Happy Birthday from a Grateful Mind

What a wonderful day it's been!

My morning started off with my mom calling to wish me a happy birthday and telling me all about a humming bird she saw in the backyard. It's pretty early for humming birds, so this really was something special. Mom said that it was a sign of good luck for me since it appeared on my birthday.

At work, a lot of my co-workers wished me a happy birthday and Xtina gave me a lovely candle from Bath and Body Works. One of our newer staff, MA, make strawberry shortcake for my birthday, which we ate out of red solo cups, which was awesome. In the afternoon, my co-worker and I had our last French class for this session. We both passed :) So we celebrated with some cupcakes that I baked. After class, the pair of us had coffee with our teacher and thanked her for making class fun.

After work, I met up with NB and we went out for dinner. We caught up and decided that we're far too young to be this old so there must have been a mistake somewhere along the way!! We split a free dessert which was served with a sparkler in it. That's as close as I've come to blowing out a candle today.

Right now, I'm doing the dishes and trying to think if I forgot to pack anything. I'm heading home for the long weekend and for a party for my great aunt, who turns 80 tomorrow. That certainly puts turning 35 into perspective. I'm really looking forward to getting home to see my family. I haven't seen them since Christmas. Plus I get to do some celebrating, which is great. I usually miss all the family parties.

LOL. I just discovered that the Google Doodle for today is Google wishing me a happy birthday! That's pretty freakin' cool. Guess it helps when you have a Google profile. Awesome.

Since I still have a sink full of dishes and I should have been in bed 11 minutes ago, I'm going to borrow someone else's wise words tonight:

"Pleas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind,
And count each birthday with a grateful mind."
~ Alexander Pope

Good Night!

Sarah

More Ranting About The Weather and Random Thoughts.

For a long week, it's gone by surprisingly quick. It's been a very busy and stressful week too. Plus I've got PMS. I'm kind of impressed that I haven't snapped and tore someone's head off. But tomorrow is going to be a tricky one. We're in for a very nasty storm, full of snow and ice pellets and maybe even my favourite thing of all: Freezing rain. Stupid weather.

I was in bed a little after 9 last night. I curled up and decided to read for a bit but I'd put my book away and was asleep before 10. I haven't made it to bed that early in quite awhile. I sure made a difference on my day today. French class was good. We had a quiz and I made it through the quiz in one piece so that was good. In fact, the class seemed to fly by today.

I just keep telling myself that I only have to make it through tomorrow. Then it will be the weekend. I've stocked up on food so I don't have to go out (but I still might as I think I'm going to make mussels again this weekend). I'm going to focus on cleaning all weekend and get my apartment in tip-top shape again. It might not look/feel like spring but my spring cleaning is in full swing. I still need to find something for my friend to sleep on while she's here. I'm pretty sure I saw some air beds on sale in the Canadian Tire flyer for this upcoming week.

My winter boots are ready to go for tomorrow but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that the storm misses us all together (yeah, I'm delusional) or at least doesn't hit as bad as it's supposed to or maybe just brings us a little snow and no ice. Or just rain (normal rain). Sigh. I'm so ready for spring to be here.

Time to hit the hay and dream of sunshine. Oh, and my little blog here now has over 8000 page views. That's  crazy awesome. And still incredibly unbelievable.

Good Night!

Sarah

Sarah + PMS = this photo :)

A Very Good Day

What a day it's been! It's been one of the best days I've had in weeks, which feels amazing.

It was a pretty chilly start to the day. I'm hoping that's the last of the arctic air. Work went smoothly this morning and all my finance stuff totalled properly on the first time. That's pretty rare in itself. So that put things off to a good start.

This afternoon I started the next level of my French classes. My co-worker and I weren't looking forward to it. Our first 2 levels weren't exactly thrilling and our teachers weren't all that good. We decided to switch to an afternoon class this time to see if we'd be a little more alert. I think that might have done the trick. That and the fact that our teacher seems pretty awesome. We have a female teacher this time and her teaching style is so different from the other 2 we had. She likes to write things done and puts a lot of emphasis on verbal communication, which is where I need the most help. This might not be so bad this time.

After work, the bus gods were making up for the last 2 days and I only had to wait 1 minute for my bus and I got a seat! Woohoo! We flew home. I can't recall the last time I got home so quickly. It gave me plenty of time to check my email, brush my hair, change my top and head back out. I met up with one of my best friends for dinner tonight. As always, the meal was great and the conversation was even better. There was some laughter involved as well, which is never a bad thing. And we capped off the evening with one heck of a dessert. I'm very happy we opted to split it because I think we both would have been rather ill had we tried to eat one ourselves.

