Updates

1. Dad - he's back in Cobourg at the local hospital there. He's waiting on bed availability for admittance to Bridgepoint for a Long Term Rehab Program. He's fully recovered from the minor case of pneumonia and the major case of dehydration. His demeanor has improved significantly. He's quite conversational and even initiates topics of conversation fairly frequently. "The Family" is meeting with Toronto Rehab to discuss his treatment (or mistreatment) as they were the one's responsible for him 1st losing 16 pounds in 3 weeks and then causing him to suffer dehydration.
2. Job - still waiting. One of the last hurdles we need to get past is the posting process. I talked to "the boss" right before the holidays and he said they were going to hold off on posting for the time being because there are a lot of assistants "floating around". He doesn't want someone internal coming to interview that has all the right qualifications, then have to tell them no, then deal with the repercussions they may bring about. So, we're being patient.
3. Moving - we're moving. We're giving our notice Jan 1 to move March 1. I'm quite excited about this although I'm not looking forward to actually packing and hauling our shit...again! But we're looking for more space and a bit of a better neighbourhood. With the recent incident with the car window, G is anxious to get out of the area with lots of "punks" with too much time on their hands. God that sounds old!

That's about it I guess. There we go...up to date!

Wha?

Any guesses as to what this is?

Killing Time

Some serious cuteness over at CuteOverload.com as well as KittenWar.com.
Enjoy.

That's it for Christmas

Here we are...another post Christmas post. I've seen plenty in-and-around blogger-land this morning. Work is dead silent today, so I figured I'd give my Christmas festivities update. To save you from the play by play, here are the highlights:

• G's parents arrived late Friday night. We stayed up until 2:30 am catching up.
• Thanks to my aunt Kathryn, my dad made a surprise visit at our Holiday Celebration at the Maizuns.
• Fantasic Christmas dinner thanks to my S-I-L, G (not to be confused with G aka G-man).
• Fun sales at Danier & Future Shop on Boxing Day.
• Watching "The 40 Year Old Virgin" with S-I-L, G & M-I-L, S! (Super highlight status on this one!)
• Crepes for breakfast thanks to G (S-I-L, not husband)
• Movies, movies and more movies

I received a lot of really great gifts from Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, In-Laws and Husband, but what was so great this holiday was being with family. Family I was born into and family that I married into. Both equally loving, generous and wonderful. After another particularly difficult year, having my family around me was the greatest gift anyone could have given me.

Smaltz and all, Peace out!

The capper to the crapper

If you've followed my blog this year you will know that it hasn't been the best of years. And if you know me at all you'll know that last year was a big "suck-fest" as well, so I'm due for a rocking awesome year in 2006.

Just to cap off the year I have to tell you about another couple of "sucking" incidents.

• Thursday night (to be discovered Friday morning), someone smashed a pane of glass on the passenger side of our car. Not the up/down window but the little window at the back of the backseat up/down window. Great! Thanks hoodlums! The in-laws were due to come in on Friday and G wasn't impressed with having to deal with getting the repair done in time to go and pick them up. (For super suckage points, I'll bring forward the fact that G switched our insurance and the policy was due to end from Insurer A on Friday and the policy from Insurer B was due to begin. So who was covering our car for the smashing incident was a little unclear)
• G called an autoglass repair guy who turned out to be a crook and not only didn't he fix the window properly but also broke the inside door handles. Ah...good times!
• The crook of a autoglass guy agreed to pay to replace the door handles but said there was nothing he could do for the window. Awesome!!

So it was the perfectly shitty way to end a perfectly shitty year. Bring on 2006 and if it doesn't rock, someone's gonna pay!

Au Tannenbaum Au Tannenbaum

This is our little 3' tree. It's actually under 3' which is kinda sad.

We went to Canadian Tire last night looking for a "fake tree". Now before we get into the whole fake/real tree debate, understand this:

1. We're in a very "space limited" apartment and real trees don't come in 3' sizes

2. We have very mischievous kittens that I'm sure would love to run up a 7' tree and attack anything that should happen to fall to the ground.

3. We've got family coming in from out of town and a thousand pine needles that need to be vacuumed up hourly is not my idea of quality family time.

So there you go. There's our little tree. The lights were on when I took the picture but of course the flash makes all the pretty twinkle go away. I hope everyone out there in blogger/internet land has a wonderful Christmas and a safe and happy New Year. Smooches and Hugs.

PandaCam

OMG!
I actually learned that this existed from reading someone's secret at POSTSECRET.
Check out PandaCam. Scroll down until the viewing window is visible.
Very very cute!

Do the math

I'm not sure if you've heard but Toronto is in a state of an Extreme Weather Warning. What does that entail you ask? Well first, have a look at this.

Now if you missed it when you viewed that page, let me just highlight something for you:

From Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon we expect : 20-30 cm of snow.

If you don't speak "metric", please allow me to translate:

30.000 centimetre is equivalent to 0.98425 foot

That's almost a foot! In 24 hours!

