Much overdue update

Ok.. It's been a few days since I wrote anything. I guess I can't really come up with any real excuse other than sheer laziness. :-p

I didn't strain myself over the weekend other than go to my cardio workout on Saturday. I really needed to do it since I hadn't gone in about a week since my cold. I'm pretty much over my cold. So that's some good news. I think the multi-prong attack of ColdFX, Emergen-C, Sudafed, Tylenol and soup helped shorten the cold's life-span.

On Sunday, I got myself into a little trouble. A friend of mine kinda nudged me into it. I had nothing better to do sometime so I guess some sort of distraction was welcomed. I bought into World of Warcraft. :-p I think I will leave it at that.

To be fair, I have not become an addict yet. I know that there are some things that I need to get done and I will get done. One of these things is to complete the online course that I enrolled in almost a year ago. Of the 4 courses required for this particular certificate, I have only completed one. The second languished for some months but I think I have finally completed it. I've gone ahead and started the 3rd course. Gosh darn it, I will get that certificate in Systems Administration!! Therefore, before I even *think* about logging into WoW, I will work on my online course. I want to put in at least 1-2 hours each night on the course. I will stay the course!

I hope. :)

In 8 days, I will be flying out to San Francisco. I will be hanging out with my friend J who dragged me into the WoW thing. She and I will try to do some of the touristy things around the Bay area. We're also going to go catch Matthew Good at the Cafe du Nord. I think it will be fun. Just how much trouble can two girls get into?

Some people annoy me. Within the company there is another person with a name similar to mine. The difference is that her last name is spelled with an "e" and mine with an "a". This is enough for some people to accidentally email me stuff that was meant for her. Now, I've been the polite and professional sort and have forwarded her any misdirected mail as well as cc'ing the original sender. Usually the sender will reply with an apology. However, not ONCE has my evil Doppleganger replied back with nary a "thank you". Hmph. I believe this person is suppose to be a project manager or something. Well, she hasn't been very professional in replying. Next time, and this was suggested by my director after I told him the story, if I receive any email meant for her I will ask if she's ever received anything meant for me. If I don't get a reply to that, well now, I don't think I'll be forwarding her anything further.

Okay, that was my small rant for the day...

This weekend, my friend M suggested that we go to the Montreal High Lights Festival All-Nighter, la nuit blanche. I think it will be fun. I don't know how far I can make it, but we'll see. :-)

Friday

Well, I think I am about 90% over my cold. There's just some snifflies left and a slight cough that is also going away. So I think it's looking better for this weekend.

I plan on having a few friends over for hot pot tomorrow evening. I'm evening contemplating going to my cardio class tomorrow morning since I missed it all this week. I need to get back on track and keep going. I've even registered for the Spring session already. The days and times I wanted were almost full! Whew! Good thing I looked into registering last night.

Spring is just around the corner! Uhm, yeah right. Kinda hard to imagine that when the windchill the past couple of days has been around -20C! Brr! I think today we'll get a reprieve from the colder weather in exchange for about 2cm of the white stuff. Oh well. Can't have everything.

Meanwhile, I've got to get my ass in gear and start collecting boxes for packing. I need to start cleaning up the office and the closet in the back. I'll probably start doing this after I have my little soiree tomorrow. I'll also need to start doing address changes for things like magazines. I'll also need to contact the utilities and services too. Hm.. I should probably put together a checklist of things that need to be done.

Two and a half hours

This might as well have been this morning's presentation I had to sit through.


Actually, this Chicken presentation is more entertaining.

Sniffle, Sniffle, Cough, Cough

I do feel a bit better today actually. Well enough that I made it into work today. Not that I really have a whole lot to do at the moment. It's been rather slow lately.

I hate having colds because it makes be all gross and icky. My nose gets all congested and snotty. I blow my nose so much that it's all red and irritated. I hate this about colds.

I guess I will pick up some groceries tonight after work. I might pick up a rotisserie chicken while I'm at the supermarket. I don't quite have the energy to really do much cooking. I'll probably have the chicken with some soup. That should be good.

