Oh, right. I have a blog.

So, what's new?

P-Face was out to visit us last month. Awesome! Although it did force me to realize that the other times she came and visited us, we didn't just sit around doing nothing because we were poor. We sat around doing nothing because we're lame. Yah, there may have been lot of sitting around doing nothing this trip as well. Sadness that I didn't get to spend as much time with her as I'd have liked. There's this stupid thing called work that gets in the way of staying up all night eating chips with your bestest buddy. But, it was awesome to spend time with awesome friend. Even if one of those days was spend with me in the bathroom throwing up. 'Cause that happened. Turns out another down side of working is that you get sick more easily than when you sit inside, avoiding people.

I was kinda a jerk, and made awesome new friend send me an epic email with 50 interesting things about her. So, to shave off a sliver of jerkiness, I'm emailing her 50 interesting things about me. Quick! Tell me something interesting about myself! I'm at #25 now.

Work's going good. I went out dancing with some coworkers yesterday. Tons-o-fun, except for the cold that is currently trying to kill me. But, I'm pretty sure the best cure for any illness is to stay up until 2:30am sweating with a bunch of strangers in a filthy dark room. Yah. In other news, I'm staying out here for Christmas, but booked off time in January for another trip home!! Omg! So much Tammy in Victoria goodness! Now, I'm just working on convincing myself that Christmas is actually Jan 25th. There was a seat sale and it made sense in my brain.

Oh, and since I tend to talk about hockey way too much on here, Dylan and I are going to a game NEXT WEEKEND!! A real, live NHL game! Neither of us have ever been to a Canucks game before and I've never been to a hockey game live. But, in a huge fluke, the Canucks are playing the Sens right in time for his birthday, so we pretty much had to go. Pretty much the best thing ever.

Thankful

Yo.

Had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner last night. I like to think that our boss purposefully gave us both a day off so we could have dinner together. That or it was just a coincidence. But it worked out either way. We had Kyle over, along with a coworker who doesn't have family in town and therefore had no plans. And we made ourselves a fancy turkey feast! And by we, I mean all I did was tidy up the apartment and make the yams. Other people handled the actual cooking. Oh, and Clair made a fantastic pumpkin cheesecake. I kinda want to eat nothing but this cake for the rest of my life. It held it's own against pumpkin pie, which is impressive since I didn't previously know of many deserts that could accomplish such a feat.

It was, however, the first Thanksgiving I've spent apart from Hubby since we spent our first one together in 2003. Sadness. And considering most years we did the whole two family dinners, I was plenty used to being thankful for his face this time of year. Pretty sure I talked to him on the phone 30,000 times yesterday though, even if he kept shoving the phone off to whoever happened to be nearby.

Yes yes. Anything else to report on? Hmm, hockey is starting up again, so that is probably going to start taking over my life again real soon. Good times. I don't know. I've had a really good last week. Life's good. What more do you want?

I'm no liar.

I promised an update after my trip home and an update you will get!

It was lovely. The end.

Haha, aren't I hilarious? No, seriously, it was more or less everything I could have asked for. I got to see a whole bunch of fantastic people, I got to go to a wedding (where Hubby even won the trophy!), I got to relax and have fun, I got to take a side trip to Van, I got to have a picnic in the woods. The only thing missing was the always lovely Dylan's mommy. Well, and the trip could have been a bit longer too.

So, I (obviously) flew in and was picked up by my Paul-Face. After meeting Hubby and me getting to drive by myself across town to (you wouldn't know it if you've met me in the past couple years, but I do love driving - it just apparently has to be at home), then... ahh... then I got a sandwich. And not just any sandwich, BUT a sandwich made by my favourite daddy-in-law. This was a much awaited sandwich. I could write an entire blog post about how much I love his sandwiches. I won't, at least not today, but believe me that they are amazing. From there I went on and saw my Mom and Dad and Grandma. Caught up a bit with them before heading off to tormented a sales associate for half an hour trying to find a good wedding present, and finally to pick up Em so I could hang out with her since it was the only day that she was in town the whole time I was there (boo). Then a bunch of lovely people came over to Dylan's and we hung out for the evening until I more or less passed out from exhaustion.

Then the next day was the wedding! Oh, I almost cried! I didn't get close to crying at my own wedding, but this one almost did me in. I was so excited to see my friends get married and I thought their minister did an awesome job of describing the beauty that can come from committing yourself to that person for the rest of your life (maybe I'm getting soft in my old age?). I got to catch up with some more lovely people at the reception, notably Allison and the bride and groom.

Ok, can't keep going through day by day or this will quickly become really long. Highlights:
-Having dinner at my Mom and Dad's, seeing them all and getting to spend time with my lovely nieces. The older one isn't scared of Hubby anymore and I hadn't seen the younger one since she was in the hospital after she was born.
-Getting to meet/know the lovely Ashley. She's lovely. I say we keep her.
-Almost dying at WildPlay, the stupid outdoor tree-top adventure thing. Not really almost dying, but it was terrifying. And my husband is a freaking monkey and has no fear of death.
-A pre-wedding lunch with my girlies. And Jordan.
-Getting my hair cut. So much easier to do when you know where a half-decent place to go is.
-Permanently marring my body.
-Hanging out in Vancouver with my sister, even if I did spend way too much on sushi and sorta steal her sweatshirt.
-My daddy-in-law being a sweetie and staying up late to hang out with us, and playing silly role-playing card game with us, and buying me my gross bagel/cream cheese combo, to name just a few things.
-Paul-Face. I didn't get to spend as much time with her as I'd have liked, but it is always uber fun to hang with that.

That being said, one of the best parts of the whole trip had to be stepping outside after the flight. It just smelt like home and that was exactly what I needed. Adventuring around is great and all, but nothing quite compares to that feeling. Gush. I could continue this trend of being really sappy, but I'll spare you.

As many rants as I've gone on about how people make fun of the Island and laugh at how 'quaint' it sounds (also, no, there is no bridge!), it was interesting to go home after being away and living in much bigger cities. Because it is kinda quaint (although I maintain that you can only call it that if you come from there!). You can get everywhere so quickly, the malls are smaller, there aren't as many options for some things like restaurants and whatnot, you run into people you know who then turn out to be a friend of a friend, and I swear you will not find another city in Canada where people actually drive more safely or considerately (it helps that I know where I'm going and don't get lost as easily). And, I've been trying to figure out exactly how for a while, but West Coast friendly and East Coast friendly are two very different things. I would say that West Coast friendly seems more genuine, but of course I'd feel that way since that's what I grew up with and what makes sense to me.

