Thursday, August 31, 2006

Run for the hills!

My mom and I are headed to Buffalo this weekend for a little cross-border shopping jaunt, so that means no blogging for me...ACK!

Typically by the end of our three days there our car looks something a little like the picture to the left (except ours is much more packed).

It's always amusing when we pull up the booth and they say "do you have anything to declare?" and we have to stifle a giggle and say "oh we only bought a few things..."

I'm also meeting Nicole on Sunday while I'm there. We're going out for a pancake breakfast...mmmm pancakes (insert Homer Simpson-like drooling). It should be a blast and I'm really looking forward to it!

Meanwhile, my husband is staying home for the weekend with Deuce. He told me that he's going to have the fire extinguisher at the ready for my return to put out the smoking credit card...

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Potty time!

Just when you thought it was safe to go the washroom...

As if there aren't enough things to go wrong when flying, imagine how the passengers felt when this happened? It's actually kind of amusing, though if I were on the plane, I doubt I'd think that.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

*shakes the lurker tree*

Let's see who falls off the branches...

(Hey, I need more blogs to feed my addiction). ;)

Monday, August 28, 2006

How do you know you're a bad daughter-in-law?

You get excited about M3 and Rod's referral day and forget your in-law's anniversary. Oops. I definitely need to enroll in Heather's 12-step blog addict program!

I *knew* it was coming up, but oh well. ;)

Wow!

I just went through my bloglines ritual and found out that Mary-Mia and Rod were referred twins.

TWINS!

How fantastic for them, I couldn't be happier (unless it happened to us). ;)


Do you hear that CCAA?

Saturday, August 26, 2006

More ramblings from the sleep deprived

I ended up having yet another migraine yesterday which was particularly nasty so I took one of my 'happy pills' (Fiorinal). They have a wonderful ability to knock out not only the migraine, but me as well. I try not to take them too often because they are known to be addictive, and that's something I just don't want to have happen, so I save them for those 'special' occasions when I can sleep them off over the course of a weekend.

I had a fairly good night's sleep last night, but woke up at the ungodly hour of 7:00 (well, ungodly for a weekend) this morning, puttered around the computer for a little bit and then went back to sleep and woke up at 11:30. Oops.

I had an overpowering desire to go shopping, what better thing to do when you're groggy and headachy? We ended up running around Yorkdale Mall, picked up some new pillows and a couple frames for our pictures from the Chinese Lantern Festival from a few weeks ago. Woo, do I lead an exciting life or what?

While we were at the mall, I popped into HMV to see if the second season of Grey's Anatomy was out. I recently became addicted to that show. I have an uncanny ability to get addicted to shows when they've already been on for a couple of years. I rarely follow the herd when people rave about a show (though the one exception was House. Hugh Laurie...mmm.)

Unfortunately Grey's Anatomy isn't out until September 12, which kind of sucks, but I poked my husband into agreeing that he'd get that for my birthday in a couple weeks.

When we got home around 4:00, I went to take a 'short' nap and woke up at 7:30. When I got up, my husband was watching a program on the Food Network (he's a foodie at heart) all about how to make ice cream. So since I had already missed dinner, and I wasn't really in the mood for it anyways, we went here , perhaps the show was sending me subliminal messages. ;) Nothing better than THAT for dinner, right? It can't be that bad for the diet...Anyways, I found my new favourite flavour. Campfire S'mores, utterly amazing!

Friday, August 25, 2006

Ramblings from the sleep deprived

I haven't written about him before, but I have a wonderful, handsome, bright nephew (and no I'm not biased). We found out in June that he's skipping senior kindergarten and going straight into grade one!

If you give him a book he can read it cover to cover, and at Passover this year, he read from the Hagaddah (and he read better than two other children that were older than him). For a five year old to read the word Egypt, having never seen it before, is pretty impressive (at least to me it is).

Anyways, my husband and I went to my nephew's soccer game last night, it was the last one of the season. :( Here are a couple of the choice things he said last night:

"Bubbie (Yiddish word for grandmother) do you know where the clouds go at night?" "No, Z, I don't. Where do they go?" "They go to China!"

(After being hit in the ear by another child, he walked off the field and went up to his mom.) "Z, oh your ear is all red. I bet you're P.O'ed." "No mom, I'm pissed off!"

