I spent 3 hours weeding my garden yesterday afternoon. I can barely move today, I feel like I'm hobbling around like I've been alive for 100 years and all those memories are piled on my shoulders.
I also laid tile in my Grandma's onsuite this weekend. It was a really simple job, especially considering Grandma and Steve did all the prep work, I just strolled in and laid the tile without having to do anything beforehand. I had it done in about 2 hours on Sunday with only a few tiles to lay on Sunday, which took me about an hour. It's so nice to do a job like that where it takes you no time at all, and the results are so instant. I'm all about instant gratification.
We're going tonight to grout it, and probably re-install the heater. The whole project should be complete this week, and after 6 months my Grandma should finally have her ensuite back (she ripped up the lino 6 months ago and then the lino guys started giving her this run around, finally we decided we'd just put in tile ourselves instead of dealing with these lino guys).
We had an entire month of sunshine, and finally it started raining today and it looks like it's going to rain all week. Normally I'd be all bitter about the rain, but we actually need it so I'll be bitter next week when I'm sure it'll still be raining.
I wish I had something more interesting to share with you...
Jason Timmerman is my second cousin's husband. He was killed in Iraq.
I haven't seen my cousin for many years, but I'm updated on her life through my Aunt and Grandma. I'm sure my cousin, and their family, could use your prayers and positive thoughts right now. I can't imagine how she feels, it would be one of my worse nightmares come true.
Because Robyn asked, I'll oblige :). I'm the obliging sort...
Here's what I'll typically eat in a day (and yes, I eat A LOT, I realize that). I'm in the process of attempting to figure out how many calories I eat in a day, but it's a very boring process and I distract easily.
Breakfast
Cereal, like shreddies, with skim milk (assuming we have milk in the house, today we didn't)
Coffee
After Work-Out Snack
Banana
Pre-Lunch Snack
Handful of home-made trail mix, or home-made granola bar (not very big though because nuts? Piles of calories!)
Handful of grapes or raisins. I think grapes and raisins are like candy!
Lunch
Whatever I had for dinner the night before. Today was a real treat because we had a whole-wheat pita pizza with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, brocolli, green onion, a little bit of feta, and a dusting of mozza cheese (only because Steve put so much cheese on his there wasn't any left for mine!)
1/2 c yogurt
Today only: cheesecake. That's not usual though, but damn, it was good. Normally I have about an ounce of a speciality cheese, and two or three whole-wheat melba toasts. But since there was cheesecake today, we skipped that :).
Mid-afternoon Snack
Orange or apple
Cut veggies and a little bit of dip. Today's veggies feature a mushroom, a couple of cherry tomatoes, celery, yellow and green peppers and carrots. It's about a cup of veggies.
Dinner
Tonight I'm thinking of having a recipe I know by heart called Italiano Zucchini. It's basically zucchini, tomatoes, tofu, onions and italian spices. You put it over rice or couscous, and then salad because we almost always have salad. This depends if Steve is up for that though. Our repetoire for dinner is something like this
-pasta with some sort of tofu-sauce, tomato sauce, or herbs and cheese.
-fish with rice/steamed veggies
-veggie burger with rice/steamed veggies
-one dish meals we can make with our eyes closed, including two veggie versions of shepards pie, mexican casserole, and things of that sort
-stir fry
After Dinner Snack
Steve has cereal, or toast, I just have green tea.
Canoe.ca is DOWN. How am I going to read my horoscope? How am I going to get through my day without my horoscope! This is horrible! A disaster! Save me!
ah, you have an addiction when...
I've been a vegetarian for 9 years, so I like to think I know a little something about vegetarianism. Maybe I'm being a know-it-all, but I do live it, so I think it's safe to assume I have an inside edge.
When you're a vegetarian you hear a lot of the same questions over and over again, and one that gets on my nerves is "How do you get enough nutrients?". NEWS FLASH: most of your nutrients come from, you guessed it, VEGETABLES. This is why all the food gurus are telling us to eat piles and piles of vegetables. They're good for you, especially the veggies no one wants to eat! Eat them anyway!
