flailing arms

Mon. I was suppose to meet someone at the parking area outside my office. At 3:50 Mon. afternoon I got a call from the potter's guild lady. "I'm just leaving my house, I'll meet you in about 10 mins"!

Perfect, no worries. Until I got a phone call at 4:20 from the Engineering office upstairs saying, "hi there, a woman just dropped off a package for you"! WHAT, I totally forgot.

At 3:50 I had hung up the phone and in the ten minutes, an RCMP friend walked in the door, we all started chatting and I completely forgot to meet potter's guild lady in the parking lot! BAHHH...so I ran upstairs to the eng. office, hoping the potter's guild lady would still be there. And with a thank you, I learned that she had just left down the elevator. So with a large package in my arms and flailing legs, I rushed down the stairs to the parking area. BAHHH...Through the staircase window I could see her, outside, walking towards her car. I reach her, just as she's starting the ignition. Phew..."I'm so sorry, I totally forgot". And she says, "I thought only us older people did that"!

Side note: Tim Horton's holiday spice flavouring is GROSS. Normal consumption time for a large steeped tea with two creams and a sugar = 1.5 hrs. With GROSS holiday spice = 6 hrs with 1/3 cup in the garbage. YUCK.

small town saskatchewan

Friday, I travelled to Wadena, a very small town, surrounded by farm land,about 2 hours east of Saskatoon. Every once and a while when we miss attending an on-scene fatal we make a trip to the location, check out the cars, visit the RCMP, etc. Well this trip was one of those trips. If you haven't watched a couple episodes from Corner Gas then you really should, I sums up small town SK experiences quite nicely. And my Friday.

Almost every small town in SK has a curling rink, a funeral home, a post office and a church. Wadena is no different, it's slightly bigger so it's blessed with an RCMP detachment, a cafe, and some type of general store too. Ahhh, small town SK.

We met our RCMP friends at the Wadena Cafe, a chinese-canadian style buffet run by the local Chinese residents. A trip to our friendly neighbourhood towing yard, with a couple extra young and curious RCMP members, followed by a stop at the local convenience store for a coffee home.

We made a pit stop part way home to say "hello" to the first responder / tow truck driver / limousine driver / auto body shop owner / justice of the peace friend! He has his fingers dabbled into just about anything and knows about EVERYTHING that's happening in that bigger town. You know those "comedy skits" where buddy walks up to the counter asks to speak to the post master. Guy behind the counter says, "just a second", spins around and then says "ahhh - yes, how can I help you"? He's almost one of those!! Baseball cap just resting on his head, toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth, yellow-tinged fingers permanently curved as a cigarette perch and of course the bathing-suit clad young female calendar! Ahhh - small town SK!

beads and pearls

What a fun week.

I started ballet again. After a very fun Sat. night out with the ballet girls (jenn & joni) and Eldon, I was inspired to start dancing again! At a certain point you can't just keep saying you'll get back into shape, you actually have to do something. So I signed up and tried a class. Oh my goodness, did it ever poop me out. I was sweating beads, not just a pretty girly, fresh glow. BEADS were pouring off me. And what would normally be a moderate level ballet class turned into "I can't catch my breath, I think I'm going to puke" ballet class. It was so tough for me, I'm so out of shape. Strange though, the next two days after I didn't really ache. Huh.

Tues. night we had girls night. A modern day quilting bee. But we did scrapbooking - card making - giggling! It was a blast. Such a treasure to have a great group of woman in the same age of life to share, laugh and commiserate. I meant to take pictures but all I ended taking was this. Thanks ballet Jen for the great idea!

Today - Bubble tea. I love bubble tea, those chewy little tapioca pearls. Yummy. For some reason, I've been feeling jittery all day. I think it was a new coffee drink brought into the office from HongKong, that I tried this morning. I don't normally have coffee and well I'm feeling dizzy and nauseous (and I'm not pregnant)! So I thought a fresh air walk to the on-campus bubble tea shop would do the trick. I'm still feeling jittery, dizzy and nauseous but loving the bubbles.

paper chase

This afternoon I had to take a large banker's box, full of files to our downstairs storage room. Of course, it's a little heavy and a little awkward. Well I walk past a prof and student talking, and as I start down the stairs the student interupts his conversation and says to me, "can I help you"?

I say, "no thank you, that's fine".

The student quickly wraps up his conversation with the prof and starts running down the stairs to catch me saying, "are you sure you don't require my assistance"?

To which I reply over my shoulder, "no really, that's ok".

He then States, "but I'm stronger than you are"!