Yeah, I know. It's a pretty boring blog entry. I know I'm usually brimming with excitement. :-p

In just over 2 weeks from now I will be flying to San Francisco. I'm going to meet up with my friend J. Not sure how much trouble 2 girls can get into in SF, but I guess we'll soon find out. While I'm out there, I'm also going to catch Matthew Good there. J got tickets for his show at Cafe du Nord. It should be good. :-)

Politics

When I'm sick, I really don't feel like doing much. Would you? So here I sit, perusing the web and checking out what's interesting, I came across this video on Tony Pierce's blog. I thought it was quite interesting.


As a result of some hype over this interview, Derrick Ashong filmed this as a follow-up. Rather impressive.

Just couldn't avoid it

I have a cold. :-p

It started with a little bit of sniffling yesterday. Then the string of sneezes started. For me, this usually meant the beginning of a cold. After I got home from work I started on the ColdFX regimen to fight the cold. I drank a crap load of water. I kept a box of tissues nearby. A bit before going to bed, I had a slight headache, so I took a Tylenol for that.

We'll see how this cold progresses this weekend. :p

Oh yeah.. Dry throat woke me up around 4. Cat saw that I was up and demanded to be fed. I'm going back to bed soon. :p

Helping

Not entirely sure how to interpret this one. However, it seems somewhat sad.

Tuesday - Frigid Temps

The wind chill yesterday was pretty bad. Today not as bad, but it was still pretty cold. I think we've been spoiled with the on again, off again mild temps. We're getting fairly normal winter weather right now. They're currently forecasting about 5cm of the white stuff overnight and another 5cm tomorrow. Yay?

Kinda quiet at work. Occasionally there's a few little things to work on, but not a heck of a whole lot. I hope things pick up a bit soon.

I need to get my workout back on track again. Tonight I plan on going to my cardio class again. I missed all last week due to the aforementioned "internal" issues. I think for the most part the issue has been rectified. Now I need to get back in shape. :-p

In less than 2 months I will be moving into a new home with a new mortgage. This should prove to be an interesting endeavor. It will be the first time in over 6 years that I will be living in and owning a house. Condo living is similar to apartment living in my opinion.

Anyway, I need to collect some boxes for packing.

Some days...

I just feel like I am falling apart or something. Maybe it has something to do with this thing called getting old. Well, I think it sucks! :p

I'm feeling a bit better after taking a dose of Immodium Thursday morning. Now I'm just waiting for things to "regulate" themselves. :-p

In 26 days I will be flying off to San Francisco. Yup. On March 6th, I am flying to San Francisco to hang out with a friend and catch Matthew Good perform at the Cafe du Nord. I've never been to SF, so this ought to be fun and interesting. I haven't decided what camera to bring with me. I might just bring both for the sake of convenience. I'll just bring my backpack and small carry-on sized luggage.

Aside from that I've decided to do some baking this weekend. I haven't done that in a long while and I felt a need to. Well, I did make a banana bread the other week, but that's easy stuff. I made some almond biscotti yesterday as I was making some pasta sauce. The almond biscotti could have been shaped and sliced better, but they still taste good. Today, I'll probably make some oatmeal cookies. I *might* make either chocolate chip cookies or the lemon poppyseed cake. Yum! I haven't made the cake in a long while. I might do that.

I guess that means I should get off my arse, go shower and head off to the supermarket for a few things. :p

Ugh!

I have no idea what caused it. I just wish it would go away!

Yesterday morning, after I got to work, I just wasn't feeling very well. My stomach felt very heavy and I was pretty tired. So at some point during the morning, I decided to go home. It was a good thing I did.

After I had kinda slept for a little bit, I was having to make frequent trips the bathroom. Ugh! I felt wretched. I have no idea if it was something I ate or if it was a bug that was causing this. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. I did not much of anything other than drink water all day.

This morning, I felt well enough to go in to work and get some stuff done. Not 100% better, but it was better than yesterday. :p

I hope this Maalox helps. :p

Forgetting

I think I torture myself with XKCD at times. However, I feel that I can relate to some of the stuff he puts up. Geeky romantic.

Insert Witty Title Here

Friday was pretty boring. Work was kinda boring. Some people decided to work from home due to the impending snow storm yesterday. My team leader was one of them. I kinda figure he would do that anyway especially since it was a Friday. I managed to find a few things to do. I think I left work around 3:15PM in an attempt to bet traffic. I think it took me about 20 minutes to get home. That wasn't bad. At that time the ice pellets started. The rest of the evening I heard the sound of ice pellets being blown against my windows.