I get enough protein because there is protein in vegetables, and eggs and milk and tofu and nuts. All things I eat on an almost daily basis. Protein, iron, and basically every other mineral and vitamen the human body needs is accessible in a vegetarian diet.
I'll agree that if you're vegan, you have to be a little more careful but as a vegetarian, it's not that big of a deal. Entire cultures don't eat meat and they're thriving and I have years and years of blood tests to prove that it's a healthy lifestyle choice. I hardly supplement anything and every blood test I've ever had indicates that all my levels are ideal. My biggest worry is B-12, which you get from meat and it's not found in vegetables (as far as I'm aware) and that's what I tend to supplement, when I remember to bother that is.
All of this is assuming you're eating well. You can be a vegetarian and eat Kraft Dinner 5 days a week, and in that case, ok, no, you're not getting proper nutrition. That isn't because of your lifestyle choice, that's because you're either a complete idiot, broke, or incredibly lazy. Eat an apple.
What I'm getting at here is that if you know someone who is sickly as of late, they're tired all the time, they're out-of-sorts, and they just happen to be vegetarian, can we not blame vegetarianism immediately? Maybe they're not eating well, maybe they're not getting enough exercise, maybe their body is fighting off a bug or virus or something but I seriously doubt that the problem has anything to do with not consuming a burger or roast chicken lately. I don't blame the chicken, why blame the brocolli?
Do you think maybe you shop online too much when you've memorized your card number and can actually buy things without said card being present?
I did find a cool on-line store, if you like this sort of thing (and I do) - Peri Dar. It's home stuff made by artisans around the world, like 10 Thousands Villages which is more familiar since they have store fronts all across Canada and the US. I bought myself a couple of cool journals since I decided yesterday I need journals. I got Leaving a Trace as a shower gift, and it's fantastic. It's given me a new-found interest in journaling (beyond this public forum).
ok, shopping must cease and work must commence. Believe it or not, I'm actually up against a deadline. And I care, oh-so-much.
oh! And the spammers are back. I naively thought that the new version of MT was going to help. Previously I was closing all the comments once the entry had rotated off the front page since the spammers seem to prefer entries in the archives. After I updated MT I stopped doing that but it appears that I'll have to start once again. I just don't get it, why spam? Why is creating the spamming code fun? Who are these people?
You can have it all if you are ready to pursue new people, places and activities. Being a participant will lead to personal or professional relationships. Your ideas may be a little ahead of the times, but you appear to be on the verge of setting a new trend. 5 stars
What ideas? gah, I need more you bloody stars. MORE. I don't know what you're talking about.
Damn horoscope.
In linky-news, Welcome Kyoto! I'm a leftie, I admit it, and I think Kyoto is a very big step in the right direction. It still needs tweaking but it's a start. I wish the US ratified the accord though, because even an idealist like me is worried about the economic consequences for Canada when the US isn't playing. I simply don't know enough about economics to really grasp what the consequences might be. There's going to be a big United Nations meeting with respect to Kyoto in Montreal this fall, something to watch for. And of course, I'm interested to see Canada's plan to meet the requirements laid out in the accord. The next few weeks should be interesting!
Not much new in the land of sea and sun, although the weather has been marvelous here.
I cut off a foot of my hair on Saturday, and then afterwards when my Grandma mentioned it, I realized that I should have donated the hair. What was I thinking?! Damn that hindsight. My hair is still at my shoulders, but it was almost at my butt so it was a lot of hair. Good for the ego, I lost almost 2lbs in hair. I forgot how fluffy my hair is when it's shorter and now I'm debating whether I should find myself a real style and cut it even shorter or just leave it alone.
Steve called the scary dog-trainer lady and told her that we won't be returning, so that unpleasant task is now out of the way. I was dreading calling her, so Steve finally did it because I'm a coward. I find most people take bad news better from Steve than they do from me. Something about the soft-spoken folks that keeps people from coming unglued. Or maybe it's because I sound young or something.
