short note

Hello all,

I dont want to get back into the habit of blog neglect, so here is a short little update. I find that when school gets busier and Alan works from home I post less. I dont like using my own computer as much as his, and since I usualyl post during the day I dont post as much when he's around strange but true.
So this is going to be a shortish post as I just got of the phone with my sister in law. Well that's not why, the reason is, is that I should be studying for my midterm tomorrow, but I felt like checking in on her and the baby so we ended up chatting for a long time which was amazing, but not very good for stuyding. And so now, I guess time for more porcrastination?!?
Anyway, our yard project is going pretty slowly, and I am getting alittle impatient because I want veggies. I was working on it yesterday for a while, and our second out of 5 boxes is almost done. I dont think we'll get to planting this weekend again, but that is life I guess. Once my midterm is done I'll have more time to spend on that as well. It will look amazing when it is finished though!
Alright I think that is it for now. the kitty is getting big. She kept me up all night as she was playing, mostly on top of me, and so since she is sleeping now it sounds like a pretty fair thing to go and bug her for a while.. oh and study for my midterm.. right!
ttys!

Busy few days!

I have done a lot in the last few days, so I will try to remember best as i can what I have been up to. First of all on friday Alan and I got together with some of our friends (3 other couples) which was a lot of fun! M&R we hadnt seen since christmas, so it was especially nice to catch up with them! Saturday was the big game day, so I met up with some of my University friends and went to a bar on Elgin to watch the game there. It was insane! The had closed parts of Elgin off and after our team won people went nuts! Everyone walked from Elgin to the Hill and was chanting and cheering. It was very nice to see Ottawa in such an excited state! We're in the finals now, so hopefully we can keep up this winning streak!
Sundayyyy.... oh right, I met with my friend J, went to see the tulip festival downtown (which was small and not nearly as impressive as dowslake and I do not understand why they used to charge people money to go and see that, but anyhow, they dont do that anymore thank goodness) we did a little bit of shopping, and than we went for a facial, which was very nice. I have never gotten anything like that done, and it was mostly just nice to be pampered. I really liked that. It isnt something I would do all the time, but defintely nice.
After that we went for a movie and a sleepover at our friend A's. It was a lot of fun. On Monday, when I got home Alan and his dad had started our backyard project. They had ripped most of the plants out (this is a good thing) and were leveling some of the dirt, they cut a bunch of lumber to the right size etc. It is going to look very good when it is done. We havent had time to work on it after because it's been to busy.
Monday I worked on pruning our weeping mulberry tree. It clearly had not been taken care of in a while. I had not idea what it was called at first, so I searched the internet, than was pretty sure what it might be. At homedepot I saw trees like it so than I knew I was right. I called a nursery and they told me how I was supposed to do this, so I took 3 sets of pruning sheers to the tree, as well as a woodsaw. It looks pretty good now if I may say so. Go tree go!
Alan's cousins from BC are visiting, so we have been hanging out with them. They are super nice and a lot of fun to be around, I really like them a lot. On tuesday night Alan's parents brought them over to see the house and the cat (whom is getting very big if I may say so!) yesterday during the day I met up with them and a whole bunch more cousins at the war museum, and we did a tiny bit of site seeing, sat on a patio and than went to Alan's parent's for a dinner with even more cousins. We counted them and aside from 3 others all boys cousins were there, so of course a good foto opp. It was very nice seeing everyone again and catching up a bit. It is neat to see how the family is expanding everytime we get together there seems to be a new addition whether child or sign. other. Alright, I think this post is long enough. time for breakfast!

