Bookstore part 1

So my first day at the bookstore has past and I must say it was a very nice change from picking weeds. I have been trained for cashier, something I will probably be doing most of my time at the store. My supervisor scheduled me for 20 hours next week after the long weekend. 5 hours 4 days a week. The cash system changed since I have been therer last, it is much more automated now and I must say I was pretty impressed with it, it is much more forgiving when you make mistakes because you can escape your way out of a lot of messes. However, it doesnt let you go as fast as the old system, so if you're not paying attention you have to redo a bunch of stuff. They have a scanner now, something i love! They're so much fun. *bleep* Also I get a discount on some items, which might come in handy during the school year. I'll have to make a list of things I need to get and see if it's worth buying it at work or not. They tend to be a little overpriced no matter what. I get a 15 minute payed break, which is not a lot of time to eat lunch. I only finished half of mine today, I had brought left overs from yesterday.
Since it was my day of yesterday I decided to make a nice dinner for Alan, so I ended up making lots of food and we invited the neighbours over aswell to help us finish all the food. (She coincidentally also got a much nicer position then she had on the same day, so that was cause for a celebration!) I made a big greek salad, alan made mexican trash ( a deliscious dip you eat with tortilla chips) and I made couscous and chicken with olives, fresh basil and tomatoes, a little bit of fushion cooking.. sort of.. ok it was a strange yet tasty combination. Oohh now I'm hungry, we're having a meal from the crockpot tonight but I think I might finish my greek salad now before it goes bad and then have some more food later on... mmm.. Stitch and bitch is on tonight and the girls are coming over here, still need to do a lot of dishes before then.. ttys

Two in one day! wohoo

So the day is over. No more groundskeeping for me ever again I dont think! This in itself should be a very exciting thing, but somehow I feel a little dazed. I am not nearly as happy as I should be. I am mainly tired.. strange. So tomorrow I have a day off before I start at the bookstore. I think it will probably be al ot of fun to work there, although it might be a little boring at first due to the lack of customers during the summer. We will see, it will pick up soon enough. So yeah, my last day at grounds was very uneventful. First I worked in my assigned section picking weeds with a couple of the others. As punishment for leaving them early, they made me a fluorescent band and tied it around my fore head 'a la Rambo' and they made black war stripes on my face. Then we got really bored with picking weeds and designed this really cool game called pebble tossing. You need pebbles and a grate and skill.. oh well, two out of three is ok too.. :P Anyway, standing at a distance point is trying to get as many pebbles to go into the grate as possible.... if you win you take to steps back... all the while looking busy.. it was very entertaining!
It rained part of the day, so we got to "work" with the furniture crew. They dropped us of in a huge storage room somewhere in the basement of the university with a couple of brooms, told us to sweep the place until they came back, but surprise surprise, they never did. I never even really said goodbye to most of the people there, because I figure I will still go back to see some of them, especially since I still have someone's dvd. It just feels really unreal that I'm gone and I am happy but sort of sad at the same time...
My weekend was very nice. We went to see Poppa on the weekend, and ate a wonderful meal and swam at Alan's aunt's. It was very tasty his uncle always barbeques incredible amounts of food and we had a ver nice dessert: banana splits! We slept over at Alan's mom and dad's place and the next day we went to see grandpa and grandma. It was a very nice day out, visited over lunch and then came back early afternoon. We spent part 0f the afternoon in the swimming pool playing frisbee and had another wonderful dinner.
Alan's mom and dad left for BC yesterday for a wedding and a short vacation. I hope they take lots of pictures, because BC is a place I would love to see some time. Pictures will have to do for now I'm affraid. They called and said they made it safely there last night, which is always a nice reassuring :) Lot's of people going on trips these days. I know I just came back from one not to long ago, but everyone is infecting me with traveling itches.. I really want to go on a trip now. Maybe later, first I need to save up some more money for school! ttys :)
Oh did I mention I am going to take 4 courses this coming year? I decided I didnt want to waste money now if I might be able to go to school for a lot less the next year. All of my courses I'm going to be taking with my friends from this past year, so that will be very nice, especially if I miss some classes or need help with labs and stuff... I'm going to be taking microbiochemistry organic chemistry part1 and 2 and genetics.. sounds like fun doesnt it?!?

Last day of grounds!!!

Needless to say I am very excited about that! I decided to take a day in between jobs to further clean the appartement and such before I start the new one at the bookstore! SO yeah I have to leavebut I just had to share...

