More Weather Venting and A Bus Caused Power Outage

I made it through the wilderness. Somehow I made it through. Didn't know how lost I was....because the damn snow/ice pellets were in my eyes. It was definitely a brutal day. Those bloody little ice pellets really hurt when they're coming down. The wind whipping them around didn't help. The funny part is that the ice pellets actually were providing some traction on the sidewalk. There'd been some freezing rain earlier. Thankfully that had stopped before I left for work. It's zero and raining right now. Our "Winter Storm" warning ended at 10:18, so about a 20 minutes ago. We still might see some freezing drizzle overnight and possibly some more tomorrow morning but it sounds like we're in for just normal rain and above zero temps tomorrow. My apartment is still damn cold though. It's kind of like being at my parent's house. My poor nose has been cold since I got home from work. Looks like we have a rainy week ahead of us too.

Work was good today. I was kept busy doing research on requests and getting some late finance things done. It was relatively quiet in the office as a lot of people had taken the day off and even more didn't make it in today due to the weather. We had an office "coffee break" which involved getting coffee and doughnuts for the staff. I think everyone liked that. We even managed to get some for the evening shift and they were happy. Unlike parts back home, we lucked out and didn't lose power at all today. The storm caused power outages back in Southern Ontario. Only one part of Ottawa lost power and that was thanks to a city transit bus. It slide off the road and took out some power poles in the process. Our buses are talented like that. And it's the second time one of those particular style of bus has slide off the road this winter. I think the City of Ottawa needs to "Winter Road Test" any new style/type of bus that they're thinking of purchasing. That was they'll know that they can survive our winter weather.

I'm in for a quiet weekend. First up on the agenda is a frequent item: sleeping in. Once that is accomplished, I really have to get my ass in gear and finish getting this place cleaned up. I need to re-organize the clutter and then sweep/swiffer/wash the floors. I also need to wash the towels and bedding. Lots of fun, right? Curling up with my book or a good movie might be in the cards too. I think some Chinese food might be as well. I'll have to see what I feel like tomorrow. Here's hoping that the productivity fairy comes to visit and I can get a lot accomplished. My bedroom is pretty much a lost cause (always is) so I'm not going to worry about that right now. Besides, no one but me sees it!!

Since my eyes seem to be closing on their own, I think it's time to log off and go burrow down under my blankets and see if I can get warm. Which will probably backfire and I'll wake up at 3am, hot and sweaty. LOL.

Good Night!

Sarah

Snow be gone!!

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 :)

You call this Spring? Oh Look! Firemen!

This has to be one of the worst springs that we've had in years. The weather just can't seem to even out. I got used to this roller coaster type weather when I was in Alberta but this is very odd for Ontario. Environment Canada is calling for a significant snow event on Friday. This isn't good.

We had some excitement this morning. I'd gone on a coffee run. When I came out of Tim Horton's, there was smoke in the air and I could see it rising from the back of the restaurant across the street. By the time I got a block away, the fire trucks were arriving. So I dropped off the coffees and headed back out with 2 co-workers (it was only a block away). So we got to stand there on our break, watching the firefighters in action. I have to say, some of them were on the very handsome side of things. LOL. Sadly, that was the highlight of my day. Who am I kidding? That's been the highlight of my month thus far. Luckily, the restaurant wasn't heavily damaged. It was a fire in their exhaust system.

An alarming number of people in the office seem to be sick at the moment, coming down with spring colds. Given our wacky weather, it's not surprising. I just really hope that I don't come down with a cold before or during my trip to Montreal. I don't really want to get sick after it either, but if I'm going to catch the cold, I'd like to do so after the trip. I still have a lot of cleaning/organizing to do before Michelle gets here. Guess what I'm doing this weekend? Yeah. Cleaning.

I think I'm going to go and crawl into bed and try to get warm. It's a little chilly in my apartment this evening.

Good Night!

Sarah

How I feel some days.

Reflection

I spent a lot of today looking around and thinking about things. Specifically, my life. It was a very reflective day. Some of the stuff that reflected back to me was pretty good and that made me happy. However, the majority of stuff wasn't so good and that made me kind of sad. I didn't sit down and tear myself apart or put myself down. This was just a general evaluation of how things are going in my life. My 35th birthday is only 6 weeks away, so I think that's what spurred on today's thoughts. Time to check in and evaluate things.

I'm doing so much better than I was 5 years ago. When I turned 30, I was miserable. I kept that to myself as much as possible but things were bad. With the exception of still being single, almost everything else has changed and improved. A lot of things in this world get better with age. Apparently I'm one of those.

