geeksbewithyou

Directions to the Reunion

2009-08-08T23:23:00.004-06:00

Okay cousins and aunts and uncles, here is how you get to Sliverwing hall outside of LaGlace. We will be camping Friday and Saturday night (August 28 & 29). There will be a dinner Saturday night where hamburgers and hotdogs will be provided. Just bring a vegetable/salad or dessert.

Here are the directions in words:

From La Glace, head 3 miles (4.8 km) west on highway 59. Turn north (right) on Range Road 90.

Travel north for 4 miles (6.4 km). Turn west (left) on Township Road 750 (this should be a "T" intersection). Travel west for only 1/4 of a mile (0.4 km).

Turn north (right) on Range Road 90. Travel north for 2 miles (3.2 km).

Silver Wing Hall is on Range Road 90, just across Township Road 752.

Emesis

2009-03-10T13:08:00.003-06:00

So I worked at one of the emergency clinics in town this weekend, as I often do.

A lady came in with her cat, who may have eaten a plastic button off of her sweater an hour before getting there. The lady was helpful by bringing in a button just like it.

I did an x-ray of the button, and it showed up on the table, but I wasn't 100% sure (at least not sure enough to bet my license on it) that it would show up in a cat's stomach surrounded by food.

So I tried to make the kitty vomit. I had the techs feed her a whole bunch of rich canned food mixed with water, then gave her domitor under her skin.

Nothing.

So I got out the cowboy tranquilizers that I have never used in my entire career that are famous for making cats vomit. Put an IV catheter in first in case they had worse side-effects than vomiting. Gave the xylazine.

Nothing.

At this point I didn't want to use anything stronger, because the side effects of the next things to try can be quite bad. Like intractable vomiting. Intractable is not a good thing. Or sloughing of the stomach lining. Also not a good thing.

So at this point I x-rayed the kitty. No obvious button in her stomach.

So I reversed the drugs we had given her and sent her home to be watched for signs of an intestinal blockage. Such as vomiting.

I hope her owner finds the button somewhere in the cracks of the couch at home.

Just a tip for anybody out there who is interested. If you ever need to make me vomit, all you have to do is buy me one of these, and read the poem on it out loud to me (click it to see a bigger version). Should work like a charm:

And only $75 plus shipping.

Yellowstone

2009-02-16T15:08:00.017-07:00

Okay, I'm off to Lethbridge this afternoon to work for 2 weeks. The vet that I'm working for and house/catsitting for has a terribly slow computer, so I thought I would update da blog before I go. In September I managed to get a picture of one of the neighborhood cats that I've been trying to photograph for about 5 years. His real name is Angel (barf) but we have always called him Pushy-Face the Half Orc, or Pushy for short. Check out those lower canines. The fun thing about Pushy is that he looks adorable from a distance, then gets rather ugly as he gets closer due to his underbite. He's really sweet and will come over to greet you if you kneel down and call him over. He's also a great weather indicator, as he will only be seen outside on very nice days. This picture makes him appear more ugly than he really is, mostly because it makes his eyes look creepy.

One of the neatest things we did this fall was go to Yellowstone with Tamara & Shawn. It was a whirlwind tour of Montana. We spent Thursday night in Lethbridge, then took the Going to the Sun Road through Glacier National Park Friday morning, which was very cool. It's only open about 4 months a year. We spent about an hour or two shopping for yarn in Kalispell. I think that Camas Creek Yarns may be my favorite yarn store so far. They have EVERY colour of Cascade 220, and almost every colour of Manos. And they have a sweater's worth of all of them. It's insane. I bought a sweater's worth each of Dream in Colour Classy, Cascade 220, and Rowan Pure Wool DK. That should keep me busy for the next 2 years. We spent Friday night in Missoula and ate at Cracker Barrel to make Mike happy. Not that the rest of us mind eating southern food either. We stayed at Ruby's and had their delicious included breakfast Saturday morning, then burned over to Bozeman and Yellowstone. Yellowstone National Park is an increadibly beautiful and weird place. As you drive through it, you see steam coming up out of the ground all over. We went to Old Faithful and hung around waiting for it to go off. It goes off every 1 - 1.5 hours. The geyser is a bit of a tease, and threatened to go off numerous times before the big show. After the eruption, the crowd dispersed and we looked around other parts of the park. The old hotel is pretty amazing. Look at this woodwork!

There are boiling/bubbling pools all over the place.

