Ice Storm, Christmas, New Year's and Merlin.

So it would appear that I haven't written for a while. I haven't written for 2 months and 26 days in fact. I don't know I haven't written. Just didn't feel like it I guess. I formulated a couple blogs in my head but never had the energy or drive to get them out and onto the screen. I guess I needed a break.

I'll bring you up to speed.

I'm still employed. I'm still single. I'm still broke and I'm still going to Curves. So that would be great, not so good, really shitty and fantastic.

Christmas was lovely. Went home for a week and got to spend time with my family. Thankfully, none of us got sick this year which is good, because I still haven't fully forgiven Typhoid Stephen for giving me the stomach flu last Christmas. It's been over a year and I still can't bring myself to eat cranberries.

The day after my arrival at home, mother nature blessed us with an ice storm. Not quite on the same scale at the one that Ottawa received back in 1998, but it was pretty impressive none the less. We were very lucky and only lost power for a very short period of time. 2 minutes the first time and 10 minutes the 2nd time to be precise. The next door neighbour and the one across the street both lost power after a limb from our tree took down the line (that sound you heard was my mother correcting me and saying that it was the city's tree and not ours. Minor detail. It's on our lawn!). Anyhow, the line was live but it was blocking the road so the nice people at the Hydro company came and cut it, thus knocking out power to both houses.

I got to test out my new "winter tracks" when dad suggested that we go for a walk around the neighbourhood and check out the damage. The damn things worked and I stayed vertical while facing a great fear of mine. I'm terrified of ice. We walked in the middle of the road and everyone froze the second we heard a cracking tree branch as a lot of the tree limbs were still falling. But hey, you've got to do something a little stupid every now and then, right? Besides, it was my dad's idea!

Adding to the excitement of the day came in the early afternoon when a tree around the corner caught fire. Ironically, the house where it happened is owned by a Fire Fighter. The cool part was watching the wreath that was hanging on the tree light up and sizzle as the electrical current ran through the tree. It was like a giant, live science demo.

Christmas Eve took on a fun twist when one of my oldest and dearest friends tagged along with us for dinner in order to avoid having to visit her mother-in-law. However, she made the kids go and see her. I'm not sure if that's cruel or just plain old funny. I think I'm going to side with funny on that one. Kind of like our Christmas dinner. We were only expecting my grandfather to come for dinner. But when he arrived, I broke the bad news to my mom as I saw him helping my grandmother from the car (earlier she said that she was too sick to come). Dinner was interesting as, for the first time in my life, we had Ham for Christmas dinner and not turkey. A fact that my mother bitched about, non-stop, for almost a week straight. The kicker? She's the who bought the god damn ham! In the ham's defence, it was delicious and I loved it more than I like turkey so I wasn't upset about the swap at all. Anyhow, back to grandma. She spent most of dinner just pushing food around her plate and saying that she wasn't hungry. Things really got interesting when she asked for some extra strength Tylenol and then her and my grandpa got into a fight over whether or not she'd taken 2 aspirin before leaving the house. My father really didn't say much. Just kept looking at his plate a lot. And my mom drank more sherry with dinner than I've seen her drink in years. It all amused the hell out of me.

Now before you point out what a horrible daughter I am, rest assured that I'm fully aware that karma will be coming back to bite me in the ass over this. One day, hopefully in the really distant future, I'm going to be the one drinking the sherry and staring at my plate while my mom and dad bicker over drugs. Actually, it won't be sherry. It will be Bailey's.

This is a photo of my grandma from earlier in the day...she's hiding from my camera.

Moving on. I headed back to Ottawa just before New Year's Eve. Mostly because I was out of vacation days and had to go back to work. Also because a very good friend of mine was in town and I got invited to his parents' house for a NYE party. This also meant that I *finally* got to meet his awesome wife and see his wonderful little guy, who had the decency to sleep the entire time. I also got to try lobster for the first time and quite enjoyed it. Sadly the night flew by far too quickly but 2014 was ushered in with good cheer and some great people.

Not too much out of the ordinary has happened since then. I do have a bit of a "dating" conundrum going on at the moment but that can wait for another night as this blog is getting quite long. Seriously!? Why can't people just step up and say what they feel? If you're interested, just ask me out. It's not hard. Especially when I've told you that I want to get some face time with you. Clearly that means I'm interested, right?
Sorry, sorry. Just needed to vent a little.

Work is going well and so is Curves. I was there tonight. And now I'm very sore. Especially my back. Hello new muscle groups. Oh, and I've formed a slight addiction to the BBC tv show Merlin. I've been watching it on Netflix. No worries, I just have 1 last episode in season 4 and then all of season 5 to watch and I'm done.  Then I'll have to find a new series to get hooked on. I am behind on my Sherlock and Downton Abbey watching. It would appear that I'm on a British roll.

Anyhow, I have to go and finish doing up the dishes and then I'm going to relax and watch an episode of Merlin.

Hang in there. I might just very well be back.

Good Night!

Sarah

Happy New Year 2014!!!!

Oh, Tannenbaum!

I had another good fun day with my parents. My dad and I ran 2 last errands this morning, then we came home and had lunch with my mom and this afternoon the 3 of us went out visiting.

