And everything will work out fine.

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?

Caveat lector (reader beware): These are pictures of the house with the current residents’ stuff in it. It will look much different after we’re in there (obviously).

Ground floor

The living room – on the main floor.

Guest bedroom – on the main floor. This room gets gorgeous light. We’ll be getting rid of the pink.

Dining room – on the main floor. It’s sort of like one big long room – the living and dining areas. Those patio doors lead out to the wrap-around veranda and gazebo!

The kitchen – on the main floor.The only thing staying the same here are the floors and the cupboards.

Kitchen breakfast nook/bay window – on the main floor. I LOVE this. The curtains on the bay window have got to go.

Also on the main floor – full bathroom with bath/shower, front door entryway and side entryway from the garage.

Basement

Den – in the basement. The house is on a gentle slope so we have a full walkout basement – it’s pretty great!

Bathroom – in the basement. Brand new!
LOVE the whirlpool tub.

Also in the basement – lots of storage, a huge laundry room, one unfinished room which will become a band room/home recording studio, and a bedroom.

Second floor

Master bedroom – second floor. Notice the his/hers closets, w00t.

Also on the upper level – lots of storage, a bedroom (craft room!), and a bathroom in desperate need of some remodeling (but it has an adorable clawfoot tub).

Because we suck, we don’t really have any pictures of the exterior of the house. Will snap some as soon as I can. But in a nutshell – it’s a 16 year old Cape Cod on 1.39 acres of land (the concept of “land ownership” really weirds me out). We take possession of it in two weeks (also – we haven’t started packing yet).

More pictures in my Our home! Flickr set.

Yes, the rumours are true (by rumours I mean countless tweets and many Facebook status updates), Chris and I just bought a house. Exciting, right? Right!

We had been casually looking at MLS listings since December, and due to the wonderfully slumping economy (I am only benefiting from this recession-business so far), we decided we might as well get a real estate agent and start having a look at some houses. Well lo and behold, we found a house we really like on the first day! Amazing! So we went to see it again after having slept on it (figuratively) for a few days, and decided to put in an offer.

I will spare you the excruciating details of our horrible negotiations, so in keeping with my “for the love of God and all that is holy, be concise!” motto, here is a point-form summary:
- visit house for second time
- put in offer on house on Tuesday
- *nervousness*
- get 1st counter offer on Wednesday afternoon
- counter-counter offer
- little bit of vomit
- counter-counter-counter offer
- counter-counter-counter-counter offer
- counter-counter-counter-counter-counter offer
- various forms of indigestion
- standstill – $ 2,500 apart
- counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-counter offer
- *puke*
- vendors: fine, but we get to keep our fridge
- us: ugh, ok, fine! (Friday)
- (2 weeks’ wait for some stupid condition to be waived)
- WE GOT THE STUPID HOUSE!
- us actually starting to be happy and excited

So yeah, phew, the whole process was super anticlimactic and nerve-racking, but you know, now we have a house, so I guess that’s kind of neat.

I’ve got some pictures, I’ll try to upload them to Fickr this weekend so that may all marvel at its beauty (and look at the wallpaper borders that I’m going to peel off and subsequently test out the wood stove with).

I’ve tried to not rant about everything that has gone wrong in our moving process, about the hassle it was to change our cell phone plans, about our $425 monthly power bills, about our upstairs neighbour who tokes out on our front porch every morning at 7:30 while I’m walking the dog, about… ok nevermind, now I’m ranting about everything.

But there are two things that warrant a full-out bitchfest blog post: Fredericton (and most of New Brunswick)’s horrible store/business hours and Fredericton residents’ lack of common sense when driving.

First: Fredericton (and most of New Brunswick)’s horrible store/business hours. Get this, in New Brunswick, if I want to pick up some groceries on a Sunday night, you know, because I need food to live, I can’t. Why? Because grocery stores are only open from 12 to 5 on Sundays here. Do you know what kind of chaos only being open for five hours on a Sunday causes in grocery stores? The massive kind, that’s what kind. As someone who was a frequent Hartman’s-walker-to-er for some Sunday evening pantry replenishing action whist living in Ottawa, this is really, really hard to get used to. But it’s not just grocery stores, ohhh no!

A few weeks ago I was in Moncton for some training and on Tuesday night upon my arrival I figured “Hey, I’ll go for a stroll to The Bay” (since we don’t have one in Fredericton *sad panda*) only to show up and find out that Highfield Square mall closes at 7 from Monday to Wednesday. Like, what?! What mall closes at 7? To console myself, on my lonely walk back to the hotel I thought “Hey, I know what’ll cheer me up! A Caramel Latte Bene from Timothy’s!” (since I have yet to solve Fredericton’s Timothy’s mystery [I see people walking around downtown with Timothy's cups all the time, yet no one can tell me where the Timothy's actually is - it's all very strange]), but nooooo, the Timothy’s on Main street closed at 8! It’s a coffee shop people – it’s where people go at night! But it doesn’t even end here!

The other week, I got word that some liquidation store in town had bought the stock of a gone-out-of-business wedding dress shop and had really nice wedding dresses on sale for $50, so I rushed there right after work, only to get there at 5:50 and find the doors already locked because they closed at 6. Who closes at 6? Gah! What I don’t get with this whole “closing early” thing is that all of these places are retail-type businesses. How do you expect to get any customers who have day jobs come into your place of business? Sometimes I’d like to know what goes through people’s minds here.

Second: Drivers here are too nice or possibly sometimes just plain old misinformed (I haven’t really figured out which one it is yet). I can hear you saying “Too nice? How could that be?”. Let me tell you how that can be. There are certain rules and conventions, when driving, that make things go smoothly for everyone. A perfect example is a left-hand turn: if I’m waiting to turn left at an intersection and there is a car waiting to turn right directly across from me, he has the right of way as soon as there is a break in traffic due to his proximity to our common desired lane. Last month a motorist kept giving me exasperated hand signals because I didn’t “get” that he wasn’t turning like his signal light indicated because he was letting me go. Dude, it’s your turn, just be on your merry way and I’ll resume looking out for my break in traffic, mmmkay? Another good example of this behaviour is at four-way stops (although with this one I would have to lean towards ignorance as the cause of my frustration and not so much niceness). At a four-way stop whoever gets there first gets to go, right? WRONG! People just don’t seem to “get” the concept of four way/all way stops here. They’re like free-for-alls. Get with the times people! I would really hate to see a roundabout anywhere near Fredericton; it’d be such a gong-show.

To end on a positive note, I will list a few of things that I do love about being back in New Brunswick (because there are lots). Perhaps they’ll get their own blog post some day.
- Being able to say “Good morning!” to people while walking to work in the morning and not get dirty looks.
- Housing prices.
- Seeing our family all the time.
- Fredericton’s so-far awesome restaurants.
- Northumberland Dairy’s various products.
- Being able to buy a house “in the country” and still take the bus to work/drive to work in 7 minutes. (More to come on this house-purchasing business at a later date!)

I’ve always described myself as a very visual person. But this morning, while peeling a clementine, I realized that I’m really a tactile person.

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.