We got very lucky and managed to see a geyser called the Great Fountain erupt. A lot of locals were there who were grumpy from the last time they sat there for 3 hours and nothing happened. Apparently the Great Fountain doesn't erupt in the daylight very often. This was even cooler than Old Faithful because we got to sit right next to it while it went off.

This picture was taken while we were waiting. I used the magic knitting trick to make the geyser erupt. I brought out my knitting, and sure enough, the geyser erupted within 2 minutes. This usually also works well for getting transit buses to show up.

I didn't get a good picture of the eruption because we were so close that it was just a huge wall of steam and water that didn't photograph well.

We spent that night in Bozeman, did some speed shopping Sunday morning, and drove back to Lethbridge where I stayed to work and Tamara, Shawn, & Mike continued to Calgary.

I have lots more to tell about, but I have to get on the road now. Back to Lethbridge!

2009-01-26T19:41:00.008-07:00

Okay, I haven't blogged in forever, but my sister Jamie tagged me to put in the fourth picture from my fourth folder and fifth from the fifth. I haven't looked at them yet, so I hope they're not disgusting work pictures of dogs' bits.

Fourth from fourth from fourth (I have a lot of layers of folders sometimes):

This is a picture taken inside the store while I was trying out a new camera last year. Got a sweet deal on the camera. Pretty cows.

Fifth from fifth:

This is my friend Tamara in the hat and cowl I knit her for Christmas. Isn't she cute?

Okay, rather tame. You've been spared the canine hermaphrodites this time. Consider yourself lucky.

Sweater!

2008-08-16T16:01:00.002-06:00

My rogue is finally finished!

Those of you who are not knitters may feel free to ignore this entry entirely.

I started this sweater 2-3 years ago, and have been working at it on & off ever since. I didn't let myself knit the summer I was studying for MCAT, so it has been ignored for months at a time.

It's knit out of Cascade 220 in a heather colourway (9443). It's a dark red with a bright blue heathered into it.

This pattern is available at www.girlfromauntie.com.

I did the cardigan modifications because I really don't like pullovers. They're always too hot and make my hair all staticky in the winter.

Issues that I had were:

1. I did the hem modification where you start the hem on smaller neeldes before a turning row. Then you knit the length of the hem and knit each stitch together with it's corresponding cast-on loop. Sounds genius, but I may have got my row count wrong or something, because it was extremely flippy, and the hem was always pointing straight up when I tried it on.

I'm a pretty easygoing knitter, but it just looked stupid. So I got very brave and cut off my original hem. Then I knit downward and just made a plain old hem that had to be sewed down in the traditional fashion. I cut one row closer than I had planned, and almost ended up messing with the cabling. So close.

2. I have a little cable-crossing error that doesn't bother me enough to change it at this point in time.

3. I forgot the pocket. Doh! Wasn't paying attention at the point in the pattern where you are supposed to start it. Oh well, I may get bored and try to find a creative way to add pockets later.

I weighed this sweater before putting in the zipper and it was 603 grams. So just over six skeins. Not bad considering I lengthened the body and the sleeves.

This was a fun pattern and I'm so happy with the finished product. It fits me well. I put in a 24 inch zipper so I can keep my neck warm when it's windy out. And now for more pictures!

Stampede

2008-08-16T14:54:00.016-06:00

I have decided that I hate working in Calgary during Stampede. It's too hot to sleep, and as soon as I do sleep, the fireworks go off. Then I get to sleep again just in time for all the drunks to make it back to our neighborhood screaming. Veterinary clinics do not close for Stampede, and they don't pay their employees to stand around eating pancakes and drinking beer like the downtown workers, which leaves me rather jealous. So as I am self-employed, I was able to decide that I no longer work that part of July. I had my cousin's 13 and 15 year old daughters come to Calgary, and took them to Stampede instead.

We had a lot of fun. Mike and I are old and boring, and I get motion sickness VERY easily, so we set them loose on the rides and had them check in with us at regular intervals. Thank goodness for cell phones.

My inner redneck LOVES watching motocross. There wasn't any there, but there was a fun BMX show. It'll do.

Mike was rather obsessed with eating as many foods "on a stick" that he could find.

He had a corndog, and ice cream on a stick, but his favorite was pizza on a stick.
We all agreed it was quite tasty.