In other news, since the topic of organic food came up, it prompted me to start the process of research I've been meaning to start. And by start I mean skim a few websites. If you're interested, check out these sites:
Canadian Organic Growers
The Canadian Governments 2 cents
The Organic Centre
In Canada in the late 90s, you needed to look for labels that said "Certified Organic" and then showed the third party who certified the product. "Organic" alone didn't mean much. Whether or not that's true today? Don't know, haven't found any information in my skimming yet. As usual, though, be wary of all claims, a lot of the big food producers have organic labels now, and might be more interested in money than they are in sustainable farming or the environment.
I also wonder, would sustainable farming actually sustain us? hmmm...
One of the disadvantageous to living is this beautiful place is the cost of everything, and groceries here are kicking my ass. It's appalling to me how much a trip to the grocery store costs. Last night was a fairly big trip, but it was mostly whole foods (vegetables, fish) and no toiletries, and the bill was still $250! It would be one thing if this was my monthly trip, but I'll be back again in a week and a half!
I've been really careful about the packaged foods I buy, because in BC, you're taxed on pre-packaged convenience food, so I limit it to ground-tofu and tofu deli slices (and I'm not entirely sure those are taxed, I think they are) and bread products. If I was buying pre-packaged meals, cleaning products and treats of any description (I don't buy chips or cookies, or even crackers) the cost would be somewhere near $400, I'm sure! I wonder how anyone with a family manages to keep them fed out here.
I'm curious, I spent $700 last month on groceries and we eat all our meals at home 98% of the time, with Friday lunch out, and we have dinner out a couple of times of month. Groceries in my world includes cleaning products and toiletries. What do you spend?
So, since we decided that we're not going back to school, Steve's been doing training exercises with Vegas in our garage instead. The dog is now being home-schooled :).
Last night, in about 10 minutes, Steve had Vegas doing a stand on his own, and staying in a stand while we skipped around the garage (simulating distractions). With NO LEASH. Once we're 100% in garage, we'll move the training sessions to the beach and parking lots where there are more distractions. You can't convince me that I'm suppose to trick my dog into a sit with a treat when he already knows to sit on a hand signal without a voice command.
In other news, we're seriously considering replacing the truck with a new Chevrolet Blazer. They have a deal going on right now that is a little hard to pass up. They're selling certain 2005 Blazers for $19,500 that would have been sold at $30,000+. Since the truck still has some value, and we have some GM points we're thinking maybe we should replace the truck sooner rather than later to take advantage of this deal, and it wouldn't be a big payment or anything once we consider the trade-in etc. If you're against SUVs on any level, eh, sorry. In our defense, if you ever need to tow anything (and we do) you need a truck or SUV. We were favoring SUVs because they have a back seat and a place for the pooch. Of course, this was just dreaming until we heard about this deal since they're usually pretty expensive vehicles, even used trucks don't come cheap and tend to have a lot of kms on them (ours has $190, 000 kms and it's only 6 years old). Our main commuter car is still going to be the little Honda, and when money starts growing on my trees in the backyard I'm hoping to replace it with a hybrid. That's the dream anyway.
Right. We're not going back. The entire hour was a joke, she wouldn't even let us get a word in edgewise to try and explain to her that our dog isn't starting from scratch. I've told her before, but she's too self-involved to remember. Or even listen for half a second it would seem. And my first instinct about the treat-based training was right, I just don't see the point. It's difficult to explain, but you don't actually give him any commands with the treat. Plus I'm not convinced that filling your dog up on treats is better than the dog having his usual dinner. Because Vegas was not interested in dinner when we got home.
There was no break in the middle of class, and if your dog got too close to another dog, the trainer FREAKED. The dogs were not allowed to be anywhere near each other.
