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I’m Cheap!

It seems there are strange things in life that we are willing to pay for and others we are not. My new thing that I begrudge paying for is pop can deposits in the States. In NY state you pay 5 cents a can and in Michigan you pay 10 cents a can. Yes, I can buy pop here but not the kinds I like. Well, I have been buying pop over there for a few years, it is expensive to begin with and then they add this deposit on it. I used to recycle them here but now I have started to collect them so I can get my $2.00 back when I go back over. Cheap, I know. The best trick is to buy them in NY and then cash them in in Michigan! You make a profit - only to spend it on you next batch.

And for those of you wondering, it is all done by barcode so you can’t take all of your cans from here over there and make any money - ummm… not that I umm, er., tried or anything. We had a can of PC pop and put it in but it spit it back out at us. Oh well. But basically if I just recycle those cans it is like throwing a dime in my recycle bin each time! Yes, cheap… I know.

Mow

So… I mowed the lawn today. First time in at least a decade I’m sure… I didn’t do much of it as a kid either… It was a rather scary looking job and luckily there weren’t too many witnesses.

Saturday Adventures

Okay, so maybe it’s not a thrilling adventure to go to the States, but it was still an adventure none the less. I headed off to Watertown this morning (about an hours drive from Kingston). I stopped for lunch at the Cracker Barrell! Yummm… I had this new turkey salad - I love their sourdough croutons… I think that’s the main reason I have salad when I go there. From there I headed to the ‘teacher store’. They just have neat things to look at. Umm… then to Michael’s, the mall, Wal-Mart, K-Mart and then the grocery store. I got some great deals at Bath and Body Works! I had a coupon for 15% off my entire order but in small print it said not valid with any other offer. They always have specials on at the store like buy 3 get one free. So I only took advantage of the soap deal which was buy 5 for $10. … and I picked up a new body wash and lotion without the buy 3 deal. BUT when I got to the cash I showed her my coupon to see if I could use it on my non-sale stuff…. and she said I can use it on all of it including the sale so I went and got the buy 3 get one free stuff as well! Score! Or so I thought… I had to pay duty at the border so there goes my savings! I haven’t had to pay duty in so long… I guess it was time. It is Memorial Day weekend in the States so I was worried it would be crowded…. but everything was deserted! The border was busy going to Canada when I crossed this morning but it was pretty good this afternoon. All in all, a great day! Oh Dan, I bought some of that Dr. Pepper with vanilla and cherry… we’ll see how it is. I also picked up some Diet Cherry Pepsi.

Weirdo

I had a massage today - I LOVE massages! Our massage benefits run out and Doug doesn’t have a good massage benefit package at his new job so I’m using up our remainder…. Anyway, Friday’s are usually pretty quiet at the clinic as most of the people take the afternoon off. About half way through our massage (Her room is in the basement by the way) we hear the front door open upstairs. No worries - people come once in a while and sometimes another clinician has appointments later in the day. We keep hearing the person prowling and then stomping or something. Finally, he knocks on the treatment door that says “Do not disturb, massage in progress!”. So my therapist goes out all shocked and bothered and apologetic. The guy was just dropping off some money for another clinician and then had the nerve to ask her to go upstairs and write him a receipt which she declined to do… But I would never walk around a clinic looking for someone. (It’s a home with obvious doors of treatment rooms, etc.)…. especially never knock on a door that says do not disturb! Argh! We talked later that I should have started yelling and scare the guy off… that he owed me for my disturbed treatment time! Oh well - it gave us a chuckle. People are nervy these days.

Lost and Found

I think a while ago Doug and I had this thing on here about our local Baskin Robbins - it was gone, but then actually not gone, but then yes, gone. Well, I found it today!! How exciting! They have torn down a mall here in Kingston (big problems over that… anyway…) and have put up boxstores - but not nearly as big box stores so more like a strip mall I guess. And … there is a Baskin Robbins in there. It didn’t look like it was open yet but it will be soon - chocolate peanut butter ice cream here I come!

Free Blizzards

Okay… buy one get one free but still a good deal. Here is the link. You have to join (for free) and they will e-mail you a coupon. If you own a domain or have lots of hotmail accounts use them to get coupons as well. The coupon is usually good for about two weeks then you need to register a new account to get another one…. not that I’ve done this a few times or anything. Oh, and change your birthday to um…. next week and they’ll send you another coupon!