feeling kind of lame

I am not even sure that is how you spell lame, but there it is, I'm taking an author's liberty. I had the worst night's sleep last night and it has left me with a head that feels as if it is filled with cotton balls, do you know that feeling?
I feel a little bored and I have felt bored the last few days and I am not entirely sure why, because I have lots to keep me busy. I think the rainy weather may have something to do with it. Although the weather is fabulous for our newly developing lawn. You can see a light green glow over the dirt now, how exciting! It;s still a little patchy but I'm sure that will grow in still. The weather and the fact that I havent talked to a lot of people lately. I'm not used to sitting at home with nobody to talk to (Alan is working downtown this week on a project)
I was thinking, I really never discuss anything in debt. I always stick to the safe topics and descriptions, mostly of my day to day life and I wonder if that makes this site boring. Is there too much of that. Ok I know the whole point of this blog was to describe my day to day life to the people at home but... Some people have amazing looking blogs and discuss all sorts of interesting in depth things or write about their exciting lives overseas or at their crazy jobs and it makes me want to travel and explore and be adventurous. At the same time I am very happy and content and safe with my 'less exciting' overseas life, and so I wonder if that makes me boring... I don't know? I would say you could argue both cases for that. I feel I have changed a lot since I have gotten here, grown a lot, learned about myself a lot and most times I really enjoy the changes I have gone through, but other times I feel I have become too serious and calm and focused. To tense and stressed almost and I feel my sense of humour disappearing a little bit. I would like to work on getting a little more positive, imaginative energy going, perhaps the spring sun is already loosening it up as I have started to think about all this stuff, but sometimes I feel like my inner me is collecting dust and that's not good. Time for spring clean up I say! By the way I don't mean to sound depress(ed)(ing) I'm just sort of making observations.
Last nights class was alright. The material is interesting, but I do not like the prof, I worked with him for a few weeks and he is pretty arrogant and full of himself, I suppose that sort of goes hand in hand doesnt it but anyway, it is going to be a lot of work and I havent decided yet whether I'm going to like this course or not. More on that later.

Back to school for me!

After a nice two weeks off it is time to turn the brain back to school mode and start from scratch again, and that is what I have been doing in the last few days. The rain nicely symbolises my mood over being done my vacation, but so far I like the courses I have picked so that is a bonus. I am taking children's literature, 2 beginner business courses and a psychology on the biological foundations of behaviour, which im looking forward too, it sounds interesting.
.............................. That was izzy saying hello. She is sitting right against the keyboard as to say, look at me, I'm pretty and deserve attention....
Anyhow, school is going to be a lot of work, especially the business courses as I do not know a thing what so ever about it, I already noticed that in my first class, so that should be interesting!
Yesterday I cooked up some chicken and asparagus on the barbeque aranged them on our plates and took them to the couch as we decided we would eat in front of the tv. I left the rest on the table, forgettign that a cat is not a dog and will climb on to the table, and so the last piece of chicken and asparagus were nicely examined, licked and half eaten by our cat. My bad, sorry Alan, no lunch for you! Hahah, it was pretty funny, she liked it she was licking her lips for hours after... ok maybe 5 min but still I tell you, it was tasty!

It's a girl!

Izzy's vet visit went pretty well. She is a healthy little girl kitten, so her name can stay! Yay! She didnt really enjoy her first shot or getting her temperature taken, but that is to be expected I suppose. After I brought her home she was a very sleepy kitten, and she spent a solid 1.5 asleep on my lap, and than many more hours asleep on our bed. In fact I think she slept from about 11:30am until about 1:00am the next morning, She woke up for short minutes, but really she slept for most of that time, after whcih it was of course time to start attacking Alan and I who were now trying to go to sleep. She has grown so much. It is soon time for a new picture of her in the scale. The first day we had her I took a picture of her in the scale and I was planning on taking a picture each week so we could see her grow.. yeah ok, so I forgot already after the first week. Maybe it will be a bi-weekly thing...?!? Who knows. Oh well.
My friend J and I are trying to sort out our tennis thing, it's notworking out to well, as most lessons are offered when I'm taking my evening classes. We're still trying though but our options are running out and we may have to wait until halfway through the summer until my classes are over. I went and bought some of my textbooks today, I got both of them used, so that was pretty exciting. I like getting deals on things I need to get anyway. I normally wouldnt go out and buy textbooks before classes started, but I already heard from friends of mine that you defintely need the books in each of these courses, so I figured if that's the case I might as well go early and get them cheaply while I still can.
I tried to find some nice patterns and yarn for a project that I am working on, but I couldnt find anything in the store and the lady that attempted to help me didnt really know what she was talking about, so I think I'll try a pattern I found on the internet this evening. If I dotn have to buy the pattern I can spend more money on yarn... right?!?
I'm not really enspired to write a lot this evening, my mind is elswhere, so I am going to leave you with a picture of the cat. write to you later.