I watched the movie Once last night. It was actually a pretty good movie. It's done a little bit differently. The storyline is not too heavy or overly complicated. I didn't realize until a read a little bit about the movie is that the lead actor is from the Irish group The Frames. Some of the music in the movie is quite nice. I would recommend this movie if you like good music.

Lately, I've been listening to some Damien Rice. I also recently discovered Ani DiFranco. Although I have seen her name in passing a number of times, I never got around to actually listening to her stuff. It's not bad really. I've also recently been listening to Imogen Heap and some Metric.

Today, nothing too heavy. I braved the snowy terrain and went to my cardio workout. The conditions were granular snow with an icy base. Because of the snow, it made for a more strenuous workout. I had to slow down a bit towards the end. Otherwise, I guess I'm happy I made it out there.

A sort of lazy afternoon. I tried to work on my online course. I think I need to read up on some stuff before I attempt the exercise and quiz.

Thursday

I ended up sleeping with my iPod on. I slept with the earbuds in my ears. Surprisingly I did manage to fall asleep towards the end of the Snow Patrol album. At some point during the night I woke up listening to some Damien Rice. Since it was only 3:30AM, I went back to sleep. Since the winds had died down at that point, I took the earbuds out.

What is this world coming to? In the past 24 hours, there have been reports of some child deaths or abandonment. The saddest was the case of two little girls in a First Nations community in Saskatchewan. It's huge tragedy for a small community.

Next there is the case of an 8-month old left in a cold stairwell of a shopping plaza near Toronto. From the description given of the child, the poor thing might have been beaten and left to die in the cold. Thankfully, some passersby heard her cries and got help.

There was also the case of 2 kids left in the car seats for over an hour in Calgary. The region is currently suffering from severe cold and windchill. The mother came back to the vehicle after having taken a 3rd child to the doctors. I mean, WTF? Why did she leave the other 2 kids in the car, unattended, in extremely cold weather?

I don't think it's unusual to hear about stuff like this during the winter months. What I find unusual is how many stories just popped up in such a short time span. The weather across the country in recent days has been pretty bad. An ice storm has knocked power out to half of PEI. The weather front that swept through this region brought high winds and plummeting temperatures. We're expecting almost a foot of snow tomorrow. :-p

Is Spring here yet?

It's 4:53AM

I think I have a few hangups and anxieties I need to address at some point. One of these is that I have as of late developed a dislike for very windy weather. I have no idea where the anxiety over this kind of weather developed. It's never really bothered me much before. Take yesterday for example. Almost as soon as I have found out that the weather today will involved wind gusts of up to 80 kph, I started to feel anxious. Of course this feeling of anxiety does not help my blood pressure. I had to consciously breathe deeply to try to calm my racing heart. I did a quick check of my BP yesterday before I took a very short nap before going to my cardio workout. I was sitting around 126/80. Not terribly high.

Anyway...

Recently, there's been some drama in the area. One of the guys I know at work who lives in the neighborhood with his wife attempted to take his own life by downing a handful of pills. Now, there's a bit more to this than a suicide attempt. Apparently, things have been building up in recent months (maybe in the past year even). I know that hes been hinting at divorce for a while. Why he hadn't gone through with it, I don't know. I think there are also some factors involved in this whole episode that might have led to this as well. Bottom line, things just came to a head and got ugly late Friday night/early Saturday morning.

Apparently, there had been times when he got pretty violent and punched holes in the walls of the apartment. He even broke an ironing board in half and used a piece of the metal to try to hurt himself. More recently, he killed their pet turtle and said something to his wife to the effect that she was next.

So after he took the pills, his wife called 911. He was taken to the hospital. I think the police stayed with her for a while. The police car was still in front of their building when I went to my cardio class Saturday morning. I spoke to a friend who's friends with the wife and had been in touch with her. The wife will be staying with friends. A restraining order has been issued against the husband. When the husband is discharged from the hospital, he will be charged with domestic assault.

So why am I writing all this? I just want to get it off my chest I guess. I don't think anyone from work knows I have this blog. If they did, they'd think I was a major head case for some of the things I've babbled on about. I guess another reason I wanted to write this is to also point out the fact that the husband is not a big brute. On the contrary. He's about my height and size. He's not a big guy at all. Some might even consider him slight. I guess this is to dis-spell any image that violent men tend to be these big, ugly ape of a man.

