What up?

We spent yesterday playing with pups in the field. It has to be one of my favourite ways to spend the afternoon. I chilled with baby while Dylan played frisbee. Yuki would run around after Dylan or wander around sniffing, and then come and sit with me for a bit, then go off again for a while. So domestic. Dylan has been so busy with work and it's been raining so much that we haven't had many opportunities for that lately. It's usually me strapping a baby to me and taking Yuki for a walk, juggling a leash and an umbrella.

We've also been planning our trip some more. I'm starting to get pretty excited. It's a bit overwhelming though (read: ridiculously stressful) to try and narrow it down to a reasonable list of cities to visit. We're aiming for at most 16 cities in total. Plus, I know next to nothing about Europe, so excluding cities is stressful since I have the barest of vague associations with places.

And hockey! It's playoff season. So that'll be consuming everything all the time!

Except I have to find a way to pack and sort and organize, since it's already mid-April and Dylan only has a few weeks left of work. And we have a wedding and a couple smaller trips we want to do before we leave for good. Geez. Panic. Have I mentioned that I really, really hate packing?

Year and a Half

So. It's been about a year and a half since I last posted. Huh.

Let's see. In that year and a half, I've:

-Gotten my crazy, loving, hyper, cuddly lil' buddy, Euclid (aka Yuki).

-Travelled to Hiroshima with my lovely friends.

     -Gone to Kyoto with Em.

 





 -Gone on a trip to Hokkaido with Hubby for the snow festival.

























-Committed to, planned, and traveled around South East Asia.

 

 -Had my darling daddy-in-law visit us in Japan.

 -Gotten myself knocked up.











-Spent five months in Canada with my fantastically wonderful family and friends.

-And had the most perfectest baby girl.

Life's pretty amazing.

Turns out I still suck at updating.

I think we may be sharing the annex with a stray cat. It's hard to say though. Maybe leprechauns are eating bowls of left over fat. Or maybe it's a neighbourhood bands of rats with a taste for raw dough. Who knows.

I'm so far behind, that I haven't even gotten to my birthday yet. Which means that I haven't even talked about the awesomely amazingly perfect present I got from my loving husband. Although, if you are reading my blog you probably already know about that since you hopefully know me and it's all I talk about these days.

Ok, where did I leave off? Nagasaki. Ok. So, we got to Nagasaki and dropped our bags off at our hostel before heading out in search of a bakery that Dylan had been to the last time he was in the city. It was sadly closed, so we stopped at this small restaurant that had delicious coffee. I'm sure the food was lovely too, but I was sleepy. Happily fed and caffeinated, we headed off to the Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park. I really don't know what to say about that. It was depressing and amazing and horrifying and beautiful and gah. It did everything that a place like that should and it did it very well. I don't have any pictures since a lot of the museum was people's belongings from their day-to-day life that had been saved and treasured for this long and it seemed kinda disrespectful to reduce that to a souvenir from my summer vacation.

It's hard to go straight from that to something else, so we headed back to the hostel to actually check in and relax for a bit. After we went to check out some shrines and a fancy-looking bridge (that's kinda popular since it and it's reflection together look like a pair of glasses). It was still kinda early, so we slowly wandered back to the area of the hostel and stopped for dinner on the waterfront. Dinner was actually one of my favourite parts of our time there. We ate on the patio of a restaurant on the wharf and every table was full at our restaurant and all the surrounding restaurants, people where laughing and drinking, there was music playing in the distance, boats where coming and going. Exactly how you would imagine any summer evening in any port city. It had such a different feel from our afternoon and I found it very hopeful.

Not really relevant to anything. But I thought it looked cool and it was in Nagasaki.