Art Gallery visit

I forgot to tell you I went to the National Art Gallery on Friday to go to a special exhibition on Ron Mueck. It was very neat. This man makes sculptures that look like real people, except that they are not the right size. They're usually smaller or larger than normal. I had seen pictures on his work a few months ago and was amazed by it then, so it was nice to get an opportunity to actually go and see it. I would highly recommend typing in Ron Mueck into google images to get a feel for what I'm talking about. The detail with which these sculptures are made is simply amazing. You can see hairs and veins and pimples and wrinkles, the hole deal. And the artist did a good job in making the body proportional to it's size. At the end of the exhibit they had a movie playing showing how he makes these sculptures and it is a pretty interesting and long process, I forget the specific details, but he first takes or finds pictures of a person he is interested in. Than after he has made the design of the sculpture he starts by making a small sculpture out of clay to see if he likes it. If so, he makes it, again from clay, in the size he wants the final sculpture to be in in and uses it to cast a mold. When the mold is taken off he pretty much destroys the clay sculpture underneath, so the casting must go right the first time or he has to start over again. Than he uses the mold to make the actual sculpture. He paints the skin colour with different types of resin onto the mold, and than uses fiberglass and wood underneath for the structure. When that is done he does more painting and he puts hairs in one at a time. I really like seeing how something like that is done. Very cool.
The art gallery is going to be having an exhibit on Renoir next, and I think I might go to that too. I am not one for spending hours and hours at a museum, but I do like going for a bit and seeing some cool stuff. If anyone would like to come with me let me know!
yesterday I did some more gardening in the front yard and turned some more dirt on our weed infested lawn and last night Alan finished it and planted some grass seed and fertilized it and watered it, so now we're looking out our window every hour to see if anything is coming up yet.. yes I know it will probably take days if not weeks before we have a lawn but it is *so* exciting to see grass grow. Honest!
Our yard is an on going project and we are taking pictures to let you know how it is going the before and after thing you know. Alright I'm going to have a shower to get ready to go to the vet with izzy. I'll let you know how that went. Cheers!

Craazzzyy kitten

Our cute little sleepy kitty turned into crazy kitty.. Haha, she now races through the house and ounces on everything, including our heads when we are sleeping, but she is still cute. She is definitely getting bigger and much more coordinated though. It is so much fun to play with her! You have got to get fast though :) And she has discovered the sun, she loves curling up in a ball and sleeping in the sun. Much like she is doing now, on top of alan's little desk file organiser thingy on top of all the important papers.. aawwww....
Alan and I finally got our car registered on Friday. We have our license plate and insurance etc so I can now finally drive. And so I did on Friday night I went to do groceries, with the car all by myself. It was *so* exciting, and liberating to be able to do something like that without having to depend on someone else (whether bus or person with a vehicle) Awesome! I also had a thing on at school yesterday, I worked for the afternoon, and so I got to drive in to work and on the way home I got to drive a friend home instead of being driven home. We got the brakes and a couple of other things fixed, but when you brake there is still a vibrating sensation so something isnt lined up properly. Alan is therefore bringing the car back to the shop to get them to look at it again. Hopefully they can look at it today
Saturday Alan and I did some work in our front yard to make it a little bit more presentable, we're ripping up all the weed covered areas of our front yard and we're planning on putting grass seed down and hopefully it will come up and grow all pretty and nice and than we can focus on the backyard and make it look presentable for the summer. I really like gardening, it makes me feel more relaxed and it is nice seeing something you put in the ground grow.
Tomorrow morning i'm taking our kitten's to it's first vet visit. We'll see how she likes that.
Oh and I would like to rectify a little mistake I made in a post 2 posts ago, see I didnt realise how many typos I had made so when I was typing niephew was supposed to be a blend of niece and nephew as we dont know what it is yet, but I understand that totally didnt come across Oops! So we dont know what it is yet, but it will be cute I'm sure :) Alright more will follow on the vet visit I'm sure!

some more pictures!

Like I pormised before, here are some pictures of the kits and kitten!
You can see the hole mommy ripped in the wall and the box with the kits that went on the roof waiting for mommy to rescue them.















Cute kitty












Alan with Kitty!





















Kitty begging for attention in the kitchen















Sleepy Kitty...