Okee, this is officially long enough. If I think of anything else I just have to write about, I can do so later. Bye lovelies!

Oh dear.

It's now Sept. How did that happen?

So, what have I been up to, you ask? Well the reason I haven't updated in a while is mainly because I haven't really done anything. When Dylan was here I at least had some incentive to go out and be dragged along on whatever he wanted to do. But, alas, since he boarded a bus to head out to beautiful B.C., I've really only gone to work, to the grocery store and to the laundromat. Oh wait! Clair and I went to the library to get library cards last week and we went to the mall AND we went out for food. Ok, so I'm living it up here!

Works gotten crazy. All the lil' kiddies are back at school and apparently need coffee to drown their sorrows. Or something like that. It took a bit of adjusting to get used to being so busy after the store having been fairly tame, but it's fine. Makes it go by faster. No one can really slack off. I got my colleague card that gives me a discount at other stores, which would be awesome if I ever ventured far enough away from home to get to another store.

And today I was super adventurous and went out all on my lonesome. Now, on top of having a Ottawa library card, I also have Ontario health care. OMG, how amazing am I?

I swear my life will be more exciting next week. I get to see awesome people get married and see other also awesome people not get married and yes. It will be awesome. Awesome. Ok.

Extrawesometasticy

You know, I was super stoked to get tickets for Joshy at Christmas, but then I waited so long to get the tickets and then so much longer for the date of the concert to come around, that it didn't have a super excited build up for the concert. (For some reason I started calling Josh Groban that. Not really sure why.) I knew it was coming and I wanted to see him, but I got stuck in that mindset of 'Oh, it's still a ways away.' But, oh man, when he walked out and I actually saw him..., well I think Dylan still has dents in his arms attesting to how excited I was. And I stayed out-of-my-mind giddy the entire night.

I'll back up and start a couple days ago. I got an email saying that they closed the 300 level of the arena, so our tickets got upgraded. So, instead of sitting front and center row 301A, we were sitting front and center row 201A. Much better tickets; sad because that means crazy people out there didn't want to see the amazingness that is Josh Groban, but good for us. We were going to pick up the new tickets on Thurs., but were told we had to pick them up on the day. Seeing as how we're not crazy and didn't want to be in a crazy line right before the concert, we decided to get them during regular box office hours.

Now, me, I'm used to the Bell Center or Rogers Arena, both of which are smack down in the middle of downtown in their respective cities. Ottawa saw the flaws in that thinking and made the obvious choice to have their arena in the middle of freaking nowhere. Stittsville, or Kanata, or something like that.

So, it took us a good hour to hour and a half to get out to the general area by bus, then we brought our bikes to make the 20 min ride to the actual arena (there are buses that run special for events that we took home afterwards, but the website doesn't think it's a good idea to specify times for these buses). We got off the bus about 15 mins before the box office closed at 4pm, so Dylan took off to obtain tickets. He was successful with ticket-getting, slightly less successful at appearing sane to the box office people. He came back to me and we wasted time in the wonderful air conditioning Walmart offered. Then ate dinner an delicious fast-food burrito place, Mucho Burrito. Think Subway, but classier and with burritos. Doors for the concert were at 7pm, so naturally by 6pm I was getting antsy to get to the arena. After Dylan convinced me to wait 20 mins, we headed down and got there about 15 mins before doors... for a concert that we already had our tickets for and it was assigned seating. And, since it was Josh Groban, security wasn't that tight (as in they didn't look twice at Dylan and his huge backpack), so there weren't any delays there either. Dylan was very good, though and let me have my crazy. The concert itself started at 8pm, and even then it was just the opener.

Some guy opened. A rock jazz pianist who did a lot of medley-covers. He was good.

Then Joshy comes on. But instead of walking straight on stage, he walked out from

the back of the arena, directly under our seats, and goes to this mini-stage that was in front of the sound guys and WAY WAY closer to us than the main stage.He sung a couple songs from there right at the beginning, then came back to sing a couple more near the end. Plus, it was nice for the people with floor seats because he obviously had to walk through them to get to and from the main stage. The whole idea he built the tour was to bring a more intimate feel to arena concerts, which I think he did a good job accomplishing. For instance, the last two songs he pulled a few people up from the audience, had them sit on couches, gave them wine, and sung to them. Of course two of the four people were having their 40th wedding anniversary, so Joshy sung them a gorgeous song about cheating.

He's a pretty funny guy. Now, I've watched more than a few clips of him doing talk shows or guest appearances, plus his little vlogs he makes for his fans occasionally, plus follow his twitter (did I mention I'm a fan?), so I knew he was hilarious. But obviously it's going to be better in person. He called his band the Groband. His security guards call the stairs from the floor to the stage GAPs - Grobanite Access Points, and he made fun of them because his fans are not really the type to rush the stage. He told all the men in the audience to sit back and relax, because the concert was probably just the beginning of a long night for them. And, at one point while in the aisles, he did an impromptu chorus of Biance's 'Single Ladies,' in falsetto of course. I enjoyed it.

He also did some singing. Kinda the whole point. A lot from his new albums, but obviously did a few of his big hits like 'You Raise Me Up' and 'You Are Loved.' I have nothing bad to say. I could have sat and listened to him sing for twice as long. It made me goose-bumpy. Most of the time I go to are somewhat more age-appropriate concerts so it's hard for me to compare, but I definitely can't think of a concert I've enjoyed more.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! JOSHY!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

More later once I've calmed down some.

...EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Ok, right, using my blog to update people in major life things at the bare minimum.

Ottawa. Yes. So far doing good by me.

Got myself a job, oh, a couple weeks ago. I'm now the proud employee at a coffee store, which makes me happy because I love working at coffee stores and couldn't get anyone in Montreal even slightly associated with coffee to hire me. They also hired the always lovely Clair, so I'm a happy llama. Did the online training and started my training shifts earlier this past week. I dig it. It's a grueling 5 min walk away (barely enough time to pull out my ipod, pick a song, and get through the first verse).

