Everyday New: my project 365

Good Bye, 365...

2008-08-19T11:00:00.000-04:00

After a great running, I have decided to officially turn off Lisa365: Everyday New.

It was a great idea that just ran out of steam.

And, due to a friend's recent blog entry about blogs suddenly vanishing (it was not directed at me), I knew I had to bring closure to those people who visited here expecting to view new entries everyday.

I'm sorry.

You can find me at home - ...are you kidding me? or on my other Entrecard blog, dedicated to photography - Waterstone Photography.

Thanks everyone for your comments, encouragement, and readership! It was through this blog that I met SO many awesome people. Stay tuned for the next project...

Days 183-213 (July)

2008-07-01T07:49:00.000-04:00

Clicking on the links will open a new window :-)

183 - July 01: saw fireworks from Columbia Lake from in our room
184 - July 02: cut my own hair (yes, yes I did!)
185 - July 03: ordered a 16x20 print for the first time
186 - July 04: crossed the US border by myself, driving; participated in July 4th IN the US; ate cheesecake at Cheesecake factory
187 - July 05: visited Webster state park; toured Rochester by myself
188 - July 06: drove from the Falls to home in 90 minutes
189 - July 07: tried 85% cocoa chocolate; too bitter for me!
190 - July 08: took a sample US citizenship test and scored 35% (oops!); Also, bought a laptop bag for $60 (ouch!)
191 - July 09: saw first tomatoes growing on the accidental plant!
192 - July 10: bought DARK KNIGHT tickets online
193 - July 11:
194 - July 12: Nic & I pet baby geese (or ducks?)
195 - July 13:
196 - July 14: drove to Guelph office to take one picture; stayed for the morning
197 - July 15: bought $10 nailpolish (metallic blue!)
198 - July 16: heard commercial on radio while reading the very same sign, while driving. cool.
199 - July 17:
200 - July 18: took part in opening night of movie; saw Dark Knight; first theatre Batman movie; bought pizza & pop for $9
201 - July 19:
202 - July 20: bought organic counter cleaner, smells so good
203 - July 21:
204 - July 22: drove around storm chasing for 2 hours right after work
205 - July 23: Halfway point! I slammed on my brakes when a bunny ran out in front of me (he was ok!! hopped to the other side of the street!) :D
206 - July 24: called customer service for something and the rep had to ask for my birthday... "Hey, that's mine too! Happy belated!" haha Ok guy, calm down... lol
207 - July 25: visited a loft that a friend recently bought (gorgeous!) and tried lychee fruit jelly/shooter type thing (good but weird jelly)
208 - July 26: discovered a new park/nature trail called Snyder's Flats, by following the boys on their canoe trip
209 - July 27: Had keys to house for ONE YEAR! woo!
210 - July 28: Nic taught me how to keep score at baseball... yikes!
211 - July 29: picked beans from my own little garden!!
212 - July 30:
213 - July 31:

Days 160-182 (June)

2008-06-30T10:55:00.000-04:00

Hello friends... I have officially fallen behind on my "Lisa365" project. So, I've decided to just summarize what I've done! Yes, there are a few days missing. I've let myself down :(
Hopefully this summary in point-form is self-explanatory... and click the links to view the corresponding photos :D (they open in a new window/tab)

Day #160 - June 8: spa treatment! I had a shower using everything the Healing Garden set I got.
Day #161 - June 9: went to lunch by myself on my birthday. First time doing that!
Day #162 - June 10: signed up for epost
Day #163 - June 11: Wore all black. Everything.
Day #164 - June 12: Got my ownership papers for my own car!!
Day #165 - June 13: Bought my own car! And changed license name; got my own insurance...
Day #166 - June 14: agreed to shoot a last-minute wedding - less than 24hrs away
Day #167 - June 15: held a mouse
Day #168 - June 16: discovered Flyleaf
Day #169 - June 17: rode an elephant by myself at African Lion Safari. Same elephant that starred in The Love Guru!
Day #170 - June 18: scanned all my postcrossing cards
Day #171 - June 19:
Day #172 - June 20: exercized in the morning; yay!
Day #173 - June 21: official Tour a Garden volunteer; visited 180yr old house
Day #174 - June 22: tried cologne lotion... strong!
Day #175 - June 23: watched Liz perform live
Day #176 - June 24:
Day #177 - June 25:
Day #178 - June 26: mailed a home-made postcard (sticky backs)
Day #179 - June 27: spotted a Photoshop Disaster (guy's hand on the left looks... odd)
Day #180 - June 28: went to the batting cages
Day #181 - June 29: got a free autographed baseball and saw engagement at the Jays game
Day #182 - June 30: was given a Mr Rooter figurine, lol

Day #159

2008-06-07T23:13:00.000-04:00

Today was my birthday barbecue... and I learned to BBQ all by myself! Yes, for the first time in my life I learned to turn on the propane tank and light the burners... I've always loved barbecues but have always been fearful of them (having worked at the manufacturing plant of Broil King, you hear all the stories!)
When it was time to cook for our friends, I lit it up and put the burgers and hot dogs on... and then a friend stepped up and offered to take over for me as I was running around and talking to everyone who was over. :-)

Day #158

2008-06-06T22:21:00.000-04:00

If you've been following my blog then you'll know I wrote in to Elle Canada.

