Well we’re still going – just not right away. Chris doesn’t get much paid vacation at his job and he wasn’t able to get any leave without pay in August, which really blows. So instead we’ve set our sights on sunny California. Neither of us have ever been and we’re getting pretty excited to go!

So far we’re flying into L.A. and bumming around there for a few days, then we’re heading to a $3 million beach house that we’ve rented for a week in Solana Beach for some California-style beach bumming and not thinking about weddings…. ever again! And then, well who knows… we’re thinking of sort of winging the rest of it. I most definitely want to catch some shows while I’m there, so we’ll see what comes up closer to the date. We’re there from August 3rd to the 16th and then it’s back to non-wedding-planning reality in Fredericton, which should be nice!

As for the Mediterranean Europe vacation, it’s still a go, we’re just thinking of going in sometime in the off-season next year. That way it’ll be easier for Chris to get leave without pay from his job and there’ll be less tourists in our way.

And now I leave you with what is possibly my favourite California-related song, California on my Mind by Wild Light. Lyrics not necessarily safe for work.

I’m in Ottawa for the week for work. I don’t miss the city that much on a day-to-day basis when I’m in Fredericton, but when I’m here, I miss all the little silly things that I loved so much about living here. Hartman’s, Bridgehead, sketchos on the bus, UOttawa campus, awesome restaurants, Centretown doggies…

I especially miss all the amazing friends I made while living here. I’m on a wonderfully strict schedule of lunch with this person, supper with so-and-so, and late night coffee with this other person. It’s amazing. I’m exhausted but loving every minute of it.

And then this weekend I’m spending 100% of my time with my main lady Val. We haven’t seen each other ever since I moved away in December of 2008. I’m incredibly excited and fully anticipating not wanting to leave come Sunday.

So yeah… things I love? Ottawa.

Behold, in no particular order:

- get more sleep (8 hours-ish a night)

- never sleep in past 10 am (so, to respect previous resolution, never go to bed past 2 am)

- take more photos (getting my brand new DSLR today! What what!)

- watch every single Dr Who episode before 2011

- try and waste less time online

- craft more (this will probably be a resolution every year for the rest of my life)

- take more weekend trips

- build better/stronger relationships with new Fredericton friends (making friends is so awkward, guys)

Well I think that’s a tall enough order for one year. What are some of your resolutions?

Happy twenty ten to all! xox

It’s probably been one of the most emotional and eventful years of my life to date. A good year, but also tough in some spots.

Good in that we bought a house, both have found meaningful employment that we enjoy, got to spend lots of time with our families, are really enjoying living in Fredericton, have met lots of lovely nice people and have made some new friends. The year’s mostly just been tough because we missed our friends from Ottawa a lot, and still do today.

Whenever I sit back and think of all the changes I experienced in the last year, I kind of just want to have a stiff drink. Here’s to hopefully never having such a crazy year again! Cheers!

Now, for some showing off:

Clockwise from top left:

Pretty purple cowl for my friend Val (that I was supposed to knit her last Xmas… sorry Val!)  -  Black slouchy hat for my friend and co-op. student extraordinaire Kristie  -  Super warm brown mittens for myself  -  Fingerless mitts for my friend Sinéad who lives in Ireland  -  Brown slouchy hat for myself  -  Bee hat for Katelyn’s daughter Ella’s Halloween costume

So – yeah – machine, huh? It’s like the biggest compulsion ever. Maybe it’s somehow related to the colder weather, but all I can think about all day long at work is coming home and curling up on the couch with the pug to knit.

Knit knit knit!

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day. Armistice. I’ll be perfectly honest in saying that while I’ve always been thankful to veterans and our military, I’ve never paid too much attention to the holiday. Sure, I always wear a poppy and observe the two minutes of silence at 11, but that’s been about it.

Last year whilst still living in Ottawa, I attended the national Remembrance Day ceremony for the first time. It was such a powerful and emotional ceremony that since then Remembrance Day has more meaning to me.

I won’t pretend that I’ve been touched by the war like others have been. I won’t pretend that I’m pro-military. I won’t pretend that I understand what past and current soldiers’ families feel on Remembrance Day. But tomorrow, I will be just as thankful as every other Canadian for all that our veterans have done for our country.

Thanks.

Driving under an overpass on the highway on my way home from work this evening in pretty heavy rain. I love hearing the rhythm of the rain and seeing my windshield wipers chase it away, and then, all of a sudden, being under an overpass and there is a delayed break in that rhythm and the wipers are streaking across the windshield uselessly because of the obstruction overhead. It’s like time stops for an instant.

I hate driving in the rain, but I love those tiny silent moments.

