Seismic Twitch

Apparently the supply of jewelry at the Fringe Festival (a 10 day event with independent plays, music performances, street performances, psychics and craft sales galore) on Broadway Avenue this year is creating a buyers market. I haven’t heard from Bran yet, but as of this morning only one pair of earrings had been sold. I have a feeling that mine is the only nickel free stuff though.

I spent yesterday rather productively. I went into work at 1130 or so to get the month end report done. It needs to be handed in on Tuesday. My boss could’ve done it, but he prefers that the person who knows what they’re doing take care of it. I was ok with that. I ate lunch and then phoned Bran to come get me.

We went off to Michael’s to find some earring nuts (those backs put on studs and hooks to prevent them from falling out of the holes). The place was rather crowded. I didn’t like that much. I liked it even less when I couldn’t get up to see the rack of findings. That got even more less desirable when I encountered a woman wearing enough perfume to kill flies at 50 paces. What is that all about? Do people have no sense of smell? If they don’t they should be outlawed from wearing scents. Anyway, it was a fruitless trip.

I worked to make jewelry on Thursday to increase the supplies for the Fringe but didn’t do anything on Friday. Today I made two bracelets. They’re rather pretty. When the Fringe is over, I’ll start taking photos again to get some up on my Etsy store. I’ll also be working on advertising on other sites to get buyers.

Today I set up the etagiere I took from Dad’s. It didn’t fit where I hoped it would on my bedside table. It does, however, fit on my end table on the living room. I now have multiple shelves holding my beading, tissues, pills and other junk that crowded my table.

I went to Panda Hall and Rings and Things and made orders. I got earring nuts, various tools I need, wire, and beads. I think I spent around $450 or so on supplies. Oh, I also bought a wire working book about the basics. The wire I ordered is surgical grade stainless steel.

On a more disappointing note, last night I ordered yummy Chinese food. I got deep fried shrimp (colour me having had a craving) and tofu and vegetables in sate sauce. That’s not the disappointing part. The disappointing part is the whole thing falling off my work table and leaking sauce all over the floor. The food stayed in the container as the lid had still been on it, but damn!

Boy approves of my movie choices today. First was The Cheap Detective which he missed because he was entertaining a friend. the second was The Incredibles, third was Interview with a Vampire, fourth was Catwoman (yes, the bad Halle Barry version) and now Casablanca is playing as I type this entry.

We had a discovery when we got home on Wednesday. Because of all the rain we’ve been having the ground has been saturated. The last good storm we had about 12 days ago caused water to leech through the concrete and infiltrate our basement. The tenant in the suite down there didn’t say anything until his floor was getting wet. By that time it was too late, damage had been done. Had he notified the landlord when he noticed water the first time a sump pump could have been put into a hole and the water pumped out through the sewer system. Now we have a small issue with black mould.

The downstairs tenant has to move out. His suite is contaminated. Since black mould is highly toxic (or produces toxins, I’m not exactly sure) he has to leave. The stuff we have downstairs is also contaminated and will have to be cleaned. We may have to move as well depending on the results of the tests conducted that evening in our suite. Upstairs has also been affected, but it’s not known how much. One advantage we have is that we rarely use the rear door and did laundry over a week ago, before the bloom of black mould (hopefully). We don’t have forced air heating so that prevents fast spread of the mould. The symptoms of poisoning from black mould are heart burn (or increasing heart burn), sleeping a lot, and a few other things that we suffer from all the time anyway – and did before we moved in here – so which came first, right?

Anyway, the tests done will determine whether or not we can stay here. Cross your toes would you please? I don’t want to move before we move into a house we buy after the will is completed in probate.

Speaking of buying houses, I’ve been looking through the real estate listings for Saskatoon. I’ve found several areas that are affordable to us, up to $300,000. Some are a little bit more than that but we’d not want to spend much more. I want a house that we don’t have to do a lot of altering to. This means I’m looking for hardwood floors (or laminate) throughout the house, a good, high wooden privacy fence, a well functioning kitchen, and a basement that has adequate windows for egress. This means it’s most likely to be a split level house. Central air, though not a requirement, would be a definite bonus. At any rate, it was entertaining and kept me amused for several hours. I even looked at the areas we’d not likely buy in unless desperate.

