The Christmas Haul

Okay obviously Christmas isn't about the gifts you get. For the more religious amongst us it's about the birth of Jesus. For me it's about getting my family all together in one place. This year that place was my parent's farm. Everyone gathered there on the 27th except OB1's girlfriend who was supposed to have the day off but ended up being scheduled to work. We had a lovely turkey and ham dinner. It was really great to see my family.

But there were also gifts. I got pretty much everything I wanted this year. My brother's all went together to purchase me a sony ebook reader. It's the touch screen one. It's pretty sweet. My parents bought me a Tassimo, just like I asked for. I also got some socks and some jewelry from my folks. OB2's girlfriend bought me a pack of 3 DVD games, "family feud", "who wants to be a millionaire" and "deal or no deal". And my younger brother bought me a wireless router for when I get my internet hooked up in Guelph. Oh and I got a book from my parents and a little book with quotes about courage from my dad's cousin.

There is still one mystery gift to be had. It's coming by post, it was supposed to be at my parent's waiting for me when I got home but alas it did not arrive. So now they're going to have to ship it too me in Guelph when it does get out to the farm.

Technological Advancement

I've decided that it's time for me to venture back into the world of cellular phone ownership. I haven't had a cell phone in about 6 years. Not since my dad lost my phone somewhere in the pasture while fixing fences.

The main argument against having a cell phone all these years was a combination of a) you needed a landline to get highspeed internet and b)I'm usually somewhere where I have a phone, you can call me at home or at work and if I'm not in either of those two places then I probably don't need to be talking to someone anyway.

But things have obviously changed. Now we have cable internet which doesn't require a landline at all. I've been off work for a while now (I can't believe it's been this long) and I've suddenly found myself without a phone when I really wished I had one. I've also been driving back and forth to the farm lately (almost every weekend) and you never know when you might need to make an emergency call from the side of the highway. The other big recent life change has been developing a relationship with someone who lives a fair distance away. We spend a lot of time IMing each other and well we could text more easily if I had a cell.

So now the problem is to choose a service provider. I know people who are on MTS and people who are on Rogers and not really a whole lot of complaints for either company. So it's a matter of figuring out what works best for what I intend to do, which is a lot of texting and a little bit of websurfing. Which then brings up the question of Smartphone or Voice Only? I'm still torn here as I don't really get enough e-mail to make it worth it, BUT I would like to have web capability that isn't going to cost me an arm and a leg. Someone recommended waiting for the new iPhone to hit Canada and I was going to take her advice, but what do I need a $700 phone for?

So anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I'm going with Rogers or MTS because come this fall they'll have the best province wide coverage. Which I'll need if I'm out at the farm a lot. Is there anything else I need to consider when looking at what to do here? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Feasting With My Parents

For the last couple of weekends, and the next couple of weekends I've been out at the farm helping my parents prepare for the local fair. There is a lot of work to do but at least I know that they're going to keep me well fed.

On Friday night we had fried chicken which is one of my favorite meals. Saturday was spaghetti and Ribs, Sunday we had Lasagna and Steaks. Yup even if it was a terrible weekend the food would have saved it.

For the record it wasn't a terrible weekend but the weather sucked and it's awfully wet outside.

I always forget how boring it is here

I came out to the farm for the weekend, because today is Mother's Day and I hadn't been home for a while. But now I'm about ready to go back to the city. It's not like I would be doing anything more at home than I can do here but it just seems a lot more boring.

Now that my parents are hooked up for wireless I can get internet on my laptop but it's slow internet so it probably going to take a whole night to download anything. I'm not really feeling like watching a movie and it's only like half an hour now until the hockey game starts. The Canucks really need to win this one.

Really I just don't feel like doing much of anything. I tried to take a nap this afternoon but that wasn't happening so I ended up catching up on episodes of the Vampire Diaries and Castle. But now I'm out of episodes and like I said the download speeds here suck ass.

One more thing before I leave, I really must watch my expression around my mom. She's very perceptive and as much as I love here there are just some things that I'm not ready to tell her yet or maybe ever.

We've gone wireless

Well actually we've been wireless in our apartment since we moved there. But the big news is that my mom and dad are wireless now. The internet is still impossibly slow but now I'm able to sit in the living room and type this without disturbing my mom's game of freecell.