Bevelry Lewis

I just finished reading the 5th book in the Abrams Daughters series by Beverly Lewis! Anne, it just came out if you didn’t know! It’s a good one and is the last one in the series. There is a new series coming out in November.

I/We Passed!

I saw my transcripts today and I passed!! I got honors in every course that had an honors option! Woohoo!! Not that that is a hard task but still an accomplishment none the less. Convocation is next week!

And our house passed the home inspection today which means most likely our home will officially be sold as of this Friday at 5pm - as long as everything else goes through ie. their financing.

So everything is moving along…

Far away

Oops - a number of comments (7 to be exact) were unjustifiably stopped by our spam filter. So don’t worry - they’ve all been approved now.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted… so here’s the update. The new job is great. I’ve successfully completed Day #1, and the hospital is amazing, my colleagues are really nice, I have my own cubicle and a good computer - there is, uhh - yup, nothing for which I am dissatisfied. Outside of work, I’m a little lonely, but thanks to public internet access at the local library I can survive (they even gave me a library card number without the required mail). The environment here is lovely, lots of walking on pretty paths, and I’m about to go home and cook a delicious meal, a meal that Jenn wouldn’t like as it has eggplant and curry and onions, but I can do so guilt-free. But it would have been nice to share my rice with her. Anyways, I’ll post more again later.

Surprise!!

Last night I thought I was going out for dinner with a few of my friends - turned out to be a surprise party for me with 21 friends!! I was so surprised and as I looked down the table I was amazed at all the people there. My great friend Chrystal organized it all and made sure to include people from the two schools I have worked at as well as people I used to work with - even the teacher that hired me was there! It was great! My friend Paula gave me a gift of an address book so everyone could fill in their address - perfect idea. They also brought me a cake - not just any cake - but a Phylis cake!!! If you live in Kingston, you get to know a Phylis cake. They are homemade and fantastic! I have put pictures of them on my website. Since I just finished teacher’s college they had an apple and then a picture of Winnie the Pooh because I like him too! I have LOTS of yummy cake leftover too. My friend Nancy painted me a wooden mirror - in Lottie pattern. It’s just something that is special to both of us so I was happy to have something to remind me of her when I move. It was just such a great night and I can’t thank you all enough for making me feel so loved!! I’d mention you all… but I might forget someone!! Hopefully someone will e-mail me pictures soon so I can post them. I must admit I wasn’t looking my best but I’m sure all of my ’sisters’ will look great in the pics!

Bartering

This is a great new site that offers service for service - an online bartering website. So if you are good at computers you can help someone in exchange for having some mending done! Got off of a Freecycle site.

Exchange

It would appear that we have exchanged one set of animal problems for another. I must admit that this new problem is better than the old one but none would be better. For at least the past three years, we have had a skunk problem each spring. It would start to dig under our porch but for some reason we always managed to keep it moving onto our neighbours porch. Phew! This year - no skunk - so far. But, we do have a bird problem. There were hardly ever birds around here and now there are lots! They are living in our vents, our BBQ, anywhere warm! So after doing laundry last night we taped up the outside vents, I opened the BBQ this morning so they couldn’t hide - hopefully they will move on as well.

Doug

Since Doug doesn’t seem to be posting about Doug, I will! His last day of work is this week so his colleagues through him a party Friday night. There were about 15 people there and it was great! There were many there that I hadn’t met before and they were all so nice it made me sad for him that he is leaving.

I also noticed that at a farm party there are no vegetarians! It seems in the city there are always at least a few.

The party was hosted at this amazing log home which is only a year old. It was beautiful! We were all drooling and dreaming about how it would be ours.

One of the food highlights was this amazing cheese dip that you dip bread into…. Yumm.. You serve it warm. They also got Doug a DQ cake. I also got to hear some of the inside jokes about Doug from work… hee hee…

Life

All of our fans (okay, my Mom), have been writing and calling saying that we need to update our page! So… here I am.

