Corner of Bourbon & Division

Having one day per weekend makes the weekend go by really fast. I dreamed that my supervisor asked me to come in for overtime next weekend. Sheesh.

I accidentally locked Gretzky outside all night. I feel horribly guilty, but she seems to be none the worse for wear. I went to bed early-ish with a migraine and didn't do a head-count of the cats the way I usually do. She doesn't even harbour any hard feelings, and is curled up next to me on the sofa, purring and accepting pats.

I have to head to the gym in about 15 minutes. I don't feel like going, but it's good for me, so I shall go anyway. None of this "I don't wanna!" anymore. When I get home I shall go back out into the garden. With any luck I'll get the side beds dug out. Tomorrow I will plant the seedlings, 'cause I don't think I'll have time to do it all today.

I have a long week of evening shifts and dentist's appointments ahead of me, and I don't even have Wednesday evening at Hurley's to look forward to, since I'll be working at the time. On the plus side, when I work evening shift, my mornings are usually pretty productive, unlike my evenings when I'm working day shift. I get up with a fair bit of energy to spare, which is more than I can say for when I get home from work and just want to pass out on the chesterfield.

After a weekend of rain, naturally the week is shaping up to be particularly fine in terms of weather. Typical.

All righty. I'm off!

Why is it that every time I've come to Halifax I've brought a snowstorm with me? :P

That's annoying.

I wanted to take out some of my lovely organic meat from my freezer in the shed this morning, so that it might thaw in time for me to make some shepherd's pie (or cottage pie, as owldaughter pointed out).

Unfortunately, the padlock on my shed appears to have been affected by the cold weather, and won't unlock. It's not even that cold out!

>_<

Now I shall have to get bolt cutters, and see if I can find a padlock that won't freeze. Also, I have no cottage pie.

Bah, humbug.

It snowed!

I will doubtless be less excited by this when I have to shovel. I think I may have to get BorderCrossing some snowshoes for Christmas. :)

I went to get yarn yesterday, and was foiled by my own absent-mindedness. I forgot that the yarn store is closed on Mondays. I shall have to go today instead. I am going to see also about obtaining a car for a couple of hours and hieing myself to Canadian Tire to get an air mattress, and also procuring myself all the things I will need for cooking for this weekend.

In random news, I finally began walking the environmental walk with regards to my coffee intake. I kept meaning and forgetting to buy a Tim Horton's travel mug. So yesterday I made a point of going to get one. I had the following exchange with the Tim Horton's employee who served me:

Me: "Hi, do you have any travel mugs for sale here?" (It's a smallish store, so I wasn't sure if they had any on-site)

Employee: *blank stare* "A what?"

Me: "A travel mug."

Employee: *blank stare* *mumbles something incomprehensible*

Me: "You know, a re-usable mug?"

Employee: *blank stare*

Me: "It's a cup? Made of plastic, with a lid? You put coffee in it?"

Employee: *turns to Employee #2* "Do we have something called a trowel mug?"

Employee #2: "You mean a travel mug?"

Employee: *shrugs*

Employee #2: *to me* "You want a travel mug?"

Me: *thanking God for employees who know what they're talking about* "Yes, please."

Employee #2: *to Employee* "They're over there. In the corner with the promotional items. Over there! Get with it, kid!"

Employee: *searches three times for a mug before finding one*

Employee #3: *comes up behind Employee* "Okay, do you know how to ring this up?"

Employee: *mutters something incomprehensible* *tries to ring up the mug and fails* *charges me for a bagel I didn't order*

Employee #3: *credits the bagel I didn't order*

Employee: *tries to ring up the mug and fails* *charges me for a croissant I didn't order*

Employee #3: *credits the croissant I didn't order* *rings up the mug* "Would you like the free coffee that comes with your mug?"

Me: "Yes, please."

Employee: *looks vaguely panic-stricken and as if he's about to cry*

Employee #3: *rings up coffee*

Employee #2: *rolls eyes* "Have a nice day. Thanks for coming!"

Me: *grabs coffee and makes a dash for the door*

Spent yesterday and today with BorderCrossing. I got to see her school, and the classroom that she calls the "Pink Bunker" because the walls are all painted pink. It's not the garish-verging-on-lurid shade I was imagining, but it's still pretty pink. I met a couple of her colleagues, who appear to be universally nice. We are slated to go on a double-date with one of her friends and her husband, with whom it turns out I went to high school. Small world indeed.

We went to Kilo for dinner, because BorderCrossing expressed a desire for really good cake. I agreed with this thought, and had a delicious dinner of onion soup gratinée along with a platter of nachos with salsa, guacamole, and sour cream. By the time we were done, I was too full for dessert, and was very VERY good and didn't order any cake out of sheer greed. I'm quite proud of myself for that, because I know that I would have felt overly full afterward and kind of sick. So, yay me!