A factor that I think is involved in all this is the fact that the husband's family never took to his wife. He's of Ukrainian descent. She's Mexican. His late father mistreated her one time by grabbing both her arms and shaking her. He left bruises on her arms. The husband does not show any backbone. Why didn't he defend his wife? Since his father's death last year, I think his mother may have been harping on him still about his wife. I believe that this is part of what's been building up.

Anyway, it does leave me with some questions as to why he did what he did to end up in this situation...

I think I'll go shower now and get an early start to the day.

It's now 5:13AM.

Vancouver Blog Wars

Now, some of you know I frequent Matthew Good's website. As a result, you get to know about certain people of that world and that community. One of these people is Duane Storey. He's a rather unassuming fellow, but I find him interesting nonetheless. Interesting enough that I check out his blog from time to time. For a bit more explanation about the Blog Wars, kindly head over to his site (link over on the right there).

Thursday

Yeah, so I was feeling a bit down last night. I find that I've been getting this way everyone once in a while. It never lasts for more than a day or so. I suspect that I tend to get this way when I start to think about certain things. There's no real logic behind it all. Anyway...

Monday evening, it looks like I've finally sold my condo. It was rather interesting in how it all transpired. Let's see if I can summarize this simply.

• Visit by prospective buyer A last Wednesday.
• Offer made by buyer A on Friday but with condition of 2nd visit with father.
• Delay in answering offer until after 2nd visit scheduled for Sunday.
• Counter-offer made Sunday soon after 2nd visit.
• Delay in answering counter-offer until buyer A discussed it with parents.
• Counter to counter-offer made Monday mid-day. Will wait until after work to accept counter.
  
• Hour or so later, call from agent that there is another client interested in property. Very motivied.
• Visit by buyer B. Does the usual tour. Talks with agent. Discussed with wife.
• Offer made by buyer B for more than the counter-offer from buyer A.
• Offer by buyer B accepted. Mortgage approval pending.

So there you have it. I tried to summarize the whole thing as best as possible. Now i have a shopping list of documents and things to do that my agent emailed me. I've managed to locate most of the documents. I still need to get one document from the surveyor which I have to pay for. It seems that when I bought my place they were too lazy to order a certified copy of the certificate of location from the surveyor. Oh well. :-p

Tuesday, I was a bit tired. I was probably still a bit excited over the fact that my place finally sold. In any case, having a cat that wakes you up around 4:45AM does not help either. I will have to either start going to be earlier or try to sleep in more on weekends to catch up. Either way, I think the cloudy days do not help matters much either.

Yesterday was a bit better until I started to feel down in the evening. I had made a crockpot full of chili last night. It was quite tasty. I could have given it a bit more kick if I had remembered to get a small tin of jalapeno peppers. No matter. It was fine the way it was. So now I have lunch and dinner for the next couple of days.

Something that has been getting to me is the fact that I have started to spend a bit more time on Second Life. One thing that I keep reminding myself is to not to let something like SL take over all of my spare time. There are still things that I would like to get done. I have to constantly remind myself that I need to do this or that. So far it hasn't gotten to the point of total addiction or obsession. At least not yet. I hope someone out there who knows me can occasionally keep an eye out. :)

The weekend is quickly approaching. Chinese new year is coming up soon. I'm contemplating making something, but I would definitely need to plan it out a bit. Maybe I'll go to the Hash this Sunday. I haven't gone since the one before New Year's. We'll see.

Some days...

I just feel a bit bummed out. For whatever reason I find myself in a bit of a funk. I guess i'll just head off to bed and sleep it off.

Oooooh! That's purdy!

This is purdy. I'd like one. But I've already got a regular iPod and an iPod nano. Oh well.

Sibel Edwards

Copied from matthewgood.org:

Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger

Click here to watch the documentary “Kill The Messenger” about the Sibel Edmonds affair. I highly recommend that you find some time today, or over the next few days, to watch this crucial film. The information provided in it is extremely important, so if you have a blog, or an email list that you use to send group emails to friends, please help spread the link.

More on the documentary here.

M.L.K.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in the States. Matthew Good posted this on this site.