I also enjoyed the pickle kabob on a stick:

My favorite indulgence was the funnel cake. Mike's cell phone camera managed to capture the holiness of the crumbs and powdered sugar left on the plate:

It's a good thing we went over several days. Especially since Davina was on a successful quest for deep fried oreos. That's too much grease for a single visit.

I wasn't sure how a boring couple of people like Mike and myself were going to entertain teenagers. What I forgot is that when I was a teenager, there was no internet! Give them a laptop and they can amuse themselves for hours. Mike was giving free geek lessons. Katie is a star pupil:

Davina and Katie are fun and smart kids, and we enjoyed having them around. I managed to keep the cat allergens in our house from killing Davina by drugging her with antihistamines every few hours. I'm not sure her lungs would have survived a longer visit, though. I sent them home with the first season of Veronica Mars. They of course became immediate addicts and I had to ship them seasons 2 and 3 ASAP.

I wonder if I'm brave enough to do it again next year?

Been gone gone gone so long.

2008-06-14T17:14:00.032-06:00

I left Calgary after work on April 20th, and didn't really get back home until June 4th. I spent a week in Lethbridge, 36 hours at home, flew to Fort Mac for 3 weeks, came home for 4 days (worked 2 of them) and then went back to Grande Prairie for a couple of weeks. It's nice to be back.

As for my adventures while away, some are so long ago that they're getting a bit blurry. I'll have to go through my photos to jog my memory. Apparently the evil forces of Voldemort are getting a little out of control near the Starbucks in Lethbridge.

Up in Fort Mac I stayed with my friend Alison & her husband, along with their daughters Mary & Anna. Aren't they cute?

As usual, Fort McMurray was full of Newfies and their fun phrases and habits. And apparently their strange foods too. I didn't feel the need to buy any.

I worked at 2 clinics while I was up there. The clinic I had never worked at before was really fun, and they gave me this SWEET RIDE to drive around in while I was working for them. There's a cartoon turtle hanging on for dear life on the other side, and a bunch of animal backsides on the tailgate where it says "happy tails to you".

I kept my eyes on the road, but Alison assures me that we got a lot of strange looks while going out for coffee in it. I think I can safely say that I was driving the most noticeable pickup truck in Fort McMurray. That's saying a lot.

After a few days at home where I enjoyed the relative quiet of living with Mike and the cat, I went home to Grande Prairie. I spent a couple of nights at my grandparents' new place (quite the palace) and the rest of the time at my brother's. Where they also have two small children.

Rebekah is difficult to photograph because if the red-eye on my camera goes off, she stops smiling, but if I don't use the flash, she's just a happy pink blur.

She has also developed the adorable habit of sucking her thumb. That's her mom, my wonderful sister in law Sarah holding her there.

My nephew James and I also had some pretty good times together this visit. He really enjoys roaring at me like a lion. He REALLY thinks it's great if I shriek and run away when he roars. He was jumping and roaring when I took this picture, so I couldn't get him centered in the shot.

After peeking inside James' Backyardigans lunchbox, I have decided that I will never ask a toddler to pack my lunch. What you see there is 3 Thomas the Train toys, an old muffin, a really old timbit type dessert, and an unopened jar of babyfood. Meat babyfood. Pretty grim if you ask me.

James and I had a lot of fun at the park, where he was kind enough to bury my feet in the sand. I also introduced him to the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, which is by far one of the best movies to watch with a 2 year old. During the really fun bit where the chipmunks are singing the Witch Doctor song, he grabbed my brother's guitar hero guitar and started rockin' out with them. I think that he's proably rockin' out at a third grade level these days. Very advanced, that boy.

Whenever I felt the need to flee the toddler/infant lifestyle, I went over to my friend Marti's house and hung out with her and the animals. This is Crispy the italian greyhound on my lap. Poor unsuspecting guy was under my knife for a little lumpectomy just a few days later. He is resilient and quickly regained his prancy walk after surgery. That reminds me that I have to call her and see what the histopathology results were.

Just a few days before I left Grande Prairie my poor little sister Kristed cut of the end of her finger while chopping kindling. None of the bone is missing, so it should be alright. I brought her bandaids and a sympathy card to make her feel better.

Maybe I should have bought her and Opi matching tea sets instead.

Even without the gift of fine china, she recovered quickly, and was able to hold her own in a Magnadoodle race with James before taking me to the airport. Note that she was only using 4 fingers to draw as fast as she could, and James was using all 10 of his to erase her drawings.

That's all I have to report for today. I'll post an update on my knitting projects tomorrow.

How did they not see this coming?