We found ourselves a place for Sept. It is a floor down from where we are now. For everyone who knows our address, as of Sept change Apt 4 to Apt 5 and you'll be good. More expensive than we were hoping, but still quite manageable. We really like the neighbourhood, so good good. On our way to sign the lease we were all, 'Oh, so I guess we're staying here through the winter... Everyone cool with that? Stresssss. Okay.'

Another major bonus of Ottawa is that one of Dylan's uncles also lives here. He's nice. It's nice. He's shown us around a few places, given us a whole bunch of advice on things to do, answered our questions on good places to volunteer, and fed Dylan more food than is speakable. He even went out in search of bikes for Clair and I, getting a loaner for Clair and went so far above and beyond as to buy me a used bike from a guy he knows. It's red and white and pretty and I'm excited because I don't think I've ever owned my own bike with the possible exception of a tricycle. But, the biggest advantage is that at the end of the day, it helps us feel less alone on this side of the continent.

And, in news unrelated to Ottawa for the most part, my laptop (known affectionately as Lappy, both for the obvious reason and after Lapierre) has been giving me problems again lately. It was running off the power cord, but wasn't charging the battery at all. It was alarming since Lappy is definitely one of my most beloved possessions and somewhat annoying since having to have a laptop plugged in to use it sorta takes away from the whole portability thing. Anyway, it's still under warranty, so I took it in. This led to three separate repairs, a new MagSafe board, logic board, battery, trackpad assembly (still don't know why this was replaced), and a new display (this was just because they could and I asked since mine was somewhat dented...). A grand total of $1,362.91 worth of repairs. But Lappy is now working like a Pro! Get it? 'Cause I have a MacBook Pro. Hahaha. Anyways. Have I mentioned I love extended warranties? Because paying for that would have sucked.

Oh right, updating. I do that. Yes.

So, we are safe and sound in Ottawa. First impressions: I really like it. Smaller than Montreal, which makes me happy. Less traffic. Fewer people. More English. Seems more laid back, which I wouldn't have expected from the capital. If jobs work out, I can see this being a really good summer.

Byward Market, close-ish to our place

I kinda lucked out on the moving end in that the Uhaul truck only had two seats. So the three of us loaded the truck up, then hubby and Clair drove it over here and emptied the truck whilst I stayed behind and cleaned home. Hubby drove the truck back to Montreal (much cheaper for a two way trip). Playoff finals happened. Then we wrapped things up in Montreal, packed up the car with everything that was left and headed to Ottawa a couple days later. Those two days were super fun without any furniture whatsoever.

The gorgeous Rachel was Montreal for a day since she was out this way for her sister's grad from UOttawa. After she managed to actually into the city, it was lovely albeit too short. Oh, we also had the ravishing Vanessa stay with us in Montreal and got the chance to meet her boy. We approved, even if he kept trying to take her away from us. His initial plans failed and they followed us to Ottawa. She stayed with us here for a few more days (although was conveniently at some cabin on a lake the days that we were actually moving). Ultimately he won though and she left us. An old girlfriend of Dylan's was also in Montreal with her husband while Vanessa was there, we had coffee and caught up a bit with them. Super fun to see everyone, but, really you guys, couldn't you spread it out so that everyone wasn't here in the same week, let alone the week that we're moving?! Oh, then Bill and Jan were in Ottawa and we had lunch with them yesterday.

What else? Our neighbourhood is nice. Really close to UOttawa, a few blocks away from two grocery stores both of which are 24 hr, laundromat nearby. Easy walk to downtown, but we're on a quiet side street. Young building, so we never have to worry about our noise levels. Being in such a university/young area means that there are a lot of drunks wandering around, but the only problems they cause is occasionally throwing up in the driveway that goes to the back of our place. The apartment itself is good, and slowly getting organized. But it's a furnished sublet, so between everything left here and all our stuff it will be a cramped summer.

Super quick update!

Hubby is back!! After two of the looooongest months of my life, mes man is back, yo. Or something.

Anyway.

And he brought be back a t-shirt (along with a whole bunch of other things, don't worry, he does love me). This t-shirt to be exact:



Life is awesome.

I'm free!

Dylan comes home on Friday!

Yesterday was free museum day in Montreal - 32 museums around town opened their doors and let just any ol' person in. We had grand plans to spend a carefree afternoon wandering around downtown museums, sipping coffee and pretending to be more sophisticated than we really are. We then remember that people were coming by to look at the apartment between 1-2pm. But we figured we could still make it to the two museums that we really wanted to see. So at 2pm on the dot (that's a lie, I am not that punctual), we headed out. We hit up the McCord Museum, where they have a pretty cool exhibit of 90 treasures, 90 stories, 90 years. The museum is 90 years old; most of the 90 things were much older. There was also this really cool mosaic panorama of Montreal from this guy who stood on a roof and took hundreds of pictures throughout the year at different times of the day. It's hard to explain, but it was cool. So cool, in fact, that by the time we were done looking at it we were exhausted and decided to scrap the second museum in favour of skipping straight to the coffee.

Weird baby horse seat thing. Looks terrifying if you ask me.

Hmm, then I got to run around trying to get money in to the right bank account for rent. Turns out that if you don't use any of your accounts at a bank for over a year, leave a whopping $0.01 in it, and forget your telephone and online banking passwords, things get somewhat complicated. Almost forgot my PIN, but remembered after a few tries. I got money into my savings account no prob with the help of the nice telephone person, but of course the cheques I had written were from my chequings account that is apparently just gone. Maybe I closed it? Maybe they did? Who knows. Second telephone person told me that I would have to figure something else out for the immediate future, and could order cheques for the account that is exists. So I went onto my online banking, that I miraculously remembered all the answers to the security questions and could therefore get into, then promptly got even more confused. Apparently, I remembered to change my name with them so it welcomed Tamara MarriedName, but then when I went to order cheques it said that they would come in the name Miss Tammy MaidenName. But my old cheques are in Tamara MaidenName, so I don't even know. We'll just leave that for now.

