Sigh of relief

Had final test #2 of 2 this morning and all went well (we already got our grades back) and so now a leisurely Friday in class is all that's left before VACATION TIME!!!

But there's lots of packing to be done in the meantime. It's hard to decide what to bring as we could get all kinds of weather so I must be prepared for any eventuality!

On the way home I went and purchased 3 CD's as a birthday/travel gift to myself - the new Jason Mraz & Coldplay & Harmonium (for nostalgia's sake.) I will give a review of the first two after I have listened to them, I laready know HArmonium is good!

Aahh, it feels good to be getting some time off. Now I can come back all eager & refreshed for my final session!!! After which I will have a 5 week stage which we found out this week, we have to find ourselves. Joy.

Anyhow, destination Newfoundland is the focus for now! How may hours til Saturday???

Weekend update

No pictures to share today but we had an amazing bike ride yesterday. Perfect weather and perfect company! We met up with Cathy & Eric at the "escatade" and headed towards Ste-Catherine. I love that bike path. It's wide, nicely paved and usually quite deserted save for the keeners with the thousand dollar bikes that whiz by you. We came back on the South Shore through Candiac, La Prairie and Brossard and then headed home on our separate ways at Simard Blvd. Crossing the Concord Bridge and then heading West along the Canal was not the most pleasant way to end the trip as it was windy as all hell! But we made it! All 49.618 km of it. And I have now confirmed that my odometer is off by about 9% as Tim, Eric & Cathy's all registered about the same while mine was lower. I'll keep it as is for the season and compensate for the difference at the end as I keep a log of all my bike rides since I got the bike computer. So that should mean I'm at about 550 km for the season. Lance Armstrong watch out! LOL!

Cathy & Eric joined us for supper and this time Tim mastered a pork roast on the bbq. It was delectable! And I got spoiled with another early birthday present, Cathy made me a carry-all bag at her folks' shop. It will definitely come in handy on our trip to Nfld!
The evening was capped off by a (never-ending) game of Trivial Pursuit for which Dave and France joined us. We were playing in teams as the 90's version we have is a little more difficult so 2 heads are better than one. Although Dave was pretty much on his own as France was feeling a little over-stuffed from the bbq she had gone to earlier. And Eric vetoed Cathy's correct answers on more than one (or two or three or four...!!!) occasions so they could have fared better but it was certainly entertaining!

The sacrifices for fresh bread

Yes, the time of this post is correct, on a Saturday morning, I must be nuts...but I awoke at 4:30 to the unpleasant sound of the ka-klunk, ka-klunk, ka-klunk of the bread machine mixing . The poor thing is getting a little tired these days. After all, it must be close to 10 years old now. It's funny how we are amazed these days when things like appliances don't conk out on us after 5 years or so. In my parents day, you could expect your washing machine to last a lifetime (even after they gave up on the washboard!!!)

Anyhow, the ka-klunk made me get up and come downstairs which was a good thing because the bread needed a lot more water than the recipe called for. But then I couldn't get back to sleep. And it being Saturday, the paper probably won't be here for another hour...

I think I will be in dire need of a nap later.

A new twist on an old standard

I got out of class early today so I decided to see if I could beat the odds of 60% chance of showers and went for a bike ride...But nay, it started sprinkling as soon as I got to the corner of our street! Anyhow I continued on towards the Canal but I opted to avoid all the slowpokes and rollerbladers by taking the pedestrian path. Now I understand the usefulness of toe clips. There was lots of tree root branch avoidance going on with one moment of slight panic and praying (if muttering Jesus Christ qualifies as a prayer, that is) when some kid got in my way. I had visions of heading head first into the canal. Not a pretty thought. Anyhow I came out of it unscathed. It was fun!

My backyard jungle

Step by step

This, apparently, is the number of steps I took yesterday.
I wonder what that converts to in km?

The gift of life.

I gave blood yesterday. It was my 42nd donation!

Biking by the water

Who knew Lasalle could be so beautiful...

Bye Bye Birdie

We are now birdless, Ganache went home last night But she'll be back in a week when Mommy France (the globe-trotter that she is) goes off to Thunder Bay.





Birdie and her plastic pal.

August 19th came early this year

Tim spoiled me last evening by giving me my birthday present early - a Canon Power Shot A520!!!

He wants me to learn how to use it properly before we leave for vacation!

It is awesome!



This is me intensively studying the user's manual!

What do you think of Newfoundland?

Newfoundland poll

And yet more softball

I actually got around to doing some schoolwork yesterday afternoon then we went over to Paul & Murielle's for supper and had an amazing lamb roast on the bbq. Food is good...
We took off not too shortly after dinner though as Eric & Tim both had softball games at 8:30 in St-Laurent but at different fields. Cathy showed up to keep me company on the bleachers as the game scheduled before Eric's hadn't started until 8:00, I wonder what time they got home!

So, can you name the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?
As we were leaving the lab today, Darsha came up to me and said "Christine, Christine, do you know what the Seven Wonders of the World are?"
I only got one right...

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

But I did get a few of the other wonders...

Forgotten, Modern & Natural Wonders

Softball, softball and more softball

Friday was a long day in the lab mostly because there was a lot of waiting around between steps while we had things spinning in the centrifuge. But the school day finally came to an end and then we had our first softball game of three for the weekend. Needless to say, we lost! But we always have fun and Tim and Bill always manage to get each other riled up!
Saturday morning we had another makeup game for a rainout. Tim had Yohan, a stagière from work play as a spare. That kid has quite an arm. We also had the honour of Eric joining us which was a nice plus. But, needless to say, we lost!