Just as I was getting home, I got a text message from my brother telling me to check my email. I thought that perhaps he'd sent me another photo of my adorable niece but nope, it was something better. He'd got my niece laughing and he recorded it and sent it to me. I was grinning from ear to ear hearing her laugh. It's such a happy,joyful and innocent sound. Incredible. And the perfect way to end a wonderful day.

And tomorrow's Friday so that's awesome too!

Good Night!

Sarah

Tonight's Dessert

More Bus Stories

After last night's epic bus ride home, I was looking forward to tonight's ride being much better. On the whole, it was. I didn't have to wait too long in the freezing cold, snow and wind (less than 10 minutes) and when my bus did arrive, I was able to get a seat. Yay!.

Two stops later, a man got on the bus. He had an expired transfer. And not a "just" expired one. This one was over 10-15 minutes expired. He had words with the bus driver and it ended with the man saying "I've already paid for a ride, I'm not paying again" and he went and sat down. We made it 2 more stops along the way before the bus stopped. And we waited. And waited. At first I thought it was a time point and he was waiting until the correct time to leave but after 5 minutes, I was guessing this wasn't a time check. That's when a transit security person got on the bus. The bus cop had a few words with the driver and then came and found expired transfer man and escorted him off the bus. They stood outside chatting. While we sat and waited some more. Finally the transit security dude waved us off and we left without expired transfer man.

The rest of the trip was uninteresting until we got to my stop. My stop is about 10 feet from where an off ramp exits onto the main road. Not only does the exit have a yield sign, but there's a city bylaw that says you have to yield to all transit vehicles. My bus put his signal on and started to move over into the exit lane to get to the stop when some jackass came barrelling up the ramp and without even looking, tried to fly into our lane. The bus driver laid on the horn and the jackass can to a very sudden stop. Which was rather impressive given how snow covered the roads are. Seriously. How do you not see an articulated (so extra long) red and white bus? And what makes you think you'd win if you attempted to cut it off? Some people are just plain stupid. Maybe we should make people pass IQ tests at the same time as they take their driver's tests.

I'd actually love it if the cops would sit in the parking lot and wait for all the idiots that don't yield to the bus and then ticket them all. It's not like they're going to get stuck behind the bus. Once the bus has pulled up to the stop the cars can go around it in the other lane (there are 4 lanes at this point in the road, 1 turning into the mall and 3 straight through). Some people I tell ya.

On an unrelated topic, my next French course starts tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it. A 4 hour class where I spend most of it lost and/or confused for 13 weeks. And my partner in crime is already slated to miss classes 2 and 3 so that blows. Sigh. Why can't it be a fun class that I actually want to take???. Wish me luck.

Good Night!

Sarah

If buses came with these, no one would dare cut them off.

C'est Fini!!

It's been 13 long weeks, but I'm finally done. Until February. LOL.

Yes, today was my last french class of this session. And the even better news is that I "met" the course objectives which means I get to move onto the next level in February. I'm on my way to being bilingual. It's a long and frustrating road but it's worth it in the end.

My afternoon was a blur. Playing catch up from being in class all morning :) It's going to be a little strange next Wednesday, being in the office in the morning. I'm sure I'll re-adjust quickly.

I did something kind of cool this evening. The lead guitarist, Sal Costa, from one of my favourite bands, My Darkest Days, did a live web chat to answer questions about his new clothing line. He's released a few items so far and will be releasing more tomorrow. The really wicked part is that he donates partial proceeds to charity. And the charity changes every so often too. I think that's awesome.

Anyhow, he was answering questions from the fans and I got 2 questions answered and a request answered. LOL. One of my questions was the last one he answered and it was the most important one. Sal is a very big proponent of healthy living and eating. He gave a very honest and straightforward answer to my question, which was "What's the most important healthy eating tip you can give". And he answered it! He reminded everyone that if you eat garbage, you'll feel and look bad. You are what you eat. He recommended staying away from bad fats and to eat 6 small meals through out the day to get your metabolism up. It makes sense and I've definitely heard that recommendation before.