The problem I have before me at the present is that I've become complacent with my life. Things have gotten better and are going well, so I'm ok with just letting things be. This isn't good. I'm a dreamer. I have a vivid imagination and wild dreams and unfortunately, I seem to be operating under the delusion that I live in a Disney version of the world, where if you wish hard enough, and believe strongly enough *poof*, your magic godmother fairy type person appears and makes all those dreams come true. Yeah, that's not quite how it works.

I've come to the rather sobering realization that if I want any of these wild ass dreams of mine to come true, then I'm going to need to work for them. Really, really work for them. Put plans in place and follow through on them. Strive to be better and not accept mediocrity. I've been doing that my whole life. Like back in high school. I was a good student. Good grades came to me easily, so I never really pushed myself. Same with University. Had I actually pushed myself and really applied myself, I could have got great grades but for some stupid reason, I never felt the need.

But not anymore. This isn't just limited to my personal life either. My work life is going to have to change as well. I need to start looking for the next step. My career needs to grow too. And while complacency can be safe, it's not what I want. Don't get me wrong, I like and most of the time enjoy my job, but it's not my "dream" job and it's not the final destination in my career path either.

I am holding out some hope that the universe will help me along too and I have faith that it won't let me fall on my ass either.

I know what I want and why I want it. I just don't know the Where, as in where this will take me, the Who as in who will I become or the most important and hardest one, the How. That one is going to require some more thought and planning. But I do know that whatever I decide to do or how I decide to approach it all, everything is going to start with one small step, taken with courage, hope and determination. And I'm taking that step right now.

Good Night!

Sarah

Sunny Saturday and Sleep

Since I haven't blogged for the last couple of nights, I thought I should probably do so. Frankly, I've been too damn tired to Blog. After the no sleep Wednesday, Thursday night wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be. Despite being crazy tired, it still took a long time to fall asleep. Thankfully, last night was a bit better. I'm still waking up a lot in the night but I got to sleep in this morning, so that was very nice. I also had a nice can of Pear Cider this evening so I'm hoping that helps with the sleep too.

It was a beautifully sunny day here today. Too bad it was breezy and that breeze was stupid cold. Stupid weather. We're in for flurries this evening and freezing rain early in the morning then it's going to warm up and the freezing rain will change to normal rain. Looking at the week's forecast, it appears that spring might just be here. Heck, it's supposed to be 20C with rain on Wednesday. Go figure. Weather people are predicting that we'll have a long, hot and humid summer. I'm ok with the long and hot part. The humid part I could do without.

My day was pretty good. I went downtown and cashed in my coupon for a free bottle of perfume that I got for Christmas. The lady said I could have the small bottle for free, or pay $11 and get the big bottle. So, 35ml for free or 60ml for $11. Big bottle it was. I ventured into the market and went to my favourite butcher shop. They had some lamb souvlaki skewers, so I decided to have a Greek night. I bought them and I made some Greek rice and made a Greek Vinaigrette for the Greek salad I made. It was all very good. I also picked up a bottle of my new favourite wine and a couple cans of the Pear Cider I discovered last month. I ran a couple more errands and hit up the grocery store before returning home to bask in the sun coming in my windows.

I started to watch Madagascar 3 this evening. It made me laugh so that's good. I'll watch the other half in the morning.

Since tomorrow is looking like it's going to be a dreary day, I'm going to use it to clean my kitchen. I'm going to make a pasta dish for dinner. It's on the cover of the April issue of Food Network magazine. Looks easy enough. They have a truly kick-ass cake in this issue. It looks just like a flower pot with flowers in it! So cool.

My friend Michelle and I head to Montreal in 13 short days. I'm excited and not excited all at the same time. I have a lot of house work to do before she gets here and work is crazy busy right now so I have to make sure everything's all organized before I leave. That being said, I'm only actually missing 3 days of work and the break will be really good for me and I really am looking forward to seeing Michelle again. It's been a very, very, very long time since I've spent this much time with her, so I'm slightly apprehensive about it too. I'm sure everything will be great. I just hope that Mother Nature co-operates too and gives us some nice weather while we're there. The long range forecast isn't looking very good. But it's still a good ways out.

WTF?? It's 11:30pm and it sounds like someone is walking around upstairs with a peg leg. I swear, I have some of the most disrespectful and inconsiderate neighbours ever. Earlier, I got to listen to the couple down the hall yelling at one and other, again. It's pretty much a weekly event. It's one of the things I miss about my apartment in Calgary. Other than the dude that used to watch porn with the volume up and the naked people who lived in the building beside me, the neighbours were pretty awesome and very quiet.