 

The next morning meant another bus as we headed off to Kagoshima. First thing was first - we did some laundry at the hostel. Did nothing for a while. I think Dylan napped a bit. Probably found some food to shove in our face-holes. Then we hopped on a train and went to a bath house that specializes in sand baths. Sounds weird, but it was actually pretty amazing. Basically, we were given a full-length light bathrobe, sent out to the beach where we lied down and staff members buried us except for our heads. I think most people stay for about 10-15 min since the sand is freakin' hot. We stayed about 15-20 and were happy to get out. We got there after sun set (since it was a long train ride to get there), so it wasn't that hot out anymore. I'd imagine it would be significantly more unpleasant during the day since I doubt their tarp-tent-thingy does much other than make it so that you aren't staring directly at the sun. Then we rinsed off (both the terribly invasive sand and the buckets of sweat) and went to the indoor bath room. Another benefit of going at night - it is much less crowded and I only had to worry about being naked in front of our friend as opposed to our friend and a bunch of strangers. Finished up and caught the train back into the city. Had dinner at this amazing Indian restaurant. The worst thing about traveling is that the best restaurant are always so far away!

Fun side note: Kagoshima is near an active volcano that had been acting up a bit around the time we were there. So the entire city was covered in ash - to the point where there were designated areas on the side of the road for people to put the bags of ash that they had collected from around their houses. There were a lot of designated areas and a lot of bags.

I'm done talking now. I'll finish up soon. Maybe. Hopefully.

Excuses

     I actually have a good excuse for not updating lately. I was on vacation! Dylan, a friend of ours and I all went on a week-long trip down to Kyushu and Yakushima Island last week. It was amazing.

Wanna hear about it? I sure hope so!

     After school was over on the Thursday, Dylan and I hopped into the car and picked up friend. Dropped her off at the train station so she could get to Tokyo quickly to see some of her friends, then we drove to long, slow, toll-free way to Tokyo (if you take all the toll roads, it's about $40-50 to drive from here to Narita, not including gas). Then my adrenaline system got a work out when we navigated our way through Tokyo to pick her up. Oh goodness, that it one busy city with people who are all wanting to go somewhere and not thrilled to be stuck around the guy who is slowly trying to figure out where the heck he is. Stayed fairly panicked as we tried to find our way out of Tokyo. Finally, we found somewhere to stop the car to rest for a while. We had a wildly non-relaxing 3 hour sleep in the car, underneath some train tracks. It looked a lot like we just stopped in the middle of a road, but Dylan swears it wasn't and that in Japan they just pave underneath bridges. We then headed to the car parking place for 4 am before taking a shuttle bus and doing that whole airport/flying thing. Honestly, life was kinda a blur at that point. I was pretty tired.

     Anyways, landed in Fukuoka and was half-dragged from the airport into the city, where we stored our bags in a locker at the train station and promptly bought some food and a cup of coffee for me (i.e. this is where I start remembering what the heck was going on). Then, we hopped on a train to Dazifu where we went to the amazing Kyushu National Museum. It was just chalked full of really impressive things from Kyushu going back as far as 1st Century B.C. and it gave a really cool look at the influence that contact with other cultures had on the tools and artwork. We learn so much about trade between Europe and North America in school, but I really didn't now anything about trade between Asian countries or Asia and Europe and the ways that that has shaped the world. I was way too tired to fully appreciate it. After that, we headed over to a huge Zen shrine that is famous for it's stone gardens, apparently. It was beautiful and we fed some ducks. Finished up there and headed back to downtown Fukuoka, where we picked up our bags and checked into a hostel for the night (and resisted the urge to plop down on the bed and never move again). Then got on yet another train and went to have dinner with Dylan's old host mom! It was lovely, but I didn't talk a lot. Mainly because she doesn't speak English and I don't speak Japanese. But it was nice just in that the last time we saw her was when everything was falling apart and we were about to leave Japan with no money. And now Dylan has a great steady job, obviously our visas are in order and we're making it work for us this time around. After dinner, we caught the last train back into the city and slept. Finally.

Dazaifu Shrine

Doesn't he look so happy?