But, the most exciting news of all: I am no longer employed! Friday was my last day. It was sad to say goodbye to people. Ok, it was sad to say goodbye to the 5-6 people out of 65ish I actually liked and talked to on a regular basis. Other than that, I am so happy to be done! Have I mentioned that I really hated working there? Because I really hated working there. I wasn't bad at it. Ok, I was awful at selling, but I was good at the customer service part and my quality scores were always really, really good. I was punctual, polite and didn't cause any problems, so my supervisors all liked me and got around the sucky selling thing by putting me in a department that had less selling pressure, which worked out well for both me and for them. But I think I'm too introverted to be able to comfortably talk on the phone to strangers all day. And, at the end of the day, it was just too stressful for me. I would feel physically nauseous every single day before I went to work and at least the first hour or so of my shift and I developed this weird eye twitch. Definitely the worst job I've ever had, and that is including the job that didn't pay me for the two months I worked there and the job where my boss yelled at me for 20 mins about whipped cream, telling me that I was single handedly ruining his business (even though he was always telling other people how amazing I was), and made me cry. That being said, I and everyone who knows me at all, knew going into it that I would find it awful. I needed money, and I am eternally grateful that I had the job. Because I have no idea what we would have done if I hadn't have gotten it. I will just not be losing any sleep lamenting leaving my call center days behind.

Now, out of respect for the company(ies?), I still won't say who I worked for or go into the specifics of the job. But, in celebration of being done, a short list of things that I will not miss:
- People who make up services that they think the company should offer, get huffy at me when I tell them that that's not how it works and then tell me that that is a really bad business practice/customer service.
- People who forget that they aren't the only customer that we have and yell at me when I tell them that we can't get to them immediately. Personally, in 90% of circumstances I think that getting service within 24 hrs is more than acceptable. This makes more sense if you know what I'm talking about, but oh well.
- People who think that just because they exist, they deserve preferential treatment and are entitled to discounts. Then, when I explain to them that we have set prices, that that is a really bad business practice/really bad customer service. Because they can switch companies, but they thought that we'd like to keep them as a customer! Well, yah, we would but if we give you everything for free then there really isn't any point.
- Oh, which directly leads into people who don't read the terms and conditions and then yell at me when we tell them that they have to pay for things that aren't covered.
-People who yell at me for billing issues that are actually issues with a completely different company. Then yell at me about how awful that company's automated system is and how they can't get through to them. Ok, but there is still nothing I can do for you. You not being able to get through to them doesn't magically mean we are suddenly the same company.
- Other agents who work with me (or at one of the other centers) that just do not know how to do their jobs and screw up, leaving me to have to explain to the customer why things didn't go the way they were supposed to. Agents who inappropriately transfer calls to me. Agents who do not know how to write useful, coherent notes of customers' files and make me waste a whole bunch of time going back over the same things again. Or, my favourite, agents who just seem to blatantly lie to customers and tell them things that are not at all true.

Don't let my complete lack of updating lead you to believe that I haven't been doing anything. I have. I swear.

A couple weekends ago, Clair and I drove down to Ottawa to check out some neighbourhoods as potential places to live. Highlights of the trip: Getting really lost, getting really really lost, and then getting lost. Oh, then we got lost. Also, worrying the whole time that the muffler would fall off the car after I noticed it, umm, sagging somewhat. But I shoved a thing into some other thing so it was more firmly attached and it's stayed since. After all that excitement, we got coffee in downtown Ottawa to remind ourselves that we actually like the city. Then we got lost.

This last weekend, I decided to make up for all the excitement of the previous weekend by doing nothing. Clair and I had a movie day were we sat on the couch, ate junk food, and (shockingly) watched movies. It's Kinda a Funny Story, Happy-Go-Lucky, and Sunshine Cleaning. And last week's episode of Glee. It was fabulous. Ended the night with the Canucks game and some laundry.

And Sunday, Clair and I tried to go out for breakfast. Kinda failed because apparently a lot of other people had the same idea. Something about Mother's Day. Had singing lessons, which are finishing soon. I think I have two or three lessons left. Then spent most of the rest of the day calling my (grand)mommy(s) and doing some more sitting.

What else? I miss Dylan. That's probably the main reason I haven't been updating too much. Trying to not turn this into one big, 'I miss my husband' fest. He comes home in just over three and a half weeks!

I'm giving my two weeks notice at my job at the end of this week probably. That way, I can try and get some cleaning/packing done before Dylan comes back and before visitors come. (I'm sure our guest will have a lovely time amidst the boxes.) Yep yep.

Ok, by doing stuff, I'm starting to realize that most of what I've been doing is watching hockey and texting daddy-in-law about hockey. It makes me happy, but there's not really a lot for me expand on and it's probably not the most exciting thing for you to read about. I'm actually kinda sad, because I'll have to go the next few days without any Canucks while the other teams series finishes up.

But my feet are so soft now.

Another update? What? It's almost like I'm getting the hang of this or something! No, not really. I'm just avoiding watching the Canucks forget how to play hockey again.

Is taking a bath update worthy? ...No? 'Cause that's all I've really done today other than work (training, which I will not talking about). It was a really great bath.

I also was reading some of a book that Glynnis left here with me over the summer, A Short History of Nearly Everything. I'm impressed, because the guy actually talks about astronomy in a way that doesn't make me want to pull off chunks of my own skin out of boredom. And it was one of those times were I was all 'Reading is the best thing ever! I'm having so much fun!!' I think because most of the reading I've been doing lately has been during breaks at work and reading in 5 or 10 min chunks is definitely not the best way to do things. Now I just have to try and not stay up all night reading.

So, I MAY have a secret love of certain angsty tv dramas and one such show had an episode a while back that I must have had to pause and walk away from a good 6 or 7 times and ended up making Dylan (or Pauly?) watch with me. Because it was about some crazy lady cutting out someone else's baby. And it freaked me right out. But.. BUT... most terrifying thing ever - it has actually happened! Some crazy lady from the States is currently in court facing murder charges for befriending a pregnant lady on facebook, taking her out to the woods, killing her and then cutting out her baby with a knife. Ahhhghhh! That has to be one of the most disturbing things I can think of. It just makes my stomach clench. The lady brought the baby to the hospital with the uterus and ovaries. Yah. Just thought I'd share.

Ok, back to hockey. Sigh.

Feast.

Good morning internets.

I'm a liar. I told Pauly I'd update yesterday and I didn't. I feel shamed.

