Monday morning, and I think I already had my excitement for the week! This morning, Jamie set off for work, and all seemed normal. And then he rushed back up to the apartment to tell me that our car was gone. He's all panicked, so now I'm all panicked, and I start thinking about what it is that we should do now that our vehicle has been stolen. And then I think a little more and realize that our parking garage has video surveillance, so it would be stupid to steal it out of there. And then Jamie turns to me and asks, "Oh. You parked it in E11 last night, right?"
Uhh.....I think so? But maybe check D11 just in case?
A couple minutes later, Jamie returns all smiles. Panic over.
Moral of the story: When Karen can't tell the difference between a D and an E, maybe someone else should be driving.
About Me
Happy Snow Day everyone! Here's a look at the view from my place earlier today.
Just as well that we were home-bound today. It gave me a chance to recover from our annual 0T1 Christmas bash. Jamie and I hosted this year, and it was lots of fun. It'd been a while since we hosted a large dinner event. This year, I took over turkey duty from Barry which made me quite nervous; after all, he'd done such a great job for 3 years running that living up to that kind of standard is tough. Nevertheless, we pushed ahead and got ourselves a 15lb free-range bird from Cumbrae's at Church and Wellesley (who was recommended to me by the nice people at The Healthy Butcher).
I got a turkey and stuffing recipe from a post-doc in our lab. It came out of the Canadian Living Christmas Book, so it was a time tested set of instructions that in the end were pretty easy to follow. I made the stuffing the night before, and the bird the day off. I think the biggest challenge was just dealing with the size of everything and finding fridge space. In the end, the turkey was deemed a success, and I feel like I've earned yet another cooking skill. In his ever-present geekiness, Jamie commented that having tackled the turkey allowed me to level up my proficiency in cooking (it's an AD&D or RPG reference so don't feel bad if you don't understand). There was so much turkey left over! I think Jamie and I will be quite sick of turkey before the month is over. I've already made turkey stir-fry!
The gift swapping was chaotic as usual. For those of you who read this blog who don't know how we do it, we draw numbers and then select gifts from a big pile in numerical order. The gift is opened, and the person after has the option to pick from the pile, or steal from one of the people before them. A gift can only be stolen once per round to prevent a gift from just going back and forth. So, you can see how getting a later number can be advantageous, and how everything can change in the last round. This year was no exception! A few hot items that got stolen more than a few times: Cranium, Krazy Karpet + 2 sled discs, and 365 Days of Duct Tape Calendar. Barry gave what I would consider the most altruistic gift: 3 books donated to children's hospitals across Canada. That item wound up getting stolen from Jia by Naana.
Lots of food, and lots of fun! I'm already looking forward to next year :D
I know it's Wednesday already, and the weekend feels like it was so long ago, but the story I have from this Saturday is just too funny for me not to tell.
My good friend Nick from PEI, who I met at Shad Valley all the way back in '96 (who is now in Calgary doing his Paed's residency), was in town for his cousin's wedding. Since we only see each other once every two years or so, he thought it would be a great idea for me to attend the dinner portion of the event with him since he has no significant other to bring. I figure, sure - why not? His joke was that since he missed my wedding, it was only fitting that I go with him to one so it could sort of even out.
We sit down, drinks are served, bread, wedding party enter - all the usual wedding stuff. And then the MC gets to the part where they start introducing out of town guests. Sure enough, they announce him...and then me as his girlfriend. We start protesting, and his parents who are close enough to the MC correct him by saying that I'm already married. What they neglected to say was that I wasn't married to Nick. So, the MC misunderstands and announces "Oh! Sorry. Didn't know they were already married." Gah! So now Nick's whole extended family is wondering how come they weren't invited to "our wedding", so we have to explain to them that I'm married, but not to him. We think it's all cleared up, but there's bound to be someone out there who thinks that Nick is dating a married woman (haha!)
Things get better when another Shad friend (who is also an old family friend of mine) arrives. So now it's me, Nick, and Krissy. Nick now has not one, but two dates with him, all of whom look very comfortable together. I bet there was more talking after that.
To top it all off, when the bouquet toss happened, Nick's cousin tried to get me to go up too. I laughed and said that it wouldn't really work since I was already married. Then she laughed and told me she thought I was joking when I said I was married. Guess the wedding band on my left hand's not a good enough hint (haha!).
Happy Wednesday everyone!
At the beginning of November, I went to see the optometrist to get my eyes checked out. My work health benefits do include a little bit of vision coverage, though at a paltry $90 every 24 months, I wouldn't really call it much of a vision plan.
But here's the kicker. My visit to the optometrist isn't covered by this $90. The one thing that I have that's eye related that comes out to under $90, and it's not covered. I called Sun Life, and the nice lady on the phone told me that glasses and contacts are covered, but the actual visit to the optometrist isn't. I don't know what you guys think, but I thought that was pretty stupid.
So, my dad dropped by my place yesterday so he could park his car while he had a meeting downtown. Since he was coming, he decided to bring me this box of odds and ends they've fished out through the process of cleaning stuff out of my old room. And when I say odds and ends, I really mean it.
Included in the box:
- a doll that I don't remember ever belonging to me, but also looks like it's from the 70's
- a poem that I wrote in grade 4 that had a photocopy of a photo of me, and laminated to put on display in class; the poem consisted of 4 lines and was quite ridiculous
- a project on squirrels that I did in grade 3. It's written entirely in French since I was in French immersion at the time. Again, this was also laminated
- not one, but two penholders full of pens and pencils
But the school project stuff is what really cracked me up. I think it's a hint from my parents that they'd kinda like to keep it, but just don't want to keep it at their place. But I have a little condo compared to their two-story house, so there's a 99% chance that I'm just going to ditch it.
There were some photo albums that I'm planning to keep, but other than that, I think I'm gonna chuck it all. I don't think I'm really that nostalgic that I have to keep it all in a place that's easily accessible so I can reminisce on a regular basis. And if you wind up shoving it away and forgetting about it until the next time you have to do a massive cleaning, then what's the point, right?
I'm trying to convince myself of this so I don't fall back into my "let's keep it for the heck of it" instinct.
For those of you who live in Ontario, you may have heard about this new statutory holiday that our provincial government has instituted. It's called Family Day, and it falls in February. At first, I thought 'Hey, this is great. I get another holiday!' Except it doesn't work out that way for me. Here's why.
Here at UHN, we get 2 holidays a year that they call 'float days'. We can't bank them, but we can take them when we want. What HR has now done is they've taken away one of our float days, and given us Family Day. Grrrr. Their logic is that UHN gives us more than the 9 legislated days off, so we're still ahead. But the truth is I'd rather have a float day instead of being forced to take it on some random day in February. I personally like to use my float days around Christmas time so I can get a whole week off instead of having to be work.
I feel kinda cheated, actually. I feel like I totally didn't get an extra holiday at all. Am I just looking at this the wrong way?
So, what's everyone doing this year? Each year, I think I do less and less for Halloween. I don't really have a desire to come up with an original costume idea, and put together said costume. Jamie and I went to a Halloween Party on the weekend, and while Jamie did dress up, I have to admit that I cheaped out and just brought a witches hat with me. While some people really did have some great costumes (the Crocodile Hunter one that Mark - Pierre's brother - had comes to mind), I think I'm quite content to just admire other people's costumes.