big saying they are united in supporting their leader, but there are still a lot of people out there licking their wounds and causing shit because they wanted Iggnatieff to be the leader.

Election Results

I won't try to hide the fact that I'm super happy about last nights results. We all know that I am a strong provincial liberal. Heck, I even had a lawn sign and donated to the local guys campaign. It was also the first election in the last 10 years that I didn't actively campaign due to time constraints. That being said, I was hitting refresh all night last night to see how Steve Jolly was fairing in Bruce. It would have been great if he had one there.

Anywho, to follow up on what we were discussing yesterday on Jen's blog re: MMP, this is from the globe and mail website today. The election results if we had MMP.

Projected election results using MMP system
The mixed-member proportional system that Ontario voters appeared to reject yesterday aimed to have representation more closely mirror the popular vote.
These would have been the seat totals if yesterday's election had been run using MMP, according to numbers available at press time. (The numbers skew slightly: the Liberals would still be over-represented, as they would have taken more riding seats than their total proportion would allow for.)
Liberals
Percentage of popular vote: 42.0
Seats under current system: 71
Riding seats under MMP: 60
Total seats under MMP: 60
Progressive Conservatives
Percentage of popular vote: 31.7
Seats under current system: 25
Riding seats under MMP: 21
Total seats under MMP: 39
NDP
Percentage of popular vote: 16.8
Seats under current system: 11
Riding seats under MMP: 9
Total seats under MMP: 20
Green Party
Percentage of popular vote: 8.2
Seats under current system: 0
Riding seats under MMP: 0
Total seats under MMP: 10


Based on my own calculations, if it was a true hybrid between old and new, it would have been 60+16 = 76 to liberals which would have still been a majority. This system I would support hands down. Heck, it was the system I was planning on voting yes to until about 12 yesterday afternoon until I realized that I didn't understand the system properly. I love the green party. I have signed several petitions to allow them in the debates. I think if I were to protest vote against the liberals today I would park my vote with the greens. That said, I am VERY nervous about the prospect of having 10 MPPs appointed to parliament from a party that has never won a seat in the house. I would have been happy to have them have 3 seats in which they could prove themselves over 4 years to gain more support.

Happy Un-anniversary To Me.

Why un-anniversary? Because the event hasn’t taken place yet ;) Yes, that is right folks, today is my -1 year wedding un-anniversary. One year from today I will be marrying Arash and we will be cementing our relationship for ever more.

So, in celebration of the Un-day, I have decided to open up a wedding specific blog to journal my year of wedding planning fun/stress. Kind of just as a way to put down all my thoughts and keep track of this time so that in 10 years I can look back at it and (hopefully) smile.

Anywho, I thought I would post the link in case any of you all would like to keep up with this time, I’d completely understand if you don’t want to read it as well. I’m doing this more for me than anything else :).

The Blogging Bride

La la la

God today has been a slow day for me. I am currently working on an annual liner report for a major landfill and it is BORING. Not really my thing if you know what I mean. Oh well, it is keeping me busy… kind of. Right now I am pretty much reading over it to make sure everything is okay before I send it off to be proof read. Not sure what I am going to do to keep busy the rest of the week since I thought this would take a lot longer that it apparently did. I started writing yesterday and finished around 2:30 this afternoon. Now I’m just reading over to make sure I didn’t miss anything and that it all makes sense. I should also say that I had all the tables and figures done already so there wasn’t much work that I actually had to do. La La La. I’m bored.

So this weekend I start the search for my wedding dress. I have a good idea of what I want, and surprisingly I am strongly attracted to lace. Weird since I’ve always been very put off by it, but I think it is making a hip comeback. I have fallen in love with a couple of dresses that I would never be able to afford (~$5000) unless my dad wins the 649 tomorrow night. Oh well, I’m sure that I will find one that I love that is more reasonable. Actually, even if I were rich and had money to burn, I don’t think I could justify spending that kind of money on a dress that I would wear once.

Our house is finally starting to come a long. I promise I will post before and after pictures soon for everyone to see. This weekend we got our baseboards in, but we have to finish touching them up. Tonight I will be caulking around the edges so that you can’t see any gaps between the baseboard and the wall. We also have got the kitchen almost all painted. We still need another coat of paint though, damn you yellow paint. I think after painting two rooms yellow I have learned my lesson. Yellow paint = pain in the ass. Seriously, the guest bedroom took 4 coats and could still use another, and the kitchen will be 3-4 (4 for things done with the brush, 3 with the roller). We also still need to paint the doors and bring them back upstairs. Eventually we will replace the doors – I think they are probably original from 40-45 years ago and are in pretty rough shape. Too many things too do. It’s all pretty overwhelming to be honest. Hopefully by Christmas all the things currently on our list will be taken care of. Then it will be time to tackle the downstairs with it’s hideous offwhite/beige walls and forest green carpeting.

Update

Man, I wish one of my friends watched Ugly Betty because I SO need to speak to someone about last nights episode. I felt like I got sucker punched and it upset me so much! - My fun night last night consisted of watching Ugly Betty, Greys’ Anatomy, and CSI, for someone who doesn’t watch a lot of TV shows, that is a lot of TV. Thursday night is my TV night.

So yeah, there was lots of crying last night.

I cried watching Ugly Betty. I cried watching Greys (why, oh why, is Meredith so STUPID), and I cried watching CSI. Lots of tears were shed. I blame my cold.

So yeah, I have a cold this week. I probably would have considered staying home to nurse my cold on Wednesday or Thursday, but I was scheduled for field work and people were counting on me being there (one day the client was meeting me at 9:30 coming from Toronto – it was rainy and cold and I had to wear nomex and my rain jacket doesn’t really fit under the coveralls, the other day I was surveying and water samplings in Chatham with one of the other girls from the office. Somehow surveying doesn’t really work if you don’t have someone to hold the rod for you ;) luckily the weather was a little nicer yesterday.)

The house is starting to come together a little more. After tonight we should be done painting the kitchen. Our goal for this weekend is to get the base boards in. We are learning not to se ourselves lofty goals since everything is seeming to take way longer than we think it will. Also this weekend I’m doing the Run for the Cure with some people from work. It will be the first time I am socializing with people from work outside of working hours. Its nice to be closer to London so that events after work or on the weekend are easier to manage.

Niki Asked for a post

so here you go!

So it has been a few weeks since I last wrote. I have been pretty busy as I’m sure you can all imagine. On Wednesday August 29, I got my new car! A 2008 stick shift Toyota corolla in phantom grey (dark grey). It has alloy wheels and a moon roof – collective ooooooo from the audience. I normally wouldn’t have gotten them but with everything else I wanted (mainly cruise control and power windows) it was only an extra $200. A good thing about the stick shift (other than being fun and $1000 cheaper) is that my car qualifies for the $1000 fuel efficiency rebate – the automatic corolla does not. Actually, for automatic non-hybrid cars, only the Yaris qualifies.

I took the last day of august off work to move. Made for an extra long 4-day weekend. We were up super late on Thursday night trying to finish up packing. We almost got there, but we ran out of boxes. On Thursday U-haul was supposed to call us by 5 pm to let us know where we pick up our truck. We don’t pick it up where we book it for out of town moves. 5 pm… no word – I call them. After being on hold for a good 10 minutes, they say that they don’t know yet, call back at 6:50. I call at 6:50 (place closes at 7), it’s busy. And busy for another 10 minutes. Finally get a ring at 7 pm, but it rang for over 4 minutes before someone finally picks it up. They say I can pick it up at 8 at the fairway road location. Great.

Fast forward, next morning at 7:50, I am picking up A’s friend before going to pick up the truck (he is helping us move and driving). Get a call – from U-haul – “Sorry, the truck isn’t available, we hope to have something to you by this afternoon. We will call before 11am”. Um… so not going to work. We have to be completely moved out of the apartment and cleaned up by 12. We only have the elevator from 8 am to 11 am. I got bitchy and told the person on the phone that this is absolutely not acceptable, and I don’t care what she does, but she is going to find me a u-haul much before then. I got a call 15 minutes later. I can pick it up at 8:30 at Victoria Ave. Lesson learned – Don’t be a push-over!