Well, I found out not too long ago that my letter had been selected to be published, but what I didn't know was that it was selected as the Best letter! Today I received my prize: Calvin Klein's Euphoria set of body lotion, shower/bath wash and the bottled fragrance, valued at $150. Wow!! This was the biggest prize I've ever received!

the published letter:

Day #157

2008-06-05T14:42:00.000-04:00

One of the perks of being single is receiving a GST cheque from the government 3-4 times per year. Each cheque starts off around $56, then after a few years (I think when you reach a certain income) the cheques rise to $96 each. Well, when we got married these cheques kept coming, so I thought perhaps something had changed. Ha!
After filing our income tax this year, we received letters explaining that we were no longer entitled to these GST cheques and now owed the government $181 each - well, isn't that peachy. Our marriage was registered with the government in November (married in September...) so the cheques should have stopped way back then already. Anyways...
today I wrote a cheque to send back to the government. And instead of leaving the "memo" section blank, I left a little note for the accounting department.

[I haven't uploaded the photo yet, so I'm not spoiling this new thing until I do!]

I hope they get a laugh out of it instead of coming to arrest us or something. LOL.

Day #156

2008-06-04T18:37:00.000-04:00

Helping out reception this afternoon, it can get a little slow up there. I can't really do my own work while sitting there so today I wrote to a penpal while sitting at reception. Shh, don't tell anyone! :-)

Day #155

2008-06-03T17:29:00.000-04:00

I was sneaky today...

It's my grandma's birthday. We celebrated on Sunday, but I went to visit her for awhile today too :-) While I was there, I decided to secretly video our conversation.
Now, I didn't hide the camera in my pocket or anything... it was clearly sitting on the table in front of us. Why did I do this? Well, Grandma isn't going to be around forever and I thought it would be nice to capture some video of her while she's still here. She's really cute and funny... that's my Grandma. :-)

Day #154

2008-06-02T22:17:00.000-04:00

Wondering if my houseplants were dangerous to our kitties (and because of the few pieces taken out of the leaves...), I researched poisonous plants for cats. Sure enough, my English ivy & chrysanthemums were to blame... they're now sitting outside the front door :-)
(the kittehs are fine, they just nibbled them a bit too much!)

Day #153

2008-06-01T22:06:00.000-04:00

Out to lunch at Swiss Chalet for Grandma's birthday, Nic & I tried a new menu item: deepfried zuchinni.

Yum!!!

Day #152

2008-05-31T21:54:00.002-04:00

For Christmas (yes, already 5 months ago!) I received a hair towel as a gift. One of those towels that had been on TV. You know, to make it easier to wrap up your long hair after a bath or shower.
I never thought I would use it because just a normal towel has always worked for me. And with my long hair, I didn't think this new towel would work! BUT me always trying something new, and being short on towels, I used the towel "as seen on TV" for my wet hair.

Pretty cool! It's microfibre and really absorbent. In all honesty I don't think I'm going to go back using those regular towels anymore! :-)

Day #151

2008-05-30T22:43:00.002-04:00

On a daily basis I like to catch up with what's going on with the world. One of my favourite news sites (and interesting tidbits) is Fark.com. What makes it so interesting is the captions that submitters include with their links! I decided I would try to be funny as well, so I submitted a link & caption to Fark.com.
They didn't publish it. :( I guess it wasn't that funny. Anyways, the article was about an airline passenger who was told to take her lapel pin off and put it in with her checked luggage, because the pin was a gun. It wasn't even an inch long! Silly people.

Day #150

2008-05-29T21:32:00.003-04:00

I created an icon for the address bar, for the "Links" toolbar!

(*I think you can only view it with Firefox)

Credit: Pink Penguin

Day #149

2008-05-28T21:35:00.001-04:00

After searching for nearly two hours this evening, I finally broke and downloaded drivers for my printer from the Epson website. I've never done that, because I've never been able to find drivers for what I needed in the past. However since my printer is just a few months old, I figured it was worth a shot!
Success!

And THEN I found the installation CD! AAAHH!

Day #148

2008-05-27T15:31:00.001-04:00

Today's new thing is very exciting for me:
I bought my own website domain!

Not for this blog, unfortunately, but for my photography business! I've been running a free site from Googlepages for almost a year and I decided I would finally go ahead and get the website.

