(no subject)
lots to update on and i'm not even feeling all that enthusiastic about writing the update....even though i'm at work and i'm always looking for an excuse to procrastinate. i had a horrible sleep last night because i had continuous dreams about the world ending, or vancouver going up in flames, or something along those lines. we were told we had to pack a bag with all of our favourite things because we weren't allowed to come back to our homes. we also got told to pick a travel buddy so we were never left alone....and out of all of the people i could pick i picked danny. totally and completely weird. i pick the wimpiest person i know! so, that, combined with trying to sleep in a new home completely threw me off.
this weekend was a long weekend for me. it started on friday. i woke up early and me and my mom were straight into the swing of things getting boxes moved and some unpacked and taken to the apartment so we could re-use them for more things. the entire day was spent on my feet and i was racing arond like a mad-woman because not only did i have to try to move a ton of stuff from the house. i also had to have my entire basement completely cleared out for first thing saturday morning. i was basically running up and down the stairs and piling things wherever i could fit them in the living room. i then had to jump in the shower and try to pretty myself up a little to meet megan and judy downtown for dinner and a drink, then zip off to my brother's grad class presentation at an art gallery. i'm glad we went to that because it was really neat to see his classmate's photography, as well as my brother's. we also got to meet a (very hot and super tall) olympic swimmer named Brent Hayden:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1179/853420053_7fea5071d8.jpg?v=0
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/images/attachement/jpg/site1/20090615/0022190dec450ba051f40b.jpg
He posed for one of my brother's classmate's project and he came to support her and after an embarrassing display by my mom, me and megan stood and chatted briefly to him about swimming. i would have happily hung out and chat with him some more but it was a little awkward with my mom there. but dear lord he was hot! if you are into the shaved head thing. Mmmm. I love me some swimmer body men. Anyway, totally got off topic there. Afterwards we went home and continued to move crap around and eventually went to sleep on the couch since my bed was now leaning against a wall.
(sorry i'm not doing these behind cuts...i have no idea how to! hehe)
Saturday morning I woke up bright and early to head down to dragon boating. As usual we were there way too early but so were a few others. My team's first race was at 9:10 so I got us out on to the water and through our warm up and to the starting line with minimal issues. But....come race time I totally screwed it up. Without going into too many details I basically had our boat crossing the other lanes and going in the wrong direction. Totally and completely embarrassing. But when I got us back on track we went in a perfect straight line. Obviously we were dead last because of this. The coach gave me some tips on what went wrong and what to do in the situation. So come our next race I had us perfectly lined up, then 3/4 of the race i had us going in a perfect straight line. then my sweep hit a drift (or something) and suddenly our boat was being pushed right. i yelled out to "hold the boat" (means stop) and i got us back on track. but at this stage i was so flustered by it that i crossed us through the finish line in the wrong lane. again, embarrassing. once on shore the coach pulled me aside and said he could see it all over my face that i was pretty disappointed, but he said that we'll keep practicing and that he would have me steer any boat of his in the future, he was that confident i have it in me to be a good steersperson. all his tips were constructive and ones i will practice. the team was really supportive as well and weren't upset that i had screwed things up. a lot of them said that they would never ever try steering because it is so hard and that they respect the fact that i want to do it. so for our third race i let the coach steer the boat and i paddled. i wanted the team to have at least one complete race. we did really well in that race too! afterwards i got asked to do a race with the more competitive Concord Pacific team that we are linked with. they practice two times a week (as opposed to our one) and start quite a bit earlier than us in the season. so they were faaaaaaaaaast. thankfully i could keep up with their stroke rate. it felt like we were flying through the water. so that was a nice way to top off the day. we had a team bbq afterwards where i gorged on hot dogs and fudgee-os or however the heck you spell it. then went to my parent's to watch the hockey game and gorge some more on dinner.