Our first stop was to visit my favourite centenarian (some who's 100 years old), Mr. B. For the first time since I arrived home, I was actually nice and toasty warm while inside someone's house. LOL. We had a nice visit and listened to him complain about not being able to have any coffee because his family bought him a new coffee maker, but he'd run out of coffee for it. It's a Keurig. Apparently he didn't have any K-cups left for it. So he's had to resort to drinking tea. I quite like tea so I didn't see what the problem was. LOL. He then went on to explain that someone threw his kettle out so to make tea, he has to microwave a cup of water until it's hot and then add in the tea bag. LOL. He really wasn't happy about not having any coffee. It was a very nice visit and it was great to see him again. He's pretty feisty for someone who's 100 years old.

Next we visited with my great Aunt and Uncle and I was gifted with a new supply of Duct Tape. White, Silver and Red rolls this time (it's a long story). Steph will be happy to hear this as it means I have a new source of insulation for my air conditioner next summer.

Dad BBQ'd some steaks for dinner and I made broccoli, mashed potatoes and fried onions and mushrooms to go with it. We had fruitcake for dessert. Yes, I like fruitcake. I got all my gifts wrapped this evening so tomorrow should be a very relaxing day.

While we were at Mr. B's, he mentioned that he didn't have to put up the Christmas tree this year and was rather happy about that. It kind of reminded me of my parents and our tree. If they could avoid putting it up, they would. I pouted and up went the tree and that was before I got here. But all of this reminded me of a funny story about how we got the tree we have now.

Over the years, we've had both artificial and real trees. The real trees used to kill mom's plant in the living room. The damn thing would get jealous and up and die. As soon as the tree was gone, it came back to life. Stupid plant. Anyhow, we used to have 2 rather old artificial trees. They were identical. The both had a broom stick like rod with holes drilled in it for the trunk and then what looked like giant pipe cleaners for branches. The ends of the branches were painted so that you know which level of the tree to stick them into. We had one of them up in the basement and I took it out one year - I don't remember how exactly, I just remember falling and landing on the tree. I'm sure it was my brother's fault. Anyhow, the one upstairs was always put up in the middle of the french doors that separate the living room and dinning room.

The side of the tree that faced the living room was my parents' side and they decorated it. The side facing the dining room belonged to my brother and I  and we decorated it. Mom and dad's side had delicate straw stars and pretty angels while our side had every ornament we'd made since kindergarten plus a mish-mash of tacky ones picked up from other people over the years. The handmade ornaments included two gingerbread men that had to weigh about 5lbs each.

One year, after decorating the tree, my mom and I were sitting in the living room, reading. It was nice and quiet as the boys where downstairs. I heard a funny "creeek" sound. I looked around the room and saw nothing so I kept reading. Then all of a sudden, there was a very loud snapping sound. Mom and I both looked up at the same time and looked at the tree, just and the entire top 1/3 of the tree snapped off and fell backward into the dinning room. Neither of us moved for a few beats. I'm sure we were both stunned. I don't entirely recall our reaction at the time, but looking back on it, I'm pretty much laughing my ass off. Seriously? Who else has ever snapped an artificial tree in half? Needless to say, most of the "kid's" ornaments got thrown out that year, including the 5lb gingerbread men.

Mom and dad have already warned me that next year, there will be no tree, just mom's little 2 ft fibre optic tree, as next year is our year to host my grandparent's for dinner. My dad seems to be worried about my grandmother taking out the tree. Can't say I blame him :)

Here's hoping everyone's trees remain vertical this year.

Good Night!

Sarah

A slightly fuzzy version of the tree at Mom and Dad's from 2008

G-String or Rodeo?

Oh shit! My blog! That is seriously what I said about 3 minutes ago. I'd already turned out the light, pulled back the covers and had just sat down on the edge of my bed when I realized that I hadn't blogged tonight. I thought about just skipping it and going to sleep, but I'm too close to 100 posts to do that.

So here I am.

I worked OT again tonight, which is why my brain isn't functioning at its best at the moment. And I'm back into work tomorrow morning too.

A pretty funny thing happened at work tonight though.

A co-worker (I'm going to call her Gidget) was given a project by her supervisor. She was to come up with "getting to know you" questions that are going to be asked to a different member of their team each week as a sort of "bonding" exercise. A fairly cool idea. So, Gidget was googling questions. She pointed out a few to me and was complaining that some of them were very lame. At that point, one of our other co-workers (I'm going to call him Gizmo) came over to see us. We explained what was up and that some of the questions were lame. Gidget decided to read one as an example. She read: "Strength Training or Cardio?" Gizmo got a funny look on his face and said "What?" so Gidget read it again, thinking that he thought it was a super lame question too. When Gidget was done reading it the second time, Gizmo laughed and said "I thought you said "G-String or Rodeo?".  We all died laughing. How do you get "G-string or Rodeo" from "Strength Training or Cardio?" I get the "O" sound in rodeo and cardio but that's about it. Clearly this is what happens when you work too many late nights in a row - you stop hearing things normally and your brain goes to odd places. And while asking if you prefer a G-String or a Rodeo is a very interesting question, I really don't think it's work appropriate. But it sure what good for an awesome laugh that lasted for hours and hours.

Good Night!

Sarah

Calgary Stampede Rodeo