2008-04-10T19:32:00.009-06:00

I've been working late shifts at one of the emergency clinic in town this week. They're supposed to be 3pm to 1am, but they've been stretching a bit later. I worked 3pm to 4am the other day. Ridiculous.

Anyway, I was coming home last night at 3:30am and listening to the news radio station. They predicted today might be a little cloudy and it might rain.

I had an appointment to get an oil change and have the summer tires put on the car today, since it's my only weekday off until the rapture. Or until May 22 if you want to avoid hyperbole.

I got up at 10am and was still exhausted from the night before. My very nice husband Mike agreed to take the car in for me, and I would pick it up later today. When he went out to the car it looked like this:

He made it about 5 blocks from home before deciding that he didn't want to die on the roads today. He turned around and barely made it up a small hill on the way back.

I went for a walk this afternoon and it had started again. This is thick, heavy stuff that sticks to you and causes major heart attacks in middle-aged men who have to shovel it. This is what I looked like one block from home:

But at least the gnome is still happy.

Creepy little bugger. Mike was terrified of this thing when he was a toddler. Smart guy.

In other news I've been to Lethbridge to work lately, and will be going back in a couple of weeks. I really like that place. If only the university would open an engineering department where Mike could teach.

I also spent some time working up in the northeast end of the city. Aptly, there was a plethora of adorable pitbulls to vaccinate:

If you click on the picture you can see the little pink dots that we drew on their heads with a highliter to keep track of who had already been vaccinated and dewormed.

So that's what's been going on with me. Any suggestions on how to go to bed 6 hours earlier than "usual" tonight? I have to work at 9am tomorrow.

Cute Stuff

2008-03-22T20:34:00.002-06:00

I've had a pretty good week apart from having a nasty cold. Fortunately, I didn't have any work booked for 6 days in a row, so I got to stay home and surf the interwebs and knit and blow my nose a lot.

I'm currently knitting a pattern called tulip, which will be a little cardigan for my goddaughter. Since this picture I've managed to finish one of the sleeves. It feels good to work on something so colourful right around easter. Although maybe I should have been working on something a bit more sombre on Good Friday?

I have volunteered to do interviews for the first crop of prospective veterinary students at the University of Calgary's new vet school. I had my training session on Wednesday. Let's hope the spelling of the word "veterinary" in the parking meters gets corrected before they graduate in four years.

Mike's parents stopped in Calgary for a night on their way to vacation in Costa Rica. His brother came up from Lethbridge to see them, and my brother and his wife & kids also happened to be in Calgary this weekend. It was awesome.

Mike and I babysat my nephew James today and he was an angel. It helps that he was mesmerized by watching Treehouse for a couple of hours. He even managed to share space with our grouchy old cat with no altercations.

This is a picture of him polishing off a 100 calorie pack of fudge shop cookies. I figure that there can't be too much sugar if there's only 100 calories, and he had already eaten some cheese at that point. He wasn't nearly as grumpy as this picture makes him look.

His little sister Rebekah has started smiling and is EXTREMELY cute.

The only sad part about this week is that one of the greatest veterinary technicians I've ever worked with is moving back to Ontario. I'm going to miss her so much.

Almost an Engineer.

2008-03-09T12:35:00.003-06:00

Mike's iron ring ceremony was yesterday. Only 51 more days until he's done.

He doesn't like the fact that the UofC ceremony is open to everybody, so I didn't go. But I did go to the dinner and that was fun.

Here's a rare sighting of Mike in a suit, waiting for the bus to go downtown to the dinner:

Unfortunately we were halfway there when we realized we had forgotten the tickets. So we bailed off the bus and had our friends Tamara and Shawn come get us, take us home to get the tickets, and take us back downtown in time for everything.

Then we found out we didn't even need the tickets to get in. Sigh.

Immortalized (temporarily)

2008-01-27T18:57:00.000-07:00

The clinic I work at the most in Calgary has a rather ugly sign, so we've been using a window painter to make the building more interesting to look at, and to tell people about us.

I had to laugh when I saw that they had the window painter put me on the windows this time.

I feel famous!

I am so SMRT

2007-10-10T21:51:00.000-06:00

Yay!

My studying paid off and I got a 35Q on the MCAT. That's the 93.1-95.1 percentile range. Yay again!

Here is a picture of my brain so you can stare at its awesomeness. Mike took this slice at the research MRI the day I was his guinea pig.