then came moving day. *sigh* i'm just glad it's over and done with. what a day. started early in the morning with loading up cars that we had available to us with smaller things. then i went and picked up the uhaul truck i rented. once i got it to the house matt and ben were incredibly speedy loading the heavy items up into it. while they did that me, megan and mom moved smaller things in the cars. we had the truck over at the new place by noon i think it was. auntie rae showed up and her and mom got busy unpacking things inside while me, megan, matt and ben took care of unloading crap. after that auntie rae was kind enough to make us some lunch so we all took a 20 minute breather and ate. once we ate me, matt and ben went back to the old house to grab the bbq to take to minna's, and then drop off the truck. this took forever because traffic was super heavy and then the uhaul place was packed with people. i was mentally and physically exhausted at this point. my feet were screaming out at me to get off them and my brain just wanted to go to sleep. but there was still more to do. at first jodie told us if we had to leave a few things until later that it was no big deal. we assured her we would take care of the salvation army stuff when the store was open again as well. but when my mom went over there to do a quick one last vacuum for us jodie apparently was really snarky with her telling her we need to get everything out of the house as technically it should have been all gone on the saturday and blah blah blah. my mom didn't take her shit and basically put her in her place. but it still involved megan going over there and moving some things around to a level jodie was satisfied with. what really pissed me off about that is we left heaps of things for jodie for FREE because we didn't want to put the effort into selling them, or we replaced with nicer things. so she got a pretty sweet deal out of her move and here she is being completely inflexible about the few things that were left there to be picked up later? seriously? what a little fucker is basically my only thought. thank god for my mom staying and helping megan get things out of there. now all we need to do is get my bike out and aslan and then we are pretty much all clear of jodie forever potentially. clearly jodie is one of those people where you give an inch and she takes a mile. she forgets the favours you do for her and then stomps all over you when she wants something done. it's pretty frustrating but i'm just breathing a bit sigh of relief sitting in my new living room knowing that she isn't going to come barrelling in to make a mess of the kitchen and bathroom. and then wake up at 4am to go for a run but first make a phone call back home keeping me awake. i feel sad that it has turned out this way where we are going to be quite happy to push her out of our lives, because at times she is actually really a decent, caring person. but there are far too many other negatives that are outweighing it. she needs to grow up a little and learn how to deal with people and realize that the whole world doesn't revolve around her.
but the good news is that we are basically out of that house. we can now settle into our new place...for a year. yeah...the owners told our property manager yesterday that once our lease is up next year they want to put the apartment on the market. great. our PM had really shitty timing telling us this at like 11:00 last night...our first day in the place. i know a year is a long time, but it really sucks knowing that in 12 months we are going to have to pack up and move on out...again. it's like it's going to be ringing in the back of my mind. i'm trying not to think about it though and will just enjoy the present. i just hate moving so much so having it looming overhead makes things pretty challenging.
but time to think of the positive. get the house looking lived in and not so much of a bomb-site.
oh and i haven't mentioned anything about the birthday yesterday because it honestly did not feel like it was my birthday. besides my mom taking us out for dinner and getting us a cake to be brought to the table it was the only birthday-ish thing that happened. which we were prepared for because our first priority of the day was to move. we had some unexpected birthday wishes ranging from people who are relative strangers (an e-mail from a guy on our d-boat team) and phone call from Berlin (sebastian), and of course the flurry of facebook wall posts which are always nice to receive. mom got us both $50 Ikea gift cards and some funky new lunchbags to help encourage us to pack our lunches more often. auntie rae got us $25 milestones gift cards so we can treat ourselves to a belated birthday dinner when we are all moved in, as well as a $50 home depot gift card to share. so this weekend we'll be making trips to home depot and ikea i think to spend those. we have our eyes on a few things. catching up with minna and nicole wasn't really an option yesterday with timing, so maybe we will have a delayed dinner or something when things are a little less stressful.
alright, i should go and do some work. this has been long enough.
this weekend was a long weekend for me. it started on friday. i woke up early and me and my mom were straight into the swing of things getting boxes moved and some unpacked and taken to the apartment so we could re-use them for more things. the entire day was spent on my feet and i was racing arond like a mad-woman because not only did i have to try to move a ton of stuff from the house. i also had to have my entire basement completely cleared out for first thing saturday morning. i was basically running up and down the stairs and piling things wherever i could fit them in the living room. i then had to jump in the shower and try to pretty myself up a little to meet megan and judy downtown for dinner and a drink, then zip off to my brother's grad class presentation at an art gallery. i'm glad we went to that because it was really neat to see his classmate's photography, as well as my brother's. we also got to meet a (very hot and super tall) olympic swimmer named Brent Hayden:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1179/853420053_7fea5071d8.jpg?v=0
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/images/attachement/jpg/site1/20090615/0022190dec450ba051f40b.jpg
He posed for one of my brother's classmate's project and he came to support her and after an embarrassing display by my mom, me and megan stood and chatted briefly to him about swimming. i would have happily hung out and chat with him some more but it was a little awkward with my mom there. but dear lord he was hot! if you are into the shaved head thing. Mmmm. I love me some swimmer body men. Anyway, totally got off topic there. Afterwards we went home and continued to move crap around and eventually went to sleep on the couch since my bed was now leaning against a wall.
