My love-hate relationship with CAA

I have CAA, not because I'm a bad driver but because I have bad luck. Some days CAA is great. Like last Friday when my battery was dead.

The driver told me that the battery was frozen because the car had sat dead too long. First of all I knew my battery was pretty much dead and I hadn't driven in a while, but who knew batteries could freeze. Anyway the guy took it out, took it to the shop charged it up and it was working fine so he re-installed it on Monday in near blizzard conditions.

Today CAA wasn't so great. I had a really flat tire. I mean really flat. Again because had left it sit too long. I knew I had a slow leak and had just been filling it up with air from my air tank but because I hadn't driven in a while it went right flat. My theory was that I would just drive to the service station up the road and pump it up but when I got there, there was no hose on the air compressor.

This is where CAA comes in. I am probably the only person in the world without a cell phone but luckily the service station had a pay phone from which I could call CAA. So I did but because I didn't have a phone they couldn't give me a five minute warning call so they gave me an hour and a half window. So I sat and sat and sat some more. Finally half an hour after my window I called to see what was up. And wouldn't you know that once I called and was waiting on hold the truck came to change my tire.

Today has been a good day

I haven't had a lot of good days recently so it's good to document the ones I have so that I can refer back to it later.

It started this morning. My brother and I watched some Smallville and this British show called "the IT crowd" it's pretty funny. After that we played a game of hockey on the Playstation. Oh and then I watched some curling. I'm totally crushing on Marc Kennedy. Then I hunkered down with my bag of chips and watched the Colts beat the Jets to head for the Superbowl. Now I'm watching the NFC title game. Go Saints! Or Geaux Saints if you want to play up the frenchness.

Yup good day.

the scary thing about the internet

Even though there are all sorts of wonderful things about the internet I find it scary how much of it is accessible to everyone. I'm never really sure what could be used against me in the future. I mean things like Facebook which was developed with the intention of connecting people can be used by future and sometimes even current employers to determine an employees character outside of work.

What I'm thinking of now is actually about my illness. I've been struggling with it for a long time and being able to talk about it openly might help someone in the future who is dealing with the same thing. But I'm too afraid to talk about it here on my blog because someone might find it and it might prevent me from living the life that I may want to lead in the future.

more blogcation

Well I made it back from Regina in one piece. A very tired piece but still together. As for my health well that's not going so well right now. I was pretty good through our whole trip but since I've been back it's been pretty crappy.

Anyway I think I'm going to take a break from blogging for a while. Just until things settle down a bit.

Going to Agribition

I am so excited about going to Agribition it's really the only thing that has gotten me through the last couple of months. This is the first time in the history of me that my family is taking cattle to show in Regina. It's a big deal and there is lots of work to be done.

The cattle are going tomorrow and I'll be arriving on Wednesday. Then the show is on Thursday and the sale on Friday and then home again. I'm going to attempt to blog this trip on my travel blog. This is my first real trip since I went to Scotland. Well actually that's not true. I just haven't taken my camera along on some of the others.

So wish us luck and follow along if you'd like.

It appears that I have gone missing

Hey there,

Listen I'm just going through a prolonged period of illness right now. Things seemed to be getting better and then they got worse. So what does this have to do with you? Well mostly I just wanted to let you know what was up since I disappeared rather suddenly. It's hard to get to a computer when you're not feeling well, even though I have two of them. So I really do apologize if anyone actually kept checking to see if I'd written something new.

So thank you for supporting my blogging addiction. I promise I'll get back to it as soon as I can.

Lots of Love,

Janalee

Looking for ideas

Along with a whole lot of other things in my life my inner blogger is broken. I don't know what to talk about. I try to keep my blog mostly positive, but lately I'm seeing only grey. So commenter is there something you'd like me to talk about? Some subject I've never touched on but should? Something that I've mentioned and since forgot about? I'm throwing this over to you because you make the effort to read at least occasionally.

That's it next year I'm getting Sunday Ticket

So it's football season again. Actually we're almost half way through the season. Up until now I've been able to find a game to watch on Sunday. Considering that there are 4 teams (Indy, New York Giants, New Orleans and Chicago) that I will watch if I can find their game. However this week they aren't showing any of those games in my area except the Giants game which is the Sunday night feature.

My brother has NFL Sunday Ticket which allows you to watch any game you want, which is pretty sweet. But I didn't want to spend the money to get it. Maybe next season I'll re-think that.

Sometimes you just get bored

As you probably know by now I watch a lot of TV. When I'm not watching TV I'm probably watching something that I downloaded so that I can catch up on past episodes. As you can imagine from time to time I get stumped about what to watch next. It's time like these I turn to my friends.

A friend suggested that I check out Castle. I was a little skeptical at first since I'm not big on cop shows, but I have to admit that I really like it. So what about you? Have you watched it? Do you like it? What else would you recommend for the next time I run out of ideas?

Week 2 is in the bag

It was pointed out to me recently that it's been a while since I posted and well it has. I just haven't had anything exciting to say. I really do try to leave a lot of my personal drama out of my blog simply because I don't want to bring people down.

So my only new is that I got through my second week of return to work. Tuesday was a little wavery but I powered through. Hopefully I can get back to full time soon.

Wine-ing, Dining and nearly getting electrocuted

I've been driving for nearly 10 years, more than that if you count illegally hitting up the back roads back home, so you'd think that I would know well enough not to leave my lights on. Well then you would think wrong.

I went out for dinner with an old friend that I hadn't seen in more than 2 years. We went to the Olive Garden which is my all time favorite restaurant. I don't much like driving in the city to begin with and we went to the one that's on the opposite side of the city so I had to meet her there. I was a little nervous but it turned out that it wasn't a problem.