What have I been up to? Well, work mostly. And watching hockey. But other than that, Clair and I have been continuing our efforts to get out there in the world and explore Montreal since the clock is ticking down. Yesterday we continued our quest to find good coffee and picked a place went out in Westmount. Which, upon further inspection, turned out to be really close the Atwater Market (the other big market in Montreal besides the Jean Talon Market), so we went and checked that out before coffee. The market was nice, probably smaller than Jean Talon and it seemed to have a much bigger focus on meat over vegetables. Maybe that's why it seemed smaller? Because I'm not really the type to walk through all of the 6 or so butcher shops, so they mostly got skipped over. There were also a billion cafes, which I thought was weird. I'm sure they were different in important ways. We did stop and split a spanakopita, which was definitely one of the best I've ever had.


Made our way down to coffee and had a yummy latte. And then we played chess. Should I be embarrassed that I taught Clair how to play and she beat me? 'Cause I am. I think Dylan and Jordan would have been in tears. As an indication of how bad I am, I very successfully managed to lose my Queen in three moves, maybe four.

Our plan was to go from there and walk around the neighbourhood and explore previously unexplored areas. But the hard balls of ice pelting us from the sky quickly convinced us otherwise. We just headed back to the Metro, made a slight detour to the grocery store (confusingly, also called Metro), and came home. Have I mentioned how grateful I am that Clair exists? Without her, I'm sure I would be eating Kraft Dinner every night. Instead, we have vegetables and scalloped potatoes and chicken. Woah.

Applesauce.

Ok, so less timely than part 3. But I promised Pauly that I'd upload this today. What better way to start my weekend?

Apparently I say, 'shocking!' too much.



Unfortunately, part 3 contains the least exciting questions, in our humble opinion.

In other news, really, Japan got another earthquake? Really?! For those of you not following the trip, Hubby is there now and was no where near where it was. So he's perfectly fine. But the poor country just can't seem to catch a break. Although their trip has so far raised almost half their goal, which is awesome! Especially since the bike trip itself doesn't start for another 4 days. I'm so proud of them for taking a really fun thing and turning it into a way to raise money for such a good cause. ...Because I'm just that kind of cheesy wife, apparently. Who knew?

And my fantastically wonderful coworker friend found another job, so today was our last day working together. Which is sad for me, but her new job sounds like it is a really good opportunity for her. And I'm determined to hang with her so we don't loose touch. We're having celebration sushi tomorrow.

Part 2

Apparently this is a good way to have me update in a much more timely manner. Who knew?

Today, Clair and I actually ventured out into the excitingness that is Montreal. We went to a cute sports cafe, Cafe Olypmico, that we had been to once last summer and had a surprisingly delicious latte (although the lineup should have given away the fact that they're good). Then we wandered around, exploring a some little home decorating stores, and enjoying the fact that Spring is actually coming. We didn't wear coats! Sure, we were kinda cold, but it was worth it. Had some quiche at a deli/bakery that we came across and ate it outside an adorable little church before coming home. All in all, a pretty awesome day. Living in Victoria, you don't really get the city-wide feeling of relief that comes with the onset of Spring. But man, do you get that feeling here! It is hilarious because all of a sudden everyone is just happy. The streets are suddenly filled with bikes, patio furniture is out and no one is in nearly as big of a hurry anymore.

Ok, video.



Tammy + Clair + free time = weird things. I feel like I should be embarrassed...

Woah.

What up? So, Hubby left. Not quite as expected, but it did happen eventually.

But, I have been keeping busy so it hasn't been too bad yet. Clair has been especially helpful with that. How so?



It turned out to be reaaaaalllllly long, so part 1 of 3. And sorry for the repeat there for you, Pauly.

Feel free to make fun of me starting now. But at least you get to see my face while doing it?

Sitting here watching Hubby get ready to go. He's fiddling with his bike. His flight leaves tomorrow morning at 11 am. I'm torn between wanting to stay up all night to spend as much time with him as possible and wanting to go to sleep so that I can stop being sad (and, because let's face it, I'm me and therefore always tired).

Plans for things to keep me busy while Dylan is away:
-Work (please just shoot me now).
-Obsessively follow Japan Andrew's blog for their updates on the trip.
-Do 4 people's taxes and help someone else with theirs.
-Help Japan Andrew with his website by transferring over pictures.
-Singing lessons. They're only once a week, but I can spend time practicing.
-Watch lots and lots of hockey. Playoffs are coming!
-Whatever Clair comes up with to entertain me. So far we have going to a concert on Tues. and making lasagna on Thurs.
-Lastly, I have plans to blog more. I don't know what about exactly. It will probably just be me typing out how bored I am hundreds of times. But that could be fun, right?

Speaking of Japan Andrew's blog, for the few of you who read this who don't already what their website is: The Unframed World. Click on Japan by Bicycle at the top and feel free to donate! They've decided to use their trip as a way to help raise money for earthquake relief and their plan is to have at least one of them do a trip update daily.

All this news about Charlie Sheen just makes me want to watch more West Wing.

Hello world. And by world, I mean all three of you. Yah.

There are two things that people who REALLY know me know. First: that I've had a weird obsession with mustard since the summer. Seriously, I put some in pasta I made the other day. Pasta, asparagus, mushrooms, cream cheese, and mustard. I thought it was fantastic, although the asparagus wasn't quite cooked enough. Anyway, secondly: one of my favorite non-Canucks hockey players used to be Maxim Lapierre. Used to be?! OMG, Tammy, you love him! What could he have possibly done to fall out of favour with you? Nothing! It's just that now he IS a Canucks player! I am super excited.



In other news, hmm, yah there isn't really any other news.

Umm, oh, right! My dear hubby's trip is drawing ever nearer. He leaves in three and a half weeks, I believe. So, he obviously has a whole bunch of stuff he needs to do to get ready for that besides training. For one, we have to get online banking sorted out so that I will actually have access to the account that my pay cheque gets deposited into; he also needs to buy more stuff for his bike like a new chain (salt is not really good for it) and new breaks. On top of that, he's gonna have to squeeze in as much time as possible with our dear Clair since she's coming back sometime before he leaves. It's like they are bitter exs who are trading off being here because they know I can't be left alone. Except without the ex part, or the hatred part.