That’s about it. I’m looking forward to the new supplies coming in.

I’ve sunk down a lot with my feelings about Dad dying. I’ve preferred quiet to talking. Boy and Bran went out to Shell Lake to be with friends today. I opted to stay at home. I didn’t feel up to being with people and welcomed the time in solitude.

I got most of my order from Panda Hall. They left out one of the spacer bead orders though. I contacted them that day, and of course, made a typo in the email. It should be straightened out soon, I hope. I didn’t pay much for them, but I’m missing out 2000 pieces of stuff I paid for.

Since the order arrival, and after I checked it, I started to experiment with what I could create. I’ve made several bracelets and some earrings. I’d make more earrings but I don’t have many earring backs (I use rubber backs) left. Getting more will have to wait for a bit. For the time being I’ve deleted my Esty inventory. I’ll let you know when I put anything up for sale there again.

One of the bracelets I made uses up some of the sandalwood beads from a necklace that Boy finally gave me. I love the scent of sandalwood and having a bracelet made of it pleases me no end. I’ll have to get a picture of it for you to see. I’ve not made another like it thus far.

The best part of the items I ordered is that they’re nickel free. Nickel is usually what people react to in metals. There’s no (or little) nickel in surgical steel and that’s what the earring hooks are made of. The eyepins, chain, bead caps and spacer beads I bought are all nickel free. That can be a selling point of my product. I haven’t found any nickel free wire though. I want some half-hard silver wire that is nickel free, but can’t find any.

Because I’m doing something with my hands, my mind needs to be occupied with other things. I’ve always found it difficult to do only one thing at a time, except for reading. I still prefer to have no noise or distraction when I’m reading. But I bead, do crosswords, crochet, knit, etc. to the television. This means that I’ve been watching movies again. Not new ones, that would be far to radical of me. I’d been watching Scooby Doo DVDs (8 of them), Scooby Doo the movie (the first one), The Avengers, Emperor’s New Groove, Kill Bill (Part 1 and Part 2), and now the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tomorrow I’ll be watching more movies, I don’t know which ones, but I’ll be watching more.

One thing about LOTR I’ve been wondering about. The narrator says at the beginning that the elves are immortal folk. If this is the case, why is it that Arwen’s father is middle aged? Shouldn’t he appear to be in his 20s? I mean, sure, he doesn’t look like suffering from old age, but still, he has wrinkles and looks to be of about the right age to have a daughter the age Arwen is.

Dutchess hunted tonight. There was a rather large moth flying about the living room and she was in very close attendance to it. Alas, being an inside cat has caused her hunting skills to rust and she lost track of the prey as it flew toward my light. More to the point, it was my getting up to get out of the moth’s way (vicious things they are!) that caused her to lose the trail. Hopefully the moth won’t creep up and pounce on me when I’m least expecting it.

I got an email from my thesis supervisor yesterday. She wants to see what I’ve done. Of course, I’ve not done a damned thing since I saw her last. I asked her if I could take a year off the program. By the time a year is up I should be able to get back into doing stuff as I should. By that time Dad will probably have died and things will have settled out emotionally speaking. Either that or I’ll need to step away and not get my Masters degree. Regardless, I can’t do anything right now. It stretches my abilities to deal just going from one day to the next. Working is going to further stress that. It’s hard fighting the inertia I’m feeling. Adding stress to that isn’t going to help me any.

That’s about it for now.

Here I sit, covered in a blanket, wearing sweats and a sweat shirt and it’s 15C outside. I don’t know why I’m cold, but I am. I don’t want the ceiling fan turned off though. I like having cool air to breathe even if my body is insisting that it be covered up and cozy. Boy thinks that the apocalypse has come because I’m feeling cold. Perhaps he’s right.

Once I get to full time the first thing that we’re saving for is a move out of our neighbourhood. I do like our place, but there are a few things that are wrong with the place. First, we can’t leave anything outside if it’s not nailed down or chained up to a solid metal pole. It gets stolen otherwise. Second, in a three block radius there are two families of residents and one who is on the reporting centre program. That is not good considering my position at work consists of making sure that they follow the requirements of their parole and not doing so requires me to call them in and have arrest warrants issued for them. Yeah, not good. So we will be searching for something affordable out of our area.

