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SALE!

Tomorrow is the start of my favourite sale… the downtown Kingston sidewalk sale. In particular, there is one store that has grab bags of cards! They are Hallmark and I usually like all of them. I sold a lot of my unused cards at my cubbie sale this year so I am allowed to restock. I was a bit card crazy for a while. I can’t turn down a good card sale! On Friday, Fanfayr starts downtown which is an artisan fair with vendors from all over. It has very unique things and is where we bought our coffee table. Anyway.. can’t wait to start shopping!

Left Behind

Well, I just finished reading the last book (or so I thought) in the Left Behind series. It is book number twelve and called “The Glorious Appearing”. The funny thing is, is that I haven’t read books 7-11. I just saw this one in the library and wanted to know how the series ended. The series was originally supposed to have seven books but when they kept writing - it appeared as a money making scheme - I stopped reading the books. Anyway, I was able to follow the final book with few problems. A few more people had been added to the story line and a few more were missing but other than that, it was easy to read. Soo… as I was saying, I thought it was the last book but I noticed in the front cover it stated that a prequel and a sequel were on their way. When will this series end???

Election

In our riding Rosie the Clown received 237 votes!

Shopping!

I am off to the States for a little shopping today. My main stop will be The Cracker Barrel. It is a restaurant and a country gift shop. They have them all over the States and I just love it there. Our main goal is grocery shopping and getting snacks that you can’t get here. It’s also just a fun place to go for the day! We will definitely have to hit Wal-Mart!

UPDATE: Just got back. Had a great lunch at the Cracker Barrel! Yumm.. we split chicken fingers with macaroni and cheese, fries, and the BLT salad! Yummm… Didin’t buy anything at the store but that’s okay, I love the atmosphere! Did well at the BIG SALE at Bath and Body Works. And managed to find everything on my grocery list even though we had to hit three grocery stores! Don’t worry Mom, we found the sour cream and onion chips!

Strawberriesssssss

I picked $30 worth of strawberries on Tuesday, which is probably the equivalent of … well, you know the 2L ice cream containers (I think they’re 2L)? - probably 8! So Jenn and I have strawberries comin’ out our ying-yang (literally and figuratively). From shortcake to milkshakes to desserts, to strawberry sandwiches, we’ve pretty much done it all. Today I even tried putting them in my fajitas (note: weird effect - I had grapes once before and it was tasty, but mixed with pepperoni and salsa, strawberries didn’t really work). Any ideas for what else I can do? I’ve got 4 bagged and frozen already, and I’ll probably have another 6-8 bags when all is said and done.

Magnetic Field

Doug thinks I have some new magnetic field around me as electronic things are going haywire around here. I just go to my computer and it’s not working, and my Palm is a little wonky as well. And now my speakers are buzzing… weird. Luckily Doug was able to fix my computer… it got quite sick. I think he worked hard on it as I was using his all the time now so it became a higher priority so he could get me off his!

Doesn’t Really Compare

My life is in a valley - not an emotional valley, but a valley without exciting news. I’ve surpassed news of a new car purchase, a canoe purchase, and I’m preceeding news of career development. I’m reading interesting books, and enjoying playing on the internet, and doing relaxing things like gardening and canoeing — but nothing that really compares to a new baby. I guess I do have some news of significance, including:

Fall?

I am not complaining about the weather at all, but it is a lot cooler this year than usual. I don’t think we will be hitting the Picton beach anytime soon. It makes for great paddling weather and you don’t need to turn on the air! It is nice to sleep with the windows open and get a nice breeze. I love it when it is cooler up until the end of the school year because you hardly notice that school is ending!

Labour?

Our friends Brock and Julie might be having their baby soon!! Sounds like she might already be in labour. Her due date is July 1st but they aren’t surprised to go early as the doctor told them it could be anytime a week or two ago. I’m hoping for a girl since both sides of their families seem to be bombarded with boys!

Hey, Jeff would pretty excited if they had their baby tomorrow, on his birthday!!

UPDATE: Well, they didn’t quite make it to the 25th. They had a boy…. don’t know the name yet. 7 1/2 lbs; born at 9:54.

School’s Out

It totally didn’t feel like the last day of school but it is over!! I go in tomorrow to help clean and sort and then WOOHOOO!

Two Days!

I will only mention this once as I really don’t like to rub it in. I only have two days left of work!! WOOHOO!! Also, summer holidays are an extra week long this year. Don’t worry I have to make it up next year as school goes right until the end of June and March Break and Easter fall right on top of each other. So for those of you who are mad at me… remember, I only work 30 hours a week and only get paid for 10 months of work so your pay cheque is bigger!! This is also my first summer off in four years as I have been doing courses every summer. So I am exhausted and ready for some time off to clean up this pig sty! Anyway, I’m looking forward to the break.