     The next day, we did a bunch of tourist-type things. We had breakfast at a cafe, did a bit of shopping. Oh, had some freakin' delicious tonkotsu ramen for lunch (where the broth is made from pork bone and very popular in Kyushu, instead of broth made from soy sauce which is much more popular almost everywhere else). We toured around a bunch of shrine and temples (including what is believed to be the first Zen temple in Japan), went to a tea house. And we past by this tourist-type place where there was a women weaving and you were allowed to try it out, so of course Dylan gave it a try and was adorably excited. We were going to have dinner at the street stalls that Fukuoka is famous for, but after wandering around for a long time and not finding any (we guess they weren't there either because it wasn't really tourist season anymore or because it was raining), we gave up and had dinner at some neighbourhood restaurant.

Zen Temple, completed in 1195

      We woke up early the next morning and headed off to Nagasaki. But this is already really long, so I'll continue later. I'm thinking that I'm gonna manage to break 8 days into 3 different posts, because I'm magical like that.

Uh-huh.

Life's been busy, blah blah blah, crazy amounts of students, blah blah blag. Other excuses as to why I haven't really been around lately.

Finished up the book I've been reading. Apparently it's a bad idea to stay up late finishing a crazy depressing book where tons of people are sick or dying. I love me my sad books, but they always put me in a weird head space for a few days.

Story time. Preamble: life's pretty good for Dylan and I. Our expenses are low (especially since, seriously, we've hardly had time to go anywhere, so spending money hasn't really been a thing) and Dylan has a regular pay cheque. So anyways, Dylan went crazy last week and splurged on some meat (I know, we're crazy people!). Not because it was ridiculously cheap, and was therefore going to plan everything we ate around it, or because he needed it for some specific reason. He just saw it and thought that he'd buy it and it'd get used whenever. Yah, we've been that couple that was so poor they lived off rice and whatever vegetables were cheapest. Which means that I am very familiar with opening the fridge and finding the moldy end bit of whatever vegetable. But that I have never opened the fridge to the smell of rotting meat. Turns out that you gotta eat that meat stuff pretty quick! Kinda gross, so we tossed it. Sweet mother, the smell that was coming from the garbage the next day. How is it possible for something to smell that bad? There wasn't even that much of it. That smell alone makes a pretty good argument for becoming a vegetarian.

Yah, that was the main point of me writing this post. To say that rotting meat smells bad. Had a picnic for Em last week because she is an old lady now! It was fun. Took yesterday off from going to the schools for meals and lounged around the annex. I got really excited because Dylan bought more laundry detergent so our clothes can be clean again.

I'll be more exciting next time.

Hello Internets.

I'm still with ya. The school has been really busy the last three weeks, with a high school group every weekend plus the regular students throughout the week. Hence my lack in presence.

To start with a bit of a personal-life thing (as opposed to happy-fun-time adventure things), I sometimes have really vivid dreams about my dad and family. I had a lot of them last year once I got back to Ottawa. I haven't had one in a while, but I had one last week. Sometimes they are really depressing, but they can sometime be happier. Those are almost worse though, since I wake up and kinda get smacked in the face with reality. Because they feel ridiculously real at the time. I rarely remember my dreams, but these stick with me. I don't really talk about them too much, partially since it's weird for something like that to affect me and partially since they just feel so personal. But I guess this past year has been a good lesson that it doesn't matter whether you want to or not, your body will find a way to deal with those darn feelings and shtuff.

Anyways. Japan.

