Never get excited

One thing I've learned this week... is never get excited about something.. or it won't happen.

First... Well actually lastly... I'll go backwards. We packed our bags and were just waiting for Josh and Mike to finish a project they were working on, so that we could leave to go to Edmonton for the weekend. I was so looking forward to going, I was going to get the rest of my christmas shopping done.. maybe buy a new sweater for me. SPending the whole day at WEM. We were going to leave in about half an hour... when the phone rang. One of the girls had double booked herself, and couldn't work her shift tomorrow. Everyone else already works that day.. except one other person... who's on a varsity team - which plays this weekend, So I said I'd take the shift. I'm not going to leave her in a lurch. So josh is gone now... and I'm here. I was really looking forward to getting away.... a weekend away from roomates and stress.

I have been excited for about a month about my boss letting me sell my cards in the store. Well last night I was told that I no longer have a job after this week. They've decided to close the store. I really loved that job, but oh well.

No Job, No Cards and No Edmonton. I'm never getting excited again...

School has started.

I'm really looking forward to being done school.

Although one of my classes should be fun. Weather and Climate. I've always been fascinated with weather, loving storms and such. For the tornado in Lethbridge last year, while everyone else was running indoors. I was outside watching funnel clouds and hoping to glimpse the tornado. I was at work at the time.. so I could not go to my basement as recommended. Same is true for thunder storms. Love watching them through the window. It's just amazing the power of weather. I'm very excited about this class.

Another class that will be intereseting is my River Science class. It is a 4000/5000/7000 level course, meaning that it is undergraduates, masters students and phds all in one class. We have to adopt a river, analyze and interpret data and give a presentation to the class on our river. I have decided to do the Illecillewaet River. It will be a lot of work. There's a very large paper, and the presentation is long as well. A lot of information. I think it will take at least 2 months to gather data and another month to interpret it. Overall it will be interesting. The class is a 6 hour class once a week. We don't spend much time in the classroom, mostly on field trips.

My other classes will just be brutal. I have Analytical Chemistry (the hardest and brutalist Chemistry class that is offered at the U) and Geographical Statistical Data Analysis (or somethign like that). Both are going to be harsh.

I joined the Be-Aware club - the environmental science club. Most of the people I got to know on my trip are in the club, and more peopel from my program that I have not met. So we'll see if I actually get time to attend the events this year.

Anyway... my new battery arrived today.... I just put it in, so I'm happy. Yay for free replacements!

It's 3:15 am. I was sleeping quite nicely, maybe a little light, when I woke up to a glug, glug, glug. Now my immediate thought was, a cat knowcked over a water jug, but I didn't think there were any in the bedroom. So I crawled over to the light, turned it on. Teemo was laying on the corner of the bed, and Oakley was sniffing something on the floor. I loo only to realize that a cat had thrown up. Now the smell usually makes me throw up myself, so I cleaned it up right away (best I could without firing up the spot carpet cleaner machine), only to notice another pile. SO I cleaned that up too. I put a dirty towel over both spots (so the smell won't make me be sick before morning comes) and turned off the light only to step in yet another pile. On go the lights, and another scrubfest. Just as I was throwing that out, I see and hear Teemo loudly dry heaving, ready to deliver another. I thought it had been oakley in the bedroom, but I guess Teemo just jumped back on the bed after doing his business. And Oakley, being Oakley, had gone down there to investigate and maybe try to eat it.I shooed Teemo while he was heaving, down to the linoleum of the dining room. But it appears nothing more is coming tonight. Thankfully.

And now no sleep will come. I checked out online, and have a few ideas I may try with Teemo (such as petroleum jelly, and cutting fish out of his diet). We'll see..... he doesn't throw up often. I think this is only the 3rd event since we've had them. So it may take a while to determine if something is working. Open to suggestions.

I had begun a post about The Swadeshi Movement about 4 days ago... but never finished it.

And thus the silence of this blog continues...... but only for a little longer.

I have much environmentalism running around in my head, but I haven't had the time to put them down in my blog. I started this blog for that purpose. Now that my trip has been recapped, and my life is smoothing out, I should be able to get on here with my thoughts...... next week. :) I'm heading to Vancouver for the weekend, and will be back in 5 days. AND I WILL POST MY TREE HUGGING THOUGHTS!

And the week begins. 10 minutes and the week of no money begins. This marks the end of computer use for the week. :) I will be back next Sunday.

Today I got word of the passing of a dear family friend. He passed away on the golf course with friends. Please keep the Buchannon family in your prayers this week as this is a difficult time for them.

This week I've mainly been a housewife. Just keeping things clean around the house, sewing, and laundry. I sorted all the recycleables this week. I really need to get my compost going again. I feel bad whenever I throw out peels and such. Soon!