Did I say he was brilliant or what? :P

On a side note, I'm now down 8.5 pounds! Slow and steady wins the race...

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Can you imagine...

this? What a wonderful, heartwarming story!

Biblical proportions and muffin bottoms

I got up early this morning because I couldn't sleep and I didn't want to wake my husband up with my tossing and turning. Deuce was acting a little strange, mewing and cooing more than usual. Anyways, I flitted around online and once he woke up, I went back to sleep for a bit.

When I got up, Deuce snuck into the bathroom while I took my shower (this is his usual routine, he likes the steam from the shower) and he continued his cooing and mewing. I got out of the shower, said goodbye to my husband as he left for the day and went to dry my hair.

I had the hairdryer on and I thought I heard something, but just chalked it up to my husband locking the door and continued drying my hair. When I finished, I walked down the hallway and looked to my right and saw a cat gurgle of biblical proportions spread all over our rug in the living room (he likes to walk while he has a furball. What can I say? He's talented). The cat had a look of self-satisfaction on his face and just kept watching me as I cleaned it up.

Once the carpet was clean, I went to get my breakfast because I had SUCH an appetite after that. *mutter*

Wouldn't you know it? As I put my chocolate chip muffin on the plate, the bottom half fell and landed on the floor. Deuce was happily licking away until I shooed him away and cleaned it up.

Perhaps I should have just stayed in bed...

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The agony and the ecstacy

The agony!

I went to bed around 9:30 last night because I had a migraine (surprise, surprise) and also I hadn't been sleeping well since I tend to stay up late going from blog to blog to blog to...

I'm still fairly headachy and wouldn't you know it? They're testing the fire alarm all day today and tomorrow. Do I have a horseshoe someplace or what? :(

The ecstacy!

I just decided to check my email and found one from our agency with everyone's names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses who is in our travel group! Our group is comprised of nine families (including us) and they come from Regina (Saskatchewan), Riverview (New Brunswick), and the rest are scattered around Ontario (three from Toronto, Brights Grove, Guelph, Orangeville, and Millbrook). Even though we're still 12? 18? months away, having this information makes it feel like it's getting closer. :)

If any of the group have popped by...hi group!

The weird thing is, we know one of the couples. His mom and my husband's mom have known each other for years, and actually his wife is the one who told us about their experience with our agency and convinced us to go with them. Talk about coincidence!

Also, today is one week since we were DTC! Come on CCAA, send us a LID.

Found!


Monday, August 21, 2006

Two (semi) mad scientists at work...

Introduction:

My cat is rather spoiled and unique in his taste for fine clothing. Whenever my husband leaves his clothes on the bed, the cat always has this innate knack for finding the 'best' clothes. It doesn't seem to matter what clothes he leaves there, Deuce will always find the best. So, tonight we decided to run a little experiment to test this theory.

Purpose:

We neatly folded three pairs of my husband's pants and left them in a pile to test if Deuce really could tell the difference.

Apparatus:

Three pairs of pants and signs, one apparently very sleepy cat, a digital camera, and two exceptionally bored parents-in-waiting.

Observations:

Pile A is a pair of wool pants, Pile B is a pair of jeans and Pile C is a pair of Tilley pants.



We then waited for Deuce to jump on the bed and make his choice...which was A.



We removed Deuce from the bed and rearranged the piles of clothes to see if he could notice the difference.



We again waited for Deuce to make his choice...which was C.



For our last attempt we switched the piles around again, took him off the bed and left the room.



When we came back to the room we found him on...pile A!



Conclusions:

What have we learned from this? Deuce CAN tell the difference between wool, jeans and Tilley pants, and we were extremely bored tonight. Also, if CCAA doesn't hurry up and give us an LID soon, we're going to have to subject the kitty to more experiments! :P

***DISCLAIMER***

No cat was harmed in the making of this experiment. I hope nobody from CCAA sees this site or they might re-think things a bit. ;)

Sunday, August 20, 2006

How did they know?

You Are Cookie Monster

Misunderstood as a primal monster, you're a true hedonist with a huge sweet tooth.

You are usually feeling: Hungry. Cookies are preferred, but you'll eat anything if cookies aren't around.

You are famous for: Your slightly crazy eyes and usual way of speaking

How you live your life: In the moment. "Me want COOKIE!"


Which Sesame Street character are YOU?