I slept in today. Actually I ripped the back off that concept and didn’t get up until Boy got me up at 5 pm. I spent until the wee wee hours of today watching Midsommer Murders and doing crosswords. I really shouldn’t do that. It screws up any concept of having a regular sleep pattern.

Did I mention that I finally got a hug from Dutchess? I did!! It was the weirdest feeling, but oh, so very neat! After Boy and Bran getting hugs from her on a regular basis, I finally got one.

I think that’s my life right now. There’s really nothing exciting going on at the moment…I mean other than having to revoke someone who lives only a block away from my house. Oy!

Let’s see. I’ve been working. Not extra hours, just the regular hours. They do tend to make me somewhat weary though. I have the notorious 12 hour shifts coming up this weekend. Yerg!j

I’ve decided to work full time after a co-worker leaves to go school this fall. I don’t know when he is leaving for certain, sometime in August, but when he goes I’m taking his place. I shall probably still be running the program I’m running. Since I don’t like talking about the details of work I won’t be. However, since I can still do homework while working there I won’t have problems being able to take care of research and thesis writing.

I’ve been craving hot wings from KFC so I had some today. We’ll see how they treat my guts after being vegetarian for several weeks. I’ve had no problems with IBS since being mostly vegetarian. Even the usual intestinal gas has been minimal considering the beans, braccus family concentration and tofu that have been the mainstay of my diet. So far so good, but I’ve slept most of the time since eating them. Anyway, back to being a herbivore.

We saw Harry Potter: The Half Blood Prince today. It was quite good, though you have to remember it’s a movie and not the book. The book is huge and much detail in it is left out of the movie and there are a few artistic licences taken. I found it dragged a bit in a few places, however all in all, it was a good movie, and the special effects were cool. I realized one thing, though. Movie theatres have their sound way too loud. I mean, I walked out feeling like I had been at a concert. There’s no reason for them to play it that loud.

That said, I won’t be going to see the last two movies. As with Lord of the Rings, I’ll wait until they’re out and see all of them in a row, a Harry Potterathon, so that I can get an ending to the story. I dislike movies that leave one hanging. The noises I made after FOTR were quite pathetic and I’m beginning to feel that way about Harry Potter.

I saw a preview for a movie I want to see. Sherlock Holmes looks like it might be a nice romp in the realm of make believe. The thing that sold me on the movie wasn’t that it was about Holmes (the first fictional detective stories I read) but that Watson gets to punch Holmes’s lights out. I liked that a lot. I’ve always thought that Watson should be able to do that. They also work vampires into the movie somehow. Anyway, Holmes, being a wastrel is played by Robert Downey Jr. Jude Law plays Watson.

I watched some movies yesterday at work that I’d not seen in a while, and one I’ve not seen ever. The Cheap Detective, Hot Shots, Hot Shots, part deux, Escape from Sobibor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer were the one’s I’d not seen in a while.

For any people out there who are interested in the Holocaust, Escape from Sobibor is a movie you must see. Sobibor was a death camp in Poland. It’s sole purpose to exist was to kill Jews. The Nazis brought in some Russian soldiers who were Jewish for heavy labour, cutting trees to use to burn the corpses of those they murdered. It was those soldiers who were instrumental in the escape along with the help of several of those who’d been in the camp for a while. They didn’t want to have just a few escape from the camp because when that happened the Nazis would take it out on those who remained behind. They planned for the entire camp to escape. Of the 600 in the camp at the time, 300 escaped. Many died in the escape, however many of those who got to the forest outside camp were able to live out the rest of the war. It’s a phenomenal story.

The movie that I had but hadn’t watched was Anne Frank Remembered. This isn’t an acted movie, it’s a documentary of her life and death. It uses her diary, as she wrote it, and recollections of the people who knew her. They interviewed childhood friends, people who knew her in the camps she was in and official documents. They even found the one piece of moving picture of Anne as a young girl before the war. She was looking out a window of her apartment down toward a wedding party that was being filmed. It’s pretty good at making Anne a full person.

That’s about it. I think I’m going to set up some movies, get my beading and sit and relax for the evening. There’s no murder and mayhem on until tomorrow night so I’ve got the evening ahead of me. Of course, that will be after I read all about your lives.