Despite the fact that we've been busy 'round here, Dylan has taken a couple days off. Last weekend, it was our five year anniversary (craziness!), so Hubby took the afternoon off after the high schoolers had left. We went into a nearby town and stopped by the zoo before they close. They had penguins! And giraffes! And soft-shelled turtles, and turtles that looked like dinosaurs! And some other stuff! And penguins! That would have been a good enough celebration for me to be honest. But afterwards, we headed off a park, walked around for a while and did some sittin' and readin'. Then we were going to go to a fancy-ish restaurant, but didn't have anywhere in mind. So, we spotted a place that looked pretty good while driving. Yah, turns out it looked pretty nice especially on the outside, but was about family restaurant level of food. I thought it was fitting/funny, since we're not the fanciest of couples. But Hubby was a bit disappointed. He forgot about that pretty quickly though, since we moved on to a fireworks show that was downtown that night. It was sorta a competition, in that different companies sponsored chunks of the show - so it was a very long show. As in, it lasted two hours. They boast having about 15,000 fireworks. All in all, a good day.

He also took another day off later in the week, so we decided to try and go to a cat cafe. Despite what inappropriate things you might be assuming, a cat cafe is just a normal cafe but with a lot of cats. You pay to be there for a chunk of time, and a drink is included. From what I've gathered, it is mainly aimed to people who can't have pets of their own. I think this cafe had about 15-20 cats and could sit maybe a dozen people comfortably. It was fun, except that I was suddenly reminded that I'm allergic to cats not long after walking in. Oh well. Worth it. We were going to go to a soccer game in the evening and had a bit of time to waste, so we went to yet another park to read. Only difference this time was the ten or so mosquito bites I got. Then we went to the game where Dylan was desperate to see a goal. The game ended 0-0. It was the second live game he has gone to and the second one that has ended 0-0.


Ok, those are the highlights for now. Byeeee!

I miss the rain.

Raining season here in this here part of good ol' Japan is officially over. It got hot - really hot (right now it's about 31-33 degrees outside). I wasn't ready! So I've been spending most of my time sweating and try to hid away inside.

But! Last week Dylan and I did venture out to Yokohama. Dylan's friend had to go there for a test, so we tagged along and made a day trip out of it. It's a neat little town (by little, I mean it is the second largest city in Japan). A bit off unsettling though, since there were a lot of foreigners, especially because we were in a more tourist part of the city. Seeing other foreigners reminds me how much I must stick out and then I get all self-conscious. Anyway, we got there and went to Chinatown - which is huge. It reminded me a lot of Canada and just made Dylan really want to cook. Then it was time for our friend to go write her test, so Dylan and I found a nice park and settled in to read and relax for a while. After that, we headed... somewhere... I don't know, I just followed them... and went to a few pubs/breweries and did us some shopping at this adorable market-type place. Had some pretty fantastic Mexican food for diner (the international food scene in our neck of the woods is very limited). Wondered around for a while longer. Then headed home. All in all, a fun day if you look past the fact that I was exhausted, got a moderate sunburn, got some blisters on my feet, and may or may not have gotten some really mild heatstroke because it was so very very very hot out.

Oh, side note. A couple days later, we went to a night market for a bit and grabbed a couple beers at a pub after where we ended up watching a women's doubles tennis match. Which gave me the brilliant idea that we should play tennis the next day since the school has a court, despite the mind-melting heat (have I mentioned that it's hot here?). That stroke of genius resulted in Dylan re-injuring his back, Em definitely getting heatstroke and my moderate sunburn becoming a bad sunburn. Nobody should ever take my suggestions ever.

To have a happy ending, the rainy season being over does mean that the clouds that have been hiding Mt. Fuji have lessened considerably and we have gotten a few gorgeous clear looks at it in the last few weeks.  
 

Visa!

So, the school has been a bit slower lately. It's been a nice lull before, I've been told, everything picks up like crazy in July and August. It's meant that my darling deary and friends have had a bit more free time to show me things and hang out. Even though my darling deary has decided to pick pretty much every piece of fruit on the surrounding towns and preserve them in a multitude of ways. It's a good thing the annex has a industrial kitchen, because he has well over twenty pounds of two different kinda of fruit. He's lucky he's so cute.