At one point they were doing 'stand' exercises, and it involved putting your hand under your dog's belly and putting him from a sit into a stand. If you put your hand under the belly palm side up, she'd correct you and tell you put it palm side down because on a male dog you might touch something. Seriously, who gives a flying fuck, if you don't mind potentially touching something, have your palm up. I prefer to have my palm up, so if I was doing it, she would have burst a blood vessel yelling at me. She took more pleasure in showing the entire class they were doing wrong and she was always right instead of actually teaching. The attitude was just too much to bear.
I could go on, but why? It was a complete waste of $80, attending will not be good for Vegas, and I'm pretty sure I've reached the point that even if it came to light that the woman does have some merits, I'm no longer willing to see them. And Steve can't stand her, and if Steve can't stand someone that's saying something. He doesn't usually muster up that much emotion for the average person.
I walk into the ATM area of the bank yesterday to cash a cheque that my mortgage lender sent me (it appears I over-paid!). This cheque is going to buy me a new mini TV for my work-out area at home! I love getting money I didn't know I was getting!
Anyway, I walk into the ATM area, put my card into the machine and it takes my card, then is temporarily out of service, comes back to life AND WON'T GIVE ME BACK MY CARD. I didn't even get to cash my cheque :(.
meh. It's probably a safety issue, it has been every other time it stole my card but it's a hassle to go and get a new card. This one is brand new and I really liked the number, it was easy to remember for online banking. I don't want a new card, I like my old card!
We were in Wal-Mart and I bought a new gym lock for the lockers at the gym because my old one mysteriously disappeared. It was about $2.50. Anyway, we accidently didn't pay for it, it was in the bottom of the cart under the dog food. I debated going back in to pay for it, but it was $2.50, I just spent $80 and it's Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart can suck up the $2.50.
I wonder if backing into a BMW roadster and having my car eaten by the bank machine is equivalent to $2.50 bad kharma?!
Steve and I spent the day in Vancouver and it was a bizarre mixture of really great and well, fiasco, all rolled into one.
Fiasco: Leaving really late, missing our reservation for the ferry and basically throwing away $17. Coffee spilling over Steve's pants in the truck and completely forgetting the camera.
Great: We spent the morning walking along the seawall in Stanley Park and that was very peaceful and beautiful. It was a fabulous day, the right mix of sunshine and crisp air. Once we started to get hungry, we hopped in the truck to go and find food.
Fiasco: There was a confusing intersection and some indecision and the end result was that we backed into a car. A BMW roadster to be precise. Damn nice car. Too bad we put a hole in her fibreglass, and there goes any chance I had into guilting Steve to buy me pretty things.
Great: BMW owner was really nice.
Fiasco: Trying to park near the seawall in Vancouver (actually, it wasn't that bad, I just want to keep with my Great/Fiasco theme).
Great: Lunch looking over the ocean, and it was a really tasty lunch indeed.
Fiasco: Getting lost on the way to Granville Island, bickering over how to find Granville Island, and being forced to drive around on crazy busy streets in Vancouver. At this point, the low fuel light goes on.
Great: By some miracle, finding a great, free parking spot and then hanging out in Granville Island buying myself really pretty things. I spoiled myself something rotten.
Fiasco: Attempting to get into a gas station and missing the turn.
Great: Unintentionally finding an even quicker way to the ferry, sans gas, but we made it
Fiasco: An hour and a half early for said ferry with no decent coffee shop open in the entire village.
Great: First on the ferry, yummy soup on and even more shopping for pretty things! (Believe it or not, but I found a glass caligraphy set on the ferry over to Vancouver and thought it was pretty, then I saw it on Granville Island for $10 MORE THAN ON THE FERRY - what the?! - I bought it on the ferry!)
I think next time we'll walk on and use Vancouver Public Transit instead, but we wanted the truck this time because we weren't entirely sure where we were going to go. Unless we go to Ikea next time, and in that case, of course we'll take the truck! All in all, I really enjoyed myself! It was a pretty nice birthday treat, that ended up costing whatever it takes to fix a hole in a BMW roadster.
