Tracey

Back to work for me today after being off on vacation for about 2.5 weeks. It's been great, my last day of work was December 19th. I felt like I was in school again getting this much time off for Christmas. That's the way I love to do it though, I hardly take vacation in the summer, I save it all up for Christmas. I am now officially out of vacation days now until July 1st, but that's okay. It was worth it to have my time off for Christmas. It ensures that I get to see all of my family and friends over Christmas without feeling rushed or stressed about time. And really, that is the most important part about Christmas for me.

However, I'm now back at work with the stomach flu. Any other day, I would have called in sick but I didn't really feel I could do that after having been on vacation for the above mentioned 2.5 weeks. So I'm here, just trying to get through the day. I'm armed with gingerale and crackers.

I had a pretty good weekend. We had our yard sale on Saturday and we managed to get rid of a ton of crap and make a few bucks while we were at it! We brought two car loads of stuff to Julie & Jeremy's for the yard sale and wound up only needing to take 3 boxes to Value Village to donate at the end of the day. Plus, there's the added bonus of all of that crap not being in our basement any longer!

After the yard sale we stopped at a furniture store on our way home to have a look at sofas for our rec room downstairs. We would like a nice new sectional corner unit and we'd seen some nice ones for sale in the flyer this week. We fell in love with one that was in the show room but it was opposite of what we needed. Everywhere else we've been they've been able to mirror the layout of the sofa, but not in this case. :( So I guess we'll keep looking. We want to pick a furniture store in the area each night this week and check to see what's available where. We know we can get exactly what we want at Bad Boy in Whitby, but we thought it would be nice (plus save on delivery charges) to get something local.

We got home and were planning to just veg for the evening. We were both in our around home pants. Dan was dozing on the couch and I was searching for zucchini recipes online when the doorbell rang. I answered and it was one of our neighbours from the cottages across the road asking what the dial number was for the local radio station and then he invited Dan and I over for some drinks on their back porch. We got dressed again and headed over there for a couple of hours. I was sunburned from earlier in the day, so I didn't feel like drinking (which they thought was really strange...people seem to have a problem when I don't want to drink and I don't understand that. I just wanted water or a pop and they kept trying to force alcohol on me...WTF??). We got to know them a bit better anyway and then we came home and went to bed.

On Sunday we had a neighbourhood meeting to talk about the condition of our road. It's the neighbourhood's responsibility to keep it in good condition, since we're a private road. So we pay money each year and patch up the road. We almost have enough to re-surface it, so we'll just be doing a light patch this year and the re-surfacing next year. Sunday afternoon I cooked up a big zucchini casserole for us to eat this week since the first of the zucchini were ready from the garden. Later on Dan's parents and the youngest, Jimmy (11) came over to use the canoe and go swimming. They brought some cabbage rolls with them for dinner and I added a salad and threw together some tea biscuits. They left around 7:00 so Dan and I played our two player Settler's of Catan card game (where I won again...I'm two games up on Dan now in total) and then we went outside and had a dusk campfire. Neither of us felt like vegging in front of the TV, and there are a ton of wood scraps in the shed that need to be burned up, so we burned up a box of those while chatting outside. We had some good conversations about money and future plans including our honeymoon and having kids. So that was really nice!!

Today at work has been okay. I'm working an extra half hour each day this week so I can leave at noon on Friday. It's our department's summer hours, so that means I have to be here at 7:30am. Not a big deal, I got up 10 minutes earlier than usual, hurried and then Dan drove me instead of me driving him which is how it normally works. The longer days are a bit tough right now, but I know I'll appreciate it come Friday at noon when I can leave!!!

After work Dan and I are going grocery shopping and then having leftovers for dinner. Dan was going to mow the lawn tonight, but we've been having thunder storms all afternoon, so maybe I can convince him to play Settler's with me instead!!! :D

Okay, fast version of the weekend since I haven't felt like posting all day!!
Friday:
Left work early (around 2:00) to catch the VIA train to Cobourg where Dan picked me up on his way from work. It was great, we haven't been on a road trip in a while. I brought my wedding books along and we had some great brainstorming/conversations and settled a lot of things.
Got into Ottawa around 8:00 and shot the breeze with Jody and Jen for a while. Watched Ali. Still not sure if I liked it or not.
Went to bed around midnight and completely passed out. Traveling will do that to me.

Saturday:
Got up early so we could eat breakfast and be out the door in time to return the VCR Jody had rented.
From there headed to Hull Quebec to visit the Museum of Civilization. That was a lot of fun, we walked around for about 4 hours before we'd had enough. Then we went and parked the car and went for another walk. We walked past the Prime Minister's house, but he didn't want to come out and play, so we went to the Governor General's house. She wasn't interested in coming out to play either, but we did stroll around her yard for a while and look at the gardens.
By then we were exhausted, so we headed for home and ordered in some Chinese. Dan looked at Jen's computer which has been acting up lately (ie. not booting at all) and then we ate. Went out to the park to play frisbee for a while (we had an active day!!).