It seems like a simple concept, but putting it into place is the trick. Especially is you're rather set in the way you live/eat already. The "diet" industry in North America is a multi-billion dollar industry. There is just so much out there. Shakes, pills, vitamins, diets, work outs, equipments, meal plans, drugs... and there's so much hype around all of them. It's very hard to wade through all of that noise and figure out what is real, what works and what makes the most sense for me. Just because something works for one person, don't mean it will work for me.

I definitely have something to mull over for a little bit. Maybe simplicity is the key?

Good Night!

Sarah

Let's Talk About: Flu Shots!

I managed to make it through my 2nd last french class (of this session) today with only minimal confusion, so that was a nice change of pace. Just 1 more class to go. I think I'm going to have to re-read my notes and such every week or so to ensure that I don't forget anything along the way.

This afternoon I went and got my flu shot. Other than my arm being a little on the sore side when I move around a lot, I feel perfectly fine. As I knew I would seeing as this is the 12th year now that I've got the shot.

I am definitely a big supporter of the flu shot. I think everyone should get it. When I lived in Calgary, I was volunteering with seniors and getting the shot was mandatory in order to keep working with them. The flu is very dangerous to the elderly as well as babies and anyone with a weak immune system. I hear a lot of people say that they don't need the flu shot because they don't get sick. Good for you. It doesn't mean that you don't have the virus. You can carry the virus and in turn pass it along to others without actually getting sick. You can feel fine but end up giving the flu to the nice old lady you sit next to on the bus.

And for the love of god, you CANNOT GET THE FLU FROM THE FLU SHOT!!! The vaccine does not contain the live virus. It's dead. It can't make you sick. You can have a reaction to the vaccine that presents with similar flu-like symptoms, but it's not the flu. And if you're already sick and just haven't developed a full blown flu or cold yet, the shot isn't going to stop that from happening.

In this day and age, with so much medical research being done and such wonderful advancements being made, it's hard to believe that the flu still exists and that there is still a need for the flu shot. Or the flu nasal spray if you really hate needles. But when you stop to think about how many billions of dollars the drug companies make every year from the sale of cold and flu remedies, you can see why it's not quite so surprises that science hasn't been able to eliminate the flu (or the common cold yet).

Other than not wanting to pass the virus onto anyone else, why would I want to get the shot? Well...back in my first year of University, I got the flu. The Sydney flu to be exact since that was the name of the strain going around that year. My god was I sick. For an entire week, that damn flu knocked me on my ass. Never again do I want to get that sick. So the next year, I got a flu shot. And the year after and so forth and I've never been that sick since. In fact, I've never had the flu again. I've had colds, sinusitis and a broncular infection once, but no flu. If the world health people predicted the flu strain correctly, the vaccine is 70-90% effective. I like those odds. And seriously, who actually likes being sick? I certainly don't.

Here's a link to the Government of Ontario's Health site on the flu:  http://health.gov.on.ca/en/public/programs/publichealth/flu/about_flu.aspx
And here is a link to Health Canada's website with info on vaccine safety (all, not just the flu): http://www.healthycanadians.gc.ca/health-sante/medicine-medicament/misconception-eng.php

Ok, that's it for me and my soapbox tonight. My book awaits :)

Good Night!

Sarah

Photo my parents took in Alaska

French - How I Loathe Thee

I am not an idiot. Ok, well most of the time I'm not an idiot. Judging by how badly I just did on my french homework, an argument can be made to the contrary. Even after re-reading my notes I still couldn't get it. The fact that the teacher hadn't covered this off in class yet might have something to do with it. I have a vague recollection of him mentioning something in the last 10 minutes of class that kind of hinted towards what we needed to know for our homework assignment but that's all.

Just to make sure I hadn't blacked out or something during our last class, I contacted my co-worker who's in class with me and she confirmed what I'd been lead to believe. No, we didn't cover it in class. Now I don't feel quite as much of an idiot. It's nice to have someone to confirm that you're not as stupid as you feel.

What pisses me off is that our teacher is assuming that we'll know this. Some of the answers I was able to figure out based on some deductive reasoning but the rest? No fucking idea. If the teacher would have just taken the time to clearly explain how/when/why each one is used, I'd be able to understand what's going on. But he didn't and now I'm just confused and frustrated. Nuts to that. I'm giving up on the french and reading my book. It's much more entertaining.