If you’ve ever had oral surgery or any type of procedure performed that prohibits you from practicing normal eating habits, you’ll know how painful it is to have to see food everywhere when you can’t eat normally. Due my intake of painkillers during my wisdom teeth extraction surgery recovery, I watched a lot of television (didn’t want to read books or watch movies by fear of not remembering anything after I stopped taking painkillers). It was during that faithful weekend back in November of  2005 that I realized the extent to which we are bombarded by food advertisement on television. Seriously – about every second ad on television is for some sort of food product. Do you know how cruel that is for someone who loves food and can’t eat? Ugh!

Do you know what’s even more cruel? A certain boyfriend who ordered a delicious Philly Cheesesteak pizza from Domino’s on the second day of my recovery. Sure, let me site here and struggle my way through a baked potato only to wash it down with Boost while I watch you eat that oh-so-delicious-looking pizza. Ughh!

Well by the third day I had had enough. I was feeling weak and hungry and couldn’t stand to intake another drip of Boost, so I decided to do something about it. I opened the fridge only to find the pizza box from the previous night staring at me. I just had to have some. So I got creative – I took out a knife and a cutting board and started cutting two pieces of pizza into tiny bits, which I then threw into the blender, which rendered it into mush. I transferred the pizza mush into a bowl and added a little bit of water to moisten it up a bit. I then microwaved the concoction until it was hot and the cheese had melted. Sounds disgusting? Well it didn’t look like much – but it was delicious. And I’d totally do it again. In a heartbeat.

Want my advice? Don’t starve – blend your food and you’ll survive oral surgery recovery without experiencing too much food-deprivation misery.

And really, how could I have been so in the dark about my tactile tendencies?

I touch everything when I’m shopping. When I was a kid I used to drive my mom crazy touching all the clothing in stores, especially silk and satin (fabrics which really gross out my mom for some reason). I’m still the same today. Chris and I’ll be walking along in the mall when suddenly he realizes he’s walking alone. Then he’ll usually hear a high-pitched “Ooooo!” sound behind him, just to turn around and find me petting old-lady clothes. True stories.

I also get a really strange sense of satisfaction out of peeling things. Many different things. Some aren’t so bad – like clementines. I like it when a clementine is so easy to peel that you’re able to remove its whole peel in one piece or motion. Ahh… life’s little pleasures. Another category of things I like peeling are protective stickers. You know, like the ones that come on your new cell phone’s screen or on mirrors when you buy them. I love those. I die inside every time someone peels one off in front of me. I could never deliberately buy a screen protector for any of my gadgets because I just want to peel them off. Just last week, Chris had to reprimand me for peeling the protective coating off the PayPass machine at the Time Hortons down the road from our house. Well if you think I have issues now, wait ’til you hear about the other thing I like to pick: scabs. Yup, I’m a scab picker. Not only do I compulsively peel my own scabs, I am also completely willing to pick the scabs of others. Needless to say this has lead to many simple lesions such a mosquito bites to get blown out of proportions and lead to permanent scarring (is that redundant?) when really, if I had just shown some scab-picking restraint, it wouldn’t have left a scar. I’m pretty gross.

I wonder if there is a philia associated with my extreme tactile tendencies? My google-fu is failing me.

Chris and I are still getting settled in our new life in Fredericton. Things are going well. Kind of slow, but well. I’m very neutral about Fredericton as a city so far. I don’t love it – I don’t hate it. I like it fine. I’m finding that I like it more and more with every week that passes by, so I suppose that’s a good thing. It’s probably because with every week that passes, we are also staring to do more “normal people things”, you know, like grocery shopping and going out as opposed to staying in, unpacking and cleaning.

Well I would hate to bore you with the minute details of the last few months of my life – so for the sake of brevity, let me give you a summary of December and January complete with visual aids.

End of November/Early December – Holy bejesus we’re moving!
This is pretty much just one giant blur in my mind. Things started getting finalized for my deployment to my new job, I went down to Fredericton for three days to visit my new workplace and look at some apartments, we let go of our place in Ottawa, started packing, started telling everybody about our move… Basically I got very little sleep and stressed a whole lot. We also started not buying anymore fresh food and surviving solely on leftovers and mystery cupboard food. That’s never a good thing.