Moving went pretty smoothly after that with the exception of getting our couches inside. It was a bit of a feat getting them in. we had to take off storm doors and the main doors, and after much grunting managed to get in 3 out of 4 couches inside. The last just isn’t going to fit. It is currently sitting in our garage with all our other construction waste (carpet, subflooring, cuttings from laminate and hardwood, etc).

Funny how you can go go go, until you crash. Well, we certainly crashed by the end of the weekend. Every day we got progressively less productive until Monday night where we sat on the couch doing nothing from approximately 5 pm to 10 pm. They don’t call it a lay-z boy for nothing!

Last week I was busy getting little stuff done before Christine’s wedding. I went up on Thursday night in time for bridesmaid duties on Friday. Saturday was a fun day. A drove up separately from me and has discovered that driving long distances are not fun. Sunday morning we were going to hang around Burleigh (awesome wedding venue!) for a while, but it was cold out and not all that nice so we packed it in, and went to visit my Dad and Nora for the afternoon. It was nice to get the last minute chance to see them since we haven’t seen them since the wedding! My Dad has lost a tonne of weight (well, not really a tonne ;)) He has ulcer surgery scheduled for next Monday, and the doctor told him he had to be down to 193 for the surgery. He was at 192 last Friday. At 6 feet, that is pretty trim!

Hopefully this weekend we will be able to get a chance to get some of the things done around the house that still need doing – like painting doors. But it looks like there is a good chance that we will be having visitors this weekend (in the form of sisters! K is in TO for a conference and A’s sister is back from Iran and wants to see our new digs).

Oh yes, almost forgot to mention – We have picked a day for the wedding – October 4, 2008 :) Hope to see you all there!!!

Laura Jones on the run

Yep, I’m officially a fugitive. I committed my first ever punishable offence on Monday night. B&E. I’m a hardened criminal. Though, I do wonder if it is considered B&E when it is your own house you are breaking into?

Jenny is currently residing in Woodstock while we finish packing up our apartment and moving this week. We took her to Woodstock last week since we didn’t want to leave her by herself from Tuesday to Sunday (particularly after just having left her from Thursday – Sunday. Jenny hates car rides, and proved her hatred for it about 2/3rd of the way there when she (while I was holding her) projectile vomited all over the console and Arash who was driving. Nice. So needless to say she stayed in Woodstock this week so that we wouldn’t subject her (or us?) to the trauma of two more car rides.

So Monday night comes around, and I stop in at home to feed Jenny and to put another coat of paint on the stairs. But wait, the “second set” set of keys, you know the ones that we haven’t tried yet. The ones I have with me? They don’t work. Oops. So yes, I had to break into my own house. Luckily over the weekend I noticed that the latch in one of the bedrooms was broken so I piled up paint buckets under the window, slid it open and pulled myself into the room. Standing on three paint pails that came up to my waist put me so that the start of the window was boob height, so it took a bit of muscle power to get myself in, and for a moment I didn’t think I could do it and that I would fall to the ground with disastrous results. Thankfully though I made it. And now have the bruises all over my arms to prove it. I’m in a bit of pain here.

When I got back to KW, I had time to pick up my ring. Yay! I feel like I am officially engaged now since I have the ring to prove it :)

Yesterday I was sick. It sucked. Woke up with a wonky tummy and a bad headache. Headache is gone, but tummy is still not perfect. Kind of coming and going in ebbs and tides.

So that is it for me. Please, no one disclose my location to the police ;)

A Very Busy Weekend

Or, actually, 4 days.

On Thursday we spent the day running around with our heads cut off… well, not really, but that is certainly how it felt. A. had his drivers test at 8:55 am in Woodstock, after that we had to pick up the rental cargo van to pick up stuff that we would need. Alas, there are some tasks that a Toyota Camry is not built for ;) We had to go to storage, pick up the futon, go to sears buy a bbq and lawnmower, go back to the apartment to pick up stuff we would need and get Jenny ready for 4 days on her own (the longest we have left he for! She was pretty needy last night and this morning), to home depot to pick up painting suppliest ($1000 worth of paint and accessories! Ack! The dude told us way too much paint though, and it looks like we pretty much got twice as much as we needed. Grrr. Hopefully we can return some of the white paint (ceiling paint, semi-gloss and primer). Finally we went to best buy to buy our new tv (32” Panasonic LCD TV – regularly $1500! But it was on sale, we got it for the discount price of $1200 .)

By the time we finally got back to the house and unloaded it was 6 pm, and we needed to get the floor cleared of carpets since the guy who was coming to refinish the floors was supposed to be there Thursday evening. We started removing the carpet and the floor was looking pretty fantastic. Until we got to the stairs. There was a dark dark stain at the bottom of the stairs and it looked bad. By this time it was 9 pm and no flooring guy, so I decided to give him a call. Apparently something came up and he couldn’t come. Thanks for the call asshole. Seriously, why would you not call? I described the stain to him, he though he wouldn’t be able to get it out and that the floor would have to be patched there. Great. So we continue along with our carpet removal and hit “The stairs of staples”. We have a side split, so there are only 6 stairs between the main floor and the upstairs. Sounds simple enough right? Well, on those six stairs their must have been somewhere between 1000 and 2000 staples. I’m not exaggerating here either. They were the little tiny ones that are just wide enough to fit a pair of needle nose plyers through (if there is enough clearance, and got about 1 cm into the wood. They take an incredible amount of effort to pull out, provided that they actually come out and don’t break in the process. I started working on the stairs at 9 pm on Thursday and finished pulling staples out of the six stairs by 2:30 on Friday. Seriously. We think the dude that put the carpet in got a new nail gun and went a little gung ho. The wood was pretty beat up from that little escapade. Another part of our floors that couldn’t be refinished. While I was busy going insane, A. got the carpet off of the other rooms and ripped up the subflooring. The room that will be the office has rotten wood that is buckling. Great. Hallway same deal, rotting wood, but the guest bedroom was the saving grace. The floor looks FANTASTIC in there and won’t even need to be refinished. It looked amazing. I was very happy about that.

So off to home depot we go to sort out our flooring woes. We ended up deciding to put in Laminate in the office and upstairs hallway and hardwood in the living room. We are still trying to sort out the stairs. Right now we have filled in all the little staple holes with plaster and have painted the sides white. We were planning on painting the sides white and laminated the steps, but now we are leaning towards painting the whole stairs white and perhaps running a nice rug down the middle to keep them a little cleaner. When we finally got back to the house, I continued to remove the staples from upstairs (just the subflooring staples, MUCH easier to pull out, but there were still a lot of them) while A put the BBQ together so that we could have some dinner.

When the BBQ was all put together and A. was going to start cooking dinner, he called me outside to come and join him. And, as some of you know now, he proposed. Apparently, this isn’t how he had planned it. We got a mulberry tree to plant at the house (the tree of love ;)) and he was going to propose while we were planting it, but the tree kind of got pushed aside in favour of other stuff this weekend so he asked while cooking dinner on our new bbq. The tree did eventually get planted but it wasn’t until dusk last night. The engagement ring was my mums, which made me cry. I always loved my mum’s ring, and I am so happy that it is now mine. It is more valuable to me than all the diamonds in the world. It is white gold with an oval star sapphire. I can’t wear it yet because my mum had ginormous fingers. Like the ring is at least a size 10. I believe my ring finger is an 8 or 8.5. The ring is currently too big for my thumb. No details yet on when the nuptials will take place, we aren’t going to start worrying about the details until after the house is finished.