Hmmm, I State "no thank you, I'm fine"! And parted ways...and I made it just fine, with my heavy box to the downstairs storage room.

white coat

In anticipation for the winter season, I bought a cream coloured coat a couple weeks ago. I had sister Sarah and Brad give their opinions before purchase and both of them cautioned me, "pella, are you SURE you want a white coat? Won't it get dirty really quickly"?

Yes, I do tend to not have the greatest luck when it comes to such items but I figured it's washable, not too expensive, prettier than black and worth the risk. So the cream coloured coat came home with me.

First time wearing it. I wore it for about 1 min, got in the car, walked into my office and hung it up on the hook by the door. Total time on around me, 10 mins. Tops.

End of the day, put on the cream coloured coat and see very large BLUE INK squiggles across the middle front! WHAT!! I don't even have a blue pen in my desk or bag. How could this have happened? Theory, student standing against open door with pen in hand, accidentally squiggled on my new , 10 mins of wearing, cream coloured coat.

Recommendation: carry a tide-pen or be close to a bottle of dish soap!

lead dust

So Saturday I had a brillant idea to refinish an old dresser that I found buried under a pile of stuff in my Grandma's basement. The thing is I went up to Stromberg's house to use their garage and forgot my face mask. So with the garage door open and my turtleneck pulled up to my eyes I decided to sand away old layers of paint and uneven-ness to help reveal the beauty of the dresser.

About three hours of sanding later...I thought this maybe isn't such a good idea. There is likely lead in this paint and I'm creating a very fine dust! Hmmmm...

So home I went for the rest of the day, showered down, laundered the clothing and starting thinking how I may have just damaged me (and any unborn, not yet conceived child. Apparently lead rests in your bone marrow and something to do with pregnancy leaches it out and can harm a fetus, oh great). Then I went out for coffee with Jennifer, bumped into a friend and started explaining how I may have just exposed myself to lead. The ears of the neighbouring coffee sipper perked up, his eyes grew big, and while wearing a biotechnology shirt, piped in, "oh dear, that's not good...you probably did do damage!" Or something to that effect. Anyways...panic and fear ensued.

Of course I called home, consulted with my parents...and my dad comforted me, that it was likely only a little, I've been exposed to far worse than that etc. Ahhhh...relief.

So here's the before pics...and some very cool knobs I found on Anthropologie's website.

time warp

Do you ever find it strange to see people you went to highschool with?

The last couple weeks I've passed the same girl on my way out of work. A girl I went to high school with. I always find it strange to see these people since I haven't kept in contact with anyone. And that experience was such a short blimp in my life. Two years. I wonder if they even remember that I went to school with them or if I'm just a slight tilt of the head, "she's looks familiar, no idea", thought.

The Saskatoon I live in now is a totally different chapter then the Saskatoon I lived in then. I've closed many chapters between the times here and often feel like the two times where just that, two different times, two different places.

Plus, I secretly (not so secret anymore) hope that I look WAY better than I did then.

Oh Joy!

For visual inspiration: Jennifer forwarded this blog site to me (a month ago) and I love it! It's full of such fun, visual ideas. Enjoy!

Happy Winter

Good morning Happy Winter,

Ahhh - slippery roads, pouffy coats, hot milk tea, ice encrusted cars, snow tipped trees and double the time to get to work. 'Tis the season...

It snowed last night - we awoke to winter.

On a side note: Did you know that mushrooms can grow in carpet? My hairdresser was telling me how her parents basement flooded, same weekend that my floor flooded. Her parents cleaned up the mess but this past week, mushrooms sprouted from the carpet! EIWWUUU! Isn't that something tasty? Needless to say, they had to gut the basement and bleach everything down.

end of fall

Is it possible? Is fall over?

Today it has fluctuated between -7 (with a windchill of -14) and +2. (Shauna this is around 19-36 F with a windchill making it feel like 7F )! And this afternoon...a very light sprinkling of snow, that didn't do anything, but scare me to death. How is this possible? The mitts are out tomorrow and I'll be armed and ready with the windshield scraper.

Yuck...it's TOO soon!

home made

Happy Thanksgiving!

A few of you have asked me to upload my wedding album pages. Well, today I scanned them and they are now loaded onto my flickr page. Hope it inspires :)

Gobble Gobble

As Brad has been saying these past few days, "Happy gobble, gobble"!

It's Thanksgiving - the turkey is out, the gravy is hot and the harvest is in! Tis the season of cornicopia's and blessings!

Brad & I came up north to my mom & dad's for the holidays. It started with us leaving straight after work Friday and my brillant idea of staying, for fun, at a motel in Vegreville. Not so fun but "good" memory anyways.

What a pleasure to spend time with family, laughing and sharing! Ahhh, if only they were closer. We are so blessed with abundance, abundance of things, abundance of love, abundance of family. How did we get blessed with all these good gifts?