Valentines Day Baking!

Filed Under baking, ottawa, winter | 10 Comments

Valentines Day is quickly approaching, and being the only unattached blonde here, I am just figuring out what I’m doing without my significant other (I’m watching Felicity right now, and it is SO sad…just thought I’d add that in here). This year our three aunts are coming up to Ottawa, so that I can catch a ride with them back to the L-dot. They are coming up on Friday, and we’re hanging out here skating (crossing my fingers that it’s cold enough!), winterluding and visiting until Saturday. Saturday we’re going to a Citizenship party, because a certain Aussie we know is now a Canadian citizen! On Sunday we’re heading up to Montreal to visit my aunts dancing friend who is in second year at Concordia, and from there we go home, and I am home for a whole week! I definitely can’t wait So that is my Valentines weekend, what is everyone else planning on doing?

Tomorrow my cheerleading team is doing a bake sale with the AOIIs, and in true Valentines Day fashion, I made cherry chip cupcakes, with pink and red icing, and red hearts on the tops! Here are some pictures of my masterpieces!

Teensie spatula I found and used!

The finished products!

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Jan

27

January, I hate you.

Filed Under life, money, personal, winter | 16 Comments

I hate January. I really do. I promised myself today that I will never have a child born in January, I will just put a plug in it and tell that child to wait. Momma hasn’t gotten out of bed in 30 days. January is the longest month of the year for some reason, and this year it dragged and dragged. I don’t even know if I am going to last another week. January is the month keeping me from having visitors from home. January is the month I got credit card fraud, and my bank decided I didn’t need to know until my card was declined and I had to call them – “Oh, it looks here like we cut your card off because of fraud.” What the eff, is it not important that I know this? January is the month my debit card failed the same week my credit card did, and my boyfriend left for Panorama, BC that day leaving me with no access to my funds at all. January is the month I sucked at my job. January is the month Tim didn’t work any day shifts leaving us an hour during lunch to see each other. January is the month that I tried to make new friends that didn’t want to be made back. January is the month I fell really hard and hurt my elbows (okay, that one was just whining).
For the duration of the month of January, you may find me going about my duties with a hoodie on, hood up, with the strings pulled real tight so no one can look in.
I’m sorry for this negative, whiny post but I needed to let it out. The pit in my stomach is growing by the second. My plan is to go to bed in my favourite pyjamas, with a glass of wine and a good book, in my super comfy bed and wake up tomorrow and take a big breath and tell the world that it’s showtime.

What are you whining about lately? Let it out.

Jan

8

Bus Strike Adventures

Filed Under Cheerleading, friends, internet, lauren, life, ottawa, random, university, winter | 10 Comments

OC Transpo Bus

For the past week (and before the Christmas break), I’ve had to find different ways of getting to school almost every day because there are no buses running. Wednesdays I have no class, but I had to be at school to help recruit for cheerleading, so I was going to walk the hour to school, then someone recommended to me that I should take the shuttles (Carleton has school buses running from different parts of the city every half hour to help students get to their classes). The closest shuttle stop from me is a half hour walk at our nearest shopping center/O-train stop, so I got bundled up, and left at about 3:45, since I had to be at school for 5, and figured that would give me enough time. I got to the stop at about 4:20, and noticed a sign on the times board saying “Due to the weather, the shuttles will not be running today”. There I was, boots on, with slippers underneath, down filled mitts, tights, yoga pants, a short sleeved shirt, a long sleeved shirt, a sweater, a down coat, and BOTH hoods on (I later got made fun of when I mentioned that I took off my hoodS.). In other words, I was totally bundled up, and totally pissed that I walked half an hour to a bus stop where no buses would be coming.