This is the post that does not end, yes it goes on and on my friends…

Saturday we got the rooms ready for paint. A’s mum came from TO to help out. We primed all the trim (ugly wood coloured) and before we left on Sunday we got 3 coats of semi gloss on. I’m thinking I want to do one more coat, but this will likely wait for a while now. Ceilings in the upstairs hall and office got painted and the walls in the living room, hall (asparagus green – the colour of my green v-neck sweater for those that know it), and office (sky blue) got their first coat of paint. I’m happy with how it is starting to look. I think that when we are done it is going to look great and very us. Before the house looked old and dull, now at least half of it will be hip and modern (we are leaving the basement for now). We are a far cry from where we wanted to be at this point, but hopefully it will all come together. A is taking Wednesday to Friday off this week. I’m taking Friday off so we will be in Woodstock starting tomorrow night. This time Jenny is coming with us. Hopefully we can get a second coat onto the walls before Arash starts putting in the floors on Thursday. Should be possible now with him taking another day off work. Otherwise it would have been a sleepless night on Wednesday which would not have made for a fun day on Thursday for me. We are kind of in full damage mode now and plan to only get done the essential things before we move. Hopefully everything goes well and we get most of the important stuff done first!

Countdown Homeowner... 22 hours, 9 minutes

So. This is it. One day from now, I will be a proud joint owner of a 1960s side split in the booming metropolis of Woodstock, Ontario. It has been a stressful week. I, like blythe, made the mistake of waiting to the last minute to transfer money into my chequing account. I called last Thursday thinking I had plenty of time, but neglected to account for the fact that it would have to do two bank transfers – one from Manulife to CIBC (my investment banker is CIBC Wood Gundy) and one from CIBC to my chequing account at Scotia. My CIBC account isn’t a regular account that I could go to any branch and get a bank draft. Anywho, CIBC apparently got the money on Friday but forgot to send it on and it takes 48 hours between CIBC and Scotia. Aka, Laura is screwed, but I talked to them first thing yesterday morning and the money was still sitting there, so they prepared a bank draft and walked it over to the scotia branch in downtown Belleville and deposited directly into my account – Crisis averted thank god.

I am very preoccupied at work today, and am not being very productive. I keep getting excited/stressed about our house and impending home ownership. On top of that my IBS appears to be acting up today so my lower digestive tract is giving me grief. I may go home sick early today because I’m in quite a bit of pain right now. And from past experience it is just going to get worse. I’m sticking it out to lunch since I have to go to the bank, but if it doesn’t get better, I may leave early this afternoon.

Do not Follow this link unless you have finished HP7

It is JK rowling giving an interview answering some of the questions that we want answers to that weren't given in the epilogue.

http://www.hpana.com/news.20129.html

Also says which character she was going to kill but didn't.

I'm done

If anyone wants to talk HP, let me know. Preferabley by e-mail. don't want to spoil it at all.

Peterborough Half Ironman

Niki, here is the report for you!

So after doing triathlons for 6 years, I finally decided to start ramping up for the possibility of one day doing an Ironman. For years, I put off doing an Olympic triathlon because I didn't want to take longer than 3 hours to do, I wouldn't let myself start training for that distance until my sprint race times came down. I trained for my first oly last summer and would have just squeaked by under 3 hours, but the swim was cancelled and I freaked out at the prospect of an Olympic duathlon. After fighting a weird stomach problem for several months (ended up being acid reflux), my run training was not good.

Since then, I have worked back on the running and have lost 20 pounds. Both of which have made me faster, 2 weeks ago, I did my first oly (on a long bike course) and got 2:57 (based on bike pace = 2:50 for a true oly. I have also had this weird though in my head that I didn't want to do a half Ironman unless I could do it under 7 hours. That may seem like a lot of time to some, but I've never been an exceptional cyclist. I enjoy it, I'm just not all that fast.

So the days leading up to the race on Sunday weren't really ideal. Well, the day before mostly. My dad got married an hour away from the race site on Saturday so we had to be there early on Sunday to register the day of the race. Not smart, but I wasn't going to miss my dad's wedding, so such is life. The other downside of my dad's wedding was that it was hard to leave the reception. I wanted to leave around 10 and it was close to 11:30 by the time we left. What should have been a 1 hour drive turned to 1.5 hours, due to 4 stops on the side of the road for my boyfriend to throw up. Nice. Silly boy was very hungover yesterday. So these things combined meant that my legs were tired and sore and I was tired from 4.5 hours sleep.

I wasn't really in the mood to race Sunday morning. Was a little down that I hadn't stayed for the rest of the wedding and wouldn't be able to visit more with my family on Sunday, but I guess it was my decision, and it is done. We got to the race site, water was like glass which was a good omen, and the wind wasn't too bad, but would pick up during the day along with the temperatures.

Swim 38:15, 6/13 AG, 187/580 OA, 1:55/100m
I was originally hoping and thinking I could do 35:xx for the swim, but I guess that didn't happen. I haven't been swimming nearly enough for that to be possible. There was also a 1 minute run into transition and the timing mats, so I likely lost some time there too.

Overall the swim wasn't bad. It was my second mass start swim with almost 200 more swimmers, but it went much much better. Probably a combination of me being prepared for what is was going to be like, and other swimmers knowing what to do. I'm guessing close to half of the racers have done an IM and we were much more spread out across the beach. There were a LOT of M-dot tattoos yesterday!

Overall the swim was pretty uneventful. It was two loops, so running into the water the second time, I really didn't feel much like starting swimming again, and waded in very deep before finally starting to swim again . On the last leg of the swim, I remember thinking to myself "hey! I'm almost done the swim of my first half Ironman" but I didn't let myself get too excited about that since the swim is always my strong suit .

Bike 3:17:33, 10/13 AG, 471/580 OA, 27.3 km/hour

The bike. Me and my bike have a love/hate relationship. I love riding. I find it relaxing and just plain fun. That said. I seem to not be able to do well on the bike section compared to other riders. I don't know why my bike splits are usually so slow but there it is. So given my normally abissmal bike performances, I set myself an ambitious goal of being off the bike in 3:30 which would be 25.8 km/hr. To be honest, I was a little scared that I would miss the bike cutoff and not be allowed to start the run. No need to worry though, but I ROCKED out there

As per my usual triathlon carreer. The first 20 km of the bike were spent with the crappy swimmers speeding by me which to be honest is a little demoralizing. Why can't the swim be longer. Like have a triathlon that is not so heavily weighted on the bike. Say something where the average time for each of the events would be 1 hour. Then I could place better . After about 20 K or so though, the passing became less frequent. I even passed one girl who tried passing me. Looking at the results, she ended up getting off the bike 12 minutes later than I did. I was keeping up a good clip too on a challenging course. Lots of hills in this are. Not mountainous long hills where you are climbing for kilometres at a time, but definitely hilly with no real flat sections. I reached the turnaround with an average speed of more than 28.5 km/hour. Holy crap! That is very fast for me given the distance that I rode. And then within km of the turnaround bam! It hits me! Wind. Nice. Now I know why I had such a speedy time on the bike. The wind wasn't horribly strong, but it was a constant presence during most of the second half of the bike. At least 30 km, were a constant head wind. I learned on valuable life lesson during those 30 km: although I hate headwinds and they slow me down, they slow down others more I probably passed about 20 people during the headwind period, most of which passed me earlier.

There was also a tonne of drafting in the second half of the bike course. I would be slogging up a hard hill with a headwind about to pass another rider, check my shoulder to make sure that there wasn't a rider I was going to cutoff and sure enough there would be some jerk sitting inches off my wheel. I probably saw this about 10 times, but quite a few times it was the same two riders. I wanted to take down their numbers and report it to the OAT officials, but I'm not sure they could do anything. I realize it doesn't slow you down any, but it isn't really fair if half the people draft. Makes for an uneven playing field.

On hydration, my stupid thing for my areo bottle that keeps the liquid from splashing out fell out again. 2km into the bike course. Crap. On the way back, I noticed several of them lying on the ground in the spot where mine flew out. I had to drink the contents really quickly since it was splashing all over me. Also make the container pointless for the rest of the race. I am pretty bad about remembering to drink on the bike, and this water bottle always makes be drink since the straw is at normal mouth level. Meant that I didn't end up drinking nearly enough for the heat on the bike course.