But the school is definitely gearing up for the busy season. My buddy got here last week (I'm ridiculously proud of myself because I drove most of the way to the train station to pick him up by myself without getting lost ... I may have brought three sets of directions with me). So many friends! And another teacher who used to work here before will be here for the month of August. But he'll be living in the annex with us while he's here, so I'm a bit nervous about that. I don't like sharing my space with people I don't really know. I've been assured he is a nice guy and I'm sure it'll be fine, I just worry too much.

Oh, I went down to immigration to have my visa changed. I now have a year-long dependents visa, so that's a relief to have everything all happy and in order.  And the immigration office is at least an hour and a half away, so we made a day trip of it and adventured our way around for a bit (partially in search of somewhere that sold a plant that Dylan needs for his preserving). Nothing terribly thrilling, but it made for a good day.

Yesh. That is all for now.

I would love to tell you all of exciting stories of adventure and wonder. But the school has been pretty busy lately, so little time for play. Dylan is on day 9 or so of work. But we've been going climbing pretty often. And yesterday we went out for fried rice, then to a bar-type place thingy because some guy that Dylan's friend knows was DJ-ing. I'm having fun, it's just a little bit more of a subdued fun than the first couple weeks. But I'm an old lady, so that's right up my alley!

I took the day off from life today. I didn't go have meals with students, I didn't see anyone other than Dylan. Heck, I didn't even go outside. It made the day easier to handle. I just need to manage to try and not go on the computer too much tomorrow, to avoid being too bummed out. Stupid internet.
Although I feel that I am not as opposed to being sad as most people are. I don't feel taking a day to be sad about sad things is necessarily a bad thing. I'm generally more inclined to avoid all those feeling type things, so I try and remind myself that it's ok (kinda of like how I have to remind myself that telling people I like/love them is good, not a sign of weakness). Because my default plan of letting everything build up and build up until I have a sobbing melt down doesn't seem like a great idea.

Anyway, happy Father's Day, Daddy. I love you and I miss you.

Oh right.

Ok, so that feelings thing didn't work out terribly well. So much so that I stopped writing here at all. I am trying to work on it on a more face-to-face, person-to-person level though. But if I'm still so bad at it that you've missed it, rest assured, if you read this blog it is almost certain that I think you are amazing. Baby steps. But it has slapped me across the face how important it is to make sure that the people you love know it. I'm working on not taking those things for granted.

Enough of that.

So, I'm in Japan.

I did my year of Criminology. It was crazy fun to be back in school. Because I'm a nerd like that. The worst part was actually having to be around hoards of 18 year olds who didn't have the same passion for school that I do. Chances are that you've heard my rants about little kiddies talking to each other through class, ignoring the lecture that was taking place in front of them, or people who go to discussion group without having done any readings or having gone to class and sit there not saying a word the whole time. But now I'm less sure than ever about what I actually want to do as a career. I want to learn more about every subject I took, so it anti-narrowed my focus.

But, Dylan being in Japan and me being in Ottawa wasn't that much fun. So, as much as I absolutely loved Ottawa, I caved. I left behind my lovely friends, new and old, and packed up my life yet again. I haven't given up on school, but I figure that it will be much easier to have a long distance relationship with my university than with my husband. We live on the school grounds of the private English immersion school where Dylan works, outside of a small-ish city. I've been told that it's 13km from the school to the top of Mt Fuji, so I have a pretty nice view from outside my front door (I'll try and get a picture for next time). Every week there are new students, meaning that there is always something going on. It's a bit of a drive into town, but it means I get to learn how to drive on the other side of the road! Japanese streets are terrifyingly narrow! I've been joining Dylan at the climbing gym. Meeting all the friends Dylan has been making. I'm happy or at least getting pretty close to it.

Oh, and my sister got married!! I made a pit stop in Victoria after leaving Ottawa, before coming here to be her maid of honour and watch her marry her other half. I'm still amazed at how good she looked. I was there the whole time she was getting ready, so I shouldn't have been that surprised. But she looked perfect. And they were both adorably happy. I'm still not sure I understand it, but marriage can be beautiful when done right.

Here goes.