Paper

Life involves so much paper. I look so disogranized as there are piles of paper everywhere in my house… but there is SOOO much! Receipts, newspapers, bills, mortgage stuff, car stuff, insurance, and it seems that all the paper is important. I trash non-important stuff right away but then I’m not sure where to file something so I leave it in its important pile. My mission this summer is to organize all this paper! Any tips?

Don’t Have Much

Don’t have much to blog about but thought I should write something. We had a nice quiet weekend reading and canoeing. It was one of those relaxing weekends that you never really allow yourself.

Friday after work, we went to negotiate our mortgage. We had our list of what we wanted and he offered it to us without us even having to ask. Man, we’re good.

Tip

I know you’re always supposed to pay 15% tip, but I’d rather pay up to 30% for excellent service, 15% for expected service, and less for poor service. I think that paying extra at times makes it justifiable to pay less at others. It should just average 15%, right?

Last night we went to Swiss Chalet. The waitress was friendly enough and the food was good, but she (and all the staff) were quite inefficient. It seemed that waitresses were serving tables scattered throughout the restaurant. The manager wouldn’t seat people even though there were empty tables. Our waitress was single-task oriented — she’d deliver a meal then walk back to the kitchen without stopping at another table on the way. It took 10-15 minutes to get our drinks, another 30 minutes to get our meals, and 10-15 minutes to pay our bill. Even then, we paid on a gift certificate and she didn’t bring the bill - just the receipt. There was no room/opportunity to leave a tip and since we planned on putting the tip on the gift card we had no cash to leave for her. So we walked out.

Another time we went to Shoeless Joes - the food was good, the waitress was nice enough, until the end when we asked for our bill, put our coats on, and she dropped off the VISA slips and simply said “Top copy is mine.” No good-bye, have a nice day, thanks for coming, see you again, it’s been a pleasure, enjoy the mints — it was quite rude. I think we left a small tip that time.

There are other restaurants we’ve been to that the server has been excellent - quick, very friendly, cares about the quality of what we receive, and promotes a very positive environment and experience… we had one like that last week at Smittys.

I begrudgingly give a 15% tip for average service, but I cannot bring myself to give the same tip for bad service, and I feel cheap if I don’t significantly reward excellent service. Growing up I don’t think my parents ever left any tip - I dunno, though.

$$$

You gotta love it when you take a day off without pay and they take it out of your pay before you even took the day off. And then on your next pay, you discover that they took it out again! Nice.

UPDATE: Called payroll and it would appear that someone decided that I shouldn’t get paid for a day off I took in April to present my thesis. Nice of them to let me know ahead of time that I wouldn’t get paid.

Car Payments

Drive-in banks were established so most of the cars today could see their real owners.
— E. Joseph Crossman

B.A.

For those who don’t know, I graduated with a B.A. in Disability Studies and a minor in Family Supports and Community Practice.

Class of 2004!

Well, I officially have my degree now!! WOOHOO!! I was convocated this morning! The household was up around 5:45 am to get downtown by 7:30 am. We had a whole weekend of festivities and now I am exhausted … but have to go back to work tomorrow.

Here are some pics of my weekend of festivities!

Elections

I have two little stories about local electoral candidates. We have a “No Soliciting” sign on our mailbox which is generally respected. In our last mayoral election and in this election, we have had candidates ring our doorbell, acknowledge that they read the sign and assumed that we would want to hear from them. They thought wrong.

Today I was downtown during my lunch hour and someone tried to talk to me. I just said “I’m not interested” and kept walking as I heard them introduce themselves as the independent candidate. As I kept walking he said “Aren’t you going to vote?” I replied “Yep” and he said “Oh”…. I’m not sure why he said “oh”… shocked that I kept walking or what? Oh well. Also, when people are on their lunch hour, they don’t have time to hear someone’s campaign!

Valoo Villahj

Uh, that kinda makes it look East Indian. I was just trying to spell it phonetically. Anyways, I usually don’t go in there - Jenn does her stuff, and I leave her alone to enjoy it. But today I went in looking for a floppy hat (like Bill Mason), and came out with a bright yellow jacket, and an outdoorsy canoe shirt (well, it will be my hiking/canoeing shirt when I need more than just a quick-dry). It’s not a bad store, as long as you’re in the right mood, and as long as you can put up with that smell - you know, the VV smell.