The amusing part of this was that I used to have a stuffed cookie monster. One night he fell off my bed and landed hard on the floor. His white, googly eyes cracked in the middle and I was very upset about this (hey, I was six). I went to the bathroom, grabbed a bandaid and performed First Aid on him by bandaging his eyes back together. This probably explains why I never went into medicine.

Florence Nightingale I'm not...

Friday, August 18, 2006

What would YOU do?

I was walking past a bakery today and out walked a woman with one infant and three toddlers. One of the toddlers was a sweet little Chinese girl who was carrying a ladybug backpack. I can only assume she was adopted, but she could have been looking after the girl for the day.

I was tempted to ask the lady some questions, but since I didn't know her, I didn't want to ask anything personal and just kept walking. I guess I was a little chicken to say anything and I wasn't really in the mood to get a snarky response since I'm still on a 'high' from the DTC news. ;)

I didn't want this to happen to me...

In one of our pre-adoption seminars, one of the speakers once went up to a lady on the sidewalk who had a little Chinese girl in a stroller and she got all excited and said 'which agency did you use?' The lady looked at her and said 'my husband is Chinese!' Oops.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Where DOES the time go?

It feels like just yesterday that we were DTC and today I got an email from my agency saying that they were requesting our 12-month post placement report. Oh wait, it WAS yesterday that we were DTC.

Actually the email went like this:

"Our records indicate that your 12 month Post Placement report is now Not Due Yet. Your completion of these reports is extremely important and your compliance is critical to the future of the China adoption program."...

Umm, our 12 month Post Placement report is now Not Due Yet? Call me crazy, but that has to be THE most confusing sentence...ever.

Needless to say, we got a frenzied email shortly afterwards apologizing profusely about the email and that it was sent out in mistake. (You're telling me.)

"Please disregard the previous e-mail regarding the 12 month post placement report. An error occured in the database and you were mistakenly contacted. My sincere apologies for any confusion or consternation this may have caused.

I will be contacting the approximately 25 families who have adopted from China whose 12 month post placement reports are due separately from this message."

(Ok, it's disregarded...but it's going on my blog anyways. ;))

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Inhale...exhale...and repeat

Ok, now that I've had a chance to calm down, I can post semi-rationally...I think.

I called my hubby and screamed something like "We're DTC! We're DTC! WE'RE D...T...C...!!!" and he was just over the moon (well as over the moon as one can be over the phone). :)

This news couldn't have come at a better time. Not only was I beginning to fret about things in general, but I hastily sent out an email to our agency asking for any news.

I got the call at 11:00am and I was feverishly scribbling notes while I tried to comprehend that this was REALLY happening. This couldn't have come at a better time/date as it is also my mother-in-law's 70th birthday today. Talk about timing!

I must have looked like the cat that swallowed the canary all day as I didn't divulge the DTC information to anyone, which is quite a trick when I work for my father-in-law. ;)

Since I knew that we would all be having dinner together to celebrate my MIL's birthday, I waited until the right time. I waited until everyone gave their orders for dinner and turned to my MIL and said 'We got you an indirect birthday present, we found out we're dossier to China today!' (they're not really up on the lingo, yet). My mom and MIL were SO happy, my FIL was thrilled as well, and that's pretty much all we talked about all evening.

Birthday? What birthday? :P

WOO!

I just got a call from our agency and our dossier is being sent out today! We're officially DTC!

Government efficiency?

Any Canadians reading this will probably either just shake their head, or nod knowingly if they've been through the 'joy' of this.

I had to renew my OHIP card(Ontario Health Insurance Plan--our free health care, gotta love that) which, if you have a photo card, expires every five years on your birthday (which isn't for a few more weeks). If you have an old red and white card (non-photo card), they don't expire, but that's a story for another day. I had been holding off going to the office, basically because I didn't want to sit around and wait...and wait...and wait.

I had gotten my renewal notice about a month or so ago and finally decided to go in yesterday.

When you get your renewal notice, the Ministry of Health sends you a document which lists the information you need to bring in. You need to bring in one item in each column in this list so you can prove you are who you say you are.

Now here is where the stupidity government in efficiency comes in...

