that canadian girl

Latest adventures…

  • Oxford tomorrow

    Tomorrow will be sOoOoOooooo nice! We’re going to Oxford, walking around town in the afternoon, going for dinner at a nice restaurant in the area and in the evening, the ultimate treat, we’re going to see Miss Saigon. I’ve been looking forward to that show for years, I get shivers just listening to the songs!

    Oh and yesterday was my first work exhibition alone, or more precisely, my first work exhibition at all! I was a bit nervous to be holding the fort alone when the other publisher present had three people shmoozing with the nursing academics, but it wen’t almost perfectly well. At least now I know what to expect when they ask me to do it again! I’ve been feeling really excited about work, like there’s some good potential of moving up within the company. I’ve got such a great team, I’m looking forward to getting to work in the morning… Well other than for the fact that we have to go outside to get there and the weather’s been awfully shitty recently!

    Oh oh one more thing! One week till Christmas… Are YOU ready?

  • First real driving lesson

    This is a landmark in my life, I had a driving lesson with actual intention of getting through the lessons and going for my test. The lesson went very well, the instructor’s absolutely lovely and helpful, so I’ve got a good vibe about this. Hopefully in a few months, I’ll have passed and can get on with life pretending I never waited this long to get my license!

    Andrew’s looking forward to it just as much as I am, since it means he can now be the one dozing off in the passenger seat on the way back from his parents’ place, and he can be the one having a little tipple when we’re out with friends without worrying about having to drive back. It also means I’ll be able to drive to work, and who knows, possibly become a sales rep and get paid to be on the road and chat to academics!

    Ahhh the possibilities are endless! But for now, back to reading that monkey driving test guide. Must buy the Highway Code and the Road Signs book tomorrow.

  • Feeling good

    MmmMmm today’s a good day. It’s a chilled out day at work, and my Christmas cards-writing morning was accompanied by a nice gingerbread skinny latte. (Updated: It was only a half-hour of card writing, and in exchange I didn’t take a lunch break. Yes I work, stop telling me I make it sound like I don’t do any work!!)

    Latte, the drink of Gods. Just enough caffeine to get me going but not enough to make me twitch, shake and panic like some other coffees do. Skinny because it gives me the illusion of being less naughty. Gingerbread because it’s the flavour of the week and it’s very festive. Normally, I go for vanilla, or when I’m feeling wild, I go for hazelnut. I tried some of the other flavours over the years, but they just didn’t do it for me. Coconut made me want to gag, irish cream was depressing since it was non-alcoholic, and the rest just didn’t measure up to the calming and soothing flavour of vanilla!

    Today’s a day for staying home, cuddled up in the warmth of our draft-free apartment, watching movies and reading what’s happening on my fave blogs. But there’s still a few days worth of work left to be done around here! Oh Christmas holidays, please come soon!

  • RSS Feed readers

    Started using FeedDemon 1.11, as I couldn’t keep up with all the blogs I want to read. I’d simply forget to check my bookmarks for a week, and feel like I’ve neglected blogs of interest.

    Fantastic tool to track what’s going on with everyone’s blog! Thanks Andrea for the recommendation! Some other people recommended bloglines.com but it didn’t seem to behave the way I wanted it to. FeedDemon literally looks like MS Outlook, so I can organise things in the same way I’ve got them setup in Outlook. Only advantage to bloglines.com and the likes is that I would’ve been able to use it from work as well… but somehow I don’t think that would’ve improved my work productivity, so it’s probably best this way.

    RSS Feeds seem to be the way to go to keep track of multiple blogs. Now, I need to fiddle with it a bit more to see if I can track comments on my own blog as well.

    Alright… time to take a bath. Looks like I found my blogging mojo again! YEAH BABY! (Oh god, that wasn’t at ALL an intended Austin Powers pun but I guess it’s too late to recover now, isn’t it!? *sigh*)

  • La terre plantée dans le coeur

    I don’t know why, but I’ll post this in English, even though those who would recognize the show I’m about to bring up will all be French speaking. I guess I just want to share with everyone…

    La Course Destination Monde was more than a tv show when I was young, it was one of my biggest dreams. From the age of 12 or 13 to when the show ended just as I turned 18, I don’t think I missed a single show. At 16, I ordered the pack they send to potential candidates, even though I was at least 2 years too young to participate. I just read it, mentally filling in all the fields, answering the questions about travelling ambitions and dreams.

    Of course, something came in the way of my ultimate quest to be on the show. Simple and painful – The show was taken off the air the season I turned 18. The SRC (French CBC) couldn’t afford to keep the show going for reasons that escaped me at that age. I would assume a lot had to do with budget. It happened around the same time the CBC’s general quality of programming started spiraling down, but that’s another whole can o’ beans…

    What I’m left now is good memories of scrambling for paper and pen when I found the email addresses of contestants, getting an email from Antoine Laprise, first from Egypt and a few weeks later, from Kazakhstan.

    And I’m left with an interesting piece of folded paper that has never left my wallet all these years. I think it probably dates back to 1994. It’s the end-of-season Gala video by Hugo Latulippe, something that touched me at the time… Being 13, his words described exactly how and why I wanted to travel. J’sais pas pourquoi mais je m’en rappelle encore presque par coeur…

    La Terre plantée dans le coeur

    Partir, partir parce qu’on poursuit tous des idées mythiques. Partir par pur souci esthétique. Partir parce que c’est important de savoir. Partir parce que c’est rock n roll. Partir sur les traces de nos rêves. Partir, mais partir pour revenir.