If you would like to visit, I only have the index page up right now but I should have it up and running within a few weeks!
http://www.waterstonephoto.com

Day #147

2008-05-26T23:51:00.001-04:00

A girl from my church is currently spending six months in Botswana with a missionary family. I thought it would be neat to ask her about a few Setswana phrases that I could learn as my new thing for today! She says that most people there speak English anyways, so she only knows a few phrases. Interesting none the less! I have learned how to speak Setswana!

This is what she sent to me:

Dumela (doo-MEH-lah) means hello
Dumelang (doo-MEH-lung) is hello plural
Rra (rah roll the 'r') is sir
Mma (mah, drag the 'm' a bit) is m'am
When you greet someone, you use sir/m'am. To pluralize, you put bo (boe) in front. Ex: Dumelang bo-rra.
The direct translation is greetings sirs, a greeting we'd never use in English, but it's cultural, and the only way you'd greet some men.

Oh, and in Setswana, the second last syllable is always the accented one (they try to apply that rule to English, it's amusing to try to decode what they're saying)

You can visit her blog at http://susanna-botswana.blogspot.com :-)

Day #146

2008-05-25T23:01:00.001-04:00

For the first time in my life, I was in the same building as the Memorial Cup Championship final. Because I refused to buy the tickets for the game (I'm not that desperate a fan) the Aud still set up an area for people to watch the games on projector screens. A friend and I sat and watched the game (The Kitchener Rangers lost 4-1 to the Spokane Chiefs). It was very depressing, especially after such an amazing season.
It was a very quiet procession out of the Aud and the parking lot; quieter than I've ever witnessed!

Day #145

2008-05-24T23:50:00.001-04:00

I've been hearing commercials for awhile now, about McDonald's Iced Coffee.
It was a nice warm day today, so I decided I would swing by and get this new iced coffee before heading to dinner (I had about an hour to wait, and I was thirsty!)

Ooh, it was yummy. High calories I'm sure but I'd have to say it was almost nicer than Tim Horton's Iced Capp! Yikes!

Day #144

2008-05-23T23:33:00.001-04:00

Another TWO things!

1) Before dropping my husband off for a hockey game, we came to a four-way stop. I came to a complete stop (as always, helloooo it says STOP) however the guy behind me didn't think I was completely stopping, and he bumped the back of the car. My initial reaction was anger, then annoyance. I told him that I in fact come to complete STOPS. Anyways, we got out of the cars and there was no damage at all, you can't even tell... I guess it always sounds worse that it actually is! I just shook the guy's hand and said, "Have a nice day, and remember to STOP at stop signs."

2) I dropped my husband off and I continued on to William's Coffee Pub (after attempting to fix and modify wireless settings, which finally allowed me to) browse the web on my laptop in a public place. WAY cool! XD

Day #143

2008-05-22T22:27:00.001-04:00

I discovered a new magazine, published right here in KW :-) I found an article about the Elora Gorge and decided to read it - upside down! That was fun. Surprisingly I can read pretty well upside down, but it's so time consuming. Hehe.

Day #142

2008-05-21T23:24:00.001-04:00

Two things!

1) I ate Poptarts for breakfast. Not too shabby; they were never really appealing to me as a child.

2) I bought a book from a co-worker. She's a full time assistant as well as an author. I believe in supporting small businesses, authors & artists. Her book isn't of a genre I would normally (ever) read, however, I'm all about trying new things!

Day #141

2008-05-20T23:19:00.001-04:00

I drew faces on top of the faces already printed in the newspaper.
And oops, I used the office newspaper! (Hopefully no one reads the entertainment section!)

Day #140

2008-05-19T22:33:00.001-04:00

Today was the Victoria Day holiday in Canada. Usually there are fireworks put on display, however the weather was not very cooperating all weekend long. Still when I left a friend's house late in the evening, I heard gunshots all the way home (which were personal fireworks packages in backyards). I've never driven around while fireworks were going off, and it was pretty shocking at times!

Day #139

2008-05-18T23:58:00.001-04:00

It was another long, busy day for me but I was still able to do something new.
I shot another wedding today. At the reception there was a game to be played by each table by a certain time of the night. When it was my table's turn, they voted me to be captain. I had to roll the giant die and follow the instructions given by the MC. Thankfully the item I rolled on the die was a heart which just meant the bride & groom had to kiss. Yay! It was a great day. I had to be the only out-of-place "guest". Haha :-)

*I grew up with the bride in elementary school so at least we knew each other for a very long time!

Day #138

2008-05-17T23:02:00.001-04:00

Last night was the kick-off celebrations for the Memorial Cup series here in Kitchener. This year we are the host city for this huge event of CHL hockey and our team (the Kitchener Rangers) have very good odds of winning the cup again! (Last time was in 2003 in Quebec City).
Today Nic & I went down to the Auditorium to check out each CHL team's exhibit, as created and displayed by many Grade 5 classes in the Waterloo Region. The kids did a great job!
As well, we made it to the trophy table where I saw the Memorial Cup in all it's glory for the first time. It's got to be the first real & famous trophy I've ever seen. :-)