I've been trying to figure out what it is that I'm going to be doing with my life come the summer since, if I do decide to go back to school, the earliest I could do that would be Sept 2012. What do I want to get out of the next year and a half of life? I have it rather haphazardly narrowed down to three cities. Which I was totally fine with and wasn't really feeling any pressure to make a decision on at least until the snow melted (being stuck in -20 degree weather kinda makes you hate being where you are and I felt it unfair to make any decision while in that mindset). BUT, my dear, sweet in-laws gave me the Christmas gift of the promise of tickets to go see Josh Groban in concert whenever and wherever it was going to be happening. And he just came out with his concert dates. And it just so happens that it is in the late summer and he's playing in all three of the cities that are on my list. Now I feel all of this pressure to make a decision because I am SO excited about the idea of seeing him in concert and I want to buy tickets as quickly as possible so that I have them in case it sells out. But I have no idea what where I'm going to be after July 1st. And I know a concert seems like a really stupid reason to make a decision on where to live. But, really, the concert isn't the reason I'm making a decision, it is just the reason that I'm not trying to put it off for longer. Would it be ridiculous to drive 7 hrs. down to Buffalo in June to see him so that I can avoid making this decision?

Aren't you proud?

In a completely out of character move, I decided to go out last night. I know, right! Not just out, but out to one of thems fancy Montreal cultural thingys that people are always telling me I should take advantage of. Last night was Montreal's La Nuit Blanche, an all night extravaganza to celebrate the end the Montreal Lumière festival. Just don't ask me what the Montreal Lumière Festival was, because I don't really know. Anyways, La Nuit Blanche boasts about 120 seperate venues with everything from a ferris wheel, to fireworks, to crazy art shows, to concerts. The majority of which were free. The Metro even ran all night for it.

But, don't worry, I am still the old lady you know and love - I came no where close to staying out all night. Mostly because Dylan and I both worked at 8 am today. But we did stay out past my normally ridiculously strict bedtime.

What did we decide to do at said festival? Well, we first headed out to this trippy art exhibit at some club that was originally a swimming pool. It was all black lights and craziness, but neat. We went from there to the Cathédrale to Marie-Reine-du-Monde for a classical church choir concert with the big organ and everything. It was super pretty (although whenever I go into a big old cathedral, I always have such mixed feelings). And, for our final stop of the night, we decided to spend the big bucks and pay $2 each for a flashlight tour of the McGill Redpath Museum. Now THAT was super fun. Seriously. Well, except that apparently everyone thought that it would be fun and we ended up waiting outside in the cold for about 45 min waiting to get in. There was a short lecture at first in french (by a lady whose first language was clearly English since she would switch whenever she got flustered and she would completely drop her accent when saying proper nouns). Then we were free to wander around and there were tour guides all over giving tours in English. It worked out well for us and it makes sense because it's McGill and the tour guides were all Anthropology students, but was kinda funny. Our first tour guide was this really laid back guy who was hilarious, but did really know his stuff, That ended up taking longer than we'd thought, so we ended up rushing through the rest because it was after 11pm and I was sleepy. We'll have to go back sometime since the rock exhibit is pretty big and Dylan does so love his rocks (well, and to actually see the exhibits lit up with more than a flashlight).

We found out about this whole thing through my coworker friend lady who I was supposed to go with, but she had a friend visiting and somehow got sucked into hanging out with this big group of people and eating dinner outside on a patio in about -10 degree weather. So we never ended up meeting up. And it sounded like she did not enjoy herself and I felt bad. The invitation, however, was really nice and hopefully it'll work out better next time.

Short Update

I'm afraid that there's not too much to report on our end of things.

This past week, Dylan and I have had rather conflicting schedules. All of a sudden, I'm off working 40 hrs/ week and our dear Dylan picked up an extra three shifts this week as well as staying late on one of his regular shifts. And by staying late, I mean that he ended up working 14 hours that day if I'm not mistaken. On top of all that, he is picking up a little extra cash shoveling snow from the walkway of an apartment complex for the month while the manager is on vacation, so he has to run off an take care of that a few times a week. Needless to say, we've seen slightly less of each other as of late. Seeing the other one sleep is almost like spending quality time together, right? It's such a crazy change from how things were a month ago. I like to think of it as practice for when he goes away on his trip.

But, have no fear! We both have Friday off. Which I'm sure will result in us just hanging out here, doing nothing like we normally do. Oh, the lives we lead.

And, with absolutely no segue, I think that working in a call center is going to end up giving me an identity crisis. Like most jobs I've had in the last few years, I've decided to go by Tamara. Since I introduce myself when answering a call, I thought that it sounded more professional than Tammy. It might have been a slight mistake on my part. Man, do I spend the whole time repeating my name and then I just end up going along with whatever name the customer says that sounds even remotely close. I've gotten Tara, Tam-air-a, a couple words that didn't even sound like anything. And more than one person has thought that my name is Camera. Seriously, that's not a name! My parents did not name me after a piece of photography equipment. If that's not enough, my last name was entered in wrong by whatever IT person for my user id to get onto the computers, so everyday when I log in I have to misspell my own name. In a few months, I'm going to have no idea who I am.

Ok, have a good night. And have a good time with your above-average sized apples, P-Face.

Hubby.

Week two of training is officially finished! It's going well in terms of me understanding everything and I'm even laying some good ground work for making my very own first Montreal friend. She's really sweet, really smart, has good level of chattiness (e.g. sometimes we both just sit at the same table and read our books during break without any awkwardness), and we have the same taste in movies and tv shows. I have a good feeling about this one. But that's besides the point. I got off topic and it's only the first paragraph.

What is my point, you ask?

My point is this: Dylan is awesome.


I

him.

Now, I know, I know... you're all thinking, 'Yah, duh. Of course he is! Tell me something I don't know.'

But I think that even something as obvious as the awesomeness of my hubby deserves to be restated every once and a while. And what better time than now? Especially since this is being made easier by the fact that he has recently been pulling out all the stops in awesome. Even if we completely overlook how patient and understanding and not totally-constantly-freaking-out-OMG-we-have-no-money!!! he was when I didn't have a job (which we shouldn't), he has made going back to work so easy for me. He makes us dinner every night, packs me adorable lunches to take to work with all sorts of little things he's made or baked to make it more interesting (my coworkers are all horribly jealous), he listens to me go on and on about work stuff (which isn't all that interesting, trust me!), he has yet to complain about how the alarm goes off every morning at 6:30am even on the days where he works nights, and he's been doing his best to wash dishes and do that sort of thing around the house now that I don't have as much time. And the other night he even took me out to a fancy dinner as a Congrats/early Valentine's Day thing.

