cheers to canada day

On Dec 22, 1997 I drank a bottle of wine with Liz (a roommate, later a floor RA and a friend) - this was my last day at UNBC. It is also the last time I drank red wine, until tonight... I cracked open a bottle of Australian Banrock and since I had no wine glasses- yes it's been that long since we drank wine in our home - I put it in this sad coke glass...



So cheers to everyone - happy Canada Day!

a sad, sad update - good lord that is TERRIBLE wine - GOD - how can this be? how? how? - I can't even drowned my tears... why can't I be a beer drinker - there are four in the fridge right now... but I have no interest... I guess I'll go have some water... very very very sad - well the label was definitely right - smokie, oak, a little bit of berries - I guess that's why they don't right that it is good wine on the label... damnit...
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it is now 1:03am... it is 79 degrees (about 27 celsius) in my house - I can't sleep - it's 12 degrees cooler outside than it is in the house... I'm soooo tired, but I can't get my eyes stay shut long enough... it is a couple of degrees cooler in the living room so I'm out here hoping to get some sleep - if there was just a little breeze from outside.... a little one...

puppies

So there are three cute little puppies left. Four of the seven found homes this weekend. (http://nazkopuppies.blogspot.com)
Pretty uneventful weekend - Michael started getting sick as soon as the weekend started and is still trying to get over it. His nose is running out of control and he has the red burns on his nose from all the damned tissue paper. I'm over heated tonight - and very pissed about my camera...



See this picture - aahhhh - cute boys- I showed it last weekend - see that black bag in the photo - that's the bag - that's the bag that is missing - and I could just pull my hair out over losing my stuff.... !!!!!!!! Tonight I actually reopened the tent trailer (alone) and pulled it apart trying to find some hint of the camera... how can this be? How! Is it a sign? Is it time to get a new camera? it makes me sad - I loved my camera - literally - loved it - I'm going to go grab a cooler and put it on some ice and start designing a new website...

another carmen boredom buster

Hit forward and place an X by all the things you've done and remove the X from the ones you have not. Answer the 30 questions at the end and send it to your friends (including me). The questions refer to your entire life .

( ) Gone on a blind date
(X) Skipped school
( ) Watched someone die
(X) Been to The United States
( ) Been to Mexico
( ) Been to Florida
(X) Been on a plane
(X) Been lost
( ) Been on the opposite side of the country
(X) Swam in the ocean
(X)Cried yourself to sleep
(X) Played cops and robbers
(X) Recently colored with crayons
( ) Sang Karaoke
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't?
(X) Made prank phone calls
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Danced in the rain
(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus
( ) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(X) Watched the sunrise with someone you care about
(X) Blown bubbles
(X) Gone ice-skating
(X) Been skinny dipping outdoors
(X) Gone to the movies
1. Any nickname? Ape, Ape of the Jungle
2. Mother's name? Kathy
3. Favorite drink? water
4. Tattoo?? 1
5 . Body piercings? Ears
6. How much do you love your job? What isn't there to love... ha
7. Birthplace. Q-town baby
8. Favorite vacation spot? Vancouver Island
9. Ever been to Africa ??? No
10. Ever eaten cookies for dinner? No
11. Ever been on TV? Yes
12. Ever steal any traffic sign?? Traffic sign (singular... no) - traffic signs... well - ok
13. Ever been in a car accident?? No
14. Drive a 2-door or 4-door vehicle? Both
15. Favorite salad dressing : Homemade
16. Favorite pie? Blueberry (Cariboo blueberries)
17 Favorite number?? 8 hundred million
18. Favorite movie? One - that's tough - there isn't just one...
19. Favorite holiday ? my birthday - let's everyone take it off this year and call it the new holiday
20. Favorite dessert? Q-town bakery - Black Forest Cake - I can't really eat it anymore - but it is definitely my fav
22. Favorite day of the week. - Monday -
23. Favorite brand of body wash? Olay
24. Favorite toothpaste?? Colgate with the little pieces of Maxfresh in it - I like the same as Carmen - who knew
25. Favorite smell?? Vanilla - I like vanilla too...
26. What do you do to relax: - well working out actually works - but I hate to admit that I enjoy it...
27. How do you see yourself in 10 years? A millionaire
29. Furthest place you will send this message? Well if you are outside of Q-town and reading it - it went pretty far then...
30. Who will respond to this the fastest? No one - Carmen already did it - so that's that...