NOT MY IDEA OF A GOOD TIME!!

Too close to call!

Okay. As you all know, I'm a big fan of The Reign of Ellen. Her daily writings are filled with honesty, humour and a really cute baby!

Well she's nominated for a Weblog Award and she's so close to winning that I have to ask of you...

pppplease go here, and if you feel so inclined, please vote for The Reign of Ellen.

Thank you and goodnight!

For all you music buffs

This was put out by Virgin. There are 75 names of bands found somewhere on this poster:

If you click on the photo it will take you to the site so you can view a larger version. Have fun!

Not going my way!

Last night was the season finale for Survivor and I have to say, I’m disappointed. I mean come on! What does Stephanie have to do to win this blooming thing?!! I love this girl and I was so happy to see she made it to the final two, but because she played rather aggressively and had to “turn” on a couple of people, Danni ended up winning the million. Danni flew under the radar after the merge and let the power egos that held the majority in numbers, slowly pick each other off. She aligned herself with the right person and found herself winning the final immunity.

I won’t go into all the gory details as I know the majority of you who read this don’t really care but know this; if the Weaver’s win The Amazing Race, I’m gonna be pissed. This entire season of Reality Shows will have been a complete write off!!!

New Hair

Ever since I got my hair done in San Francisco, I've been thinking about how I could change it. I went into the salon (while in SF) and told the guy I wanted lots of really blonde highlights. My hair was fairly dark blonde so I thought it would be a good look. What happened is that he gave me so many it just looked very blonde on the top and the dark blonde underneath. It was another look I was thinking about trying but not what I had in mind. What I should have told him was that I wanted a mixture of highlights and lowlights and lots of texture and mixture of the two.

Yesterday I called my favourite local salon here on College Street to find out if they had any openings. She wanted me for 5 but I told her I worked until then and could I have 5:30. I knew I would be pushing it because I had to go to the temp agency, pick up my cheque, give them some excuse about "coming back for the Christmas Party after I deposit my cheque", and then zoot over to the salon. I knew that 1/2 an hour would be cutting it close but I was willing to try. Especially considering the boss said he wanted to "leave early". I thought, I could leave by 1/4 to 5 and make it. Well, the boss didn't "leave early" he left at 10 to so I left at 10 to. Needless to say, I ended up taking a cab from the bank and got there at 5:35.

I explained what I wanted and put my fate in the hands of my hairdresser Lucy and her assistant, Isabel. All was going fine until the phone rang while I still hand the foils on my head. Lucy looked at the call display and said "Oh O" and answered. Isabel continued to work on the foils, checking to see if they were "cooked". I watched Lucy's face as she was receiving the information from the person on the other end of the phone and two strange things started to happen. First of all I noticed she was rubbing her chest with more and more vehemence. Secondly her face started to distort in a way that didn't look good. Then she started to cry. Isabel went to her and tried to comfort her but Lucy was pretty upset. I was able to gather that Lucy's mom had been very old and very sick and the call was to tell Lucy that her mom had passed away. God!!! Here I am sitting there with foils on my head and my hairdresser learning that her mother just died. I wanted to run out of there!

Long story short. Lucy went home, or off to be with her siblings, and Isabel finished my hair. I offered to come back on Saturday but they would have none of that idea. Lucy kept apologizing and thanking me for being so understanding. Isabel kept saying it was a blessing but that doesn't make it any easier and crying all the while she was cutting my hair. I kept thinking, "Well, if it doesn't look good, at least this time I have a good excuse!" More to the fact I was thinking that one is never really ready for their parents to die. It's never easy. My heart was truly going out to Lucy at her time of loss.

In the end, my hair turned out exactly the way I wanted it. Not so shockingly blonde with some nice lowlights mixed in. Have a look and say a prayer for Lucy and her family.

Up Close and Personal

The boss gave G and I two tickets in the Plantinums Wednesday night for the Hockey Game, Leafs against the Kings and, boy! what an experience. Talk about close...sixth row!! You can see their faces when you're that close. You can see if they shaved or not when you're THAT close.

Here's how close we were.

It was a amazing. Although the Leafs didn't win (they just couldn't get their passing game together and the Kings goalie was doing everything but standing on his head to make saves. He was incredible) we still had an incredible time.

G-man was like a kid at Christmas he was so excited. At one point he said "I've been putting this out for years that I wanted seats down here and now...here we are!!" I was getting more of a kick out of his excitement than the game (see performance evaluation above!).

Eureka!!

I've figured it out! I don't know why I didn't try this weeks ago. I've used them before but for some reason it took me a while to come around.

EARPLUGS!!!

I popped a couple of those suckers in my ears last night and only woke up once!!! (it was just after 2, G had been fighting the good fight against Orcs and Goblins, so I used it as a good opportunity to P so I wouldn't wake myself up around 6am). Other than that...slept right through the footsteps above and the meowing cat outside my door. Didn't hear a peep! It was great.