List 1 is for Proof of Citizenship
List 2 is your Proof of Residency document
List 3 is a Support of Indentity document

Now, being a simple citizen, I was silly enough to think 'hey, wouldn't my old card have ALL that information since I'm in their computer?' The proof of citizenship is that I HAVE a valid card, the proof of residency is that I HAVE their letter which was sent to MY address, and once again the support of identity is my valid health card (which incidentally has my name, address, and signature). But I complied with their silly request and came with my passport, bank account information, and a credit card

So, after spending the better part of 1.5 hours in their office, my number was up (literally) and they called me to a counter. After all this, all he asked to see was my passport. I was going to question him about the documents that I was requested to bring and why the government spends money on such a silly brochure when, really, it's not needed. I thought better of it since he hadn't taken my picture yet and I didn't know if he would photoshop it to make me look like I have horns or something. :P

I had my new picture taken and he handed me a form saying that I'll be getting my new card in a month and if I don't have it by then that I should call and inquire about its whereabouts. I asked for my new version code (for any Canadians out there, that's the two letters after your number) and he said 'we have it, but we can't release it to you'. Huh? Isn't it *my* card? Anyways, they can't release that information until the old card expires.

Gotta love the government...not.

(Incidentally, I think I know now why I woke up this morning with a migraine.) :P

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

What NOT to do when you have insomnia

So, I couldn't sleep. My husband was sleeping in the middle of the bed, snoring, and I had my cat flopped next to me on my pillow also snoring. Not exactly conducive to a restful night of sleep.

I got up and, what else, logged on and checked out my blog, or rather, I tried to...

I mistyped my blog address and went to "littleample.blogspot.com", which thankfully, doesn't exist. When my husband woke up, he used the computer, saw "littleample" in the drag down menu and jokingly asked "What's that? Midget porn?" :P

Once when I was exceptionally tired, I went to look at my hotmail account, but mistyped it. I'll let you figure out where I went to. Oops.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Customer service, what's that?

On Saturday night, before we went to the Chinese Lantern Festival, we went out for dinner, walked through the Eaton Centre and went into Sears . I just happened to walk past the watch display (cue hubby's terminally thrilled expression) and saw one that caught my eye. I tried it on, it looked good on me, and I bought it.

When I looked at it again when we got home, I noticed that there was a deep scratch on the buckle of the watch. Granted, nobody would ever see it, but I knew it was there, and it bothered me, so I decided I would take it back the following day.

When I got to the watch counter at Sears, the saleslady looked at the watch and said 'you can't return it.' I asked why and she said 'well, how are we going to turn around and sell it?' so I told her in no uncertain terms that this was not *my* problem and again, she said I couldn't return it. I had to remind her about their guarantee which states quite explicitly that if you're not happy with the merchandise you can return it within 30 days.

She rolled her eyes, god forbid someone actually takes them up on their guarantee, and said that she couldn't reverse the charge since I paid for it with my debit card, so she would have to pay me back in cash (like this is some sort of catastrophe). She said she had to go get the money because she didn't have it in her till.

About 20 minutes later, she came back with a wad of $20s, apparently they don't keep anything bigger in the store!?! Anyways, she counted up the money and said she was $6 short, she didn't have a five, and asked me if she could give me the rest in twoonies (our $2 coin). Umm, if you're giving me a wad of $20s, would I really care if I got $6 in coins?

We left the store in a most annoyed state (I was annoyed at the saleslady and my hubby was getting annoyed with me), and you know the only cure for that is retail therapy. ;)

So I went into Mappins and saw this watch . I saw it previously and really liked it, so I waited for a saleslady to come over. (It was on sale, but still at a fairly hefty price.) Anyways I noticed a tiny surface scratch on the band, the saleslady took a cloth, rubbed it out and it was fine. I ended up trying it on and bought it.

Ironically, before I left, she gave me a slip of paper to take the watch over to Sears to get a link taken out and get a new battery (free of charge). Apparently they don't service their own watches. It was VERY tempting to walk over to the Sears saleslady with the bag in my hand and flaunt it, but I decided not to.

Emily Post I'm not


I've been tweaking the blog a little lately and had a question for anyone who cares to post a response...what is the proper 'netiquette' when adding a link to someone else's blog?

Should I ask/tell them first? Just go ahead and post with the thought/hope that they'll add my link to their blog? I'm still new to all this, so any advice would be great. ;)

Sunday, August 13, 2006

A picture is worth 1000 words...

My husband and I went to Ontario Place last night to see the Chinese Lantern Festival . It is a must see if you're in the area.