Most of my afternoon was spent moving things out of the blue bedroom to get it ready for our new German border who will be arriving on September 2nd. I didn't think I could rearrange our closets to fit everything into one but it seems to have worked. It might take some more rearranging though once sweater weather is back and I take things out of storage from under the bed.

We had Martin over for supper and treated him to salmon cooked on the bbq on cedar planks, very tasty and then he treated us to Dairy Queen. Walking there and back made us feel a little less guilty about endulging in Blizzards. But this guy, on the other hand...
"In August, 2002, a man coined "the DQ Blizzard Guy" completed his goal of eating a Blizzard Flavor Treat in every state with a visit to a Dairy Queen restaurant in Alaska for his 50th Blizzard treat."

Dairy Queen Blizzard link

And this morning, yes, we played softball again and yes, we lost, again! Oh well, I don't think I've ever played on a winning sports team so it doesn't really matter. As long as I'm out there doing something and having fun. It just gets a little frustrating sometimes when you mess up on one of the only chances you get at making a play. (And I'll have you know, throwing my glove to the ground does not consist in me having a temper trantum!!!)

Thursday night at the movies

Tim & I both got home late yesterday (okay, maybe just before 5 is not late for most people but it's later than usual for us!) and decided to go to the movies to get some extra air-conditioned hours of relief on a stinking hot night...We checked the listings & decided to go and see Mr & Mrs Smith which is not playing in many places anymore so Colisée in Kirkland was our best option. We figured we'd head out to the Waste Island early to get some food & checked out the new McKibbin's in Complexe Pointe-Claire. How appropriate on a Thursday night (old times usual pub night.) The decor is very nicely done (no ceiling tiles!) and familiarity is the key: same menu as downtown & Jen was even there but she did not serve us. And the group was smaller than usual but Paul did join us for a drink.

The movie was quite good. I'm not sure how much of it was intended as a comedy but we got quite a few laughs out of it and Tim got in a couple of pretty good outbursts of giggles too!

An overall great evening!

I was relieved to hear the pouring rain at about 3:30 this morning, my poor garden was needing a good watering and I was procastinating getting out there with the watering can as they kept promising us thundershowers this week. And now, here comes the sun!

Sunday, day of rest, I wish!

Yesterday morning we went out and bought a rotisserie attachement for our bbq and I don't know how we've lived without it! We got a couple of beef roasts and Tim the Chefman did an excellent job of cooking them up. And, no, we didn't pig out on our own. We had my folks and brother over to celebrate my dad's birthday (which was on Friday.) Very yummy banana cake was provided courtesy of my mom. My bro even did some of the dishes before taking off. And I can now experiment with the frozen vanilla yogurt again as we finished the last batch last night. I just have to remember to take it out of the freezer a good while before serving it...

Busy week & weekend

Last week was pretty busy at school, most of our labs went overtime but I think that had a lot to do with bad planning which I have now come to expect. It can't be easy to start a whole new program from scratch but sometimes things are just way too disorganized...

At least we got out early on Friday but instead of going biking as I had wished, I came home and worked on my assignments and lab report so I wouldn't have to deal with any of it for the rest of the weekend.
Friday evening we played softball against The Broods, the young Lachine team and we faired pretty well against them. Then we had a makeup game on Saturday morning against The Royals and we got creamed. Which is too bad cos last time we played them we did well, but lost to them in extra innings. On Saturday, we were missing a player though and I was the only rover which at least saw me make a few good catches.

On Saturday afternoon we headed to La Vieille Brasserie by the water in Lachine where Tim's friend Dianna was getting married. It was a very nice ceremony & reception and a beautiful day to boot. The timing was funny cos yesterday was 2 years to the day when I "smiled" at Tim (that's Lavalife talk for making first contact with someone. Yes, for those of you not aware, we're an Internet couple!) See, Dianna met Daryl, her now husband, on Lavalife and Tim & Dianna kind of owe it to each other that they were on Lavalife. Dianna started off on Canada personals and introduced it to Tim which made him discover Lavalife which he then introduced to Dianna. So we're Lavalife success stories who will all live happily ever after!

We were seated with two other married couples and the talk inevitably turned to their weddings and how they did it and it eventualy came out that I had been married and the response was, "oh, so that's why you were being so quiet!" Yeah, well, divorce is not the favoured topic of conversation at a wedding! That didn't stop me from later on being questioned if I would get married again. Some people really have no qualms about asking very personnal questions of total strangers...And, no, I'm not about to tell you what my answer was!
If you wish to see how beautiful the bride was, I will again take the easy way out and send you to Tim's site, be sure to check out the chocolate fountain, it was awesome, we want to get one for ourselves!

Dianna and Daryl

July 23-24, oh so long ago

So I never even mentioned last weekend when we went camping at La Minerve. It was perfect camping weather. Beautiful, warm & sunny during the day and nice & cool at night so you could actually snuggle up in your sleeping bag.

Just the usual camping activities - swimming, frisbee-golf, pétonque, walking, eating, relaxing.

Check out the pictures on Tim's site (click on folder La Minerve 2005). Elise is just the cutest!

La Minerve camping