Some pictures:

Some tidbits from Twitter:
“we’re moving so we need to get rid of all our food” shitty meal #37: shake and bake mystery freezer chicken with rice and broccoli 8:36 PM Nov 27th, 2008
project management as applied to moving our asses across the country: not so fun, ackshully. 11:49 AM Dec 2nd, 2008
just opened my own NB Power account. I feel all East Coaster-like. 2:10 PM Dec 4th, 2008

Mid-December – Goodbye Ottawa – cram our lives in a UHaul truck – Hello Fredericton
This part was definitely the hardest. Especially the “Goodbye Ottawa” part (and because of that I don’t know how to make my summary brief). Despite what some of you might think, we did not leave Ottawa because we didn’t like it there. In fact, I loved living Ottawa and still miss it very much every day. The last few days at my old job were tough. I miss my Ottawa coworkers everyday still. On our last Thursday in Ottawa Chris and I had a going-away supper/drinks at the Clocktower Brew Pub in the Glebe. So many of our friends came out – they braved the cold, the traffic and the bus strike to come say goodbye and it was so heartwarming. I’m still very emotional about it all as I’m writing this over a month later. The following three days were spent as follows: Friday was my last day at work, after work we picked up the UHaul. Saturday we finished packing our boxes and packed the truck late into the night. I can’t go any further without giving another huge thanks to our friends Josh and Jen for helping us pack the truck and countless boxes of miscellaneous junk on our last day in Ottawa – we would have been so screwed without them. Chris’ dad flew up to Ottawa on Saturday to help us drive the UHaul down to New Brunswick on Sunday. Sunday morning we left Ottawa and got to our new home in Fredericton late into the evening. We ate Greco and passed out. On Monday we got the keys to our new house and met up with my parents who helped us unload the truck (unloading is so much easier than packing!). They took us shopping and bought Chris and I our Xmas present – a washer, a dryer and a new mattress for our bed. Good times! The parents left that evening and Chris and I were left alone in our new mess in our new house in our new city in our new province.

Some pictures:

Some tidbits from Twitter:
going away party tonight with our friends. So sad to be leaving the last 6 years of our lives behind. I’m going to miss everyone so much :( 6:32 PM Dec 11th, 2008
packing: the final frontier. OMG moving in December sucks, guys. 8:22 PM Dec 12th, 2008
goodbye Ottawa, it was a fun six years. 11:09 AM Dec 14th, 2008
I’m so excited about my new washer and dryer it should probably be illegal. I can finally stop hoarding loonies after 6 years of doing so! 12:44 AM Dec 16th, 2008

Rest of December + the Holidays

Our first few weeks in Fredericton were quite uneventful. We unpacked, cleaned, did our Xmas shopping, explored the city a bit (which consisted of going to Kent Building Supplies and Canadian Tire a million times). I started my new job on the 22nd – but only worked for a day and a half before I was off for the holidays. We traveled up to Northern New Brunswick for Xmas with our families which was lovely as always (and, as always, we were way too spoiled). I got together with my favourite group of girlfriends for a lovely evening of food, wine and karaoke (unplanned – but definitely amazing). We came back to Fredericton because I worked on the 29th. Chris’ family came down to stay with up for New Year’s Eve/Day which was a lot of fun.

Some pictures:

Some tidbits from Twitter:
every morning it feels weird when I wake up and realize that I live in New Brunswick again. 1:36 PM Dec 18th, 2008
attempting to finish my Xmas shopping this afternoon. OMG if I ever move across the country around Xmas time ever again shoot me. 12:13 PM Dec 21st, 2008
hanging out with my mom :) 3:15 PM Dec 26th, 2008
good night and good food with good friends. I love my ladyfriends! 2:06 AM Dec 27th, 2008

January – present
After the holidays is when I really got to get into the groove of things at my new job (because, let’s face it, starting a new job on December 22 is not exactly ideal). I absolutely love my new job and my new coworkers, and I’m not just saying that because they know I have a blog, hahah. I never really felt that there was an adjustment period in my new functions. I mean, the work is different but the pace picked up quickly enough that I didn’t really didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that I was thrown into a new work environment. It’s nice! I’m learning lots and loving every minute of it. My department is pretty cool in terms of technologies and new media: we have webmail access, remote desktop access and social media sites are unrestricted at work. Oh yeah, and we also have a water cooler that has a boiling water tap – how’s that for fancy? Everything else in my life is also starting to fall into place. We’re nearly completely unpacked by now. And I’ve finally started to be able to establish some sort of a weekday routine (I’m a creature of habit), you know, stuff like grocery shopping and exercising and Battlestar Galactica. Heh. We’re slowly resurfacing and it feels nice.

Some pictures:

Some tidbits from Twitter:
going to get my New Brunswick car plates. Goodbye AYJN 864. 10:41 AM Jan 3rd
drinking tea. They just put in one of those water coolers with a boiling water tap in the hallway. It’s pretty amazing! 2:10 PM Jan 9th
going to Bathurst for work later this week – hah! 1:28 PM Jan 12th
trying out Fredericton Greek take-out. I’m skeptical, but hopeful. I miss Greek on Wheels :( 7:19 PM Jan 16th

Well there you have it. For a self-proclaimed no-nonsense concise writer I think I deserve a big FAIL for this blog post. Ah well. Now you’re all caught up with my goings-on.