Steve and I went to the first class of doggy school this week, this is the class you attend without the dog to get the philosophy of the school and learn what you need to bring for next class (which is like a backpack of shit for this class!).
The trainer annoys the fuck out of me, I don't see us sticking with it, but who knows. We'll go next week and see how it works out with the dog there. I'm thinking it's not going to be worth the $80 though.
She spent a lot of the first class giving us her opinions on matters outside the area of dog training and this bugs me. I'm there for training, every other concern from what toys I give my dog to what food I feed my dog I'll take up with my vet, not my trainer. Share that information with me if I ask, but not otherwise.
It's positive training, like previous training we've done, but it's all treat focused and I'm not sure I agree with treat-focused training. First, you ALWAYS have to have treats on you and I'm just not that organized. Second, what do you do when you DON'T have treats and still need your dog to listen to you? Third, we aren't big treat givers because we don't want Vegas to become any more obsessed with food than he already is and how healthy is it to be doling out 50 bits of treats a day? Even if they are small bits? And fourth, eventually you have to wean the dog off treats and that can't be easy.
Thankfully Vegas has a lot of the basics and he learned it without the treats so he won't be getting too many treats anyway because we're not moving backwards (the end goal is the same, have the dog follow your command without the treat).
The other thing that irked me is we have to decide who is doing the training, we both can't participate because it confuses the dog. What the fuck? We did an entire training course where we both worked with Vegas and I can honestly say, with respect to training, the pooch was fine. He's scared of his own shawdow, but managed to learn with both of us teaching him. So one of us ALWAYS does the training and the other sits out. Does she honestly think that in the home environment the dog is only going to be getting commands from one person? That's ludicrous.
That isn't even the lot of it, she said so many thing that annoyed me, plus her personality is annoying, and when I asked a question, she talked for 10 minutes and never answered the question! She's a big talker, very interested to tell everyone about her own dogs and the medals they've won. I don't give a rat's ass, I'm there to learn about MY dog, not her dogs.
We'll give it a few classes, if I see no benefit to it, or if Vegas doesn't enjoy it, we'll stop going.
Who these people are who scour the internet and write/comment/post some of the most bizarre crap? Are they for real? What are these people like in real life? Are they glued to their computers 24/7? Do they not work? Or raise their children? Seriously, even if you spend your working days online, how do you have that sort of time.
My short list of blogs I read are obviously pretty normal folks. They never reveal anything too personal, being a public forum and all, and when they comment, it's all very normal.
A few of the blogs I read (not on my link list) are popular blogs and will get upwards of 200 comments. These people who comment are either complete losers, or really, really weird.
I admit to doing a fair bit of internet wandering. Usually it is just re-checking my daily sites to see if any of you have posted so I can have a two minute reprise from work. But even those who procrastinate like I do wouldn't have the time to do the sort of posting/commenting these people do. That's some serious computer time and it's a little ..sad.
You know what today is? My best friend's birthday. She's old today. And you know what that means? That means I'm old in three more days.
Turning 31 is worse than turning 30. You can ham up 30, 31 is just an adult. A boring old adult.
I'm totally not into the birthday thing this year. Usually I'm all about me, but I've got the blahs this year. Steve is taking me to Vancouver to check out the sites. We're going to Stanley Park and Granville Island. We're only spending the day there, but it should be fun. Hey Lisa! Maybe I'll run into you ;).
“I was thinking that if I got pregnant now, I could still go to school while working, then I’d get a year paid leave and I can finish up school, and then change careers. The only issue being a kid”
“If you do that, we’d have to sell the condo”
“Why would we have to sell the condo? I'd get maternity leave, so I'd still be getting paid”
“You get paid?”
“Well, I'd get a percentage of my salary through UI anyway”
“oh, yeah, that would work”
“And I’d be out of this job”
~silence~
“um, I don't really think a kid is a way to get a new career"
“It took you a while to realize that glitch in the plan” :)