Ok, so maybe we'll start off slow? Sure, why not. I hired a realtor. Well, I hired him over a week ago, but today we settled on a listing price and are going to get the paperwork started.

I still can't believe I'm selling my parents' house. Heck, I can't believe on how many levels I can't believe I'm selling their house. So many people have worked so hard over the last six months and I am eternally grateful for all the support I've gotten and my family has gotten. But it's unlikely that I will even walk into my parents' house again. It's unlikely that I will ever see firsthand all the renovations that have been done. And I'm just jumping from the world of not knowing anything about hiring and arranging people to do work on the house to the world of not knowing anything about real estate. This house has only ever belonged to our family. It was built for us. Only five people have ever lived in it. I grew up there. Everything, the good and the bad, that was my family was that house. And I'm the one who is changing that. It's what (almost) everyone wants, but it is going to be my name on that paper. I know no matter what we'd need to sell it eventually, and now makes sense if only so that we go from two overwhelmingly large stressful things in our lives to one. But it still breaks my heart.

 Got the nice new apartment. Finished registering for classes for September. Yah.

Yah.

It's been six months as of yesterday. It both feels like more and less time should have passed. I've been debating using this as somewhere to unload all those annoying feeling things. But that seems like it be a pretty big downer and a radical shift from using this to update everyone on my fun outings. I don't know. I rant and rave at people, but I don't typically talk about being sad. Maybe I should? Maybe I'll wait a week or so until I'm feeling better? I got accepted into Carleton. Talking to Paul reminded me that I'm not always the best at telling people my plans big picture. So, as of September, I'll be doing a year full time in Criminology and then hopefully switching the year after into Social Work. They're also giving me a bit of money to do all this, so that's cool. At the very least it makes me feel somewhat smart and like all the work I put into my first degree is being recognized a little bit. Yah. Rugby is ongoing. I'm slowly going from really really sucking to just really sucking. I'm getting into somewhat better shape. Having fun getting jarred around every week. I haven't been doing much else. Between work and rugby and trying to help out as much as I can with stuff back home from here, there isn't really time. Umm, I went out for brunch on Sunday. That was ok. Yah.

Hey there. Sorry it's been so long. Life has been... hard lately. (Read: spectacularly crappy.) And, for reasons that may be completely ridiculous, writing anything on here has been a really hard thing to get back into. I don't really have much to say. The whole point of this is pretty much to jump over the hurdle of getting it done. Accepting things as they are and all that jazz. Think happy thoughts in my direction.

Apparently I only keep you up to date right before I see you.

Hanging out at the airport. I may or may not have gotten here freakishly early. But my flight starts boarding in 15 mins, so it's not too bad.

Oh, and apparently wearing boots with giant metal buckles was not my best move. Sigh. But I did get to go through the body scanner!

In unrelated news, Tim Thomas is an idiot who likes to alienate 90% of his team. Maybe someone should have pointed out that it wasn't a good move to talk about the evils of foreigners talking American jobs when you play on a professional hockey team where you are one of three Americans on said team. Oops.

Yah.

So, I'm fairly bored.

That means: blog times!!

Yah.

Sorry that that is apparently all you mean to me. I love you anyway.

Last night was hanging out with coworkers time. Or, as I like to think of it, 'Cool, I have a life! Kinda. At least for today. Yah.' So after work, one of the girls came over to watch me eat (...not because she lives far away and needed somewhere to hangout). Oh, but first I went to the store and napped (because having a life is hard work). Anyways, after she was done admiring my culinary skills, we went down to the pub-type place conveniently located right beside work and met up with other work folk. Then headed off to shake what our mommas gave us.

The club had an adorable stamp. See?

Anyways, we danced lots. Had a regular show up that we invited 'cause we're like that. He was pretty adorable with his super awkward dancing.

Clair and I had sushi today. It was delicious.

And Tuesday I hop a plane to go and see some lovely people. See ya soon!

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.