One last interesting note: I got passed by a chick with 8 km to go. She was Riding a P3. I'm sorry, but if you are going to buy a $5000 Tri bike, I would think that you would want to be a fantastic bike rider. But to be passing me with 8 km left of a 90K bike? I'm sure her average speed at the most might have been 28.5 km/hr. Most people would be able to pull that off on that bike. Rant over.

Run (if you can call it that ) 2:31:13, 12/13 AG, 455/580 OA, 7:10 min/km.

Coming off the bike I was in great shape. Well, kind of, I was out of it a bit, but I was running with around 4 hours elapsed time. My recent run times in triathlons have been fantastic, and I have had two half marathon PRs this year. I thought, Great, now for the fun. Ha. Yeah, not funny or fun.

For the first 7 km I was holding my own pretty well, not passing a lot of people, but not getting passed either (pace was about 6 minutes/km). Was keeping up a pretty good clip, and was happy with how I was doing. That was until I started overheating. Yes. Overheating with 14 km left to go isn't a good thing. I was probably also dehydrated from the bike, but I during the run, I was hydrating well, drinking water and Gatorade (I was carrying Gatorade with me) and took salt tabs, but I think the damage was already done. Soon holding the pace wasn't working and I had to slow down a lot.

They changed the course so that it was a two loop course this year. We had to run by the finish 3 times before we actually got there and it was really demoralizing. Not fun at all. On the second loop I really slowed down a lot. I walked the uphills (there were three good sized hills on the run course that were all back to back, but after the hills were over on the second loop, I needed to take another couple of walk breaks because I was overheating. I was generally able to keep up my spirits and knew I was going to finish well inside my 7 hour goal time even if I had to crawl across the finish. So I was happy about that, but my body was just falling apart. I couldn't tell you what it was really, nothing hurt terribly bad, my calf was cramping a bit in the last 1 km but there was no one thing bad, I just was tired and wanted to sit down for a bit.

After the slowest 21 km of my life (including long runs!) I finished the race in 6:32:08 13/13 AG, 436/580 OA.

Now, this is interesting, I thought this morning. Remember several hundred words ago when I told you about this girl who tried passing me on the. She was in my AG and I know for certain that she didn't pass me again during the race. I'm thinking that she may have only run one loop of the race course, but since I don't know her name, I can't verify this. Mind, you, I don't really care because I beat my goal time by 28 minutes .

So that is that. When I finished my friends asked how I felt, my response was "Like I don't want to do that again". But sure enough, here I am, a day later thinking about IMFL 2009. But for now, it is all about rest and relaxation. I've decided to switch to the half marathon at the race I'm signed up for in November (it was supposed to be a full), and for the next year, I'm going to focus on losing the rest of the weigh I want to drop and shorter race distances. Sprint Tris, and 5K-half marathon races.

I have an announcement

Arash and I have had our offer on a house accepted.

the MLS number is 56-776. We looked at probably ~ 20 houses and this one was the best all round. there were ones with a nicer backyard (there were two with absolutely beautiful back yards) and there were ones that we loved the interior for (but had tiny itty bitty back yards where you could see into the neighbours windows. This one had a nice back yard and a nice interior.

And the garage has rafters to store my future canoe ;)

Milton Triathlon

First tri of the season. First tri since losing 20 lbs. First tri in a wetsuit. First time having to bike up the nigara escarpment. Also the First race in which I won

So going into this race I had no goals. I was secretly wanting a PR until I found out this wasn't a proper sprint distance race last weekend – this race was - 750 swim, 30K bike, 7.5K run. After I found that out I decided not to care about my time. I had three goals 1) be less nervous at the start of the race (HR is usually > 120 waiting for the race to start), practice swimming in my new wetsuit, and to get in a good workout (one of the most challenging courses in Ontario - we have to bike up the escarpment, and run up most of it. Both mean we get to go down too though, which was very nice.) In fact, I cared so little about Sunday’s outcome that I rode and ran 4 times last week, and swam 3 times, about 2-3 more workouts than normal, and I even rode 44 km saturday morning (then spent the remainder of the day wondering around the zoo in extreme heat and humidity. Definitely not ideal

Before the race I ran into one of the girls in the UW tri club. She won the series opener (a duathlon) in 25-29 and got 4th over all. She is a crazy good cyclist (sunday she averaged 34-35 km/hour on a very challenging course). It was nice to see a friendly face.

Swim (13:41, 13/29 AG 1:50/100m) The swim went well. Although my heart rate was way too high the entire time. It goes much higher in open water than in the pool. Weird stuff. It was also a big race. There were 610 competiters so the waves were much bigger than I'm used to. I had people swimming over me left and right, but I ended up finishing safely and in one peice. The run to transition was on gravel. And sucked. Big time. I'm sure my split is off because of that as well, I was probably out of the water like 12:50 or so.

T1 (2:04) Bad T1 time for me. I'm usually around 1:30 or so. I struggled a bit with my new wetsuit... and had very little room. And the stupid gravel we had to run along sucked big time.

Bike (1:00:46, 24/29 AG 29.6km/hr) Despite being at the end of my age group on the bike, this is a pretty good time for me, considering the race. The race started on a gentle downhill to bring us to the bottom of the escarpment and the next 5 km were pretty much uphill. Started with a gentle uphill, a short downhill, 90 degree corner, then up up up. On the first uphill section, I stopped because a girl right in front of me popped a tire. I yelled "DO YOU NEED A TUBE?" she did, so I stopped and got out my spare tube hoping I wouldn't need it. I probably lost a minute there, but seeing as I really didn't care about this race, I didn't mind. On the big hard part of the hill I saw two others stop with mechanical problems, but there was no way I was stopping for them. Had I stopped, I wouldn't have been able to start again. I was grunting, and heaving, and saying "Oh God" over and over. I'm sure I sounded like I was having sex or something. certainly didn't feel that good . I made it to the top though (going a wopping 7.5 km/hr) without having to get off my bike to walk it (as a number of other people were doing). I was proud of myself for that. Took me several km before I regained composure and didn't feel like I was going to throw up anymore. I was able to pick up the speed considerably after that though. On the big downhill I sat up. It was scary and there was no way I was going down that with no access to my brakes! still, my max speed going down was 76.7 km/hr. Yowzas! that is fast! One final thought is that there were a lot of packs riding together with no one making a concentrated effort of losing them. It pissed me off a bit, but I wasn't in this for competition so I just had to shrug. When the packs went by me, I actually sat up and slowed down a bit because I didn't want to draft. One of the tri club guys said that he had a guy on a P3 drafting off him. Nice. You have a $5000 bike, but you will still draft off another rider???

T2 (1:10) Ahh, much better with shoes on. Bike racked, bike shoes, gloves, helmet off, run shoes, visor on. and off I go.

Run (16/29 AG 42:10 5:38/km - exact same as my 1/2 marathon pace!) The run was also very challenging. Pretty much uphill with a few short downhills for the first 3 km, flatish for the next 1.5, then back downhill for the rest of the race. It was a pretty hot course and only half of the stations had gatorade. I wished more did (they usually all do, and was kind of counting on that given the heat and my hydration strategy. I only had one bottle of gatorade on the bike and with the heat, and the amount I sweat, that isn't enough for a 2hr race. Oh well, I finished, and with a pretty decent time. I'm impressed that I was so high in my age group standings since I'm generally not that great of a runner.

Overall time: 1:59:50 (including the stop to help the girl on the bike), 22/29 AG - BUT, I registered as a Clydesdale, and I was first there Albeit there were only two racers . Given last years results, I would have been third, but at least the 2nd place girl is now 40+, not 39-, so that was kind of cool. I got a hat that says race winner Stuck around for the awards to claim my prize. Ended up also getting a door prize - a timex ironman watch. I'm happy about that. I needed a pool watch for doing repeats and i can also wear it when I am doing fieldwork. As a side note: had this been the standard sprint distance, given my paces, today, I would have gotten a 1 min PR (over Peterborough 2005), but the course was by far the most challenging race course I have done. Those hills were crazy big.