Lots of stuff

Well I have to say life is never boring. It is true what they say about expecting the unexpected. Obviously I havent really been posting as much as I should have been. I have had a very busy period, for no particular reason.
I think I have collected all of the official papers for my PR application. Next step is making the photo album and filling out all the forms which is still going to take a while. Alan's mom had a bunch of useful pictures of us that I'll be able to use, and then there is Alan's picture library that we'll be going through to collect the pictures. It really is fun. I started a little bit of that this monday and it is neat to see all the things we have done in the past three years. Amazing how many fun and memorable things we have already done so far, and how many I forgot about already.
Oh speaking of memorable things, we won our first soccer game this past saturday. It was fun to win a game for a change. I again almost scored, twice this time. One of these days the ball really should make it into the net! There's always comming saturday.
Further Alan and I went to see Charlie and the choclat factory this sunday with our friends. I still am not sure whether I liked the movie or not. There was lots of good acting and the story is good, yet very strange at the same time. It's definetly worth seeing at some point I think, dont know if you need the theater for it, but I enjoyed myself. The nice thing about not going out to often is that you appreciate it that much more when you do!
Last night Alan and I went out for Moroccan food. We werent sure what to pick from the menu because neither of us has eaten maroccan very often. Therefore the owner suggest we would get the buffet, that way we could try all sorts of different things. He tooks us over to the food personally and explained what the food was and stuff. Appearantly his wife is the headchef so it's all "home cooked food". It was apsolutely delicious! We started of with a bunch of very interesting salads, then I filled up my plate wih couscous (yum!), rice, lemon chicken, tajine beef (sort of stew) with tomatoes and onions and other good stuff, vegetables in a nice brothy sauce, and then after that I filled up my plate with the first lamb's meat I truely really enjoyed. It was a very nice combination of apricots, plums and apples and lamb and savory flavours. and more chicken and salad. After which I was definetly full... but not to full to have mint tea and baclava.. mmm... very very tasty.
The reason Alan and i went out for dinner was that we had something to celebrate. Namely: I have a new job. I am going to be working at the bookstore instead of outside in the blazing sun. This to me is very exciting. I at first will be working less hours then I am right now, which is to bad, but once we get closer to the school year things should really pick up a lot, which is fine by me :-) It also has the advantage that I'll be able to work throughout the school year if I want to, so if I dont get as many hours at cutv as I usually do because of all the changes, I can stay on with them. We will see. At this point my first day will be comming thursday, but it might be sooner. I told them about it at grounds, and they seemed to understand so that seems to all be working out well.
I guess that's most of the news for now.

yawn

I've been wanting to post another post basically for a whole week now, and things just keep comming up in between. Now for instance I am really really tired and so I am going to go to bed, and thus my big plan of plans is to write a nice posting tomorrow.. over and out.