There are only 2 classes left in this semester. I can do this. I can get through this. I'm thinking at this point, it might be easier to hire one of my co-workers to tutor me. Seriously. They've been speaking french all their lives. They learnt grammar and spelling so they should be able to explain it. And maybe explain the how, when and why too. A couple of our colleagues have looked through our french books and they just start laughing and then wish us good luck and walk away muttering about it not being "real" french. I think I'm doomed.

The only bright side to this seems to be that my use of numbers in french has improved and I'm getting better at asking questions in french. Still can't spell in french to save my life but we'll take it one hurdle at a time here. 

Good Night!

Sarah

*Insert French Swear Words Here*

French class was so horrible today, that I can't find the right words, in either language, to describe just how awful it was. The sinus headache that arrived around 10:30am and stayed with me for the rest of the day didn't help either.

Our teacher had everyone so confused that the entire class revolted. Usually, one or two people are a little lost (and we all take turns) but today, it was all of us. Our teacher should win a prize for that or something. It was brutal. What's worse...my co-worker hijacked some of the staff last night to help her with our French homework. Today in class, none of their answers were "correct" as to what the teacher was looking for. 2 of the 3 people helping her last night are from Montreal and French is their first language. One of them keeps looking through my work book and says "IT'S NOT REAL FRENCH". I'm so friggin' screwed.

And the rest of my dad sucked because I had to play catch up and my headache opted to keep me company all afternoon. I had planned on getting a whole bunch of chored done this evening but I'm so flipping tired that all I managed to do was some dishes.

Thank God it's a short week.

Good Night!

Sarah

Butterflies make me feel better :)

An Early Piece of Christmas Magic

So it was an epic fail with the French homework tonight. It's not that I'm not motivated to do it, it's that the instructions are terrible. They don't really explain well what we're to do. Not only that but there's no guidelines or explanation about how the questions come together - eg. The pro-noun comes before the noun or crap like that. Basically it's memory work. Which isn't really learning. It's memorizing the order things go in but I sure as shit can't explain back to you why they go in that order. Sigh. Here's hoping there's no math in the class tomorrow. And I only have 4 classes left :)

We had a fire drill at work today. At the same time, we got a little snow flurry. Thanks Mother Nature. We sure appreciated that one.

I got something a little magical in my email this evening. I got a video from Santa. Now I know what you're thinking. I'm too old to believe in Santa, right? WRONG! You're never too old to believe in Santa or magic (or the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, The Great Pumpkin or Zombies). It's what keeps our inner child young and in turn keeps us young at heart. Other than I'm slightly worried that Santa got my favourite colour wrong. Hmmm. LOL. And I really don't know why Santa is concerned with the speed at which I put on my make up.

Maybe if you watch the video, it will all make sense:  http://magicsanta.ca/gateway.html?code=STXCUT

I think it's pretty cool. We certainly never had anything like that when I was a kid. I do remember phoning Santa at the North Pole one year though. That one stuck with me. I was so impressed! As much as I claim to not be a fan of children, I have to admit that I love seeing the magic come alive in their eyes and smiles at Christmas. There's something very special about that.

I also got a gift this weekend, or rather tonight. I got some piece of mind. For the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful. I feel like maybe, just maybe I've got things under control. That I've got this. That I'm not quite as messed up as I thought I was. That maybe, just maybe, I have a handle on this being a responsible adult thing and that there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. And no, that light isn't a freight train. A couple of angels helped me to find the piece of mind. Not sure how I'll ever be able to thank them enough - thank them for trusting me and having faith in me.

I think there really is a little hint of magic in the air .

Good Night!

Sarah

Heritage Park in Calgary

Holy Math Hell Batman!

I like to consider myself a pretty smart cookie. In high school, I got good grades without trying too hard. When I applied myself, I got great grades. Except in two classes: Math and French.

Since I was in an advanced stream, I was told to take advanced math. I managed to pass grade 9 advanced math with 73%. Things went south in grade 10 and I got out alive with 62%. You don't have to be a math whiz to see where this is going. Grade 11 math rolls around and I ask my councillor if I can drop down to general or business math. He said no. Since I was in an advanced program, I needed to stay in advanced math. Within the first month of school, the teacher asked to speak to me and he suggested that I drop down to a lower level of math. I laughed and explained that I'd tried that already. Thank god, he decided to strike a deal with me. If I put in the effort, he'd find a way to pass me. I managed to fail both major exams that year but still managed to squeak by with a 51%. For the record, that is the lowest grade I ever received in my scholastic career.