Hem, Hem

I have an announcement to make.

My thesis has been submitted to the Grad studies office :D. Now they just have to tell me that the format is good and I can print. Wahoo!

I was planning on going to the gym tonight, but I don't feel like it. Perhaps I will go for a run or a bike when I get home. Or perhaps I will do both. We shall see.

Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stuff

I'm busy these days sorry for my lack of updates.

Last weeks HAZWOPER training went well. It was pretty interesting since for years it has been drilled into my head that the most dangerous pathway to the receptor is often Water. Apparently that really isn't the case for most scenarios. Often the most dangerous is inhalation which I guess makes sense, but when you are talking about Joe public, they won't be exposed to the free phase contamination so inhalation comes secondary (unless they have soil gas vapour intrusion into their basement). For workers at a site though, proper respitory protection is apparently really important ;). I got to dress up like this one day (that isn't me inside, but I was wearing a similar suit. It was kind of cool.

On the weekend I did the missisauga half marathon (as you might have gathered from reading Burgers blog yesterday. Got another half marathon personal best, took > 1 minute off of my Chilly time and finally broke the 2 hr barrier. Crossed the finish line in 1:59:29.6 (the .6 matters ;)) even with requiring an emergency potty break after clenching my butt cheeks for 7 kms. Without the break, I probably would have taken around 3 minutes off of my time from March which makes me even happier.

This week it is back to stressing about my thesis. It is due for submission at the end of the day on Friday and I have yet to get my edits from one of my readers. The other one got me his edits today and the changes will probably take an hour or so. I will do those tonight. I have thursday and Friday off this week to ensure that I graduate this spring. I'll be mighty pissed off if I'm done and just don't have my thesis approved by GSO in time which everyones favourite graduate secretary is trying to scare me into believing will happen. I intend on hand delivering my signoff sheet between the offices to make sure it gets handled well.

So that is it. Hopefully things go smoothly on Thursday and Friday!

Edit (12:20) - Silly me, forgot to post about the other exciting thing from this weekend - Dad and Nora tied the knot! The reception isn't until July 7th, but the actual civil ceremony was Saturday afternoon. The difference in the day has to do with Chinese luck stuff. They had their "numbers" read and decided on July 7th, but found out afterwards, they had to have close family and friends numbers read too. The 7th is apparently an unlucky day for me (but isn't bad since I don't believe this stuff), but it was also an unlucky day for Nora's Sister in Law who has lots of friends who believe this stuff, so hence the day change.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go...

Two things quickly first.

1) printed off my thesis and had it bound for my readers yesterday which means I have no thesis related work that i have to do today :)

2) I have OSHA HAZWOPER training this week so today is the only day of the week that I have to drive to london. Woohoo! rest of the week will be in waterloo at training :)

It's 10:30, where are you?

Me, I'm at school. I was up at 6 am. Out of the house by 7:15. At work by 8:20 - worked all day. Lunch was spent working on my thesis. Left work at 5:10. Got to school at 6:30 and have been here ever since. Yipee. I have an exciting life.

My figures and tables are all fixed up, now I just have to worry about some specific things in the text. I might be here for a while though :(

Edited at 11:40 pm: just got home. So far this week I have:
- spent 10 hours driving back and forth to london and UW
- Worked 30 hours
- spent another 14.5 hours working on my thesis.

I've gotten < 7 hours sleep every night. My minimum will be tonight at 6 hours, my maximum was last night at 6.75.

Need to wind down now before going to bed. Worst part about driving at night. I wind myself up so that I don't fall asleep while driving, just makes it hard to fall asleep once I get home. I am VERY happy that tomorrow is Friday.

First day of work

My first day of work was sucessful! yipee :) 1:05 drive, so long, but not horrible. It looks like woodstock would be almost perfectly 30 minutes for both of us, so that will be perfect.

I was tired all day today. I couldn't stop yawning. I think I'll need to add caffeine back into my daily diet... at least until I get used to the commute.

Not going to post much since I need to get cracking on my thesis for the night. Need to get chapter 4 submitted to Neil again tonight, so I need to make sure that the second half of it is good (about 10 pages but will likely take me the full 3 hours before I go to bed!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good
I submitted my thesis to the Deans Office this moring

The Bad
It isn't actually done yet. My readers agreed to only have one week to review it rather than the three they are supposed to have - they signed off saying they got it today. in reality, they will have it by the end of next week.

The Ugly
I will have to do some last minute editing next week while I'm working 37.5 hours/week plus commuting another 10+ :.(. Meh, I'll get through it.

As much as I say I've wanted to hurry up and finish for the last year or so, I think I'm really going to miss UW when I'm done here. I keep on having these moments where something happens and I get all teary-eyed and nostalgic. Like last friday I went to the C&D at lunch time and there was a big sign out front "C&D will be be closed April 20th-May 1st." Yes. My last trip to the C&D. So sad. Then yesterday I was swimming at the PAC and halfway through my swim I realized that it would be the last time I will likely swim in that pool. (I know some of you hate it, but I very much prefer it to the Rec centre).

Then finally, the toughest one was this morning. I went to my very last waterloo goodlife spinning class. All the other clubs have stupid RPM classes which I hate (so not good for training) so I'll miss that, but more so, over the last 6 years, I've become friends with this instructor, going to her classes every week as the rule. She was fun and cheerful and made the classes go by quickly. I'll miss her. It kind of feels like the end of undergrad when we all got teary eyed that we wouldn't be together anymore, but at least we knew that we would see each other again, just not the same way or as frequently.

But... time for new beginnings. I start work on Monday, and my new life as Laura Jones, MASC, Junior Engineer is about to start!

LJs Revelation - April 17th

I love the word being.

The contaminant mass is being removed from the aquifer material.

Why the heck do I need being in there? I think I've deleted "being" from over 20 sentences over the last hour. Jeepers!

Wanna hear something crazy?

I was playing around on facebook the other day, and found out that someone from Engineering '04 is seeking the nomination to be the candidate for the provincial liberals (kitchener-waterloo) for this fall's election. He went on to become the FEDS VPEd... twice. Initals JH. Don't want to actually write his name down here, but isn't that crazy.

After all his rants in the Ironwarrior, I was sure that he was a conservative. Like 100% positive. I asked him once what his political leanings were but he didn't answer.

I passed?

Seriously, not much to say about it.

I went up to thunder bay this weekend though to visit Kate though which was nice. She had a friends daughter who is interested in Environmental engineering so we went over to talk to her for a bit which was kind of cool :)

Now I'm just trying to finish up my thesis. One chapter that really needs some serious work. I'm rewritting it as we speak (same content, just completly rewriting) and running some extra simulations on my laptop at the same time - Just things I know for sure, but the captain wants solid numbers backing it up, but they should be done in a few hours and I can just put the numbers in then. Pretty fun times.

Feels good to have the seminar out of the way so that now I just have to focus on getting this in and done.

Signed, unsealed, undelivered

My job offer that is. I am going to be starting work on April 30th, all I have to do is scan the offer and e-mail it to the office manager and HR person when I get home from school today. It feels kind of weird to be entering a new stage of my life and very uncharacteristically laissez faire about it. I didn't really actively search for a job, only doing things that fell into my lap and it seems to have worked out for me. I only applied to companies at the career fair last year and when Burger told me to send her my resume.

I'm so lazy.

My seminar is booked for tomorrow afternoon. EEEE! I'm sure it will be fine, but I'm starting to get a little nervous for it and am deligently putting together my presentation and practicing. In fact, unlike my normal self, I'm hardly procrastinating at all!

In other news, not sure if I posted before, but I have a draft of my thesis completely done and am working on my edits for the supervisor. Hopefully it won't take that many rounds for chapter 4, but I forsee myself being very busy next week!

I have an announcement to make

I just got a verbal job offer for GA so there is a good chance that I'll be joining Keely and Blythe working for that company. Wahoo!