another day another dollar

We had a pretty busy weekend. I played soccer on saturday and almost scored a goal! If only I had a little bit better aim. Oh well, better luck next time. It was a fun game, although I was kind of stiff after. I play in a mixed league, so every game there have to be at least 2 girls on the field, otherwise we play with player short, no matter how many guys are on the side line. This past weekend was also the weekend of the hope volleyball tournament, it's for charity and a lot of people participate in it, a big part of our soccer team including my boyfriend went to it. turns out I was the only girl actually on the team that ended up showing up for the game. Luckily the boys managed to call in a couple of girls, first one could only play the first half, second one only the 2nd, so that worked out fine, we didnt have to play a man short, accept that I got to stay on the field for the full time. It was fun although my body isnt quite up to speed for that yet. Hey, I'm doing pretty good excersise wise! i have been using kitty for three days this week, althoguh I havent really found my favorite excersises yet. I borrowed this book from a coworker of mine, but I am not thrilled with those, I like the ones I got of a website somewhere a little better,so I think I am going ot explore that site a little bit more. So yeah kitty, I have been biking a little bit, I played soccer and yesterday we got to go visit Alan's parents so I did a little bit of swimming. SO eventhough I am not working out like crazy I do try to get some excersise each day to get into a little bit better shape. Oh and I think i can count today as an excersise day aswell. It was 33 degrees C plus humidity today and a lot of people at work took some days off. Therefore I got to trim hedges today with a gas engine hedgetrimmer. For those of you that have never seen one, it sort of looks like a small chainsaw, without the chain, and skinnier blade. Anyway, the saw itself isnt that heavy, but the hedge was pretty tall so I had to hold it above my shoulders and of course you try to cut evenly. It was a good work out. I also had about 3 L of water to drink today because it was very very hot.. And it's supposed to stay that way. Oh and I cant find my ball cap hat anywhere, so I might have lost it or "lost it" at work somewhere.. either way I am going to have to bring another hat in otherwise my brain will fry...
Sooo I completly lost track of my story, which I usually do as all of you who know me know.. Right soccer, we lost unfortunatly, but we did play a good game. Hopefully we'll do better next saturday. After the game I went to watch alan play at the volleyball tournament. He did really well. It is a pretty neat event. There where about 80 courts, and there where 15 min games, from 1 in the mourning until 4 in the afternoon I think. Everyone plays 5 games and then the winners compete against eachother. There where about 30000 people there I have heard, vendors, players, spectators. There was also a lot of promotion stuff going on. Coupons for things. There was a stand where you could play Xbox for free and try out osme new games, which was pretty cool, and we got 4 free slurpee(slush puppie) coupons 2 of which we just used for desert. Hhmmm.. Later saturday we went to a party of friend of ours which was a lot of fun. I got to meet some new nice people and chat and munch. Unfortunatly the week outside plus the busy day made me sleepy so at the end of the night I had trouble keeping my eyes open.. which I didnt really like because I didnt want to be rude and wanted to participate in the conversation, but there was nothing I could do.. Luckily there's always coke to get you the cafeine you need to rescue you from situations like that.
Sunday was sleep in day and clean the house/organize stuff/work on application day. It all takes so much time, and the questions I have for the gouvernment are hard to ask because like any good old office their open between 8 and 4 and since I work outside it's hard to call them. Oh well, I'll just have to take some time on break to do that. I am going to get my x-rays done tomorrow, so that part of the requirement will be done. Hopefully I can get the rest finished soon so I can send it in...
well I am getting sleepy... time for bed.. good night

It's the weekend... sweet!

Hello there, time for another post. I have so many little things to say, but really not to much is comming to me right now. Oh yesterday I had my doctors appointment. It wasnt nearly as scary as some people had made it sound. It was a long visit, and i had to fill out this questionair about medical history and my behaviour and stuff like that, I was weighed, got my eyes checked, the usual other stuff, ears, throat blahblah.. All I know about the results is that my bloodpressure was a little low. Probably due to the fact that I hadnt been drinking enough and had been working outside all day. So after that was all done, the doctor told me to go downstairs to get bloodwork done and x-rays, first blood because that takes the longest or whatever, so I get my bloodwork done, walk to x-ray.. Oh great whole month of July they close at 4 pm... Since i work until 3:30, this means i have to take more time of of work to get them done, next week I guess.. Oh well what can you do... my application is slowly coming together. Hopefully i can get lots of work done on it this weekend, get most of it ready to go.
So tonight I was a true housewife, I cooked and did dishes and cleaned the bathroom, and did garbage and all that stuff while Alan fixed up our vacation pictures. I definetly owed him some cleaning up, because he has been doing most of the work lately. Heat tends to drain energy, so the last week was not very productive for me. We have finally picked them all out, all 420 of them, aanndd he has made them all pretty and has taken them to get developed so soon we can make an album! finally.. alhough we are very very far behind on doing pictures, we might have to make some other albums first. Oh well, I needed to go through tons of pictures anyway to make my PerminentRes album "to show we're actually dating". i cant wait to get this thing all done and sent in.
There definetly was more to say, but all I know now is it's the weekend.. Sweet!

Hmmm stirfry :)