Bought a bunch of Hallowe'en decorations today, and am sad because the pouring rain meant I couldn't put them up. With any luck the weather will improve enough tomorrow that I will be able to decorate my front porch as much as possible.

We repaired back to BorderCrossing's place for hot chocolate and a viewing of Sliding Doors, which was charming. Then I had to be a responsible grown-up and come home and feed the cats, which was a bit of a drag. Still, the cats were pleased to see me. George even rewarded me by considerately puking on the bathroom floor, where the puke would be easily cleaned.

Now, for a leisurely night of PBeM roleplaying, maybe some tea, and some kind of light snack for dinner. If I had Kraft Dinner, I might make that. I'm in the mood for instant comfort-food. Sadly, I have none. Perhaps I shall thaw some chili.

No more wearing contacts during night shift. I will wear my glasses even though contacts are more comfortable for biking. Owie.

In biking news, I made it halfway up the hill on Atwater (from Sherbrooke to Côte-des-Neiges) yesterday on my way to visit my parents. I stopped halfway up (wheezing attractively) and walked the rest of the way, but it's a long, steep climb, so halfway up is pretty good if I do say so myself. A little bit at a time, and soon I will be a biking machine!

I'm really enjoying being a cyclist thus far. Even the rain today didn't daunt me: I pulled out my rain jacket (which turned out to be a whole lot less waterproof than I thought) and put on an older pair of jeans. I packed my work jeans in a plastic bag, and rode to work in the rain. It wasn't great, but it was still better than BMW.

I promise that I will eventually start talking about something other than biking. It's just that it's the new shiny in my life right now, and at least I'm not talking about my upcoming move, right? ;)

Today (it's technically Monday already), apart from sleeping, I have obtained a car from Communauto, with which I will go grocery shopping, stop at MEC for some clips for my pants and some waterproof gear, and pick up a bunch of moving boxes. Then I will go to bed for the rest of the day. I am looking forward to bed.

I have had a really, really good weekend, and the day's not even over yet!

Got up later than I wanted to on Saturday, and had breakfast with the Parental Units after making my way there via BMW (Bus Metro Walk). I walked to the metro as I missed the bus, but it was such a gorgeous day out that it was totally worth the extra 20 minutes it tacked onto my trip (that's walk + extra time waiting for the next metro, as I missed the one I would have taken had I not missed the bus).

I then spent a lot of time waiting for the Maternal Unit to get ready so we could walk downtown together, and I headed with her into The Bay, for my annual I-must-go-in-to-get-this-one-thing foray into the belly of the beast. My mother came with me, and she wanted to stop by the Lancôme booth at the front of the store. I have a special tactic for The Bay, which is a tried and true in-and-out strategy which takes no more than fifteen minutes and uses only the back door, so that I don't have to run the gauntlet of the perfume-sprayers (can we say "instant migraine" boys and girls?). Unfortunately, my mother's detour cost us an extra twenty minutes *and* took us down the dreaded Perfume Alley, which meant that after only 35 minutes I was just about ready to scream and/or kill someone with my bare hands.

Then we stepped outside into the street, and all the random homicidal rage magically vanished. I hate department stores, and The Bay is my own private section of hell.

The most important part of yesterday was when I got myself some Rollerblades. Yay! I am going to take them for a test drive tomorrow, to get used to them, and if I find that it's not too hard to manage (my little test in the store indicates that I will have to work on my balance a bit, but that otherwise it's close to rollerskating), then I will likely be rollerblading to work during the summer. It takes me an hour to walk the distance, so I'm assuming that it will not take more than forty minutes or so on wheels, which is only ten or fifteen minutes for than it takes me to get there by bus.

Anyway, this is the plan. Tomorrow I'm going to make sure that I can travel relatively long distances on the skates without killing myself first. Oh, and before you ask, I did get protective gear to go with it. I am not so much of an idiot that I don't know that I'm going to faceplant a couple of times at least with these things on. I already have a bicycle helmet, so I bought knee and elbow pads, and wrist/palm protectors. They are black and red and look very snazzy.

I joined the Parental Units for dinner, and as the Maternal Unit was a bit wiped out from walking all over downtown for the afternoon, I cooked dinner. I made baked salmon with dill and a bit of olive oil, and improvised a side dish of rice, green beans and zucchini which I first steamed and then sautéed in a pan with a bit of olive oil, rosemary, thyme, and lemon juice. My timing was a bit off, so the side dish turned out a bit on the smushy side, but it was very tasty. When I get my timing right, I suspect it will be a very good side dish.

Came home, passed out in a happy tired stupor, and rejoined the Parental Units for another breakfast this morning. I'm going to be working night shift for the next two weeks, so it's unlikely I'll be seeing much of them during that time.