All in all, he's a pretty rad guy. So, I thought that since Valentine's Day is quickly approaching and that romantic spirit trying its best to infect me, I'd take a minute and share with y'all just how blessed I am that he puts up with little ol' me and with a smile on his face no less. (I hope you'll forgive me for making you vomit 'cause of all the cheese.)

Ok, we got back from Maine. Hung out more then people left. Nice, but not that full of adventure. Yadayadayada. We're into February, I think it's time for me to stop talking about Christmas (as awful as that sounds to my ears!). And as my dear friend pointed out, somewhat exciting things have been happening in my life since then that I've been neglecting to inform you kind folk of since I've been trying to play catch up.

Exciting post-Christmas things in my life:

1) I've started singing lessons. My dear hubby is not one for predictable gifts and he's been getting more and more dedicated to this task seeing as how it's somewhat difficult to surprise the person you've lived with for almost four years and see everyday. But this year, he managed to shock me with this. I didn't know how I felt about it at first, seeing as how I normally do everything I can to avoid singing in front of people. Well, that's a lie. I did know how I felt about it: terrified. I also questioned what exactly I'd learn, seeing as how I've been playing instruments since I was in gr. 4 and have done my fair share of choir. What was this lady going to teach me that I either didn't already know or was too old to be able to do anything about? I figured that I was just one of those people who couldn't. But I'm two lessons in and it's a lot of fun. And she's a really good teacher who really knows her ...stuff. So, it turns out that there may be hope for me yet and I might be able to not embarrass myself in the singing department forever.

2) Dylan and I have taken up skating. When his parents were here, they were kind enough to buy Dylan and I each a pair of used skates. Montreal is sick with free outdoor skating rinks, so we've been availing ourselves of them. Turns out that skating outside is for some reason just way more fun. It makes me feel so Canadian! The other night we went out with a coworker of Dylan's who grew up in Saskatchewan. Man, can that guy skate! And not just skate as in go quickly and not fall down. Like, actually, full on skate. I was absolutely amazed. I think he's the only real live person who can actually play hockey that I've ever known (other than people who played as little kids and whatnot). He thought it was hilarious that I was so impressed. He brought along a couple of hockey sticks and was helping Dylan learn a couple things like how to do hockey stops. And he even let me play and shoot pucks at the net and pass back and forth with him and Dylan. I think it was the first time I've ever held a hockey stick while on ice. I can see why people think it's fun! I morph into a five year old girl when I put on skates and I love it.

Hmm, what else... (hahaha, aren't I funny?)

3) I managed to get meself one of those them job thingys. FINALLY! We can finally live life extravagantly and go out and buy ridiculous luxuries like cheese or meat or maybe even some juice (on occasion - we don't want to spoil ourselves or anything)! I works at call center (another thing Montreal is filled to the brim with). Turns out that I'm actually not allowed to talk about specifics of what I do or who I work for online - they specifically mentioned online social network websites and personal blogs. Woah, working for big companies! Something that I am very much not used to. And I know that the point behind it is so that people don't go and spend pages and pages go on about how awful whatever is or how big of a jerk so and so is which I would never do, but I figure I'll err on the side of caution and tell you all more or less nothing about it. Which I know you are thinking is ridiculous since no one is going to stumble on my modest ol' blog and get mad at me for anything on here, but I'm ever the little rule follower! I've told most of you about it anyway.

Other than that, we're up to our eyeballs in snow with no real end in sight. Mere hours after our street got cleared yesterday, we got probably another 7 or 8 cm. Crazy real winters.

Maine

Right, Our trip to Maine. Our lovely friend Japan Andrew was home for Christmas and since his home is in Maine and therefore decently close to us, we decided to take him up on his invitation to go down and see him. It was somewhat unfortunate because his visit to the States was almost completely overlapping with Dylan's family's visit here. But they were understanding and entertained themselves for the day and a half we were gone. Dylan worked until midnight on the night of the 25/26th, so we got a few hours of sleep and left here around 3am on the 27th. Drove peacefully through lovely Quebec for a few hours, until we got pulled over for speeding in Ayer's Cliff, a tiny town near-ish to the Vermont boarder. The police officer didn't speak much English and didn't seem overlyimpressed with us when he first came up, but when he came back and I answered a few of his questions in french his english really seemed to improve. It was magical! Considering we were maybe going 12 km over the limit, he just gave us a warning and told us to "drive prudently."

Crossed over the boarder no prob once we told him we were visiting our friend Andrew in Maine (this seemed to reassure the guard greatly that we didn't have any ill intents, I'm guessing that it was since nothing involving Andrew could possibly be malicious in the slightest). So we went on our way and drove through Vermont and got into New Hampshire. Around then, we decided we were bored of this whole driving thing and though we'd take a break in a snowbank for about 4 hrs that involved taking an hour-long nap (we brought along some blankets for just such an event) and then spend some time with the local park ranger in his truck getting to know him and his heater. Did I mention that this trip had us heading straight into a pretty big north-eastern snow storm? After a spur of the moment, brief party on the side of the road with the park ranger, a state trooper and a couple guys with a tow truck, we figured we had had enough fun for one morning and continued on our way.



We eventually got to Maine without further incident. Spent the evening catching up with Andrew, plotting future adventures with him, meeting some of his friends (one of whom we got into a fairly interesting conversation with about the differences between canadians and americans), and having his adorable mother try and feed us until we burst.



After an (at this point) amazing 5 hour sleep, we got up around 6am, showered, ate some breakfast, spent a few last minutes with Andrew, took the lunch that Andrew's mom had gotten up to make us, and were on our way back up to Canada. This time, despite it not being the fastest route according to the GPS, we stuck to the nice, clear interstate and made it back just fine. Apparently the GPS didn't know that it was the middle of the winter and that the smaller highways don't always get the same number of snow plows frequenting them. The boarder guard had a few questions as to why our car had B.C. plates since we'd said we were living in Montreal but I think our story about the banana bread Andrew's mom had packed us really won him over. I think as we were turning onto our street, I realized that I had my keys in my coat pocket and had therefore failed yet again to leave any keys with Dylan's family. Oops.