I'm so excited. This can only mean that I'll be able to blog more while I'm on the road.

The Cat Came Back... or Not

When I got sick at the end of my 2nd year of university my parents offered to get me a puppy. Not being much of a dog person I opted for a somewhat smilar though less slobbery option and got a kitten. I loved my cat. Sure we didn't know right away if it was a boy or girl (the owner told us it was a girl and we never bothered to check until it started growing boy parts), but it was mine. Thank god I chose a unisex name.

I had my kitten with me in my apartment for almost a year before we moved out. He even had his own room in the apartment, though he much prefered to cuddle up on me. My favorite apartment/cat story was when my brother left his Chem textbook open on the sofa overnight and we woke up to find it scattered all over the living room floor. At least it was a second hand textbook.

When I moved out of the apartment back into residence for my last year of University my cat went to live with my parents on the farm. They weren't big fans of a cat in the house so they let him outside whenever he wanted. He became an outdoor/indoor cat. He still liked to cuddle with me when I was home watching TV, but no one else seemed to like him much.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because my cat is missing. Apparently there was a big thunderstorm back home about 2 weeks ago and he's been missing ever since. I hope that he's just lost but it's much more likely that he's dead. Especially since my parents have talked to all of the neighbours and no one has seen him. Poor kitty. I'll miss you.

Is it Friday yet?

yeah I know it isn't Friday in fact it's only Sunday night but I have absolutely no desire to go to work tomorrow. I feel like I didn't get anything accomplished this weekend either even though it wasn't one of those relaxing do nothing kind of weekends. I always have this problem when I go out to the farm though.

It takes 4 hours to get there and back and it's not the world's most relaxing drive either. Plus my bed at home is really comfortable when you're actually in it but your back reminds you the next day that its not the most structurally sound bed. It's always nice to see the family though. Well except when you're arguing which always seems to happen with me and mom. Not that my mom and I aren't close but just that things always get a little heated right around the time I intend to leave.

On the plus side of going out to the farm I got to do all my laundry for free. Sure it cost me $60 to fill up my car but I saved $12 on laundry. So I'm going to call it even. So now to bed to prepare for yet another soul-crushing week at work.

The more things change the more they stay the same

As some of you know I made my way back home this past weekend for the local fair, in conjunction with Father's Day. I remember fairs of my youth being exciting and entertaining (and a lot of work), this one was none of that.

It's not that I expected my town to have changed much but I expected some changes. Sure the largest employer has moved from farming and agriculture to construction. Yes, they did build a daycare on to the high school (don't act so surprised!). But other than that not much has changed.

I thought going back I might catch up with the few high school friends I hadn't already found on Facebook. As it turns out anyone worth talking to from my high school days has moved on to bigger and better things. The people who are still around from my high school days are still exactly the same, a little bit older and with a few more kids but otherwise exactly the same. There is even that one guy who refuses to believe that he's too old to be hitting on high school girls, like Wooderson in Dazed and Confused.

Yup, small town living. Hard to believe I long for that lifestyle again. But despite all the bad stuff there is something to be said about being able to go and visit your neighbours for coffee at random and not having to be suspicious of every stranger you meet on the street.

Easter Weekend Review

So one would think that I would enjoy having a long weekend. One would be wrong.



As much as I dislike being at work I find that my weekends are almost too long. Sure I don't want to go to work on Monday but for me the alternative is probably sitting at home either on my computer or on my couch watching TV. Don't get me wrong these are both wonderful past times and I have taken over the world numerous times on Civ 4, but you really can't do either for more than 2 days and even that seems too long. My point is really that I didn't quite know what to do with myself for 3 whole days. So I made my way out to the farm after the near heart attack during the final minutes of the Duke/Belmont game.



First of all I should NOT be allowed to drive at night without my glasses. I can't see very well at long distances and the lights of on coming cars are not pleasant on the eyes. Nothing exciting happened Thursday night it was about 10:30 by the time I got home and I wanted nothing more than to sleep.

Friday I pretty much sat around and watched Basketball. Good times. Yes I probably should have been working on my accounting course but really it's a long weekend so I'll excuse myself. That night the whole family went to visit my grandma. You know she's lonely when she offers to make you a pizza just so that you'll stay a little longer. Poor grandma.

