Bye-bye, blog

Considering how little I update this blog, I've decided to call it quits here. I've decided that one blog is enough, and I will shift everything over to the blog I share with a good friend of mine, Yarn for Brains. Given the title of the blog, you can tell that a lot of our posts will be about knitting. However, I've decided I'm going to post about other stuff too. I think having just one blog will be easier to manage, and will result in me updating more often.

Thanks, and hope to see you over at Yarn for Brains!

Desserts!

So, here's my little experiment with something called cookie cake pie that I tried out for a housewarming BBQ I had with friends this past weekend. I saw the idea on a website, and thought what a great idea it was. I mean, I love cake, I love cookies, and I love pie, so why not have a pie where the filling is made up of cookie and cake? Someone out there is truly a genius!

The cookie base that I used was my usual chocolate chip cookie dough, but minus the chocolate chips. One of my friends who would be partaking of the pie is allergic to caffeine. I frosted it with a cream cheese icing, and the whole thing was a huge sugar rush when eaten. You wind up with a lot of left over cookie dough and cake batter, so I ended up making some cupcakes and cookies with those. I added chocolate chips to the cookies since the hubby likes them better that way.


Our house is shoved full of sweets now though. A friend of mine brought at 5lb strawberry rhubarb pie to the party too. I love strawberry rhubarb pie, but sometimes there really IS such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Thwarted!

I think I mentioned in previous posts that the lady we bought the house from left us a lot of furniture. Some of it has been very useful, and some of it we really just had to get rid of. One such item that we were originally planning to get rid of was a plaid couch that looked like it was right out of the 70's. As an added touch, the lady left a mangy stuffed lion on the couch for us as well, and that was bound for the trash heap too.

That is, until our cats discovered them. Within a few days of us moving in, they had adopted the couch, and the lion, as their own. When there were boxes filling the office, only one cat could get on the couch at a time - but no longer! Behold!


And so, there go our plans of ditching the couch and the lion. We'll probably get the couch reupholstered in the days to come.

Enforced Sick Days

On Tuesday, I woke up feeling under the weather. I had a bit of a fever, a cough, and body aches. Figuring that I work in a hospital with lots of not-so-healthy people around, I decided not to go to work. I thought I could just rest lots, drink plenty of fluids, and then report back to work on Wednesday. Turns out, it's not that simple. I showed up to work today and was told that because my symptoms were flu-like, I had to go check in with Occupational Health to get the all-clear from them to return to work. I was thinking "I'm feeling mostly fine, they'll just take my temperature and then I can just get back to work".

Wrong.

Thanks to H1N1, the rules for what they send you home for have changed. Before, it was just fever WITH vomiting or diarrhea. Now, they can send you home for just a fever, cough, or any sort of respiratory problem. I told the nurse that, while I did have a fever on Tuesday, it was gone that evening. She even took my temperature right there, and I was fine. But, the rules are that I can't be at work until 48 hours have passed since my fever ended. She also had to take some swabs to send for testing. Let me tell you, nose swabs hurt! I had no idea they had to go so deep with them.

So, the conclusion of this story is that I am now not allowed to go to work until they phone me with the results of my tests - even though I feel fine now. The nurse suspected that will probably be Monday.

Extra long weekend!!

Dance, dance dance!

Last night, PushPULL finished it's 2-week run of Soul Lifter. I have to say that it was seriously the most fun show I've done to date. I think it was a combination of the super fun choreography, combined with the awesome people I got to hang out with night after night. When we initially announced that we'd be doing a 2-week run, I was really worried; mostly about how my body would handle the extra demands put on it. Admittedly, it was tough - especially the days where we had two shows in one day. We did that twice. 24-hours after closing night, I have to say that my feet ache, my knees hurt, and my calves are like jelly. I think my body is trying to tell me "Just how old do you think you are?! You aren't 20 anymore!!" I should probably listen.

And yet, it was seriously so much fun. I can't believe how much more relaxed I was about the dancing when we hit the second week. I was comfortable with our places on stage, where all the lights were, and all the costume changes. Each night, it was easier to get into whatever character I needed for each piece, and I felt that I got better at transmitting it to the audience too. Now that the season is over, we're probably going to have to take some time to think about what we'd like for next year, but for now, I'm content to bask in the feeling of finishing a great show.

Thanks to all the great dancers and volunteers that made the 2009 season for PushPULL Dance so magical. Every minute of rehearsal and planning was totally worth it!

Moved in!

The past little while has been really busy for us. We moved out of our condo, and into our house! Yay! Instead of talking about it, I took some video instead.

First floor tour


Second floor tour


Basement tour


We totally love the area, and have been indulging in getting nice new appliances to update the home a bit. My friends Celine and Steve are coming on Sunday to help us paint the guest room and the master bedroom. After that, we're going to set up the rooms. Can't wait to get the place BBQ ready and start inviting friends over!

Yikes! It's been a while!

Okay...so a lot has happened since I last wrote!

Biggest thing is that we bought a house and sold our condo. Closing on the house is May 7, and closing on the condo is May 14. There's lots to do, but it's pretty exciting. I can't believe I'm growing up! Haha! Actually, having a house and mortgage doesn't mean my maturity level has gone up at all ^_~

Going to Kim's baby shower next weekend in Ottawa. The whole baby thing is also very exciting! I can't wait to see her, and how she's doing.

Jamie got picked for jury duty this week. He was so mad about being selected, but now he seems okay with it. They've finished closing arguments, and will begin deliberations tomorrow.

Still doing lots of dancing. Mme Fong is coming back on April 13th, so I need to get myself ready for the onslaught of work to come. PushPULL is going to be performing at some pretty public events in April too, so I'll be sure to post about that too.

Hope everyone is doing well!!