Next week Josh and I are doing a "Don't spend a cent" week. So that means, no TV, no car, no slurpees (Josh's indulgence), and no many other things. I think we've determined we can't go without lights and such, just because of the hours we are up. So only basics as far as electricity and water. I'm really looking forward to it. It really shouldn't be that bad. I guess we'll have to discuss computer usage. Josh's computer is important to everything he does, so I don't see how he can cut his out. But I will probably go computerless for a week as well.

After a week of work (and getting stuck, due to the lack of supplies), the room is now almost complete. Just waiting for the bed to arrive (tonight) and have to hang the shelves (which we decided to do once the bed is in there. Oh, and I need to hem the curtains, but I'll do that tonight while they assemble the bed. :) Then it will be done! I'll post pictures then! It looks so good already!

I'm barely working these days. I had 3 scheduled shift this week.. all about 4 hours. Next week I get 2 shifts. One is 4 hours one is 3.5. I don't know how I'm going to get by on such few hours. It's very frustrating, since I talked to her at the beginning of the summer, and made a decision then not to get a second job. And initially I was getting enough hours, but now I'm getting very little hours. I get 2 shifts, everyone else gets 3 shifts. Last week I got 3, and everyone else got 4. I don't get it. But whatever. She knows finances are tight right now for us as well...

Tuesday night I started on my Christmas cards! It was loads of fun. I'm getting together all my samples for this year... decide which I'm going to make. I think Josh and I decideed to do a photo tag one.

Anyway back to work around the house. I've got loads to do today, plus I work this afternoon (after 6 days of no shifts).

Tonight Josh and I prepped our bedroom for painting! :) Tomorrow I will be painting, 2 coats hopefully will be enough. If not I'll do a third coat on Friday morning before the bed arrives. We're doing a Japanese bedroom. I've got my paint colour (obviously), a bamboo rug, a platformish bed, a rock garden/candle set, two framed prints. I still need to find a duvet cover, and some curtains. :) I also need to make a print of a photo I have and get it framed.

I'm excited to finally see it coming together.

Tomorrow I will paint in the morning, go to my pedicure in the afternoon and paint again before dinner...

Well int he last week I've written 3 blog entries. Well... 3 incomplete blog entries. I just close my computer because I have to run somewhere, but decide that the info written is outdated now, soI start all over. And so... no blog entries. I really will get more entries on here to tell you all about my dull and mundane life. Well not as mundane now that I have cats. :)

Today I must clean though, as for this week only, I have no bed in the master bedroom, but it will be back either friday or saturday. SO this week is filled with cleaning and organizing the bedroom, then filling holes and cracks in the wall, and prepping the walls, then painting. Oh how I love painting. I'm getting really close to having my Japanese bedroom! :) Paint the walls, hang the pictures, put down the bamboo rug, set up my tranquil mini rockgarden/ candle set. :) I'm very excited to see it done, but I need to get the room painted and thouroughly clean before the bed arrives.

BACK TO WORK! I will come with interesting things to say very soon!

Day 21
We drove from Yosemite to Reno. Once in Reno, we didn't have a place to stay. Eventually we found a random campground well after dark. I don't know why they didn't plan ahead, it was very frustrating. We played dodgeball in a grocery store parking lot.

Day 22
We drove to Boise Idaho. We stayed in a campground right underneath some powerlines that were noisy. Other than that, I don't remember much of that day.

Day 23.
We drove to Coeur de Laine and camped there. This was our last night together so we did toasts, and had a big party. I won the cute and cuddley award. Not entirely sure why, but that's ok. :)

Day 24
We drove home to Lethbridge. We stopped in Kimberley for a while to shop.

:) WE WERE HOME!

Day 20
Hike the half-dome at Yosemite. This hike is comparable to the grand canyon. Unfortunately I didn't go all the way up. At this point in the trip I was VERY sick with a cold. It was difficult to breathe, let alone hike. I hiked to the top of the first waterfall on the trail. There was quite a number of us that were too sick to go much further. But in all honesty, I don't feel like I missed much. It would have been neat, but I got to go back, have a shower and do some laundry. Showering was quite the privilege on this trip. Sometimes we'd get to shower 2 days in a row, sometimes we'd go 5-6 days without a shower. It was all whether they were available, which often they weren't.
This night my tent group moved our tent over to a campsite with an older couple in an RV. They were very sweet. Let us use their gas stove!! HOT food! no sandwiches! It was wonderful. :) They talked about their trip to canada, and this great big dam they visited in Revelstoke, BC. :) It was a proud moment for me, peopel who know my small town. We had to move to their site because the rangers told us we had too many people in our site. They came over and offered us a spot on their site. Which was nice. We didn't have to get another one.

Day 19
This day we drove from San Fransisco to Yosemite National Park. We stopped at a couple overlooks, and it was gorgeous. It was like home for me. I wasn't as excited in Yosemite, since it was like what I had grown up around. There were some spectacular water falls, but it just wasn't that great.