Saturday morning my brother and I helped Dad cut wood. Not a big deal except that it was more physical labour than I've done... well ever really. My arms are still killing me today and I think I messed up my shoulder pretty bad because my whole right arm is a dull ache right now. This was all followed by more watching of college basketball followed by taking my Mom out for dinner for her birthday. Oh I also helped name cattle for registration purposes.

Sunday I watched a little bit of basketball and then played computer games until it was time to head to OB2's for Easter Dinner. It wasn't your typical Easter dinner. We had BBQ'd ribs and chicken, followed by some more college basketball and OB2 and I complaining about all the stupid bracket picks we made. Freaking Drake. The real excitement came when the little brother and I went back to my apartment so that he could grab some stuff he had left there. He drove and then forgot to give me back my car keys. So now my keys are at the farm but my car is in the parking lot behind my building. It's gonna be an interesting week.

Random thoughts

It's been almost a week since my last post. I didn't even bother to talk about the fair, though that was a good time. There is just nothing about it that I want to put into writing.

Anyway it appears that with the loss of one of my co-workers, who is moving to a different department, much of what we do around here will be falling on me. So I'm about to become much busier than I was for the first month and a half.

Today I was thinking about what to do tommorow night. Tonight OB2 is coming over for supper and Friday night I'm going back out to the country, but I have no firm plans for tommorow. I'm considering going to a movie but then that's pretty much my entire night shot and I won't be able to get anything else done. Though there are a couple of movies playing that I wouldn't mind seeing.

The long road home

Last night I went home with my older brother to pick up my mom's car. See older brother 2 had borrowed my parents' truck so that he could move so his car was at the farm. Older brother 1 had some time to go and pick it up last night and little brother is off at Brandon with the car he and I share so I was carless. Mom told me I could have her car but I had to go out and get it.

So Older Brother 1 (OB1) and I went out in the truck to pick up the 2 cars. First of all it was pouring rain last night when I left work and I was soaked by the time I walked the 3 blocks home from the bus. OB1 told me he would be leaving his place by 5:00 which would get him to my place by 5:30. We also had to wait for his girlfreind to get off work at 6:30. So about 5:45 OB1 calls me to get directions to my place. When he finally gets there he bitches about how long it took for his supper to cook. I was pretty upset because I hadn't eaten, of course thinking we were going to be leaving my place by 6 and we would have to pick something up. Then we go to pick up his girlfreind at work and she's not there. She had gone home to eat. So the only person who hadn't eaten was me. Now I don't know if you've seen me when I haven't eaten but I get a little grumpy. So we stopped at McDonald's so that I could at least get something to eat.

Then on the way home OB1 and I talked about all sort of stuff that led into an arguement about the declaration of Quebec as a nation within a nation which he insists makes them legally closer to seperation to which I said it depends on what the legislation says. He said the words didn't matter and it was the idea. So obviously he doesn't understand how the legal system works. It blew up into a huge arguement which lead to hypothetically 100 years from now Quebec could be declare an autonomus state. Which true could hypothetically happen but lots of things could hypothetically happen.

Anyway so we didn't end up leaving the city until 7:00 which got us home about 8:45. But when we got there Mom's car wasn't there. She was on call and had gone in and then stopped to visit my Aunt who lives in town. Apparently she thought we weren't coming out. So she didn't get home until 9:45, which gave me time to go through the mail and visit with dad. I finally made it back to the city about 11:40 last night which left me with about 6 hours of sleep if I had gone to bed immediatly which I didn't . So now I'm dragging my ass through work thinking about my bed and how nice it'll be to get some sleep.

My Long weekend

So I went out to the farm for the long weekend, but I didn't do a whole lot of farm-y stuff. I went out to look at the first calf heifers, my calf looks really good. We also vaccinated calves yesterday, big fun there.

Other than that I watched alot of T.V. there was a hockey game to watch. The Senators won and all was well. I also watched a little bit of tennis, but Rafael Nadal wasn't playing very well and I couldn't watch the whole thing. You can read about it here .

Anyway that was basically the extent of my long weekend. Well except fighting with my brother and fighting with my mom, but that's just what happens when I go home.