    […] Revenir, revenir plein de soleil et d’espoir d’ailleurs parce qu’on a compris que d’un point de vue logistique, on s’auto-suffit, mais qu’émotivement, pas du tout. Revenir parce que ça fait du bien. Revenir parce qu’on en a assez de s’immiscer dans la vie des autres et qu’on veut entendre l’avis des nôtres. Revenir et ne jamais oublier la guerre, la misère, la haine, les blessures. Revenir pour ne plus jamais s’incliner devant autre chose qu’une montagne, un arbre, une rivière, un sourire. Revenir et prendre le parti des enfants, des baleines, des aurores boréales et des odeurs de printemps. Revenir après 40 décollages, 97 contrôles douaniers, 567 repas, 192 collé sur mes loups, 62 interviews, 6 ou 7 sanglots, 3165 éclats de rire, une vingtaine de p’tits films et une conviction. Si les p’tits culs de Karashi peuvent sourire à manger de la marde. Si les petits soudanais peuvent danser l’estomac plein de sable. Si un palestinien peut oublier le meurtre de sa mère au nom de la paix, j’vois pas pourquoi moi, j’aurais pas confiance jusqu’à la fin du monde. J’vois pas pourquoi moi, j’sourirais pas jusqu’à la fin des temps.

    Revenir, persuadé que la seule chose au monde qui compte vraiment, c’est d’avoir un coeur pour revenir. Revenir, de l’humanité plein la tête. Revenir, la Terre plantée dans le coeur. Revenir, mais revenir pour repartir.

    Ce soir, c’est fini et ma tête tourne, mais la Terre tourne. Salut!

    – “J’étais l’océan, je voulais seulement toucher ton pied”

  • Driving theory for monkeys

    Tonight was my first browse into the Official Theory Driving Test Guide I borrowed from a friend. I’m so amused by the kind of questions in the book, and baffled by how many questions in the Alertness section are dedicated to repeating the same question about mobile phones in about 20 different ways! Yes, we understand, driving while on the phone is bad.

    Then, the puffin, pelican and penguin crossings come… Who the hell named those?! The day I see a penguin cross the road, I’ll agree with the name… Till then, I’ll call them all “crossings where you get bonus points if you run a couple of people over”, if that’s fine with the Department of Transportation.

  • Some more useless facts

    I’ve been having a weird week, a “not feeling like blogging much” week, so here’s a post that didn’t require much thinking…

    Storms – Cool or Scary?: Great! Especially when you have big windows or a veranda! *childhood memories*
    Favourite alcoholic drink: Sangria, Cosmopolitans and other not-vile-tasting-but-not-too-too-sweet cocktails.
    Favourite non-alcoholic drink: Fresh pineapple juice
    Finish this statement, “If I had the time, I would…”: have finished all my work by now, and would have gone for a practice drive today. Instead, we went out to finish our Christmas shopping.
    If you could dye your hair any colour, what would you choose?: Keep it permanently the gorgeous burgundy colour with purple shades that I had a few weeks ago. It’s now faded to a slightly duller red.
    Name the cities/towns you’ve lived in: Rockland, Hull, Ottawa (Canada) and Harlow, Sawbridgeworth (England)
    One nice thing about the last person you spoke to: My hubby, the sweetest person ever! What can I say, he’s just great, and rather cute too!
    Morning person or night owl?: Neither really, I’m at my best late-afternoon, early evening. I used to be a morning person as a teenager, believe it or not!
    Favourite place to relax?: Menorca — on the boat, on the beach, at the villa or at Sa Roca, the restaurant with the most amazing peaceful atmosphere on the face of this earth.
    Favourite dessert?: Fudge brownies with vanilla ice cream (made with real vanilla beans)

  • Family Xmas Party 2004

    The beginning of a long Christmas season of family get-togethers!

    This was our pre-Christmas family get together with Andrew’s family, started with food, ended with food, oh and there was some food in the middle too… There was a bit of yelling at Sharon Osbourne, a bit of wine and port and cheese, a bit too much wine for the youngest guest (it’s okay, we’ve all gone through it too at some point!) and probably too much food for Roy! (Notice how we can see his belly when he’s sitting on the sofa! That’s how we all felt by the end of a fantastic meal!)

    Incriminating photos even make Nan Phyl look like a dessert hog! See how she keeps the raspberry bomb to herself? Heehee!

    Overall, a really nice day with the family!

  • Dancing on tables!

    As our work party is a few hours away, I’m amused by the (rather obvious) guidelines for Christmas parties. Making a fool of yourself in front of colleagues doesn’t usually lead to a promotion, and I can’t imagine photocopying your bits is very sanitary. It’ll be interesting to see how many of the big office party DON’T’s happen tonight.

  • sms.ac again

    Remember my rant about SMS.ac? Since the day I posted that, I received three more invitations. One was from a complete stranger but two were from people who I thought were fully mentally capable and able to spot a scam when they see one.

    Unfortunately, they completely fell for it and all I can say is, if they have ME in their address book, they must have hundreds of people in there, since they’re old acquaintances.

    So everyone, I beg you to warn anyone who sends you the automated email so they send a mass apology/warning to their contacts! If no one stops this chain of emails, that company’s going to make an absolute mint off of you and your friends!

    I know complete strangers are coming across my previous post on this topic because of my search results statistics, so it’s worth pointing out again. Regular scams and spams annoy me but this is just really really aggravating and unbelievably cheap-shot of them!

    Don’t fall for something as obvious as being asked for your password…

    Update 19/12/04: Woops, I was writing sms.ca, I meant sms.ac! Thanks for the anonymous poster who pointed it out!