I spent the afternoon in the garden with ai731, where we did a metric ton of prep work for this year's vegetables. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and perfect for this: mid-twenties (that's Celsius), bright and sunny but not overwhelmingly hot or humid. I still can't get over the fact that two weeks ago there was still three feet of snow on the ground.

I turned the soil in two of the four raised bins while she raked up the fallen leaves from the neighhbour's tree. We both pulled up a record number of weeds (and OMG the giant centipedes! Not as big as the ones that I saw in Mexico, but for Canada these ones were pretty big!), and she showed me the ins and outs of tools and how to prep a garden. I sprayed the cherry tree with a sulphur-based fungicide, since it appears the tree is prone to some weird fungus in the late summer. Hopefully we've caught it early enough this year that it won't be diseased.

We planted potatoes, onions, garlic and broccoli today. To our surprise, we discovered that last year's carrots wintered over (over-wintered?). I have no idea what carrots are or aren't supposed to do, but ai731 was apparently expecting them to rot in the ground where she'd left them, and so it was a pleasant surprise to find that they had survived the winter and are apparently still edible.

I wrote down as much of what she told me about gardening in my new notebook, and I'm very much looking forward to managing the garden and seeing what I can come up with when left to my own devices.

Now I am off for one more meal with the Parental Units (the Maternal Unit is making duck tonight!), and tomorrow I have a ton of things to get done before I start my two-week night shift.

See you all on the flip side!

Note to everyone: taunting the weather gods is a bad plan.

It can has be hibernation time now, please? (Okay, I can't quite bring myself to use LOLcat spelling, no matter how tired I am)

There is snow outside. There will be lots more snow by tomorrow morning. I am unthrilled by this, as I'm working night shift this weekend (and was all last week), and anything that delays my getting home to bed is not my friend. I'm also going to have to leave early for work today.

What I really want is to go back to bed right now and sleep until tomorrow morning. I'm having something of a stressful time at work due to the new system: mostly the problem is that, since I'm on night shift,, I have no back-up to help me with the new system (same for the other girl on night shift). So when things don't work or I don't understand something, there's SFA I can do about it, and I find that kind of thing frustrating and stressful, because I need to know I'm doing my job well, and right now I'm not.

Gah.

I'm also overtired and cranky. I am a morning person, and night shift does not agree with me physiologically. Spell check is freaking out over that last word, and I'm so tired I can't see why. Presumably I've made some sort of horrendous error that I will find very embarrassing when I re-read this post in a couple of days.

In more uplifting news, I got my new glasses and a pair of contact lenses yesterday. The glasses are very nice, if a little strange: I wore the same pair for nearly eight years, and adjusting to a new shape has been... interesting. I love the contact lenses. It's so very weird to be able to see my own face clearly without actually wearing glasses. The whole putting in/taking out process will take some getting used to, but so far I am a fan.

We're getting new software to help with the job at work. The new software needs its own console and a live administrator, which means we're getting a new set of computers and setting up a new work station inside our already-cramped central. Today two of the supervisors spent the day moving furniture around: shifting cabinets, unscrewing and re-screwing desks and sundry other bits of office equipment, and generally being loud and disruptive and spreading chaos in their wake. They weren't particularly graceful or efficient about the job, and so the rest of us mocked them mercilessly the entire time from the safety of our desks while we worked.

Otherwise, today was quiet, if bitterly cold. It was -15˚C, and with the wind chill it felt more like -26˚C. Not the coldest it's ever been (2003 was notable for it's -40˚C temperatures, which recurred all through February), but cold enough that I felt chilly when I went outside, which is rare for me (feeling cold, that is, not going outside). I think it was mostly the humidity and the wind that made it bad: I don't know how fast the wind was blowing today, but at times it felt as though I was in a gale. The corner of Greene and St. Catherine is particularly bad for its "wind tunnel" effect, and at one point the wind actually kept me stationary as I walked into it. Trippy.

The "cold" emoticon looks unhappy. This isn't the case for me, but there's not much I can do about it. Bah.

Once again, the year is going by in a blur. I can't believe that Thursday is Valentine's Day already. My streak of not having a date on Valentine's Day continues unbroken, but mostly I'm noting it simply as an academic interest. I've come to a place in my life where I don't know if I would welcome the complication and added hassles of a relationship. I haven't sworn off love 4-Evar!ZOMG! but at this point I have made the "selfish" decision to not have to worry about someone else at all. Relationships are a lot of work, and I'm not willing to invest the time and energy these days, with everything else that I've got going on. If my soulmate happens to drop into my lap I won't say no, but I doubt that's going to happen.

Tonight I am aiming for a relatively early bed time. I got to bed late(ish) yesterday, and paid for it today. So tonight is catch-up night.

It is windy out there! Winds are 60 to 90km/h. Major gusts, and flash freezing, and generally scary weather!

On the plus side, it means I get to use one of my new icons!

I am seriously tired. Working the night shift is brutal.