Anyhow, I can hear my bed calling, so I think it's time to hit the hay and see if I can not only fall asleep quickly, but stay asleep until morning.

Good Night!

Sarah

Can't Sleep

I wasn't going to blog tonight because I was too tired. But seeing as I've been tossing and turning for the last hour and a half, I said "fuck it", got up and now I'm blogging.

This is ridiculous. I've been sleeping like shit since the weekend. Usually I'm pretty good at falling asleep, I just can't seem to stay asleep but lately, I can't fall asleep either. And for the past 4 nights, when I am asleep, I keep having really strange dreams. It's getting to be very annoying.

I've been tired all day. I fought off the urge to have a nap earlier because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. I guess that was a mute point. I went to be at 10pm. It's now 11:35pm and I'm wide awake. I feel like crap and I have to be up at 6am. And if the sleeping issues weren't bad enough, I keep waking up between 5-5:30am and then fall back to sleep just in time for my alarm to go off. WTF??

I nearly drifted off to sleep around 10:45 but then a cop car or ambulance went down the road with its siren blaring (really?? There's so much traffic on the road at this hour that you need your siren) and the damn thing woke me up and I can't been able to get back to sleep since. I can't get comfortable in bed either. My pillows are too flat or my arm starts to fall asleep. And I can't get the temperature right either. It's too cold with the window open (even just a crack) and it's too hot with the window closed. And to add to my misery, I have a song stuck in my head and it won't leave.

I seriously don't know what to do. This is very frustrating. I feel exhausted and tired. But as soon as I lay down, BOOM! Wide awake. My room is nice and dark, I have the fan on for background noise, I don't have any electronics in the room (no tv or computer) so there's nothing to distract me. I didn't have any caffeine this afternoon/evening, so that's not it. I don't really have anything on my mind that's bugging me, so that's not the issue either. Maybe I should raid my bathroom cupboard and see if I have any Gravol. That shit usually makes me pretty groggy. With my luck, it would just make things worse. It's be groggy but unable to fall asleep and then when I did sleep, it would be for such a short time that it would still be in my system when it's time to wake up.

Sigh. I don't know what to do. I guess I'll just go back to bed and stare at the ceiling for a few more hours.

Good Night!

Sarah

My brother seems to be able to fall sleep anywhere. Wish I could!

More Growth and Another Empty Bin

Continuing on yesterday's fun, I decided to tackle the 2nd mystery box.

This one contained a lot more mundane things like tax returns and supporting documents for doing my taxes. Some were more than 7 years old so I can toss those but a lot of the paper work I opted to keep for a little longer. I also have about 7 years worth of old bills. I think I'm going to need to buy myself a personal shredder and go on a spree.

I also found another diary. This one is not nearly as negative as the last one I found. This one is far more entertaining. I started writing it when I was 13 and the last entry in it was when I was 20. Talk about a lot changing. I wrote about my family, school, my high school friends, my high school crushes and love lost. I wrote about silly, trivial things that, at the time, didn't seem to be so, but they sure are now. 34 year old Sarah is kind of having fun laughing at 13 year old Sarah. If I'd known then what I know now...LOL. I also wrote about some serious stuff. Like how incredibly scared I was when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. How hopeful I was on my first night away at University. 34 year old Sarah wishes she could tell 19 year old Sarah not to worry so much that everything would be ok. I also wrote about some funny things like kidnapping a stuffed bear named "Hairy Bum",doing Chinese Fire Drills at 1am with a car full of boys - one of whom apparently crawled back into the car via the rear window, attending Prom and throwing a few surprise birthday parties. These memories made 34 year old Sarah smile. And while most of the people involved in those memories are no longer part of my life, I'm quite good with that. I only actually miss having one or two of them around. I guess that's another sign of growth and being able to move on.

Other than cleaning out the bin and my morning shopping trip for cheap chocolate and yogurt, I really didn't do much today. I did watch several episodes of Charmed on Netflix. It's been a very long time since I had a "do nothing" day and the best part is that I didn't even feel guilty about it. I think we all need a day like that form time to time.

The break it over. It's back to reality tomorrow, which means it's back to work. Thankfully, it's just a short week, which is nice. I refuse to get stressed about it. I treated myself to some new songs from iTunes, so I'll have them to listen to en route to and from work. That will make the day just a little bit better.

Good Night!

Sarah