After I got over my initial shock, and about 5 minutes of trying to call a cab (obviously busy every time I called, because how else would people get around these days?), I walked to the nearest Second Cup and called a teammate to come pick me up and bring me to school. On our way to school I find out that they had changed the recruiting times from 5-7 to 4-6. It was now 5:20. So I get to school, take off my layers (and my hoods), and starting trying to recruit people. Now has anyone ever had to attempt to recruit university aged guys to try out for a cheerleading team? NOT fun, let me tell you that. Pretty much our approach is “if you think the guy is hot and jacked, go hand him a flier and chat him up”. I’m clearly not very good at this. I attempted to recruit for about 20 minutes, then a group of us decided it would be better if we’d just go to the residence and try to force people to try out hand them out there. Well. In order to get to the tunnels (do you really think we would walk outside?), we had to walk past one of the campus bars. Now you should know that one of our favorite sayings is “Our drinking team has a cheerleading problem”, and we do live up to that saying. We decided it would be easier for us to talk to people if we had a beer in us. Well one beer turned into two, and two into three, and next thing you know we’ve forgotten all about handing out fliers, and were now talking about siblings having the same tongues, and things only the fiveblondes would understand like “touch tongues!”, and living on farms/ranches, since the group I was there with consisted of two sisters from Texas-Kelly and Kristina, and one guy who works on a farm-Matt (did I mention that he also is from a family of five siblings? Only one sister though). Kristina, by the way is my twin. If you are looking at pictures from my cheerleading you’d better look twice to make sure that it’s actually me, because we have to do the same thing. We were then talking about staying for trivia night, when I got a call that Krys was waiting for me outside res commons-almost all the way across campus. So I grab my coat, say my goodbyes and run across campus…only to be met by a chihuahua in Krys’ truck! Now I assure you, I wasn’t drunk enough to be seeing things…okay well maybe I was, but there was honestly a chihuahua in the truck. I’ve never seen one up close, and Radar is enough to turn me off of them. No offense to anyone who has one, but chihuahuas are creepy looking dogs in my opinion. It turns out that this lovely dog is staying at my house for a couple of days while Krys’ sister visits us from Montreal. I’ll let you all know how this goes.

I had totally forgotten that we (me, Emily and Krys) had planned a Monopoly date with Krys’ friend Dan and his girlfriend Felicia. Monopoly is a touchy subject in our house. We usually end the game in a big fight, and a win for Krys. This time was different though. This time I won! It was a crazy game, and I didn’t quite understand how I won, but I’m not going to fight it, I’m going to take that win and be happy that I’m the one who broke Krys’ winning streak. Oh yea, he also wins EVERY single game we play, including Risk, Clue, and Whoonu.

Anyways, that was my wonderful adventure with the OC Transpo strike. I was only planning on making it about my adventure getting to school for the recruitments, but I tend to ramble when I’m bored, and have 5 hour breaks in my schedule, which I do every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Jan

6

Tuesdays With Micaela #1 – A Day at the Beach

Filed Under beach, micaela, winter | 12 Comments

My blogging New Years resolution was to blog every Tuesday. So even though Leah already blogged today, I am trumping her post because there is no way I am going to lose on the first Tuesday of the year!

Kent and I started this year out in an interesting way. For as long as I’ve known him, Kent has been a water rat. He is not afraid of diving right into the water, no matter how cold. His dream has always been to do a polar bear swim on New Years Day. For those of you who don’t come from arctic temperatures, polar bear swims happen all over the place on January 1st in Canada. All of the absolutely insane people who want to participate go to the beach and run into freezing cold water. Us normal people wait until July. Our friends Dane and Michelle came along to cheer Kent on. For them and I there was no question – we knew there was no way we were going in there.

We arrived in Port Dover, where the swim was happening, and Kent and I went into a store where all of the future polar bears were waiting. The temperature was negative 10 degrees celsius. Kent got dressed in his bathing suit and robe and they listened to a pep talk where they were told that if you don’t put your head under, it doesn’t count! Everyone started chanting “THE WATER IS WARM! THE WATER IS WARM!” over and over. They were also told that the lake had frozen over the night before and there was a hold cut into the ice which all the polar bear swimmers had to jump into! I hugged Kent a lot and told him to be careful.

I tried to watch Kent jump in but there was so much bumpy ice that was really hard to walk on, and soo many people, that I couldn’t see a thing which was disappointing. Definitely not a spectator sport. Here’s what I did see.