Today was a pretty eventful day in a boring kind of way. As it didnt happen today I can write about it now. As a christmas gift Alan and I were supposed to go on this "morning hot airballoon ride", which sounds like a load of fun! The certificate was valid until june 30th, and so of course I remembered to book the flight 2 days before the end of this period, close call... We booked a flight for this morning.. Soooo my mom thinks the balloon thing is a nice plan, except she doesnt want to know about it until after the flight has taken place, which is why I couldnt write about it until now because she would have found out.. Unfortunatly the weather last night and this morning was pretty bad, thunderstorms and hot air balloons generally dont mix, and so our flight was cancelled. To bad because we had been looking forward to it, but we will just have to reschedule...
The rain made for a nice sauna-like work condition today. Good thing we have lots of bottled water left over from convocation, I'm drinking water like crazy and I had forgotten my water bottle this morning. I was put on the weedeater today, and I managed to get #2, which is for sure the best one of the bunch, it cuts the nicest with the least shake and the best "gasmilage" it is funny how your body adjusts to the enginevibrations and the heat, I find you just get into some sort of hypnosys after a while,... must cut grass... bad weeds... So as I was going steady cutting away while listing to Ipod (one nice thing about alan working at home is that we dont need to share custody over it anymore) I upset a bee or wasp or something.. whetehr I whippersnipped his flower or came to close to its head or maybe it was my highly fashionable reflective vest that attracted him and I almost sqished it or something, anyhow, the little critter decided to show me who was boss and gave me a nice sting in the arm.. needless to say it won... Positve thing about the situation: I'm not allergic to canadian bees, which is a good thing to know.. other then that $%#@! ouch.. Its all fine now, however my boss made me pick weeds the rest of the day.
I have discovered that Oliver's (the university pub) has cheap food at lunch time.. of course to most of you this doesnt come as a surprise, I mean, I have only been at carleton for 2.5 yrs, I'm quick to pick on these things I tell ya... further investigation of this food will follow on a day I dont have a lunch with me... It would be nice to find a place on campus that doesnt charge an arm and a leg for food... hhmm food.. alan is making stirfry as we speak and it smells really good...
Oh right after work I decided to do some shopping before going home, and I ended up buying one of those excersise ball things. thing is, I'm to cheap to pay for a gym membership, but I would like to some working out, so my fitness instructor friend advised me to buy one of those balls. we will see how it works out, I have named the ball Kitty, as Alan wont buy me one :P well, that's not true, he did get me a grow a pet kitty over christmas which I named lumpy. it's made of some sort of foam, which you put in a glass of water and it will expand in size, from 2 cm to like, 8 or something, but unfortunatly it grows this massive bumb on the side of its head, hence its name.. So I guess I will have to keep you posted on whether kitty works = abs and buns of steal at the end of the summer, or not.. So yeah.. ooh food is ready...

We're back.. thank you extra strength bug spray!

Just got back from an absolutly wonderful weekend in the outdoors. I had such a great time it was awesome. The bugs were partly because of my industriel strength repellent and the nice breeze (I can count my bites on 1 hand people, It's great!) very well behaved. The weather was really nice, even a little chilly at times. The scenary was lovely and the people we went with a heck of a lot of fun. We ended up going with 16 people and got a long with everyone. Camping here is a lot different from back home, both have their pro's and con's. What I like about Canada are the nice large spaces, the picknick table that comes with it, and the option of having a woodfire on each site. I thought that was really neat. Roasting marshmellows, eating smores(?), cooking your breakfast... Ok we went with these seriously experienced campers, geez what those people whipped up on their little woodfires, unbelievable: steak, asperagus, all kinds of potatoes, french toast, bacon and eggs and toast, fancy bagel sandwiches, coconut rice. .ok not all at the same time, this is just a sample.. I felt kind of sheepish with my spaghetti and jar of sauce, but its hard to buy food if you dont really know what to expect. We even had birthday cupcakes, for one of the guys we went camping with!
We had a great time, friday night we all sat around the fire, talked, drank, played games, drank, listened to music, ate lots and lots of food, aannndd drank.. The next day we went to the beach, nice and sandy.. it reminded me of home a lot except that the water smelled wrong.. it wasnt salty.. the water was very nice and warm, and no jelly fish which is a definite bonus, the sun was nice and warm and I learned how to play ultimate frisbee.. I also got introduced to skip-bo and kribage(?), which are cards games later that day, both fun games.. oh alan and I walked up to the beach late last night to look at the stars, I have never seen that many stars in my life, breath taking to say the least.
well it is time for me to hit the shower, we're going over to the neighbour for a last game of skipbo to say goodbye to the lovely weekend.. work tomorrow... sigh...

Happy Canada day everyone!

I dont have a lot of time to write as we are getting ready to go camping. It's official, yay! We borrowed a tent from friends, sleeping bags + cooler from Alan's mom and dad, which they brought over late last night, and bought tons of food so we should be good no! We're going to a place called Presqu'ile. It's a provincial park in Ontario, towards Toronto, about a 3 hrs drive away, it's on lake ontario, which is almost the size of Holland! you can take a look over here: www.ontarioparks.com/english/pres.html
I believe a minimum of 14 people are coming, only 2 of which we know, but I'm sure it's going to be a lot of fun :-) I got extra strength bugs spray with me, Alan and my bathingsuit so let the fun begin!