The End is Nigh!

Of school that is, not life in general, so it is a happy though, not a sad one :)

I'm booking my seminar tomorrow for 3:30 on Friday, April 13th. Good thing I'm not superstitious. I hope to have my thesis in either that week or the week after which should be manageable. Most of my chapters are approved with only two not. Chapter 4 was submitted in draft form to my supervisor yesterday and he'll have 5 (conclusions and recommendations) and the abstract before the end of the day tomorrow. Wahoo. this is a good feeling :)

In other news, well, lack there off. No news on the job front. Hopefully will hear back from one of the companies soon. If I don't hear today, I think I'll call tomorrow (they said they would call by monday - as in the 26th, so I feel justified calling them). I am also going to apply for a couple more companies that have been asking my supervisor if he has anyone finishing up soon. Hopefully I'll have a job soon and I can start work in May!

Okay, here they are

pictures

Grrr

:( I just 30 minutes posting pictures from vancouver, but I messed up, and I can't post them.

I'm going to put them on my flickr account and put a link to it here... it'll be easier.

I'm baaaack

So my vacation. In a word - perfect!

Monday night we got into Vancouver late.

Tuesday we went for a hike in one of the canyons, and went downtown to MEC and took a walk in my old running grounds - stanley park. The park got badly hit in the wind storms this year and a LOT of trees are down. probably close to 2/3s in some places, it was pretty crazy!

Wednesday we headed up to whistler for two days of skiing. I overheard people saying that they were the two best days all year. fresh powder on Wednesday and clear clear clear both days which is a rarity for whistler. You are often skiing there in the clouds so it was nice to have a great view at the top and excellent conditions.

Thursday on our way back from whistler we went to my aunts place on the Sunshine Coast which is a 40 minute ferry ride from Vancouver. It is on the BC mainland, but the coast has tonnes of big inlets, fjords and sounds that are silly to build bridges across. They all have Ferries instead, since it would take a good couple of hours to drive around.

Friday it was back to Vancouver (after a good 7.5 km run- in shorts! - on the sunshine coast) and we spent friday night and saturday visiting with friends from undergrad and gradschool that have found their way out to BC (it was Kelly's 30th b-day, saw QC&RL, and CyndyD from undergrad). It was nice to see them all again. QC just moved out there at the end of January and she seems to be settling well and has a fabulous apartment in kits.

On Sunday we went for a long hike in snowshoes up one of the local mountains in Vancouver. It is crazy the change in conditions over a relatively short elevation gain. At the bottom of the mountain (very bottom) sea level, there is no snow and they would barely ever get any (maximum a couple of inches but it melts after a few days). the top was at 1200-1300 m and there would have been at least 2 m of snow on the ground! craziness.

Monday was back to Ontario. we had to get up at 4:45 for our flight which probably made getting up yesterday morning a little easier. Today was a little bit easier again, so hopefully I'm mostly back on Ontario time.

Pictures will follow, but I don't have them all amalgamated. some are on my laptop, some still on my camera, and some on arash's camera. I'll try to post them tonight or tomorrow though.

Chilly Half marathon

The short version:
I've been fighting this sore throat for 2 weeks now, at first it was just there, and hinting about coming on strong, but after 1.5 weeks, I figured it wouldn't get bad. nuh-uh. Thursday it was bad, friday much worse, saturday marginally better, today similar to yesterday.

I think I had a well paced run, mile markers were NOT accurate, finished in 2:00:47 which is a 4:13 PR, I know I would have gotten <2:00:00 (my goal) had the markers been accurate. Throat didn't end up being a big issue, I did have a few coughing fits, but I doubt it slowed me down any. I came 3rd in the Athena <40 category, not sure how many were registered as I haven't checked the results online.

The long version:
Training for this run has been tough. I was going to kind of wing it and sign up at the last minute if the conditions were good and my training went well. A friend called me in a frenzy one day in late january letting me know that the race was almost full so if I was going to sign up, i had to do it then. I decided to sign up and dedicate myself to my training. 2 days after I signed up the race was full.

Training for a half at the beginning of March in Ontario. Not the smartest idea. 2 of my 18 km long runs ended up being on the treadmill at my gym in the early morning. 18 km on a treadmill Not cool. The treadmill running did help me with my pace though, I knew what pace I needed to run, and I did several tempo runs of up to 5 miles at my half marathon pace, and I had the pace in my legs. I know I could do it next time.

So I woke up yesterday morning and drove the 1 hour down to burlington ontario to pick up my race kit. I had a minor heart attack when I got there and saw the size of the line. It ended up moving fast and I was through the line in around 20 minutes. Enough time to get back to my car, drop off my belongings, go to the bathroom twice, and make my way to the start line.

The startline was a mess, and the pace bunnies were all over the place. the 1:40 was directly in front of the 2:30 I could see the 2:05 and the 2:10 back a ways, the 2:00 guy was WAY back. So, I kind of lined up halfway between the 2:30 and the 2:05 guy hoping that the people around me would be the same pace. Ended up being pretty okay. well before the 1st km marker, I was on pace.

My splits (I needed an average of 5:41 to make my goal of 2:00)
1 km 5:45
2 km 5:30
3 km 5:27
4 km 5:58 (i commented to others around me that I thought this one was long - HRM says 1.19 km)
5 km 5:04 (Short - I picked it up, but not that much!)
6 km 6:44 (long much??? again, commented that this was long, others agreed, HRM says 1.39 km)
7 km 5:11
8 km 5:47
9 km 5:26
10 km 5:48
11 km 5:25
12 km 5:15
13 km 5:39
14 km 5:24
15 km 5:29
16 km 5:40
17 km 5:40
18 km 5:49 (okay, I need to pick it up here!)
19 km 5:30 (that's better - at the 19 km mark I was at 1:46:33 - I have 13:27 to run 2.1 km. < 2:00 is in the bag)
okay, where's 20??? 20? Where are you??
20 km 8:55 And there she is folks. stupid km markers. This km was AT LEAST 1.5 km long. nice spacing on the markers assholes! (note, I didn't slow down, I actually picked up the pace here - HRM says 1.61 km)
21.1 km 5:17. I'm booting it, knowing there is very little chance I'll make under 2 now with that stupid 19-20 km boondoggle.

Final time 2:00:47. which has me both happy as it is a 4:17 PR but also has me a little upset because I missed my goal. I'm positive though that with a course with more accurate km markers I would have had <2:00 in the bag. I should note that I have the polar RS200 sd that calculates speed and distance, based on one of those foot pod things (measures foot acceleration, is supposedly more accurate than a GPS). Anywho, it had the total distance at 22.5 km, so the course may have been really wrong, either that, or I need to calibrate the thing (I've never before thought that it over estimates distance though).

So I made my way back to the hotel where we picked up our race kits, and checked the results. 3rd athena < 40, I got a medal and apparently a gym bag will be mailed to me me :)I guess that is it from me.

I know I have a < 2 hour time in me now, I just need to have a race with even km markers. Now i just have to decide it I want to do one this spring or wait until next year. (I'm officially switching focus to tris as of now, until July). I could do Waterloo, Missisauga, or Ottawa all before the end of May. Decisions, decisions.

Time for an update.

I've been woefully negligent of my blog lately. Not much going on to speak of. We (the supervisor and I) were hoping to have my thesis handed in on friday - that isn't happening). There is something that we aren't sure about, so I can't finish my modelling until we have it figured out. Unfortunately though, he'll be away for 2.5 weeks starting this weekend, so I'll be set back another 2.5 weeks. Oh well, I guess these things happen. On a brighter note though, 1 chapter is good to go, one appendix is really close (80% done, probably will be done next time I hand it in to him - he only wants the last page and a half). Supervisor is taking chapter 2, chapter 3 is getting close (Hoping this will be the last set of revisions on it), after that, only the modelling chapter (which I can't do until we sort this out) and conclusions are left. Yipee! It feels good to be getting close, although I am disappointed I won't be done before I go to BC.