Aren't the wrinkles cute?

Can't blog......studying.

2007-09-01T17:34:00.000-06:00

I promise to update people on my little life in a couple of weeks. Right now I have to study physics.

Serena Ryder stood me up!

2007-07-30T15:05:00.000-06:00

Mike and I went to London Ontario this month to see what it might be like to live there. Mike will probably be doing his master's and Ph.D out there, so we might be there for about 4 years.

We had a great time. It's a really pretty city. Of course being from Alberta I'm amazed by anywhere that has old brick houses with ivy on them. It's been stinking hot in Calgary for weeks, and it was so nice to get out of our 28 degree townhouse to an air-conditioned hotel room. The hotel was pretty sweet. Our room was built like a 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen and living area, and separate bedroom.

It was still hot out there, but it was usually cloudy which helped us feel a bit more comfortable when we were walking around outside. It was just fun to walk up and down the streets and look at all the old houses.
It was my birthday on the 19th and we had a great dinner together at a wonderful restaurant. On the 20th we went down to Detroit for the Serena Ryder concert that I had been looking forward to for weeks. We managed to get to downtown Detroit without meeting any violent criminals, but we were a bit early so we had to sit in the car looking rather suspicious for about an hour.

I was hugely disappointed when I found out that Serena Ryder had dropped off that leg of the tour a few weeks prior. You'd think that Ticketmaster would have some way of knowing and contacting people who bought tickets. However, since her album hasn't been released in the US yet, I was one of only 3 people there who had a clue who she was.

Fortunately Xavier Rudd was amazing, and managed to bring me out of my funk with his crazy one-man-band and diggeridoo skills.

We were also cheered up by the fact that the concert was over soon enough for us to hit a Cracker Barrel restaurant on the way back up to Canada.

On our last day we checked out of the hotel in the morning, but our plane didn't leave until after eight pm, so we had a lot of time to kill. There is a really nice park in the middle of London called Victoria Park. They were having a free music festival in the park called the Home County Music Festival.

Since we had spent the night before at the concert in Detroit, we didn't listen that closely to the music. However we had a perfect day lying in the grass, eating fair food, and watching squirrels bury food in the lawn.
I had a great bit of summer in London. Although I would be happy to have fall start tomorrow and put and end to this annoying heat wave.

Weddings.

2007-07-11T20:21:00.000-06:00

I spent the last 2 weeks of June in Lethbridge living in a hotel, working, walking around downtown and studying. It was quite peaceful. I got a lot of studying done, and I have now experienced the bar known as Sound Garden. Quite the place that one.

My first appointment at work there was a little weird, though. The police brought in a decapitated and skinned animal for me to look at. It was my job to guess how it died and what it was. I voted for stabbed, and cat. Bizarre. And then the next day a lady brought in her dead cat and asked me to tell her how long it had been dead. And then a bag of dead fish was found in the parking lot. I didn't have to post-mortem the fish, though. After the few days of CSI Lethbridge, things got much more normal.

Lethbridge is nice. It's like a quiet version of Grande Prairie that you can drive across in 10 minutes. I was scared that I would have to treat rattlesnake bites, but thankfully none of the clinic's dog patients were dumb enough to get bitten while I was working. Worst wildlife encounters I had to clean up were dog vs porcupine and dog vs. baby deer.

I got home the day before Heidi and Glen's wedding barbeque. The BBQ was fun, and the wedding was even more fun. All my siblings and their husbands/wives/kid were around and we had a great time dancing. Highlight of the night was BREAKDANCERS! They were awesome.

Kristed hung around town for a few days so I could neuter her dog. We had a lot of fun shopping and hanging out. Opi was an excellent patient and is the cutest dog ever. This is how he looked when he was just little. He's still just as cute, only bigger and droolier. But he's less nutty now. ha ha.

Finally, this last weekend I went to my friend Steph's wedding. It was great but I had a cold so I didn't stay past the speeches. I got to drive around in a low 2-door car while wearing a short skirt that day. Good thing it wasn't windy out.

Mike was up in GP attending his cousin Tina's wedding. Sounds like it was a good time too.

Mike is happy for Jason and Tina, but he was most excited about the roast pig.

I have to go study some more now.

Sorry for the long pause.

2007-06-08T13:16:00.000-06:00

I haven't blogged in a long time so I thought I'd give a brief synopsis of what's been happening in the last month (nothing too exciting).