Oh, I won an award from one of the bloggers I read. Janice was very nice in awarding it to me, but there are requirements to posting it on my blog. I have to give thought as to who I would award it to as well. One of those people doesn’t do public blogging and prefers to not have others publicize where her blog is. Anyway, before I post it to my blog I have thinking I have to do. (Thank you Janice!)

EDITED TO ADD
I can’t believe I forgot about this. Bran found me a link to something that every cake lover should have. A recipe for a single serving cake in a mug. Chocolate Cake in 5 Minutes makes a cake in a the microwave in a mug in 5 minutes. If judging by the comments is accurate, it’s a good recipe. It would probably be fairly easy to alter to make other kinds of cake, like lemon or orange cakes.

1. First off, Student Loans was reasonably generous so making it through to next August is doable. Yay! Tomorrow I take in the forms and get them processed by the university and sometime next week I should get a healthy deposit of money into my bank account.

2. I slept too long on Sunday and couldn’t settle in to sleep on Sunday night. At 5 am or so, I gave up and read comics and then showered before going to school. Since I was in school all day and had to work that evening there was no chance to catch any kind of nap at all. So I ended up being awake for my shift.

By the time I got home I wasn’t sleepy again (a change is as good as a rest) so Bran and I watched both Kill Bill movies. Of course, by the time they were done I was over tired and had problems falling asleep.

Since I had to be at a meeting (for the volunteering I’m doing next week), I arrived a little bit early yesterday to the school and got the data disc I didn’t get on Friday, went to the meeting, and then went to the Sociology grad students’ room where my locker is and visited with a couple of people I’ve met there. Then I phoned Bran and he and Boy came and picked me up from school and drove me to work.

Anyway, the whole point of #2 was that VUBOQ reminded me in one of his entries about Kill Bill and I’d been meaning to mention that I watched them. I love the bleeding. It’s so much like the stage scene that Pugsley and Wednesday Addams acted out in the movie.

Ta-Ra

I’m feeling somewhat groggy right now. I’ve been awake since 4 pm. I didn’t have to get up then, but I had to pee, so I guess I did have to get up.

When I realized it was 4 pm, I also realized that I had stuff to get done for this week. I have reading to get done for Monday and an assignment that I’ve not gotten the data disc for (I was supposed to pick it up yesterday but I slept through and had to go to work, so no disc. I’ll have to pick it up on Tuesday since I have classes all day Monday except for the noon hour when the person I have to see won’t be there.

I found the purse that I’ve been wanting for an age and a half. Really, I have. The thing I like about it is that it sits slightly forward of one’s hip, can hold a shit pile of stuff and can be worn along with my backpack. It would mean that my wallet and other necessary purse things will be accessible to me without having to take off a very heavy backpack in order to pay for a pack of gum. It’s only about $40 for a leather purse. While that might seem expensive to my friends in the USA, when it comes to Canada, that’s a reasonable price for leather. I’ve never found a purse that can hold things in an organized manner such as this. There are never enough smaller pockets that are as easily accessed for things like keys. They’re always being lost at the bottom of a bag. In fact, it’s gotten bad enough that I attach my keys to a strap with a carabine. I’m still waffling on buying it.

We got a docking station with speakers for my Sansa MP3 player. There are shit piles of stuff that are compatible to iPods, but none that dock anything else. The closest we’d found previously had plugs to the earphone outlets and would play, but none that would dock the player. Now Sansa has come out with one. They even have a portable one that uses AA batteries. We didn’t get that one. this means that my computer speakers won’t be needed in the bedroom anymore. I wonder what we’ll do with them. I wonder if Bran will use them in restaurants on coffee nights.

We also got some music, Emmylou Harris (Red Dirt Girl, Elite Hotel), George Michael (Older), Matchbox 20 (Yourself or Someone Like You) as well as Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. That particular Python movie isn’t my favourite, but everyone needs to have Wodewick in their lives. If you don’t know what Wodewick is (or who it is) then you need to rent the movie and be amused or scandalized or horrified (depending on one’s sense of humour and ability to laugh at religion – especially their own). This movie like Dogma needs to be in the library of every thinking person regardless of their spirituality/religion. The accent is on “thinking”. I prefer to think that people who read my blog are just that, thinking people, rather than relying on someone else to filter what they think.