This past weekend, we got down to Toronto to visit AFs mum and sister. It was good to see them again, though, I'm really missing my own family as well. I haven't seen any of them in around 2 months now, which is probably right on par with the longest I've ever gone without seeing them... probably the longest not seeing anyone. After my mum passed away, I made a good effort to see my dad once a month or so, but since meeting AF, that has fallen by the wayside. I saw new pictures of Eddie this morning, and he's getting so big! hard to believe he's that big and developed when I haven't seen him in 2 months. I'm going to take a few days off next week since my supervisor is gone and head down to visit with my dad and sister. I'm excited about getting to see them again.

Other than that, my training cycle is now complete. I'm running in the Chilly half marathon this weekend, hopefully it isn't so Chilly. I'm hoping to break my current personal best, we'll see how it goes. This week, I just get to sit back and relax with a couple of short runs. Should be a nice break :) By the time I get back up to this mileage again, it'll be much warmer, and hopefully the sidewalks will be clear of snow!

**Update**

My meeting with my supervisor had the best possible outcome. Basically, the reason why he was making so many edits and basically wanted to rewrite the chapter was because he sees a journal article coming out of it. He didn't fully understand what I was doing though, and wanted to meet so that he better understands what is going on. basically he is going to take what I have, and re-arrange and re-write it. He'll give it back to me, with minor changes that he wants me to make. He realizes that I am uber busy fixing all my other chapters (I have 2 on my desk right now) as well as writting the last chapter and analyzing my results) so he'll do as much as he can. Wahoo!

Okay, back to work. I hope to get him back one more of my chapters today, but I have to read it over a couple more times to make sure it all makes sense.

If I...

murder my supervisor can I still graduate. :(

He just gave me back some revisions on one of my chapters, and I have no clue what he wants me to do. his revisions on one single chapter will take the better part of a week and are completely different from the revisions he gave me last time. I'm meeting with him in an hour and a half, but right now every time I think about it, I start to cry. I do not want to cry in front of him. I'm bringing my last set of revisions with me, to show him that he is (IMO being unreasonable.)

My Response

Dude from Ground Water Modelling Company,

Sorry for getting back to you so late. I'm not done my masters yet, although I am getting close. I ran into some difficulties in the fall with my research that pushed me into the winter term. I am aiming to have my thesis submitted to the readers in a few weeks though, so I should be done by the end of March.

I haven't accepted a job offer yet, however, I think I am leaning more to the remediation side of things than modelling. Perhaps we could meet again to talk more on the job specifics and what you are looking for.

Thank-you for considering me.

Cheers,
Laura

I guess we'll have to wait an see. Perhaps I'll e-mail J.P. from burgers work tomorrow and see what is going on at that company.

What would you do?

So I have a question for ya'll. I had an interview with a company back in October (the good one) that I was supposed to get back to if I were interested closer to when I was going to be done. I.E. now. I think they would be a great company to work for, but I'm not sure if the work is for me. That said, it would be interesting... I'm just more interested in doing "dirty sites" right now than modelling "clean sites" (like for finding good sources for drinking water wells).

Since then I interviewed with burgers company last week and I'm still waiting to hear back from them. It would give me a greater opportunity to work with dirty sites, but I was interviewed by the wrong group (mostly the clean sites guys) so they were going to pass along my resume and put in a good word (they were impressed with me) but this all could take a while.

Well, this morning I got an e-mail from the guy I had my interview with back in October. He was wondering if I'm done yet and if I have accepted another job offer. I don't know what I should do I can probably put off e-mailing him back for a couple of hours, but I'll have to reply to him today.

What would you do? I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by being too picky right out of school.

In other news, AF and I booked ourselves plane tickets to BC last night! Yay! I'm so excited for my vacation. I spent all night last night looking up hotels in Whistler. Hopefully will be able to convince some people to come along with us to make it more affordable ($200+ / night on the weekend!) Otherwise we might go up for a night mid-week. We'll also be there for KB's 30th birthday which I'm super excited for. I miss that girl :(. So if QC or KB are reading this, I'll be in touch soon, but till then, I'll be out from March 12 to the 19ths :)

Stop the Harassment Already ;)

So, I guess I'm being harassed for an update. I can do that.

1) Pursuant to the discussion last week about anti-aging, I visited the clinique counter at the bay last week and got set up with a daily skin care regime. So far so good. However, since I didn't want to spend $54 on facial sunscreen I picked that up at Shoppers - the Neutrogena oil free stuff I've been using for years. I also picked up Neutrogena under eye cream which is good for fine lines, wrinkles and bangs. Under my eyes is my problem are for aging. Probably from years of squinting since I need glasses. So right now my regime is Neutrogena in the morning (I also have their acne wash), clinique in the evening. Seems to be going well, I have noticed a difference in my under eyes already.

2) Job interview. I think it went well, but I'm really not the best at picking up on these things (kind of like how I can't pick up flirtation from a guy). I sent them an e-mail yesterday thanking them for meeting with me, and I think the response was positive; he concluded his e-mail with "I was impressed with your depth and knowledge of your field and the manner in which you presented yourself". It didn't really feel much like an interview though. Just chatting about my research which wasn't hard. No stupid HR questions... "What would your friends say is your best trait?" or "Can you think of a time at work where you worked through a conflict with a co-worker? What did you do?" Those questions suck.

3) I met with my supervisor last week. We are aiming to have me finished and handed in by the end of February. Should be doable. Especially if I actually get my results done and handed into him so that he can get me my comments ;)

4) In case anyone is living in a hole, HP 7 release date was... released. July 21st, 07. Yipee!

Lets Talk Anti Aging

At the goodbye Q&R party on Saturday night we got talking about anti-aging products for wrinkles. The question: when is the right time to start the anti-aging process.

I'm all for getting older, and doubt that I'd ever do anything drastic to slow the process (Botox, face lift, etc) but that's not to say I want to have wrinkles soon. So far I don't have anything real. When I get a crappy nights sleep (like saturday night I got 5.5 hours), i had some fine lines visable under my eyes, but they were super fine and are only there when I'm really tired. I doubt anyone other than me would ever notice them.

So, who has started using face creams geared at anti-aging? When did you start? What are you using? basically, I want to know, what I'm supposed to do in my later 20s to avoid getting wrinkles prematurely. Right now, I just a face moisturizer with spf 15 from neutrogena and that is all.

Monday Again

So another weekend, another monday.

This past weekend was another busy one at 16 cedarwoods. Saturday was the regular errand running and it meant that I didn't get a chance to ride my trainer yet again. Boo! We did however get to go to a goodbye party at burger's house for Q&R. Q is starting a new job (and leaving the gradschool life behind) in Vancouver at the start of February. In fact they flew out this morning, so may already be starting their new life in BC. I'm going to miss them. Ditto Burgers comments about Q needing to join the blogging community!

So yep. EKs done, Burgers done, QC is done, JD has left town. MK is finishing this afternoon. That leaves lonely little me. It's quite sad that everyone else is done before me and I'm left here by myself. I'm also uber envious of them all starting their new lives and me still being stuck in the hell of trying to finish up this god damn thesis. Good news though, I'm getting pretty close. I should have my results all done by this time next week and as soon as neil approves my chapters I'll be done. We'll see if that actually happens though. Sometimes things don't really go according to plan as Burger would be able to tell you. I just want to be done so that I can start working.

Speaking of Working, I have an interview at burger's company next tuesday. I hope I get a job offer from them since they are a company I'd love to work for. This one is for real this time, the other interviews were more for practice. Wish me luck!

Back to School Thursday

Man, What is wrong with me? First I'm sick, then I think I'm better and then I'm sick again and worse than the first time. Man. It's depressing too, since I really needed to have a productive week and it really didn't happen :( Damn sickness, why did you have to throw a wrench in my plans like that????