Learning from that lesson, in grade 12 I was taking OAC 1 French (they didn't have grade 12 french, just OAC 1 and OAC 2 and for those who don't know, OAC was like grade 13. It's long gone now). After the first 6 weeks of the class, I knew I was in uber trouble so I dropped it. In hind sight, that probably wasn't the best idea but meh. I liked having that spare period.

Fast forward to today. I'm in French class this morning and what does the teacher tell us that we're doing: Math. In French.

Are you fucking kidding me? My worst 2 subjects rolled together into one. This is my idea of hell. The stuff my nightmares are made of. It was brutal. One of the worst parts being that I have to use my fingers to count by 10s to remember the number in french above 30. LOL. And we were using numbers in the millions today. Speaking of which, whoever developed the french language was a real jackass. The works in french for Thousand, Million and Billion are all almost the same fucking word! They're: Mille, Million and Milliard. COME ON!!!!!

Class wasn't entirely horrible though. My co-worker, who was equally in hell as me, managed to provide me with some awesome comic relief.  The teacher asked us to come up with 6 math questions, including the answer. We took turns reading them and another person in the class had to answer the question. My co-worker read one of hers and the other class mate gave an answer and the teacher said "correct". My co-worker looked puzzled. I looked over. The answer she had written down didn't match the verbal answer given. Hmmm. She did the math again, same answer that she had written down. That's when I noticed the problem. She had written:

80 + 5 = 90

LMAO. Oops. Blond moment apparently. But we laughed and laughed. The teacher actually had to stop and ask us if we're ok, which didn't help our laughter. Epic fail. So awesome. For the record, this is also the same co-worker who texted me tonight and said "Thank you for ur Knicks".Apparently I own a basketball team and lent them to her. Her auto correct rocks. She was trying to say "Knowledge". Priceless. Cheer up, it's almost Friday.

Good Night!

Sarah

The Great Run-A-Round

I'm feeling a bit better tonight. I still am tired and don't feel like eating but I had a nice hot bath with some lavender scented epsom salts and I used a warming mud mask on my face and now I feel a little more relaxed. Last night I woke up just before 1:30am, just after 4am (might have been the little earth quake that happened in Quebec), again at 4:40am and then at 5:55am. Friggin' annoying.

Today was a little better of a day. The morning sucked and seemed to drag on but I got some stuff done that needed to be done so that was good. Worked on getting yesterday's discovered mistake fixed and then got into a nice pissing contest with our ITHelpDesk, which I won.

We have 2 Help Desks: one for the special program we use and one for everything else. We had a problem with a user account. So the designated coordinator contacted the program helpdesk (like he's supposed to). They got back to him and said that it wasn't at their end, but provided instructions on who to contact to get help, as the issue lay with the group who looks after the accounts.

Here's the fun part. You can not communicate directly with the account group. You have to contact them via the main helpdesk.

So, the coordinator asked me to contact the main help desk since I'm the account contact person. No problems. The instructions from the program helpdesk said to contact the main helpdesk and ask that the issue be forwarded to the account people. So that's what I did. I provided all the necessary info on the user etc.., included a note saying that the program helpdesk told me to contact the main help desk and sent off the request. I get a canned response email back from the main helpdesk telling me to contact the program help desk. Sigh.

I email the helpdesk back and pointed out that in my request, I said that we'd already spoken to the program helpdesk and that they told us to contact the main helpdesk. A few minutes later, I get an email back from the main help desk saying to read the instructions and contact the program help desk.

You've got to be fucking kidding me. So...I hunt down the email train between the program coordinator and the program helpdesk, find the one that instructed us to contact the main help desk, and I copied and pasted it into my email back to the main help desk.

And I didn't hear from them again. But what a waste of time. It took the coordinator half a day to get a response telling us that we need to contact someone else. Then I wasted an hour emailing with the idiot at the help desk. And guess what? The user's problem still isn't resolved.

Which reminds me, I never got my help ticket # for that request. Guess I get to harass them again in the morning.

I'm not an idiot. I know how to read and follow instructions. Unless they're in french. Then I'm fucked.

Speaking of which, I have French in the morning. Dammit. At least I remembered to bring my books home tonight. I probably should get to bed. I need to be able to pay attention in class tomorrow morning.

Good Night.