Sunday:
Got up kind of early again. Had some breakfast and went back to looking at Jen's computer. Went out to a few Future Shop's to get some parts, but nothing helped, so Dan packed up her computer and is going to fix it at his house.
We left around 1:00 to head for real home.
We had just ramped back onto the east-bound Highway (401) from the southbound one (416) when Dan noticed that his ABS light and battery light had come on. I looked in his car manual and it said that in this event, you should shut down anything electrical. We scoffed at it and kept driving.
About 45 minutes (and a warning from my dad) later, the car completely died and left us on the side of the highway. Luckily, I'm part of an Auto-Club through my parents, so I called for a tow and we arrived in Canadian Tire just before closing. We signed his car in and walked to the nearest hotel for the night.
I had a hard time getting to sleep because I was so worried about my Jury Duty. I was supposed to be in Oshawa for 9:00am the next morning.

Monday:
Got up around 8:30 and called the court house after worrying about it all night. The woman told me that there were no trials this week and that Jury Duty had been postponed to next Monday. Apparently someone had tried to call my house, but with no answer, so I lose. Oh well, I still get to go next week.
Around 11:00 we picked up Dan's car and headed for home.
Took a side tour along the way and he showed me some properties his parents are interested in buying and maybe the one we could buy to build a house on!! :) It's been for sale for years, and might still be next year when we return to seriously look! :)

Blah blah blah, a bunch more crap happens and I finally get home around 8:30pm.

That's my weekend! :)

Ugh.
12-hour work day.
That is all.

What is up with me being sick all the time lately? I'm not usually like this! I hope my boss doesn't start thinking bad things about me!!
I went to bed early Sunday night and woke up exhausted. At work just an hour before I was going to leave I started feeling all the symptoms like a cold was coming on. Headache across my eyebrows and my sinuses draining into my throat. So I came home and downed some vitamins and juice and went to bed early again. Woke up in the middle of the night with a fever so I called my boss. I'm feeling slightly better this morning. I really hope this doesn't turn into a cold!! I'm just getting over a sinus infection and a whopping cold sore, I don't need this right now!!
I'm afraid to tell Dan that I'm home sick again. I dunno, he always seems to think that I don't feel as badly as I do and that I should go into work for half a day regardless of how I feel. And then I start to feel guilty...what if some of it really is in my head? Arg.

All week it's been go-go-go between work and getting the apartment ready and packing. I had such a hard time slowing down this evening. I actually sat at the kitchen table and ate a home cooked dinner and watched a bit of TV. Now that I have slowed down though, I can't eve motivate myself to pack one measley little box!!
I have a bunch of packing left to do....I don't think it's going to happen tonight. Dan will be mad tomorrow when he has to help me, but I just can't force myself to do it right now!!

Man...was my brain ever a pile of mush this morning. That last journal entry of mine makes me sound like some kind of psycho teetering precariously on the edge of sanity.
I assure you, I was just tired.

I went out to Subway for lunch and went for a bit of a walk and bought a big bottle of juice to drink this afternoon in case it was a little bit dehydration along with the tired-ness. Feeling much better now.

All I have to do for the rest of the afternoon is drag some work I was given this morning out over the next hour or so then I can take over the reception desk at 3:00 and successfully coast through the rest of the day.
It's nice, the receptionist takes her break from 3:00-4:00 to pick her son up from school and drop him off at daycare. Normally she's between 5 & 15 minutes late returning which works out perfectly for me. Just barely not enough time to bother logging back onto my own computer or doing anything else productive, so I hang out at the front desk and chat with her for 10 min or so then leave early for the day. Beautiful.

Yay, the weekend is coming faster than I thought it would! I thought this week was going to drag for sure after having two short weeks in a row. First the week with Good Friday, then last week where I was sick for 2 1/2 days. I just have to make it through tomorrow and Friday will be smooth sailing. They always are.

Sunday evening always seems to come too close to Friday evening. How depressing. I'm beginning to think I don't like my new job so much. It's just the unpredictability I'm not too keen on...the potential for crap work to crop up unexpectedly just when I'm doing something that I enjoy. I'll give it a little longer though, I'm still just training and need to do a little of everything before I settle into my personal routine there. I really like working reception, but they have a full time receptionist. I just fill in for her when she takes breaks/goes on vacation. It's good money and I need money. That should be enough incentive right?

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I've scanned probably close to 40 pictures now and am working on organizing them all in a quick website made from Word most likely. I'd post links to them now, but I'm not planning to leave them the way that they are and I'm not going to want to come back later and update all the links, and I don't want to have broken links either, thus my dilemma.

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On a happier note, I got the nod from Dan today on starting to go ring shopping like next weekend. Yep, the ring. We're still going to probably wait until later in the summer/early fall before getting engaged, but we're going to take our time on the ring shopping and be prepared if we decide to take the step earlier. We already have the wedding date planned out...September 13th, 2003. :) So we're just going to work backward from there when we should get engaged and play it a bit by ear. It's kind of awkward for us both living at home right now...we feel like we're both back in high school. But, we also don't want to get engaged like two weeks after moving in with a new room mate, that might be a bit awkward too. But we also don't want to leave it too late, that starts to cut into planning time. Like I said, we'll play it by ear. This is definitely exciting stuff though. *grins*

Off sick today.
Feel like shit.
Bad day.

This morning I became one of the jerks who creates a parking spot on the wrong side of the "No Parking" sign. I was in a hurry, I'd already missed one train and was on the verge of missing another...that wasn't the main reason though...the main reason is even worse.
I'm staying late for the party tonight and the thought of walking 3/4 of the way across an empty parking lot to get to my car just depressed me.
I'm such a bad person.

If I wind up with a ticket though I'm going to be some kind of pissed. I see people doing this every day and only once have I seen one car with a ticket. Murphy better not be paying attention today. I don't like his laws.