(sorry i'm not doing these behind cuts...i have no idea how to! hehe)
Saturday morning I woke up bright and early to head down to dragon boating. As usual we were there way too early but so were a few others. My team's first race was at 9:10 so I got us out on to the water and through our warm up and to the starting line with minimal issues. But....come race time I totally screwed it up. Without going into too many details I basically had our boat crossing the other lanes and going in the wrong direction. Totally and completely embarrassing. But when I got us back on track we went in a perfect straight line. Obviously we were dead last because of this. The coach gave me some tips on what went wrong and what to do in the situation. So come our next race I had us perfectly lined up, then 3/4 of the race i had us going in a perfect straight line. then my sweep hit a drift (or something) and suddenly our boat was being pushed right. i yelled out to "hold the boat" (means stop) and i got us back on track. but at this stage i was so flustered by it that i crossed us through the finish line in the wrong lane. again, embarrassing. once on shore the coach pulled me aside and said he could see it all over my face that i was pretty disappointed, but he said that we'll keep practicing and that he would have me steer any boat of his in the future, he was that confident i have it in me to be a good steersperson. all his tips were constructive and ones i will practice. the team was really supportive as well and weren't upset that i had screwed things up. a lot of them said that they would never ever try steering because it is so hard and that they respect the fact that i want to do it. so for our third race i let the coach steer the boat and i paddled. i wanted the team to have at least one complete race. we did really well in that race too! afterwards i got asked to do a race with the more competitive Concord Pacific team that we are linked with. they practice two times a week (as opposed to our one) and start quite a bit earlier than us in the season. so they were faaaaaaaaaast. thankfully i could keep up with their stroke rate. it felt like we were flying through the water. so that was a nice way to top off the day. we had a team bbq afterwards where i gorged on hot dogs and fudgee-os or however the heck you spell it. then went to my parent's to watch the hockey game and gorge some more on dinner.
then came moving day. *sigh* i'm just glad it's over and done with. what a day. started early in the morning with loading up cars that we had available to us with smaller things. then i went and picked up the uhaul truck i rented. once i got it to the house matt and ben were incredibly speedy loading the heavy items up into it. while they did that me, megan and mom moved smaller things in the cars. we had the truck over at the new place by noon i think it was. auntie rae showed up and her and mom got busy unpacking things inside while me, megan, matt and ben took care of unloading crap. after that auntie rae was kind enough to make us some lunch so we all took a 20 minute breather and ate. once we ate me, matt and ben went back to the old house to grab the bbq to take to minna's, and then drop off the truck. this took forever because traffic was super heavy and then the uhaul place was packed with people. i was mentally and physically exhausted at this point. my feet were screaming out at me to get off them and my brain just wanted to go to sleep. but there was still more to do. at first jodie told us if we had to leave a few things until later that it was no big deal. we assured her we would take care of the salvation army stuff when the store was open again as well. but when my mom went over there to do a quick one last vacuum for us jodie apparently was really snarky with her telling her we need to get everything out of the house as technically it should have been all gone on the saturday and blah blah blah. my mom didn't take her shit and basically put her in her place. but it still involved megan going over there and moving some things around to a level jodie was satisfied with. what really pissed me off about that is we left heaps of things for jodie for FREE because we didn't want to put the effort into selling them, or we replaced with nicer things. so she got a pretty sweet deal out of her move and here she is being completely inflexible about the few things that were left there to be picked up later? seriously? what a little fucker is basically my only thought. thank god for my mom staying and helping megan get things out of there. now all we need to do is get my bike out and aslan and then we are pretty much all clear of jodie forever potentially. clearly jodie is one of those people where you give an inch and she takes a mile. she forgets the favours you do for her and then stomps all over you when she wants something done. it's pretty frustrating but i'm just breathing a bit sigh of relief sitting in my new living room knowing that she isn't going to come barrelling in to make a mess of the kitchen and bathroom. and then wake up at 4am to go for a run but first make a phone call back home keeping me awake. i feel sad that it has turned out this way where we are going to be quite happy to push her out of our lives, because at times she is actually really a decent, caring person. but there are far too many other negatives that are outweighing it. she needs to grow up a little and learn how to deal with people and realize that the whole world doesn't revolve around her.
but the good news is that we are basically out of that house. we can now settle into our new place...for a year. yeah...the owners told our property manager yesterday that once our lease is up next year they want to put the apartment on the market. great. our PM had really shitty timing telling us this at like 11:00 last night...our first day in the place. i know a year is a long time, but it really sucks knowing that in 12 months we are going to have to pack up and move on out...again. it's like it's going to be ringing in the back of my mind. i'm trying not to think about it though and will just enjoy the present. i just hate moving so much so having it looming overhead makes things pretty challenging.
but time to think of the positive. get the house looking lived in and not so much of a bomb-site.
oh and i haven't mentioned anything about the birthday yesterday because it honestly did not feel like it was my birthday. besides my mom taking us out for dinner and getting us a cake to be brought to the table it was the only birthday-ish thing that happened. which we were prepared for because our first priority of the day was to move. we had some unexpected birthday wishes ranging from people who are relative strangers (an e-mail from a guy on our d-boat team) and phone call from Berlin (sebastian), and of course the flurry of facebook wall posts which are always nice to receive. mom got us both $50 Ikea gift cards and some funky new lunchbags to help encourage us to pack our lunches more often. auntie rae got us $25 milestones gift cards so we can treat ourselves to a belated birthday dinner when we are all moved in, as well as a $50 home depot gift card to share. so this weekend we'll be making trips to home depot and ikea i think to spend those. we have our eyes on a few things. catching up with minna and nicole wasn't really an option yesterday with timing, so maybe we will have a delayed dinner or something when things are a little less stressful.
alright, i should go and do some work. this has been long enough.