From a Rotten Ronny’s advertisement for the winning of $100,000 competition “…whether you have a trust fund…”(and they show a well dressed guy talking on a cell phone with his junk food lunch on the table in front of him) “…or trust issues…” (panning over to a guy eating his French fries while sitting alone at a four person booth. He’s looking suspiciously and acts like everyone who walks by is going to snatch the fries right out of his hands). That amused me enormously.

So now it’s time to read other people’s lives (you know, those thinking people that I like to think read my blog because they’re not just cuties, they gots brains too.

Ta-Ra

Breathing that is. Today Boy managed to convince Bran to surprise me. This is because I don’t like surprises. I haven’t liked them for a long time…not Boy and Bran…surprises. More on that later.

I finished with the last of the two 12 hour shifts for this weekend. I have to say I’m rather relieved. I don’t really care much for the shifts. They take up so much time. I don’t get to do much of anything with my families. I mean, it would be very nice to be able to go for a bbq in a park. However I can’t do that at 8 pm. I’m ever so glad to be done with the shifts and will be off work until Wednesday when I go in at 4 (the same on Thursday).

When I got off work we all went to Wendy’s for Boy getting a treat. He wanted a vanilla Frosty. They didn’t have vanilla since that machine was broken, so he got chocolate. Then we went off to Shoppers’ Drug Mart for Bran’s prescription (it hadn’t been faxed from the doctor’s office). We also got some antihistamines and some shower soap for Boy and I. We got Nivea stuff. Boy’s is for both his body and hair (which he likes for its simplicity) and I like one I got. Which stands to reason because we purchased them.

Then we drove home. I got out of the car, unlocked the door to the house, took off my shoes, and walked into the living room. I was taking off my little backpack and went to where I sit on the couch and then I turned around and saw…it.

It’s a 42″ flat screen LCD HD television. We’d talked about it earlier but I was torn. I desperately wanted one because the picture is phenomenal. I had been eyeing them for a while. I mean, really, who hasn’t. The thing was I don’t want to spend that money. They cost a shit pile of money. So I was waffling. Because I wasn’t making a decision I left it up to Bran and Boy. They decided to buy me an early birthday, Samhain, Yule, New Year’s, next birthday, next Samhain, next Yule, etc. present. He’d already decided to get us HD signals. This means that we’ll be getting HD channels form Toronto, Vancouver, Boston and Seattle as well as A&E and a few other channels. So, to some extent, we’ll be able to take advantage of having the new beastie. Not only that, our DVD-R machine works hard at bringing its signal close to HD. I know this because we watched Bowling for Columbine (I saw the last 1/2 hour) and the picture was phenomenal.

So that was my surprise. Actually, it was GASP “FUCK! WHAT THE…?” Then there were a few more expletives and much giggling from Boy who was quite smugly pleased with the reaction he managed to engender in his mother. Bran was pretty pleased as well. Sneaky boys that they are.

So now I’m watching Reboot, one of my favourite cartoons from when Boy was little. Some of you may remember it. Fong, Dot Matrix, Enzo Matrix, Bob (a guardian from the net), a virus named Megabyte and his virus sister, Hexidecimal and their lives in Mainframe. We even got the action figures for Boy, though I don’t think we have them anymore.

The old TV and the multi-disc DVD player is now in the bedroom. It’s on my clothes cabinet. Maybe the weight of the TV will hold it in place. Our mattress tends to push it back and it restricts my access to my side of the bed. If it holds the cabinet in place then it’ll be an issue from the past. Now Bran can watch movies and such in the bedroom while I’m involved with murder and mayhem. I have to say that advertisements suck more than usual on this TV.

Now it’s time for me to finish reading my comics and then other people’s blogs. I’m not caring much about whatever homework I might have. I’m busy watching the new toy.

I got up at 7 am. It took nearly an hour just to have the vertigo and disorientation go away enough to approach feeling human. Then Bran drove me to school.

Today was planned to be a busy day. I don’t really like busy days because they usually mean having to be around people. Today was no different.

First was my stats class. After some mad note taking we got a presentation by a couple of people who work in the government publications section of the library. Feature this…we have 6 students for whom English is a second language. Five are from China and one from Egypt. None of them are familiar with the local idioms in our speech. Add to that, the two presenters were also immigrants. Not that I have any problem with them being immigrants. I don’t have much of an issue with accents. However, the foreign students definitely did have a problem, especially with the one man who was from India and had a very strong accent. I had to do a fair bit of explaining about what he was saying to my table companion from Egypt.