Sarah

Randomness

I just finished my french home work. He gave us 3 activities to do this time. Thankfully, they were pretty repetitive so it didn't take me long to do. Also, the answers to 2 of the 3 are in the back of the book so that helped. There were only 3 words this time that I didn't know. My buddy Xtinktor translated for me. And then laughed at me. Jerk. LOL. Seriously, in what universe do you get "Stapler" from "Agrafeuse"?? French is fucked up. I'm sooo looking forward to class tomorrow. Yes, I was being sarcastic.

What I am looking forward to is Halloween. I'm very excited at the prospect of getting to go out and party/rock the night away. In a fun costume too. I honestly don't get out much. As I said to a friend earlier tonight, "I think there might be too much of Fun Sarah stored up". She hasn't been out much lately. This might be interesting. Thankfully, my wing-woman for the night (ok, it's a dude in drag) is also the DD so I'll have someone to keep me from doing anything overly stupid.
This is kind of when I miss Calgary (shocking, I know!). There were two awesome little bars within walking distance of my apartment. One had cheap wings, good food and hockey on many tvs and the other had reasonable drink prices and good live bands. My buddy Cam and I would venture out to one of them almost on a weekly basis. I don't really have anything near here like that.

It looks like the babyboom of 2012 is continuing into 2013. I've got 3 co-workers on mat leave already, the 3rd should be popping any day now and I just found out that a 4th one at the office is expecting. In addition to that, I two sets of friends who are expecting new bundles of joy in 2013. The babies just keep on coming! I'm still terrified. But a couple of them are growing on me.

BTW, I'm so in love with Pinterest!!!!!! It's awesome. I've wasted so much time on there. LOL.

Anyhow, I need to be bright eyed and bushy tailed (or something like that) for class tomorrow morning so I'd better log off.

Good Night!

Sarah

Teacher, teacher. Can you teach me?

Today's french class was the class from hell. It started out ok. I nailed like 3 questions in a row. But then the teacher got us all confused. By the end of class, all 9 of us were so mixed up, not a single one of us could come up with a correct answer. We were all playing a strange guessing game. It was brutal.

To make matters worse, once I got back to the office, I showed some of my notes and work books to my co-workers who's first language is french. They laughed their asses off. And were horrified by some of the bad stuff that was being taught to us. Great. Just great. No wonder the stuff I hear in the office doesn't match the stuff I learn in class. The really frustrating part was that I asked one of my co-workers the same question I'd asked my teacher. My co-worker was able to explain it to me in 30 seconds and I actually understood!!!! My teacher spent 30 minutes explaining the same damn thing and I still didn't understand it. So friggin' annoying.

Maybe I should just give up on the classes and hire my co-workers to teach me. It might be a better plan. Sigh.

I'm smart. I know I am. So why can't I get this? At least I wasn't alone in my misery or confusion.

Speaking of class, I keep thinking that I'd love to take some University classes. Maybe I'll work on getting my honours, then my masters and maybe even a PhD. I think I could handle and afford 1 class a semester. I kind of miss it. I do like to learn. Not a big fan of the home work but it's a necessary evil. I dunno. Something to thing about.

Good Night!

Dow's Lake with Carleton University in the background.

Sarah

My Eyes Are On Fire!

My eyes feel like they're on fire at the moment. God damned onions!!!! Even the most mild onion makes me cry when I cut it. It's brutal. It's like my eyes are uber sensitive or something. It totally sucks. I was cutting onions tonight as I'm making Cauliflower and Cheddar soup for dinner tomorrow night. I was cutting up all the veggies for it tonight, so that I just have to toss everything into the crock pot in the morning and turn it on before I leave for work. It will be mostly done by the time I'm home. I just have to puree it, add the cheese and couple remaining ingredients and then it will be done!

I made it through my french class today, just barely. It seemed very long today and my brain would not focus. That and the teacher disappeared for half hour at one point. He gave us a second 15 minute break and a half hour later, he still wasn't back yet. Just as we were all trying to decide what to do, he came back. Very odd. Work was then very busy as I played catch up. I wanted to be gone early as I had work related errands to run but alas, I was still out more than an hour late. At least I got everything I need to pick up for our pancake breakfast on Friday. With how busy things have been at work lately, I'm feeling like I've been rather anti-social. I haven't been eating lunch with the other lately and I actually miss it. Today I didn't eat lunch until 3pm and then I just wolfed it down at my desk before running off to hand out pay cheques. I think I'm sticking around to do overtimes tomorrow evening (on purpose) but I'm going to do the "other" job I've been trained on. It will be a fun break from my regular stuff.