At first blush it seems a little pricey at $25 per person, but well worth it once you see the installations.

Dragon moving under a gate



CN Tower



Kissing pandas--too cute!



Dragon in the water



Blue pagoda




Great Wall of China




The Gods of Fortune



The Faces of Chinese Opera (This installation is exquisite, the colours are spectacular, and I'm not just saying this because I took the picture) :P



Ladybug!



Dragon entirely comprised of dishes and cutlery



Friday, August 11, 2006

In the dark (literally)

Last night when I came home from work all the lights were off in the hallway, on every floor, of the apartment. I called the super and he claimed it was just a blown fuse and it would be fixed 'momentarily'. About an hour later, the lights were back on, so that was fine; though it's really not much fun trying to find the keyhole in a completely pitch black hallway.

I went out this morning and when I got back, again, the lights were off in the hallway again. The super claims it's nothing to worry about, but twice in 24 hours? It's not really a big deal for me, but we have a lot of seniors in the building (which makes for a nice *quiet* building), and I'd hate for anything to happen to them while they fumble around in the dark.

I *so* want to move out of this building, why is it proving to be so difficult to find a house? *sigh* My mom keeps joking with me that we're going to find a house the day we get on the plane to go to China. At this rate, she's probably right.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Is someone trying to tell me something?

So, when I woke up this morning, I found out about the most recent terror plot, which got me a little upset, considering that we're heading to Glasgow (via London) next month. Sure, it's still a little while away, but we're still heading into Heathrow.

Then when I got to work, I found about this and got a little more freaked out. This is the synagogue where we plan to spend the High Holidays.

We're still going, of course, as my hubby says "if we cancel now, 'they' win". Which, to an extent, I agree with but I'm still feeling unsettled.

Gah! Any thoughts?

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

This about sums up how I feel right now...

...or rather what I'd be doing.

I woke up this morning with a horrid migraine. For those of you that know me, know how awful these truly are. I ended up having to take one of my 'happy pills' (Fiorinal) but oddly this time it didn't knock me out. I took it around 10:30 this morning and I'm sitting here in a daze *still* waiting for it to kick in. It was so severe that I ended up having to take the day off work. *sigh*

I went to lay down earlier in the hopes that the pill would start working, but as usual, Deuce was getting lonely because I wasn't playing with him, so he jumped on the bed and purred and cooed until I rubbed his belly. So I haven't really slept...yet.

On a side note, for the past few months he's gotten into a real jealous streak...over a book. Whenever I lay on the bed and do sudoku, he jumps on the bed, mews at me and then flops across the book because he's being 'ignored'. If I try to move him, he nips my fingers or tries to scratch me. Now keep in mind this is just a book, imagine how he's going to feel when there's a baby in the house? Oy.

On the upside, today is two weeks that our documentation has been in for translation. It's just another two to three weeks until it's complete!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

What a weekend! (part two)

On Saturday night we decided that we were going to spend Sunday on Pelee Island.

We got up early, well, early for a Sunday on vacation and went for breakfast. I overslept so all we had time for was to go to Tim Horton's (awww, what a shame)! After that we headed over to Kingsville, because the Leamington ferry dock was being fixed. It's good that we called ahead last week and found out about that, otherwise we would have ended up missing the boat...literally.



The ferry ride took an hour and a half, and it was *not* a glamourous hour and a half. We sat outside on the deck and took in the sights, saw a lot of birds and the little surrounding islands. A gentleman was looking at the birds with his son and mentioned that he takes the ferry a few times a week and pointed out birds that kept flying alongside our boat. He told us that the swallows have nests on the lower level and fly back and forth alongside the boat, everyday, so they can keep an eye on their nests. The trip is about 20 miles, that must be quite a flight for those birds. (Keep in mind that the boat makes the trip four times a day, everyday, so there and back is 160 miles). When it's put in that perspective, it's quite the journey.

We got to the island and saw a van that was going to the winery. We considered taking the van, but asked the driver how far a walk it was. He told us it was about 1 km down the road, so we decided to walk instead.





When we got to the winery, we decided to take a tour of the grounds, which was really nice. It was an hour and a half long and there was a tasting at the end...what we won't do for wine. Four out of the five wines weren't great, but the last one was amazing; it was a 2005 late harvest Vidal which is a sweet wine, about a 3 on the sugar scale. We ended up buying four bottles of that. We got two for ourselves and one for my mom and one for my hubby's parents.

