And everything will work out fine.

I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately, but all I want to do is knit. I love to knit, but have been pretty off-and-on at it in the last few years. All that’s changed in the last few months! I am now a MACHINE!

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!

That pretty much sums up my views when it comes to Canada’s military. I support them, but I don’t approve of what our country’s making them do.

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.

A lot of people do these types of blog posts, right? Well I’m going to give it a shot. Today, I loved:

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.

I know there is a lot of hate out there for Twitter. I have a Twitter account. I’m not on there promoting my business. I’m not on there to network (although it sort of just happens). I’m not on there to have millions of followers. I’m on Twitter to share anything and everything about my life with friends, acquaintances and random strangers. I’m one of those stereotypical Twitter users who tweet about what they’re cooking and eating, and I’m not apologetic about it. If you don’t want to read it, then don’t follow me.

Well about a month ago I caught wind (on Twitter, obviously) of a Twestival event being organized in Fredericton – and they were looking for volunteers.

I figured the following: I love Twitter, I’m pretty new here, and volunteering is always something I’m looking to do more of.

Oh yeah, and raising money for charity = good.

So I signed up to help Susan and Tim, the organizers. A little over a week, a super generous outpouring of prize donations from the Fredericton community, and some super speedy event planning later, we had the first-ever Fredericton Twestival on Thursday September 10th.

Over 20 people came out (keep in mind that the Fredericton metropolitan area has only 85,000 residents), we had Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6 come talk to the crowd about social media, and raised over $500 for the Fredericton Food Bank. Pretty successful if you ask this gal.

As always, I have some photos of the event up on Flickr. Check ‘em out!

Since our move from Ottawa to Fredericton last December, one of the things I’ve struggled with is establishing mechanisms for keeping in touch with my Ottawa friends. This is partly due to the fact that I’m pretty much the worst person ever at keeping in touch via e-mail and also due to my never seeming to be able to make time for phone calls.

My aforementioned flaws, combined with the fact that I’ve been busy as shit since we bought our house explain (but aren’t an excuse for) why I hadn’t spoken to my best friend Val since… uh, the end of April I think? Sweet Jesus! (We keep in touch via Twitter and random e-mails, which is actually a pretty great way to stay in the know on the day-to-day, but yeah, overall, we suck.)

Well last night we finally got the chance to catch up. We regaled each other with tales of trips and home purchasing and wedding planning. Val and I are pretty much leading parallel lives right now, which is kind of strange, but I guess not all that uncommon for two people of the same age.

But that’s not where the similarities ended. Val and I quickly found out, through our discussion of her awesome wedding planning and my wedding planning-slacking-offing that we’re pretty much planning the same wedding. Ok, so there are a few major differences, but the really weird part is that we’re doing a lot of little offbeat things exactly the same. We picked the same wedding colours without consulting with each other. We’re both abolishing the whole “head table” thing and sitting with our parents during the reception. We’re both, in our own ways, having non-traditional wedding dresses. We both plan on having four bridesmaids and three groomsmen (probably the weirdest similarity). We’re both in each other’s wedding party (ok, that one is not so weird since we’re best friends and all). And that was just to name a few.

Knowing that we’re both planning our weddings 1000 kilometres apart and still thinking alike kind of makes me smile and makes me feel connected to her even though we hadn’t really “connected” in several months.

Chris and I just got back from a week of camping in New Hampshire with his parents and his sister. Back in the spring, Chris and I had pretty much figured that we would have to forgo the whole vacation thing for this summer due to our continually slumping personal economy (moving twice in a year – it’s expensive, ackshully), but thanks to his wonderful parents, who graciously accepted two full-grown adult leeches for the week in their motor home, we were able to go on vacation, hurrah!

We were camping at Dolly Copp campground in the White Mountain National Forest near Gorham, New Hampshire. Chris’ parents have been going to this campground every year for the last twenty years. It’s a really gorgeous spot with lots of swimming spots, hiking trails, and a whole lot of peace and quiet.

The week was mostly spent reading, swimming and eating. Just the way vacation should be.

On Tuesday Chris’ dad took Rachel (Chris’ sister) and I to the Kangamagus swimming spot where I witnessed a child almost drowning and almost lost my bikini bottom under a strong waterfall current. Good times!