We had a nice dinner and tasted some wine. I couldn't finish my meal though since I filled up on soup, breadsticks and appetizers, so I've got left overs for tomorrow.

Then after our meal we walked outside to the over-flow parking where incidentally we had both parked when I realized I had left my lights on. So I sort of panicked. Well on the inside anyway outwardly I was pretty calm. But I have no clue about cars so I didn't know what to do. So I asked my friend and she thought we could probably boost it.

In my nearly 10 years of driving I've had my car boosted probably half a dozen times but I've never done it myself. I have a general idea of what to do but I'm certainly not confident enough to do it myself. Did I mention it was dark because that's probably an important part of the story. So anyway we connected the cables red first to her car and then mine. Then we tried the black cables in the same order. And let's just say the sparks flew. Luckily no one was hurt.

Anyway we were just about to give up when I decided to try my car one more time and by some fluke of nature it started and I was on my way.

Our Technological Age

You know that game you play where you pick 3 things that you couldn't live without on a desert island? Well I had a random thought while I was getting ready to go out for dinner with an old friend, I think all of the things I couldn't live with out require electricity.

Seriously how did we ever live without internet? Or cell phones (I actually do live without a cell phone but only because everyone else has one so if I need to reach them I can)? Or a flat iron?

So what can't you live without? Do tell.

This would only happen to me

So now that I've started a travel blog I wasn't sure if this would fall under my regular everyday blog or that one. But since this is strictly a shopping trip and not a sightseeing adventure it's going here.

Anyway my brother and I had a fairly uneventful trip to Fargo. The first thing we did after we checked into the hotel was check out the pool facilities. This included a fairly decent sized pool, a rather luke-warm hot tub and a sauna.

After my initial disappoint at the hot tub we tried out the sauna. And I managed to blister my back by laying down on the hot bench. Yup, this could only happen to me.

Maybe it's never the right time

I've been thinking a lot about fate lately. It's my way of getting through a lot of the tough things in life. I don't believe in God per say but I have to believe that something is guiding us to certain things.

Take the relapse of my illness. It doesn't just happen. It showed me that I needed to make changes in the way I'm living my life. It was really crappy timing what with my promotion and everything but it is what it is. Maybe it will lead to something wonderful. But then again maybe not.As I said previously there was a job opening that I was interested in, but this just isn't a good time for me.

I have a friend who talks about going back to school but just hasn't found the right time to take that leap.Maybe the challenge is not so much finding the opportunities that we want as overcoming the problem of bad timing.

Soothing Words

Has anyone seen the movie Sidney White? No well it's a kind of modernized version of Snow White. It stars Amanda Bynes where instead of 7 Dwarfs (dwarves?) there are 7 Dorks (which I would be reminded actually means whale penis) and the mirror is a Hot or Not page. It's kind of amusing in a fluffy trying to kill time kind of way.

Why am I giving you a movie review instead of doing a blog post, you ask? Well see the Witch in the movie (Rachel Witchburn) has soothing words like Gucchi and Prada. And after today I had to come up with a few of my own soothing words.

Jay Cutler's Pouty face:

Shoe Shopping:

Starbucks Coffee... or anything really. And meeting friends for coffee or lunch. Now mind you this is not in anyway a comprehensive list. It's just a few random items to keep me going until the next time.

That didn't go as well as planned

Today was a big day for me. It was the first day that I was back at work after an extended leave of absence. It was really weird walking in there after all of this time. Everyone seemed happy to see me and when people asked about my health I gave them the stock answer "getting better".

Which got me thinking why do people even ask "how are you?" the expected answer is either good or fine. Anything else and you become something of a Debbie Downer.

Anyway I didn't realize how much I missed everyone until I saw them again. I guess if nothing else I can enjoy the social atmosphere at work.

Watching Baseball

I can't believe I watched baseball last night. I hate baseball. To be completely honest I was also watching the Colts game so it was kind of a flip back and forth kind of deal. So what was I doing watching baseball then?

Well see it started because I was out at the farm for the weekend and my dad was watching the game. So I sat down to watch with him until the football game started. That's when I realized it was the Twins vs. the Yankees. Now because I don't like baseball and therefore don't follow it the only player I knew besides Jeter and A-Rod was Joe Mauer of the Twins.

So Lisa if you're still following this one's for you. I've been trying to get you a Joe Mauer bobblehead for the last year but the 2009 versions are terrible so here's a picture instead.

Just another reason to get on with my GRE studying

You know you've been away from the real world too long when you don't even realize that one of your favorite (but then again I have lots of favorites) players switched teams in the off season.


Martin Havlat signed with the Minnesota Wild in the off season. So I guess that means I'd better get studying so that I can move to Minneapolis.

Actually I'm going to Minneapolis next weekend. Well if we aren't shopped out by the time it's time to go there.

I guess it wasn't meant to be

I tried really hard in the middle of the night last night to order a Jay Cutler Chicago bobblehead for my desk at work. But since I'm in Canada I wasn't able to complete the purchase. So I called in today to order. Turns out shipping on the item is as much as the actual item. So I decided to skip it. My desk will just have to continue to be bobblehead-less.

In the Christmas spirit... in October

I know it's still over 2 months away and it's not even Halloween but I can't stop thinking about Christmas. I love Christmas. The lights, the smell of spruce trees, the turkey, wrapping presents. I love it all. I especially love shopping for gifts for everyone else. Well that and it's the only time that my whole family gets together anymore.

I am commencing Christmas shopping next week and hope to be done by the end of October. Now I don't expect anyone else to have started their Christmas shopping yet, but have you started thinking about what you want to receive? Or who you might shop for this year that wasn't on you list last year?

You might say it's too early, I say bring it on.