1. Mike finished school for the year and now I actually get to see him for a few hours every day.

2. Poor Mike made us a delicious meal of eggs and hashbrowns and cheese. Then he noticed that the cheese was moldy. We went out for breakfast that day. Click the picture if you want to see the green bits.

3. We went camping at a nerd convention on May long weekend, and packed up and left at 2am on the last night because it was raining inches of slurpee on us.

4. I tried to dry a tent by hanging it over chairs in the back yard in between rain showers. Not so much luck.

5. I went to a veterinary dentistry seminar in Edmonton. We visited Andy & Amisha and played on their Wii system. That made my arms hurt. Left-handed pong is hard. Amisha made delicious mini hamburgers including baking fresh buns. Delicious.

6. We had our summer work barbeque last week. It rained. Fortunately the barbeque was held at the top of a hill.

Goodbye Buzz

2007-05-11T18:35:00.000-06:00

The new car is wonderful and the butt warmers are divine. But I thought I should post one last tribute to Buzz before I move on with life and become accustomed to the shiny new car.

We got Buzz about 2 years ago from somebody we know. That is the only way I would ever buy a really used car like this. Buzz got his name because whenever you were stopped at a light, the whole car would rattle unless you put it in neutral.

The only automatic thing in the car was the transmission.

Over the last 2 years Buzz got new struts, radiator, fluid pump, timing belt, and lenses for the headlights. I finally had to give in and stop pumping more money into the car when it would be $750 just to find out if the transmission was about to blow up. Buzz was our pay-as-you go car. If we ever got too poor to drive it or fix it, we could just park it and only have $50 in insurance payments that month.

I sold Buzz for 5 dollars. I hope he gets a new transmission and goes another 265000km.

Zoom Zoom

2007-04-20T15:55:00.000-06:00

We're buying a new car! It makes me feel like such a grownup.

I was hoping to wait until Mike is done school, but the red wagon (aka Buzz) is about to crap out. Mike took it in for an oil change last week and had them look into why it seems to be having trouble changing gears. It'll take about $700 just to figure out what's wrong, and I'm pretty sure the transmission is about to fall out of it.

I was hoping to give it away to someone I know who's car just died, but I think it would cost a lot just to bring it up to safety standards (which I just did 2 years ago).

Anyway, the new car is a Mazda 5 GT, and it will have a command start, cruise, and BUTT WARMERS!!! YAY!!! We'll probably get it on Wednesday night. It will hold a lot of our crap, and every one of the 6 seats in it has its own cup holder. Plus an extra!

And all the back seats fold down flat really easily, and you can store stuff in the middle row seats, and the steering wheel telescopes and tilts, and it has a power moonroof, and the side doors slide open like a minivan, and it will have a CD player. All of our vehicles have been cassette-playing cars so far.

My only complaint is that the only seat without armrests is the front passenger seat. What's up with that? We asked the salesman and he thought it was dumb too. Oh well, my left elbow will just have to dangle and suffer when Mike's driving.

It will look just like this except it will live in Calgary and not in England. And it will have red fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror.

So exciting.

Proud of my husband.

2007-04-11T22:04:00.000-06:00

With the help of some valium-type drugs and a very nice dentist, Mike has been brave enough to go through a lot of dental work in the past few weeks.

To be specific he has had 3 root canals, 5 crowns, several fillings, and a major dental cleaning. He still has to have 2 temporary crowns replaced by permanent ones, but he may be able to do that without sedation or freezing (he's most afraid of the needles).

He wasn't allowed to eat after 10 pm the night before his sedation appointments. Then he had to get up at 6 am to take his pills, and I had to shepherd a very large, very drugged, and rather clumsy man to the dentist's office for 7 am.

I went to work for the morning, and booked off some time in the afternoon to go pick him up.

The first time, I was a little apprehensive about leaving him alone at home for a couple of hours while I finished work. What if he decided to leave the house? Or tried to drive?

It's not a totally unfounded worry as one of my friends ended up buying fifty dollars worth of ice cream and leaving it at the store, then buying and bringing home a pet iguana after his dental sedation.

I had to work, so I hid Mike's house and car keys where he couldn't find them, gave him a stern lecture about not going down the stairs, and put him to bed. I also put his cell phone on the pillow next to him so he could call if he needed anything (I only work 2 blocks away). He was very tired and could barely stay awake long enough to drink some Gatorade before falling asleep. As final insurance, I left a very stern note on the door as a reminder in case he forgot.