After they were done we had a break for lunch. I went to STM for some lunch (chicken Caesar wrap and fruit salad) and went to the Pride Centre to eat. I sat and chatted there for a while and then headed back to the classroom on the 10th floor for the Sociology grad student orientation. I found that to be quite helpful. Right after that was done we headed off to the Faculty Club where a wine and cheese party was being held for all the grad students in the department. This enabled many of the students to talk to professors and try to figure out if who they wanted for supervisors and network some for committee members.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t schmooze well. (My dictionary recognized “schmooze”, interesting.) In fact, I tend to avoid being around people I don’t know, especially the kind of stilted conversation that can happen under such situations. The Grad Student Chair introduced herself and a few of the heads of departments and then we introduced ourselves. Thus far this past week or so I’ve introduced myself 5 times. There were a few familiar faces among the profs and a few among the students. Not that I necessarily know them, but that I’d seen them at the undergrad/grad social function last spring.

Then, like walking into a brick wall, I’d had enough. As I was getting my stuff together to leave my supervisor walked over and sort of semi-chided me about leaving so soon. I guess the slightly panicked glaze in my eyes (or the semi-panicked expression on my face) let her know that I’d had enough and needed to go. She seemed to understand that.

I left through the deck doors. There were a couple of professors sitting out having a drink and they looked at me like I’d invaded their space. However, I just smiled at them and kept walking. Maybe they thought I was a sessional lecturer in the Women and Gender Studies department. Afterall, I was wearing Dawgs (black), sweats (black), Tri-Goddess t-shirt (black) and was carrying a black cloth grocery bag. I have enough grey hair to make them question whether I belong or not. On my way back to the MUB (Memorial Union Building) I checked my phone and found that Bran had left me a message. He just wanted me to call him and let him know when I wanted to come home. I phoned him and waited in front of the MUB and did crosswords.

He and Boy showed up. I kicked Boy out of the front seat (MINE!) and we headed out to figure out something to eat. We ended up going to Tiffany’s Restaurant on Idylwyld. I had the lemon garlic shrimp (buttery and yummy and a heart attack on a plate), Bran had an ok t-bone steak and Boy had a pizza (which gave him leftovers for breakfast). Then we went to the drug store to get some scripts. Oh, that reminds me. I did one more thing. I went picked up some cash, got a money order and paid my drug plan to get Bran covered under the health and dental plan. That was one more “dealing with people” thing I did today.

No, I haven’t forgotten what the day is. It’s been 7 years since that day that altered my world view. I still am traumatized and cannot watch shows about it, look at pictures or read much about peoples stories. I know I didn’t lose anyone that day. I know I wasn’t even directly affected. I have seen more than enough and cannot bear to see anymore. My thoughts are still with the families of those who lost loved ones, who tried to save people and failed, and the brave men and women who sacrificed their health, safety and lives that dreadful day. All except for that one man who sent in a post card to Post Secrets stating that everyone he knew prior to that day thinks he’s dead (though it could be a she). That person has made families and friends needlessly grieve. How very selfish.

I don’t have anything else to add. Tomorrow is going to be laundry day because we’ve all run out of clothing to wear and I work this weekend. Oh, I do have something to add. I watched the new Sweeny Todd with Johny Depp. It’s a great movie. It’s very realistic (yeah, bloody) and the format of the movie made it much easier to understand the lyrics as compared to the stage production. I love having both. It totally rocks.

I have to rip more music and sync it to my player.

Ta-Ra

Yep, that’s right. A zombie would starve to…life?…on me today.

First off, we had to get up early to get the house somewhat ready for a parental unit visit. Dad was coming up with my tuition. It’s the last of the tuition that he’s going to pay for. Thats okay since I didn’t expect this one. Not that I’m not happy, for I certainly am.

We went around town shopping. I wanted to get a pair of Dawgs (which are similar to Crocs but are made locally). It ends up that I got two pairs. One are the usual Dawgs with the back strap and the holes in the top. The other pair are a closed top and have no back strap. I got both in black so that I can say I have dressy plastic clogs things. The second pair (that doesn’t have the holes in the top) I consider to be “winter sandals”. I’m sure that Dooce would frown since she’s still grieving her daughter having a pair.