After the tour we went to a little pub and had lunch, got back on the ferry and headed back to Kingsville and then on to Leamington.

Now this is where things got interesting...

When we got back to the hotel we noticed that the door didn't look quite right, so I pushed on it with my finger and it opened. The good thing is, nothing was stolen. Apparently when the maid was in the room she didn't make sure that the door closed behind her. The front desk was closed and the two 'emergency' numbers that were listed in the room, nobody answered them.

Long story short, we went down to the restaurant to have dinner, told our waitress what happened and the manager (eventually) came to our table. He told us that the owner of the hotel is on vacation and nobody can reach him. Wow, if I didn't have an unsettled feeling about things before, I did now. They asked us if we wanted to change rooms, we said no, because we'd have to go to a smaller room and we didn't feel like packing everything up when we were leaving in the morning anyways. The only thing that they could do was offer us our dinner for free. It was a nice gesture, but still, something more could have/should have been done.

After dinner we went for a walk along the boardwalk again, sat on some rocks and did some people watching and looked at all the fishermen attempting to catch something more than seaweed. :P

We went back to our room after a while and polished off that nice bottle of wine. I'd highly recommend it if you're like a slightly sweet wine.

In the morning we headed back to Toronto and bid Leamington a somewhat fond adieu.

When we got back home, Deuce had knocked a bunch of clothes out of the armoire and was standing over it like he was proud of his accomplishment. He looked too cute to be upset with him, so we just picked him up and he purred and mewed; he was *SO* happy to have us home. I swear I'm going to feel like such a heel when we go away for two and a half weeks next month. *sigh*

Monday, August 07, 2006

What a weekend! (part one)

I think I need a vacation from the vacation. :P

We left around 9:00 on Saturday morning and turned a 4 hour trip into a 6.5 hour trip; along the way we made a couple of side trips. One, of course, was to get an iced cappucino.

We also made a point of stopping off and going to Uncle Tom's Cabin , I had read the book in university for my African/Canadian history class, and wanted to visit. We saw the sign for it last time we went to Leamington, but couldn't get to it because the bridge that leads to it was under repair. We thought about taking the detour at the time, but it would have taken us quite a bit out of our way and we didn't feel like getting lost. We agreed that next time we were passing that way we would go, so we did.





The cabin is about 26km from the highway and quite a scenic drive. If we planned our trip better we could have been there to celebrate "Emancipation Day" on Monday. We stayed at the cabin for about an hour or so and then got back on the road.

We got into Leamington around 3:30, went to the hotel and unpacked. The room was just as nice as I had imagined it, we unpacked, went to a local restaurant for lunch and headed back onto the road. Last time we visited, we heard about a local bird sanctuary and thought it was some spectacular sanctuary because the locals talked about it quite a bit.







In reality, it's a small sanctuary with some geese, ducks, peacocks (why, I don't know), and other fowl. The peacocks were in large cages and some had laid quite a few eggs. While it's a nice property, we didn't spend a lot of time there. We didn't think it was particularly a brilliant idea if we stayed at a bird sanctuary with the possibility, however small, of west nile virus and avian flu being around...especially when we saw a dead bird lying on the grass; so we high-tailed it out of there.

As we headed back to town, we stopped in at the Pelee Island Winery in Kingsville and picked up some wine. We got a nice bottle of sparkling wine and a bottle of ice wine. What better way to celebrate our anniversary than with a nice, sweet bottle of ice wine!

We left the winery and decided to go to Pelee Island National Park, which incidentally is not on the island. We walked along the beaches, looked at the wildlife and took pictures of bunnies that were just hopping along the side of the road.





Afterwards, we went back into town, walked along the boardwalk, saw some people fishing and just enjoyed being in each other's company. I'll skip the mushy stuff, I wouldn't want to make you ill. We were both tired from a long day and decided to go to our room for a nap (no, E, a real nap...not a "nap".) :P

We were still full from our lunch and decided to go out for dessert. We each had a piece of chocolate cake, what else, and went back to the boardwalk for another walk. We ultimately went back to our room and polished off the ice wine. What a day!

Friday, August 04, 2006

*sigh*

I was watching the news today and saw a story about this and felt I had to do something, but first I had to give Deuce a big hug.