I needn't have worried. I don't think he even turned over in his sleep while I was gone. I had to wake him up to feed him his dinner of pudding, then he went back to bed until the next morning.

No iguanas.

Good job Mike.

2007-04-02T20:46:00.000-06:00

Mike and I went to the Starbucks this evening at Market Mall. I had ordered Mike's drink, then my drink. It was quiet in the store, and just as I finished telling the guy behind the counter what I wanted, Marvin Gaye's "Lets Get It On" came on the sound system.

The timing was so perfect that the Barista Boy looked slightly perturbed, then started laughing. In spite of the sexy guitars, I managed to not jump over the counter and shove my tongue down his throat.

I am a strong and decent woman. Marvin Gaye has no power over me.

And just in case you were suffering from cute kitty withdrawal:

from icanhascheezburger.com

It's good to be home.

2007-03-23T12:56:00.000-06:00

I went to Fort Mac again last week to visit my friend Alison and to work. Work was pretty good, and Alison's daughter Mary is getting to be very fun. She turned 1 a couple of weeks ago and is much more opinionated than last time. It was really nice to visit with Alison and Dennis again. Dennis cooked me steak twice in one week. Delicious.

Mary is just a few days away from being able to break into any room in the house, and has learned to be a cute little ham for the camera.

She's almost walking but prefers to crawl or to be lifted up and carried, especially when she's sleepy. This is her standing and politely tugging on my leg to be lifted up.

Fort Mac itself was very full of snow and rather chilly compared to Calgary. Also, I have developed the opinion that there are a large number of people in that city who don't know how to drive. I present to you the evidence:

1. Holes in the strip mall that I work in up there. These are DIFFERENT holes than the ones that were there back in October (note to self - get seat AWAY from the window when dining at Subway):

2. Then there's the sign at the Tim Horton's drive through:

3. As I was taking pictures of the sign, Alison noticed this lovely vehicle on our left.

With all those less-than-skilled drivers in town, Tim's must have put in this trench in the parking lot to slow them down. It doesn't look like much in this picture, but it's at least 20 cm deep, and I'm not sure my car could make it out of there. Good thing Alison drives a big truck. Second note to self - do NOT open the lid on steeped tea until the vehicle has cleared the trench.

I had fun, but it's good to be back in Calgary, even with the annoying weather that can't make up its mind. I am so ready for spring and so tired of snow and cloud.

Serena Ryder - If Your Memory Serves You Well

2007-03-08T13:48:00.001-07:00

Finally, I bought this fabulous CD by Serena Ryder. I love it and I have to lend it to Jamie and Amisha once I've listened to it a dozen times.

http://www.serenaryder.com/

Ann Coulter, Canada, and Vietnam

2007-03-08T13:31:00.001-07:00

Then we have this hilarious video of Ann Coulter making an ass of herself. It was pointed out to me by Perpetual Lent at Livejournal.

A dull life.

2007-03-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't been too lazy to update this, it's just that my life has been nice and dull for the past couple of weeks. So I will show you some of the things that have been entertaining me. First we have some fun pictures made by some very creative people who are not me:

I don't know how to make blogger and youtube look pretty together, so the other stuff will be on top of this post.

I finally know what the book is about.

2007-02-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

I always wondered what the story "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie" was about. Until today.

It is the story of a lovely and friendly hamster who gets lost in the ductwork of a house for 5 days. She is finally found in a duffel bag at the bottom of one of the vents.

All seems well, but then a few days later she develops an eye problem and is taken to the veterinarian. She is a nice hamster, and doesn't even try to bite. Dr. H is impressed with her cuteness and nice personality.

Dr. H is quite sure that the problem around her eye is actually an abscess and takes her into the back of the clinic to lance it because she doesn't want the small child with the hamster to be sad about the gross stuff that is about to come out of Huey's face.

Huey is quite cooperative, but has tough skin. Dr. H tries to poke a hole in it with a biopsy punch, but no luck. She tries again, pushing harder. Still no luck. Then she gives it a tiny nick with a scalpel.

THEN A GREAT BIG STREAM OF PUS LAUNCHES ONTO DR H's CHEEK, GLASSES, AND BANGS.

Huey feels much better and goes home on antibiotics and pain medication.

Dr. H washes her face, glasses, and hair. Then she washes her face again. It was her turn to be the smelly person on the bus tonight anyway. Dr. H is very glad that she wears glasses instead of contacts.

THE END