Considering I went to bed at the unheard of hour of 10pm - for a Friday night? Come on!! But having 12 hours of sleeps is a godsend these days.

Oh happy day!

These Baby Steps are killing me

Actually, I've been uncharacteristically patient though this will I or won't I end up with a job at the end of all this fiasco.

As of today, the woman that stood to inherit my boss as her new boss, started a new position in another department. Now the door is open "a crack" and I can almost see onto the other side. I just have to make it through five days of an internal posting for the position (not sure when that is due to begin) and after that, I'll finally know one way or another.

More crossing of fingers!!!

ANTM

Well, America has a new top model. Hopefully those of us in Canada get to share her a little. Actually, I don't really care if I see her ever again to tell you the truth. The winner was one of my least favourite from the very beginning. I just wasn't seeing what the judges were seeing in her.
Her name is Nicole and as you can see, she's okay. She was a little to "hick" for me with big teeth and a dorky personality.

Now, from the very beginning of this season I thought Lisa was going to be the winner. She is very outgoing, very spontaneous and a little crazy. Definitely the one with the most personality. On top of that, she photographs incredibly well. Plus, her go-see's and runway stuff was above and beyond all the other candidates.

And with that ends another season of one of my favourite trash/reality television show. Next week is the reunion/update show. Hopefully there will be a little of the catfighting similar to what happened over the season. It was a good one folks!!!

Walkin' the Line

As excited about the weekend as I was on Friday, I was not really up to going to work this morning. I’m feeling like I didn’t quite catch up on enough sleep this weekend with visiting, driving, and movie going. It’s hard to balance the right amount of rest and social activities.

Friday night I had to work late (read – brownie points with the boss’ boss!) and then the G-man and I went to see Walk the Line. As with most bio-pics, it had a few holes but I have to say the performances given by Jaoquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are fantastic. I wasn’t a huge Johnny Cash fan at the start but this movie had me tapping my toes to more than a few songs. Very well done.

Saturday we went with our friends, Mr. Bitter and Missus Sour, to our newest favourite brunch spot, “Honey Cafe” on College near Bathurst. Great great food, good prices and not too popular when you decide later in the morning to go out. I hate those places that if you don’t go at 9am on a Saturday or Sunday morning, you’re waiting in line for 45 minutes to eat!

Then on Sunday we got up bright and early (thanks to Marlowe – more on that later) to head out to Port Hope to see Dad and the rest of the Maizuns. It was a good visit with Dad and he was much much more conversational. Nice to see him getting back to where he was a few months ago. Still not even close to where he was before June 16th but we’re working on it. After a quick lunch at the Best Western Buffet with Aunt Kathryn we had an even shorter “hello” with Uncle Barry (missed Aunty K and muncheon Eden by a bit) we raced back into the city for dinner plans with Pointy and Mr. McIan.

The hobbit bought a new house a few months ago and along with the lovely Mr. McIan they’ve been going nonstop with home renos and redesign shows up the wazzoo. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to socialize so they invited The G-man and I along with Rabsy and her Jay-man over for a delightful dinner complete with political and historical conversation. Fishbowl entertained the girls with all of her cuteness to round out a perfect evening.

We went in with Rabs and Jay for a funky orchid type planty thing and it was so nice I’m thinking of getting one for our place. I’ll probably wait until we move (giving notice for March 1st) so it won’t have to go through the trauma of the elements any more than bringing it home from the store.

Okay, get ready for a “cat-related-rant”. Marlowe is driving me out of my mind. During the week, one of the things I tell myself to get my butt out of bed is, “You can sleep in on the weekend.” Well that furry little ball of hell is making that impossible. Here’s my theory: during the week, either G or I are up by 7am, 7:15 at the latest. When the weekend comes around and neither of us are up yet, she panics. And panics. AND PANICS! AND PANICS!! Saturday morning G-man hissed at her in an attempt to speak her language and tell her to shut the F up! Apparently she forgot by Sunday morning and I ended up throwing my slipper at her down the hall (I missed for all you PETA people out there). I’m at my wits end here with her. Any suggestions that don’t entail locking her outside in the subzero Toronto temperatures?

Weekend's are great!!

I woke up this morning actually feeling giddy because it was Friday. As the alarm was going off (after one push of the snooze button already) I told myself, "You can sleep in tomorrow, just get out of bed now.

As much as I am truly enjoying this job, it doesn't make the weekends any less great!

Another bloody hitch...

I was talking with "the boss" last night and again he brought up the whole me coming on board topic. Turns out now that when they internally post for the position (which they have to do regardless), we may be faced with qualified internal candidates that there would be no reason for them not to hire. Jeeze this is turning into a rollercoaster nightmare.

He's already told me that he wants to hire me on the spot so I know it's not about how I've been doing my job and whether he wants to work with me or not. It's just all this 'bureaucracy' that he / I have to deal with!!

So, nothing's secure even though "H.R"s working on it!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!