Nothing else really to say other than that I'm sooo happy that is looks like winter outside now. I mean seriously, that was getting pretty depressing there for a while. I hope winter stays this time (although it is supposed to rain again tomorrow, BOOOOOOOOOO! Hopefully not too much snow will melt!_

My fever at 3 am this morning. 102F. :( Yuck. I took 2 advil and that really helped my temperature to drop (almost normal when I got up), but now the headache is coming back, so the fever isn't too far behind. I thought I was better :(

Monday Morning

Da Da, Da-Da Da!

Meh. What I lousy weekend. Thursday night I started developing a head ache and a bit of nausea, but didn't think anything about it, Friday morning general feeling of crappiness increased to include a back ache and a stomache ache. I ended up leaving work at around noon and went home. I slept for several hours and when I woke up, I took my temperature. 101F. Nice. So I think I had the flu. Saturday the head ache had subsided, but my stomache ache and back ache were a million times worse. Sunday morning - a little better. Good thing too since we had a tonne of stuff to get done including returning merchandise, grocery shopping and laundry. On top of that, it was AFs birthday so I made him breakfast, made him a birthday cake, and took him rock climbing/to dinner. We both really sucked at the climbing yesterday. Me with getting over the flu and AF who had a nasty cold on the weekend.

Over all not a great weekend in Apartment 1507. Sucks too since I had big ambitions of getting some big stuff done at school on friday that would have allowed me to start my model simulations for real. No go though since I felt like crap, I didn't manage to get much accomplished. Hopefully I can get it done today though which would mean my simulations would be underway tomorrow.

Laura's Useless Fact of the Day

Did you know that when the day's start getting longer at the end of december, the time that the sunsets actually gets later? On the shortest day of the year, (Dec. 22), the sun rose at 7:52 am, however, now and until the 8th of January (next monday) the sun rises at 7:55. True story, we are just gaining more time in the evening than we have been losing in the morning. I found this interesting.

Yes I'm light obsessed. Getting up at an ungodly hour to run in the morning is easier if there is at least some type of sunlight, however, it looks like I'm in for another dark month ahead. By the end of January, the sun still won't be rising until 7:40 am which will still be black, however by the time I actually start working, It'll likely be getting lighter in the morning which will make getting up to run early easier.

Laura's 2006 review

2006 has come to a close with the new year just in the beginning stages. Time for reflection over the past year.

January went by quickly, dating AF and seeing our relationship develop. We went to the Banff Mountain film festival which was fun and will be repeated this month, though this time will be in Waterloo. Can't really remember too much of January, though I have a feeling I spent a lot of time on the phone ;)

February was another great month of developing our relationship, although things at school started getting more stressful with deadlines looming. Mid Month I had a wonderful visit from KB who was in Ontario to visit. At the end of the month, and the beginning of March I went to BC to do some skiing with my Dad and his friends.

March: after getting back from skiing in BC, AF came with me to B-ville to meet the family. We had a great visit with lots of family (Dad, sister, b-i-l, aunt, uncle, cousin... etc.). We went skiing at Blue Mountain and while there, my mystery illness that would end up plaguing me for the next 3-4 months began. At the end of March we met C-dubs man in Peterborough.

April was another stressfull month school wise chez Laura's. I was frantically trying to get my stuff ready for the conference in Monterey and finishing my paper. Mid (?) month we also learned that AF's sister had a brain tumor that was going to need to be operated on, scary news, but they were certain that the tumor was not cancerous. At the end of April C-dub, Nej and I took a trip to AB to visit Niks for her wedding reception. Great, but short, visit, although I was a little ball of stress the entire time.

May saw my stress level slowly decrease. The first half of the month was spent preparing my presentation for Batelle. I got news that my granny's health was deteriorating and AF and I went to visit her for the weekend on Mother's Day. The next weekend I flew to California for the conference and stayed there for half a week. While I was enroute back home (likely while I was hanging out in the San Fran Airport, D was in labour delivering god daughter #2.) We visited with the happy family at the end of May.

June was another stressful month. although not with school. At the beginning of the month AF's sister had her surgery, and while waiting for her to come out of the surgery, my dad called my Cell phone, I immediately knew it was bad news. My Granny was slipping fast and was going to be starting morphine to help with the pain management. I knew I had to get up to see her as soon as possible, so I took off a few days the next week to go and visit her one last time with my Dad. I got back to Waterloo late on the evening of the 16th and AF and I celebrated our first 6 months together on the 17th. We went out to dinner, early on the 18th my dad called to tell me that Granny had passed away. To say I was devestated would be an understatement. We went back to TO that weekend since AFs aunt was coming in from Sweeden. The next day though AFs sister had to go back into the hospital since her brain was leeking spinal fluid. Finally at the end of the month, the light started to brighten a bit, AFs sister was released from hospital for the second time, and started to recover. My health wise, the doctor had me on new medication that was finally starting to make a difference in how I was feeling.

July was another busy month. AF and I decided to move in together, My dad got engaged, I discovered I would be inheriting a big chunk of money from my granny's death, went to the peterborough triathlon (one of only two races I did last year), had burger's wedding shower, had a mini-vacation at my dad's house which AF insists is cottage like (I don't see it.)

August AFs other aunt from Iran came to visit, and while here applied for refugee status. In anticipation of my future wealth, I bought a new camera which I still love although I've been horribly bad about updating my photoblog. perhaps when things slow down I'll start up with it again. At the end of the month Burger got married! Wonderful party.

September saw me slowly starting to pack up my belongings and move them over to AFs apartment. We went up to Wasaga beach for a weekend for me to do my first olympic triathlon, but alas, wind cancelled the swim and I wimped out at the prospect of running 15 km, so I switched to the sprint duathlon. My dad also turned 60 and we had a big party.

October I spent a week with my sister on Drive Sarah to the Hospital Duty. She didn't have her baby that week, but she did the following week so I became an Aunt! I got to visit baby Eddie the following weekend. October also saw AFs aunt recind her refuge claim and head back home hoping her husbands days of abuse were over. At the end of the month saw me in the lab crazy hours and we ventured down to Windsor the P&Js Wedding Bash. Good times were had by all.

November after spending crazy hours in the lab at the end of October, my lab results came back and they were not good. Turns out I would have to redo my lab work in November which shot a hole into any plans I had of finishing up before christmas. Outside of school I turned 26 and had a fabulous birthday present - big sis moving home from Africa! yipee!

December was a stressful and busy time with school spent trying to get as far along in my research as possible before the christmas break. that combined with the lack of snow but me very much NOT in the christmas spirit. AF and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary and he had his first christmas ever. We visited with my immediate family, D and the girls, my mum's side of the family, my dad's side of the family, and of course Nej and C-dub. So it was a busy busy week and a half off, kind of hard getting back into the grove of things this morning.

Last year I made from resolutions, so I'm going to see how I stacked up...
1) Fitness wise - < 1:20 in peterborough sprint, < 2 hours in a half marathon, finish an olympic tri
Um, peterborough and the half mary didn't happen since I was sick, oly didn't happen because of wind, although I'm sure I could have completed it
2) Go to Batelle in May and completely redeem myself after being unprepared for ORTs.
Completed with flying colours. It was a stressful 5 months leading up to Batelle, but the conference went smoothly.
3) Finish writting my thesis in rough draft by the end of July leaving August for revisions.
Um, nope on this one.
4) Travel a bit before fall convocation and finish school for good!
Nope, Nope, Nope
5) Get a job that I love in a city that I adore (aka not the loo!)
Nope, nope, nope. Not only that, but I think I'll be staying in the area for at least a couple of years yet.

Obviously I don't do well with goals. Actually, normally I do, but several of them hinged on my completion of school and well, that didn't happen.

Goals for 2007
1) Goal Races - Spring half marathon, summer half ironman, fall full marathon.
2) Finish school for good and get the hell out of here. I'm SO ready to be done.
3) Be a happier person. I think school is really starting to get to me and bring me down. It is always this stress in my life and it doesn't help that people ask me all the time "So, when are you going to be done?" I think I heard it 10,000 times over the break. dude's it's a touchy subject, if I want to talk about school let me bring it up.