On Wednesday the whole gang drove down to Salem and Manchester for some shopping and some fun times at the amusement park. For shopping, we went to the Mall of New Hampshire, Target and the Ham Radio Outlet (HECK YES! [Chris' dad is a Ham]). The day’s notable purchase was most definitely my new beautiful Kitchenaid Stand Mixer. They are so much cheaper in the States, and New Hampshire has no sales tax, so I kept bugging Chris to let me buy one, and he kept saying no. Turns out he had bought me the 90th Anniversary Edition mixer at home for Xmas. Anyway, I bugged him enough that he had to tell me, and we decided to buy the one at Best Buy in New Hampshire because it was so much cheaper and return the one he had bought at Sears in Fredericton, but now he has to buy me a new Xmas present. Go me! Way to ruin Xmas!

That evening, Chris, Rachel and I went to Canobie Lake Park – which was pretty fun! I don’t remember the last time I had been to an amusement park.

On Thursday Chris, his dad and I went for a short hike on the Tama Falls trail. The weather was pretty hot the whole time we were there – so we were lazy and didn’t really attempt any long hikes this year.

The rest of the time was mostly spent lounging around, reading and sleeping. A great vacation! Thanks again to Chris’ family for letting us tag along! And here are the rest of my vacation pictures, for your viewing pleasure.

On the way back we stopped in Bangor, Maine to buy a dehumidifier at Best Buy. Since we’ve been back, my new obsession is emptying it and marvelling at the amount of water taken out of our basement air. I lead such an exciting life.

Holy mackarel (Sticking Around, anyone?), Chris and I are getting married in one year from today!

I guess I just want to share with y’all that we have zero planned except for our reception venue booked (and obviously date picked). So I guess I’ll see many of you at the Rodd Miramichi River Hotel on Saturday July 31, 2010. I’m not sure what time we’ll be meeting there at yet, or what we’ll be eating, or who’ll be marrying us (and where) beforehand, or what I’ll be wearing, or who’ll be taking our pictures, or… Well, you get it, we have nothing planned.

But hey, I got a groom picked out! Look at this handsome guy!

See you at the party!

My friend Catherine twittered this little bit of nostalgia to me the other day: “@wavingtoanimals At least the pizza hasn’t been in a blender ;)”, which is now prompting me to share some of my experience on what to eat after oral surgery.

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.

As a preface to this post: I suck a lot.

Yesterday I inadvertently deleted my blog’s database after having assumed that I had backups (I meant to delete an other older wordpress installation). I can picture the virtual cringing happening from my more backup-diligent blog readers. Yes, I suck, and yes, I’ve learned my lesson. Here, I even made a lolvero for your enjoyment.

Anyway, thanks to the magic of my RSS feed and Google Cache, I was able to manually recover all my posts last night. The only thing I lost were all my comments from the past 14 months (well, I can still view them on cached pages, but I have no way of importing them).

The experience was painful enough that you can be sure I won’t just assume when it comes to backups anymore. You would have thought that I might have learned something from the great hard drive crash of January 09? I guess not!

RSS feeders: sorry if you got spammed with all my posts again last night. Google reader seems to have picked up on the fact that I reinstalled wordpress in a different directory (root directory instead of workoutfine.com/wordpress), but I’m not too sure this magic carries over to other feed readers.

My new feed address is http://workoutfine.com/?feed=rss2, just in case.

Yup, I suck, you can stop shaking your head now.

We’re in it and still incredibly unpacked – but it’s still pretty nice! We’ve been homeowners for about a month now and I think we both feel quite comfortable with that title (no buyer’s remorse yet!) We’re taking part in sundry adult activities like lawn moving, composting, going to Home Depot like it’s our jobs, owning ladders and being concerned with property taxes. It’s quite the change!

The move went semi-smoothly, the only casualty being my favourite mirror, which can and will be repaired. Both our awesome families came down to Fredericton to help for the weekend – which was super awesome. Thanks/merci!

Since then, wallpaper has been peeled off, pink paint has been painted over, a new countertop has been ordered and a new living room set has been bought. And that’s just a small part of the changes we’re making around the place. I have a feeling homeownership will be a vicious cycle of redecorating and maintenance/upkeeping. Ah well. Better to spend my money on something I own than something I rent.

Abby’s been… well, I think this picture says it all for her:

You might have also noticed that things are looking a little bit different around here. Yup, I’ve finally gotten around to switching to a new layout. What do you think?