And yes, I worked out - and feel better - not as hostel and angry - still hate my neighbours though.

anger just doesn't even come close

I'm trying to figure out if I've lost my mind or if there are really that many assholes in Q-town. I think I've mentioned that we won this great bag of camera gear and camera at an auction. I've been using the new lens a fair bit on my old camera as the other one is too big for me. I took it camping with us and took my first picture and the shutter stopped working. I reloaded film and it wouldn't load. I put it back in the car with the new lens on and the macro lens between the seats and didn't really think about it again. A couple of days ago I started looking for it because I couldn't remember where it had gone after camping. Nothing. Now we've noticed that a bag is also missing from the car. So what I'm hoping is that somehow it is lost in the house - we unloaded it and it has just gone to a different part of the house.... or worst case that someone took it out of the car and put it all in the backpack as they left. I'm pissed. I'm pissed that I've lost it and getting madder thinking that someone stole it out of our car - WHAT THE FRICK!

So I needed to put my anger somewhere - now I have off loaded - not feeling a lot better - but at least it is out - somewhere... I've been trying to think back to the last second I say it and I remember grabbing it to take a picture of a golden bear on the way home but didn't stop in time - that was about 13 km from Quesnel. That's the last time I can think of seeing it... here's to positive thinking and finding it in the house...

Wanna hear a few more reasons why I'm hating my neigbourhood right now - a couple of nights ago the neighbours behind us set off fire works at 1am - WHAT - then Michael started throwing up at 4:30am - then we went and watched cartoons and the neighbours beside me decided to come outside and beat each other up with 2x4's - I'm not kidding - I watched them - I hoped they hurt each other so I could get some sleep.... I hate my neighbours! They are fighting right now - I can hear them through the wall - what is wrong with these people - your selling drugs - why don't you take some and just pass out for the night so we don't have to hear your crap all over again. Oh right - that might impact profits... right - better to just yell at people on our street and all the other people that visit you.

Books

A little boredom killer from Carmen's blog...

“The Big Read" reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

1) Look at the list and bold (or color if your bold isn't working) those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (large sections of it, but not from cover to cover)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple, Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

18 out of 100... well better than six... I'm surprised by the list though - there are a lot of books on here that I wouldn't have thought would make a top 100 - Bridget Jones was a funny book - but it shouldn't even be on the same list as shakespeare...

Ok - so let's mix things up - what books do I think people should read... my pics - if you are copying and pasting this to your blog than add your own list for best reads that didn't make this list...

1. 100 Mile Diet - MacKinnon -Smith
2. The Secret - Byrne
3. The Green Mile - King
4. Timothy Findley books - any of them
5. The Griffin and Sabine series
6. The Pillars of the Earth - Follett
7. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - King
8. The Poisonwood Bible (well it was mostly good) - Kingsolver


Planning to read

1. A new earth - Tolle
2. Stash of smut :)

today

Alright - so me, the political junkie, got my fill again today. We had a special event happening in Q-town today - the opening of our Spirit Square - first one in BC completed. And so the Premier joined us to open the square. He did a great speech, followed by other good speeches by our local dignitaries and committees and then he made his way to our volunteer cake cutting station. He came over, cut the cake, and thanked me and another volunteer for our time. I did manage to get a close up...



Needless to say I was pretty pleased to get to shake hands. I know - I'm an oddity, but I just truly respect our politicians for the work they do. It isn't fabulous pay - but some get pretty good pay for what they actually do - they never get to take off their political hat - they are always a councillor, mayor, premier, minister... they don't get down time, people always complain to them, it must be rough every day and also a rewarding experience to represent a community. Alright - so there you go. Happy days in my life :)

A little bit of camping

On Friday we took our tent trailer out for its first test drive... I found out that I can't back up the way I thought I could with a tent trailer, but did drive it a fair bit and learned a lot about pulling a trailer... hooray for learning something new. We arrived in the evening and were welcomed by a swarm of mosquitoes - it was brutal - it made me want to cry and I'm not a crier.

We set up camp, ate a few bugs and made dinner.

Can I please have some bugs with my soup? No problem!

It was the longest day of the year so the boys stayed up late and then Andy and I stayed up even later and watched pelicans land and take off in front of our campsite. It was amazing to watch and listen to. When they landed (about 50) it sounded like thunder clapping. We then went into our tent trailer and slept with the swarm - I couldn't sleep - I was freezing - listen to me complain - I was the one that really wanted to go - lord it was COLD - C-O-L-D cold! At 1:40am I asked for another blanket... we got up early around 6am and hung out with the bugs... we'd decided we'd be going home early as the bugs were a little bit too much - we did managed to get through breakfast and lunch and then went home in the early afternoon.