Believe it or not, I think my little crystal meditation worked last night. By the time I got into bed, the pain in my shoulder was gone and I feel asleep quickly and didn't wake up until 3:15am and then I didn't really wake up again until my alarm went off at 6am. Usually I have to pee around 1am and then I wake up again between 5-5:30am, which really pisses me off since I get up at 6. I'm hoping for another restful night tonight.

My blog continues to grow. I have over 2000 page views now and this will be my 71st post. And for the first time ever, I had someone from Peru check out my blog. Very cool! I really wish I could connect with the people over seas who read this. If you don't know me (aka, aren't a Facebook friend), please email me or leave me a comment. I'd really love to say hi!

I think it's time to give my fire eyes a break and hit the sack.

Good Night!

Sarah

Homework

The weather today is just bizarre. It rained almost all day and it rained, a lot. I think it still might be raining now. But it was warm/humid. To the point where I thanked a man on the bus when he opened one of the windows. I was so friggin' hot. However, just before I started tonight's blog, I had to close my balcony door because it's become very windy and cold. As a result, my right arm is numb and my nipples are so hard that they hurt!! And my warm blanket is on the couch, which would require me getting up to get it. Stupid weather.

I'm going to attempt to warm up by typing this blog. If that fails, I'm going to grab my book and run to my bed (where I have the new, very soft sheets ) and I'll snuggle into my very soft sheets and my quilt and sit and read until bed time. If you're wondering, I'm currently reading "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin. Yes, this is the first book in the series which become a new hit for HBO. I've only seen 2 episodes of the show and I enjoyed them so much that I decided to pick up the book. So far, it's very good. My friend Cam wouldn't like it though. Each chapter is another character and every few chapters, it comes back to one of the characters. He doesn't like books that jump around like that. I do have to admit that you have to be paying a good deal of attention to what's going on to follow the story line.

Earlier this evening, I did something that I haven't done in about 10 years....no, I didn't have sex. Give me some credit, it hasn't been that long........anyhow, I did homework! I had french homework to do. The teacher sent us home from our first class with a sheet that has a map on it. You had to find the landmarks (8 of them) and write down what they are in French. Example: Albert Street = Rue Albert. I was actually quite pleased that I new most of them and only had to use Google Translate for a few of them. I even did the exercise on the other side of the page, despite the fact that the teacher made no mention of it. Am I a keener or what? As funny as it sounds I'm looking forward to class tomorrow. Work has been so busy and so stressful as of late, that I'm quite happy about escaping for a half day. Yes, I realize that I'll be playing catch up all afternoon and will most likely end up working late as a result, but I'm still looking forward to being able to focus on something, un-interrupted, for more than 2 minutes!!! Yippee!!

Good Night!

Sarah

Lâche pas la patate!

Ok. So for those of you who don't speak French (like me!) or speak proper French and have no idea what my blog title says, it means: Don't drop the potato. Odd? Definitely. But based on the people I know who happen to be french, they are an odd bunch. Anyhow, the phrase actually is meant to mean "Don't give up".

So I think it was rather fitting that two of my co-workers taught it to me today. I have no idea if they know how frustrated and defeated I've felt lately about my quest for my second language. But it was the perfect phrase at the right time. And they only laughed at me for about 10 minutes while I tried to learn how to say it.

My French class went much better than expected. It's not the same teacher as last session (that my lucky stars) and this guy seems to be well organized and actually has a personality. He also told us that we shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes and to please feel free to make them.  I can do that. Quite easily in fact. Also, I wasn't totally lost. Most of what I'd already forgotten from the last session back in the spring kind of came back to me, so I was happy about that. One week down, 12 to go. Guess I'll just have to wait and see how this plays out.

The rest of my day was almost a total wash out. I had to run over to our other building to drop off/pick up stuff. It felt like a million people were asking me for things and my desk looks like a paper bomb exploded on it. Not good. I think I'm going to have to haul my ass into the office early tomorrow in an attempt to get caught up. Oh, and we had 5 new staff start today. Yippee.

Je suis fatigué (I am tired). It was a long day and then this evening I've spent the last hour and a bit working on a photo book project, so I'm a little tired of looking at the computer screen. The week is more than halfway over!

Good Night,

Sarah

Speaking of odd, check out this vase!