Hmm, let's see. Where did I leave off. Ok, so, on the 21st we went to the market, picked up a Christmas tree that lucky Dylan got to carry back here, decorated it up and generally hung out. Dylan made soup. Then Dylan and I headed off to the airport yet again to pick up the in-laws! It was relatively uneventful (read: evil airport men didn't yell at us to move after 5 sec of sitting at the drop-off/pick-up area). After some late night chatting and catching up, we pretty much all crashed.


Oh, around then it hit Dylan and I that in all the excitement of people getting here, we had kinda forgotten about that whole Christmas thing. Oops. Cue next few days being spent with annoyingly large crowds of people searching for presents to put under our lovely tree. Side note: Dylan and I only brought a few strings of lights, a strand of garland, and 6 ornaments (5 of which were My Little Pony and all 6 had come from the lovely Em). Our tree was slightly bare, but people kept telling me that going out and buying ornaments for our first tree would ruin the progression and story of all our future trees. Anyway, all of a sudden it was Christmas Eve and we had all of our presents acquired except for something for Dylan's daddy. Now, we did have something for him theoretically, but we wouldn't have it physically for a few days. So, since he needed to have something to open on Christmas Day, we decided to make him something. It sounded like a good idea to us, especially since making presents is the sort of thing parents swear they like. This being said, starting to make a present the evening of Christmas Eve is NOT a good idea. Especially when you're me and refuse to use things like, I don't know, the copy and paste feature. Oh well, it got done, even if Dylan and I were responsible for Christmas morning being less Christmas morning and more Christmas mid-afternoon.

Other Christmas Eve events included my sister giving my father the present of a webcam and setting him up with Skype, so I got to call and talk with/see most of my family for the first time in forever. Talking to 6 people at the same time is quite a difficult feat, but it was nice none the less. Then Dylan, his family and I all took a speed-walk through the neighbourhood to go to midnight mass, only to find out that none of the million churches around us were having one. Weird.

The rest of Christmas was good. Lots of puttering around while Dylan and his Dad somehow managed to cook an entire Christmas feast in our humble little kitchen. Dylan only almost lit the kitchen on fire once! That's an exaggeration; he just filled the house with smoke when he left his mulled wine unattended for too long. Good times.


Boxing Day, Dylan worked. So the rest of us split up. Us lady folk got dropped off downtown to do some shopping at Forever 21 (not my ideal way to spend the day, but I thought it'd beat sitting around at home alone and it turned out to be fun), while Dylan's dad and brother were going go to MEC and pick us up some more bagels. Except when we were leaving, Dylan's dad took the keys to start the car and then had to bring them back to me so that I could lock the door and I may have forgotten to give them back to him. Meaning that he couldn't turn off the car after dropping us off. Actually, any key can turn off the car, the turning it back on would have been the problem. And, on top of that, they drove all the way out to MEC (it's not amazingly far away, but it's hardly in the center of town) to find out that it was closed that day, then they drove back to the bagel store near our house to find that it was also closed (which is really weird, since they are normally open 24hrs). Needless to say, I felt a little guilty. They texted us just as we were finishing up, came and picked us up, and then we proceeded to get horribly lost. Not lost so much as led to the wrong place. There is a street way the heck in the middle of nowhere that has the same name as the street we live on. Guess which one the GPS decided to start giving us directions to? A little bit after we drove past a road that I was pretty sure was the last reasonable one to turn on to get home, I mentioned that I was pretty sure the GPS was leading us astray, that I thought we were getting close to the end of the island, and to be careful because it is fairly easy to be forced to leave the island without meaning to. More or less as soon as I said that, we saw the sign for the bridge and found ourselves taking a nice trip to Longueuil. It took a bit of work and a collective feeling of wanting to throw the GPS out the window, but we eventually made our way home.

This puts us right before Dylan and I took our trip to Maine, which is quite the story in and of itself, so I'll call it a night here. Sleep tight Internets!

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.

So, it has been pointed out to me that I suck at updating. This may be true, since I think my last post was exactly a month ago. It is also highly unfortunate, since that means that I have all of December to update you on, which includes Hubby's family visiting, Christmas, a trip to Maine, and Dylan's staff party, and I'm sure a million less important things. I blame Clair. Her semi-regular updates normally shame me into at least say hi occasionally, but she's been dropping the ball lately. Ah, nerdy memories from the Great 8 Escape. Anyway, I guess I should get started! (Don't worry, I'm pretty sure that I'll have to break this down into a couple posts.)

Ok, early Dec. was fairly boring and consisted mostly of me trying to clean so that Dylan's mom wouldn't spend her whole time here 'just quickly wiping this' (which is exactly what she did when we moved into our sublet in June). And moving stuff around enough so that 6 people could function in our 2-bdr home somewhat successfully. Have I mentioned that the only seating we have is the futon, my computer chair, and Fredrick, the amoeba-shaped footstool Dylan rescued years ago? Luckily, Dylan's fantastically nice boss lent us some folding chairs so that people didn't have to eat Christmas dinner on the floor. Oh, yah, we also don't have a dining room table, so dinner was eaten around the coffee table in the front room/Dylan's brother's room. But I'm getting ahead of myself since they weren't even here yet. Before people arrived, (as in pretty much on the way to the airport) we also got Putt-Putt some new winter tires so that we won't die this winter. Part of this pre-family-arrival time, Dylan was off being poked with needles.

Then people arrived! Dylan's brother and his fiance got here on the 20th, and the four of us got a day to hang out before the in-laws (I say in-laws because it's the shortest way of referring to them, but know that I hate and in no way mean to call upon any negative stereotypes that are commonly associated with the term; writing Dylan's Mommy and Daddy just gets to be a bit much after a while) arrived. We went out for dinner and I admit, it was all my fault. We had been driving around looking for somewhere that had something other than sushi or really fancy looking french food, and we saw this noodle place and I made the decision to eat there. I think it was called Schezwan Noodles. My food, that was something, was good. Dylan had General Tao chicken and that was fine. His brother and soon-to-be-sister-in-law ordered a combo thing that came with hot and sour soup. It was not good. It was, in fact, hilariously awful. It looked and tasted like watered down sweet and sour sauce (yes, it was VERY slimy) with whatever was in the back thrown in. It was special and probably not the best introduction into Montreal dining.

I would launch into the arrival of the in-laws, but it is late and this seems like a good place to stop. So I leave you with this. Dylan seems to think that there is some thing wrong with my iPod's scrobbling.