Seeing those poor kittens on tv that were in oxygen cages was just heartbreaking.

I used to work in an animal hospital ages ago, and the things that I've seen...

Anyways, I called up and made a donation of $200 which is nothing compared to what they need to rebuild. I'm *such* a softie when it comes to ANYTHING involving animals. We have totally spoiled our cat, Deuce, but that's a story for another day. ;)

Where do you think YOU'RE going?!

So, it's our 10th wedding anniversary this weekend (where does the time go?) and we've decided to go away to Point Pelee for a few days. Yay for long weekends! Though from our cat's point of view, it's going to be no picnic for him. The picture on the left is from the last time we went away for a week; he loves to give us guilt trips.

We went to Point Pelee a couple of months ago, for no particular reason, basically because it was there (and we weren't). We just got in the car and went. It's located about 4 hours or so from Toronto and quite a pleasant drive.

When we were there last, we got into the National Park for free, the gate was broken and nobody was there to collect the entrance fee (bonus for us). Though we did the right thing and told someone about it.

This time we're planning on going to tour the wine route and sample some (read: a lot) along the way.

When we were there last, we stayed at a really nice inn and as we were checking out we booked for this weekend. I casually mentioned that it was our 10th anniversary, so the innkeeper offered us the suite at a $75 per night drop in price. It's a tad pricey, but it's really worth it.

Each room has a fireplace, couch and coffee table, in addition to the usual amenities. The suite that we're going to be staying in this weekend has all that plus a fridge and bar. Woo! I can hardly wait to get there.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Yoyo dieting isn't fun, so I've cut the string ;)


At the end of June I decided it was high time to start losing weight again, not that I'm overweight, but I could stand to lose some. I gained a bit since last summer, I guess it was a combination of factors, but I've now flung myself into a weight loss and exercise regime.

For the past month I've been getting up early every morning (well, on days when it isn't 30+ celsius before 7:00am) and going for a 40-45 minute walk. Also once or twice a week I've been walking home from work as well which is another 50-55 minute walk, though I haven't done that for about a week or so, it's just been too bloody hot.

In addition, I've cut out all soft drinks (I just go for the hard stuff now :P) and now mainly stick to drinking about six glasses of water a day. I used to have a horrible habit of sitting in front of the tv or computer and drink tons of diet pop. Sure, it was diet, but the sodium in it blew me up.

So since the end of June I've lost 7.5 pound, and my goal is to lose another 12.5 or so. I'm not one of those people who care if I lose it by X date, I just care about losing it overall. If I can lose more, I'd be ecstatic, though I think I'm starting to put on muscle, so perhaps putting a number on the weight might not be realistic.

I lost a majority of the weight in the first couple of weeks and I've been able to keep it off. Now if I can only cut back on drinking my iced cappucinos...

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Madame Tussaud

(Or biological 'vs.' adopted children)

Ok, so I've been sitting on this story for a while, debating whether or not to write an entry about it, but I felt I had to.

I was watching The View yesterday (why, I'm not exactly sure) when they had a segment about Madame Tussaud's new exhibit. Apparently they tweaked the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt exhibit to include their baby, Shiloh . When the exhibit was unveiled on stage, it played eerie, almost angelic-sounding music; as if this were a miracle baby of unimagined proportions.

Now, according to the rep from Madame Tussaud's, Brad and Angelina's permission was not garnered for the exhibit, it's an artist's rendition. The thing that bothers me is that there is no mention of her other two children, Maddox and Zahara. Why?

The rep was fumbling over her words when she was asked, point blank, why they left the other two children out of the exhibit. She claimed that the 'public' wanted to see the baby in the exhibit and that it was the public's own doing for them to not include the adopted children. She further went on to explain that if the public wants them to make a wax model of the two other children, they would 'consider' it. I think this is quite exclusionary and insulting.

Any thoughts?

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

I'm melting...melting...

I just took a look at the temperature for today and they're calling for a high of 36 (without the humidex) and 48 with. I then went to a conversion site, probably because I'm a glutton for punishment, and found out that 48 celsius is 118.4 fahrenheit. One hundred and eighteen point four degrees! Gah! Keep in mind that this is Toronto, we're used to hot weather in the summer, but this is ridiculous!

On my way home from work I think I'm going to get another iced cappucino and just sit in it. :P

What's it like in your neck of the woods? Feel free to comment below...