A photo by Michael - he is pretty camera happy; I don't know where he gets that from...


Looking at worms on the log. A nice guy from Mill Bay was camping across from us and gave us his worms for fishing - we managed to catch one - hooray!


Kyle - letting his feet dry - he'd tromped in the water most of the morning and had complete prune feet. They had a great time being explorers and running around the campsite.


Hey Kyle, do you think we should tell mom and dad that we are staying?

more puppy pictures

Ok I don't think these puppies could be any cuter. I've loaded up photos of each of the puppies on my parents blog - in case anyone is looking for a puppy - or would simply like to look at puppy photos 'cause they're so gosh darn cute. :)

What else is new? Not much, pretty quiet around here. The weather has been blah and so we haven't even had a chance to test drive our new tent trailer - with any luck we'll get out there this weekend. The garden is doing well - everything has come up - some of it is doing better than other parts... I'll share some new photos later this week - for now here are a couple from a few days ago...


A pretty pink daisy


Sui choy... first time growing this - kind of looks like radishes at first....

the love guru

I love Mike Myers but when I saw a clip for the Love Guru a while ago I was a little less than impressed.... I was browsing through trailers tonight and came across full clips for the movie and now I'm hooked - Mike Myers is the funniest man on the planet - how could I doubt... check out the love guru.

puppy blog

So my parents (as I've mentioned before) have seven little puppies and now they are for sale... they can leave their mom at the end of the month. I've put together a blog for them and thought I'd share it with you guys... Nazko Puppies

survey says...

Here's a little something Carmen challenged me to complete... Mel, I challenge you to complete it and anyone else out there in the little old blog land. (one word answers only to all the questions...)

1. Where is your cell phone? Pocket
2. Your significant other? Andy
3. Your hair? Flat
4. Your mother? Loving
5. Your father? Loving
6. Your favorite thing? stars
7. Your dream last night? sexy
8. Your favorite drink? water
9. Your dream/goal? $850K
10. The room you're in? living
11. Your hobby? lots
12. Your fear? few
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? unknown
14. Where were you last night? 7-11
15. What you're not? smelly
16. Muffins? banana-nut
17. One of your wish list items? gardening
18. Where you grew up? BC
19. The last thing you did? movie
20. What are you wearing? socks
21. Your TV? on
22. Your pets? cats
23. Your computer? mac
24. Your life? woohoo
25. Your mood? yippee
27. Your car? crv
28. Something you're not wearing? parachute
29. Favorite store? chapters
30. Your summer? short
31. Like someone? love
32. Your favorite color? blue
33. When is the last time you laughed? Today
34. Last time you cried? today
35. Who will do this? hmmmm

a ticket to ride

A couple of days ago a hornet landed on my passenger side mirror. He stayed on the car for a tour of Quesnel. I'm not kidding. He rode with me from work to home and home to work and work to home and home to 7-11 to get a yummy slurpee and as I pulled into slurpee land he tried a different way to sit on the mirror and bit it - I actually stopped to see if he was ok. I mean really, that's a long fall for a hornet.

The garden is doing great. I'm shocked at the growth. The gailan, sui choy, and beets are up. The beans haven't made an appearance yet, but I think they'll be up soon. We are waiting on carrots and swiss chard -- mmmm - swiss chard - oh yummy yummy! We also put in a little fence (1 footer) beside the raspberries to make it look 'purdy' and planted some other plants - lily of the valley and some other pretty red one... seriously I don't know what it is called or how big it will get... it just looked nice but the label said nothing about what it might actually do... one line of instructions repeated in 10 languages and that was it.

Tonight I was attacked by mosquitoes - I was bit 4 times on my back, twice on my hands and once on my wrist.... ARG! Damned itchy mosquitoes! So watering was quick tonight. The guys were covered up and didn't have any bites... lucky guys. And speaking of the guys - Kyle is still terrified of getting stuff in his ears. I tried again tonight to clean his ears and got the screaming yelling version of my five year old. I told him I wouldn't clean them and he says ok - you can tomorrow and I say "no thanks" and he has a melt down... a complete and total melt down. Good times, good times :)