The first night there, we had a bear in our campsite. It tore into one of our backpacks, and took off with another one. We had even put everything in the bear bins, including suntan lotion and toothpaste. It was kind of funny actually. One of the girls spotted the bear around 2 int he morning when she got up to use the washroom. She went in her tent, and told her boyfriend, and next thing we know there are 4 men in their boxers chasing the bear through the campground. It made for a funny story in the morning.

Day 18
This day we went hiking. We went int he morning to the Lighthouse of the Point Reyes Nataional Seashore. We then went on a hike out to the point in the afternoon. It was a really nice hike. Lots of really neat flowers that I had never seen before. But it was troublesome for me, since it was a wide and very trafficed path. It wasn't like most national parks, it was open, and very heavily used. And the part the bugged me was not that it was busy, but that people would trample everywhere, not stick to the trails. Anyway, it was a good day. :) I was quite proud, I was the 3d person done the hike. :) I was rushing so I could call Josh, but then I realized that I didn't have my calling card.

Day 17
Free day in San Fransisco. For the morning Tyler, Rob and I just toured all the piers, wandered around, watched the sea otters. Then in the afternoon it was Alcatraz! Originally I wasn't interested in going to Alcatraz, but the night before I rethought about it, and there was someone willing to sell me their ticket (since the boat was sold out). So I ended up going, and am really glad I did. It was very interesting. I didn't know much about Alcatraz before hand, all I knew was it was a prison in the middle of the ocean. Very neat tour. They give you headsets and it tells you stories of different inmates while it walked you through it.

Day 16
The Napa Valley Wine Tour
This day we toured the Napa Valley. We first stopped at a winery (which I don't remember the name of).... we spent time there, but didn't do a tasting, because it cost to much. But we looked around the shop and such. Then we went to Beringer Winery. We did tasting there (there was 2 seperate locations for tastings... one for reds and ones for whites and sweets), so we actually did two tastings there. This is the winery where I bought a fair bit of wine. Beringer was a really old and nice looking place. I've got many pictures from there. Afterwards we went to V. Sattui Winery and had a wine tasting there. We also looked around the shops. They had many really good food products (like dips and marinades and cheese). In the evening we went to the beach to watch the sunset. (sorry.. pictures are out of order..)

Ok.. I'm going to finish the trip off. I'm at work this morning, absolutely dead. It is a holiday... so I understand. :) Ok, let's finish off the trip, so that it doesn't take months to finish! I got 2 new batch of pictures from others on the trip. The pictures were from the guys with the high quality SLR cameras. But I'll stick to using my pictures for my blog. I may post a couple of my favorites of theirs later, but for now, just mine.

Day 15
This day we hiked up to a viewpoint of the San Fransisco bay. We then hiked up to some military gun positions (which the guns never were mounted in) and had a lecture up there. We also made a pit stop right on the San Andreas Fault. Well most of the area is on the fault, but we stopped at a location that had obvious evidence. We also stopped at the cliff house, and waklked around there. On our way back to camp, we stopped in Sausalito, and spent a couple hours touring the town (the boats are in Sausalito - picture). There was really cool looking indian-style house boat there. :) It was really cool and out in the bay.

The promised pictures! Oakley is the grey tabby, Teemo the orange tabby.

So I've got more exciting news! Teemo was lonely. Very lonely, he's never lived without at least 2 other cats before. Well.... yesterday we found Oakley, and we brought him home. Him and Teemo buddied up pretty quick. It brought Teemo out of his shell even more. He's a grey tabby.. and only 10 weeks old. He's very cuddly, and purrs loundly and constantly! Last night he tried to spend the night with us. Poor Josh had to work this morning, and all night Oakley was climbing all over him. SO all night I was mostly awake, fishing the cat when he got too near Josh and either pulling him over to me (which he'd stay for a while)... or put him on the floor (which he just climbed back up on the bed).

I'll post the pictures later today of both the kitties. :)

Anyone know how to keep cats eating their own food.. rather than the others? Cause Oakley is on kitten food and Teemo is on adult food, but they're both trying to eat each others.

Having being unable to meet up with my partner for the paper on our trip, I have been at it all day. He is working out of town and has had a busier schedule than planned. So we've had little time. What does this all mean.

It means I arrived at the University at 8:30 am this morning.... went home for dinner for around 6:30... and came back for 9pm. I am still here. It is 3:30am. We are plugging away. And it's not that we're writing our paper right now, we've been editing and adding references and combining our writing. It's a big mess. I probably have a few hours left to go. 3:30!!!!

Tyler drove here straight from work. He is leaving here at 4am (at the latest) in order to get to work on time in the morning. That is just crazy. I work at 10am, but I have to get the printing done and adding figures and graphs. Oh fun times.