There isn’t much to say when you’re not working and just lounging around. Oh! Now is the time to visit us if you have never been to our place….it’s spotless. I make the beds every morning and have just been keeping it clean for the showings. We have about 1-2 showings every day… our backyard is teeny tiny so that is what people haven’t liked about it. Someone who hates a lawn will be by soon I’m sure. Our neighbours next door have made their whole back yard grass free! House #3 for sale on our street sold today so we’re next!

I made the long trek to Brockville today for the Scholastic Warehouse sale. I can’t say it was worth the drive but it was nice to get out and see Brockville again. I got some nice books and some gifts but nothing super wonderful fantastic - especially since I had to wait in a huge gigantic line. Eeks. I did go to the new Wal-Mart though and it was nice as it is set up exactly like the new Wal-Mart here so I found exactly what I was looking for!

Bug update. Those dumb black bugs that Suzie talked about are still around. We went for a walk at Lemoine Point (woods and water) and were suprised how few bugs there were. We went down to the lake for the first walk in the water when we were attacked! The water was covered in these bugs and they just kept crawling on us…. I left before I even had my shoes off but Doug was in for a minute or two before escaping…. ick! So don’t go in the water yet…

One nice thing about moving is all the eating out and people paying for dinner stuff…. it’s nice! We have been out for dinner two evenings as we had showings over supper! Yeah!

Here are some pictures of my favourite sites in Kingston. The one at the bottom with the red roof is the one by our house.

Mother’s

I got thinking today about Mother’s and how hard Mother’s Day is for some people. There was a local high school student that was killed on Friday - playing soccer. Someone jumped over him to avoid running into him (he was on the ground) but clipped his head on the way over and snapped his neck. Freak accident - yet now it is Mother’s day and this mother no longer has her son. It is also my good friend’s first Mother’s day without her Mom.

My thoughts and prayers go to mothers who have lost their own mothers or children and find this day particularly difficult.

Shop till you Drop!

Yesterday was the official EA Roadtip - I don’t know which number it was but I think it was my third. There were seven of us crazy girls and we headed to Toronto for the day. We left at the interesting hour of 7 am - which is interesting when you are trying to make sure your house is clean for the day before you leave! We drove direct to downtown Toronto. We saw some sights in the Eatons Centre as well as on Yonge Street. Lunch was at Mr. Greenjeans - I felt a little unhealthy as I was the only one out of 7 that didn’t have a salad - but they all had some of my buffalo chips. After downtown we went to Fairview Mall - and then to IKEA. There was also someone with child amongst our crew and her feet were getting quite swollen. So at IKEA (after making fools of ourselves on the top floor) she crawled into the cart and I pushed her around on the main floor. We stopped in the pillow section to help her ride go more comfortably and then found a blanket along the way. Since she was our driver I had to take good care of her. Moving is definitely a deterent for shopping trips so I only came home with a bag (free gift with Breast Cancer donation -so we all have matching bags!), and some Kernels popcorn - oh and a mini alarm clock from IKEA. I was really looking for spring clothes but nothing caught my eye. It was probably my last offical EA roadtrip so it was a little sad. Next trip will be to my house!

Happy Mother’s Day!

I want to wish my Mom (the best Mom in the world!) a very Happy Mother’s Day! Sorry I can’t be with you today (but perhaps that is a gift unto itself!) but I want you to know I love you lots!

I also want to wish all the other Mom’s out there - the old, the new and almost Mom’s - a happy day!

Protected: Brock’s Home Town

Last Shifts & Friendship That Lasts

I worked my last shift at KGH tonight! It felt pretty monumental - I kept saying “This is the last time I’ll be doing this” all through the shift. My last patient was fairly unstable, the nurse was hesitant to let me see her, but when I finished the patient said “Oh, that’s much better” and gave me the thumbs up. It’s nice to leave on a positive note. I left my ID card and keypass, grabbed all pay stubs, and walked out. Thus ends my contribution to Kingston.

I went to my first farewell lunch. A good friend treated me to lunch, wrote a nice letter and card, and gave me a little momento. Thanks Peggy! I didn’t cry, though I felt inner … no sadness, no angst, no turmoil,… happiness. Not happiness at leaving, but at having a friend like her. The next 2 weeks will be similar - apparently people are doing stuff for me, though I don’t know why. They’re just nice, I guess.