We also hit up the book store for Dad to get his photography magazines. Bran picked up a copy of a book that he’d borrowed from a friend and liked and the latest two Redwall novels by Brian Jacques. The first is Rakkety Tam and the second is High Rhulam.

We also took Dad for his very first Costco experience. He was rather impressed and somewhat overwhelmed. We got a zippered Bunny Hug for Boy. It cost about the same as the last one we got him, but this one is lined, warmer and better quality. We also got some Baby-Bel and cheddar cheese, a winter riding helmet for Bran (it’s lined and has ear flaps for the prevention of frostbitten ears) and two 2009 calendars. One has frogs on them (that one’s Boy’s) and one has parrots (that’s for Bran and I). The last thing we got was the 6 disk set of Prehistoric Earth, and other of the Walking With series.

I thought I had to work today. I tried calling Dad but he’d already left so instead I called in to be late by two hours. This allowed me to spend the entire afternoon with Dad as well as have supper with the family and then go to work. Well, that’s what I did. I spent the afternoon shopping and then went to supper and was driven to work. Around about 7:30 I got to wondering. Where did I get the idea previously that I wouldn’t be working Sunday? All my schedules at home has me working today. So I checked the one at work (the official one) and of course, I wasn’t scheduled. Thankfully I’d only been at work for two hours, but I felt like a genuine idiot. So I called Bran to come and get me. He and Boy came along and we went out to do a bit of a drive. We ended up at SuperStore because I wanted some Vaseline Healthy Hand and Nail lotion. I picked that out and went to the electronics where Bran and Boy were looking at cheap DVDs. I picked out one, Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster (it came with 3 pages of stickers!! Stickers, people!!!)and eventually I also picked out the new version of Sweeny Todd with Johny Depp. We also got Crocodile Dundee (Now, that’s a knife!), the latest two episodes of the Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as Grease that we found at the counter. Costco has several Looney Toons and Bugs Bunny collections that I want to get my eyes on. I didn’t check to see if they have Scooby-Doo!s. I’ll have to check that out next time we’re there.

So now that my grad studies have started I have DVDs to watch and books, other than text books, to read and keep myself generally busy. Oh, I also found a few handy programs that any Windows users might want to download. They’re all freeware so they don’t cost you anything, but if you choose to buy a licence then you get more features that aren’t available for free. The first is Spybot is definitely one of those. It has some compatability problems with Ad-Aware (which I’d chosen to buy a license for), but you can teach it to ignore the automatic update cookie that Ad-Ware has. I also downloaded Malware-bytes Anti-Malware. This one found a huge number of malware programs installed on my computer. The last one I downloaded was Spyware Blaster. This one doesn’t scan your computer like the other ones, it prevents them from installing in the first place. Now all I have to do is run a defrag and my computer should run just tickety-boo.

I shall be going to bed soon. I have to be up for an early class at 9:30 and have to last until nearly 4 then work until midnight (yes, I checked, this time I’m scheduled and also for Tuesday). I’m hoping that I’m not going to be quite so brainless tomorrow. Like I said, a Zombie would have starved had it picked on me today.

We got some music today:

Aerosmith:

Sarah Harmer

kd lang

James Blunt

Godsmack

Bran also got an Erica Badu cd.

Movies we got today:

While we were in Future Shop I got the weirdest panic I an remember having. It was disorienting, heart stopping and some vertigo played in, just for kicks I suppose. I had to ask Boy to get the key to the car because I didn’t want to go near the till and the person there (not Bran, the salesperson) and I went out to the car. Then when Bran was coming out of the store I needed to get one of his wraparound hugs right away. Weird.

I’m nearly done burning the new music onto my computer, so all I have to do now is transfer it over to my player.

I had a nap on the couch while Bran went out and got a bike rack. We’re going to put it under our bedroom window. That way if anything untoward happens we’re likely to hear it. Bran also plans on getting (or has already, I’m not sure) a lock alarm. The bike stand will be secured to the ground and our bikes will be secured to it. Hopefully this will keep the bikes in our possession and out of the hands of those who would take them for profit.