How did I spend the few days I had off before starting my stage? Think back, think waaaaaay back...
I made my 43rd blood donation, did some cleaning up of the front & back garden (I am always thankful at this time of year that we live in a row house with a small backyard, only 10 bags of leaves and garden clippings so far!), bought my first bus pass in over 11 years, celebrated Paul's birthday with a bbq and chocolate cake (and the famous macaroni salad of which Eric was very reasonable with his portion size), pureed 2 pumpkins which ended up killing our food processor and experimented with making onion rings, among other things.
Then Monday, it began, THE REAL WORLD!
It's not bad, it takes me about 45 minutes total to get to work. A longish metro ride to L'Assomption which allows me to do some reading (re-reading The Goblet of Fire before the movie comes out this week) and then a 5-10 minute bus ride to the corner of Notre-Dame and Dickson. Lise, my supervisor is quite nice. Luiza is the part-timer who was a stagière this summer and is the person who is showing me the ropes. She is quite excellent as a teacher. She explains really well and makes sure I understand even the basics without doing it in a condescending way. She really knows the theory behind the tests we do too and so I'm not just going through the motions without knowing why I am doing the steps that are required. I just wish there was more work to do. I think I had already pretty much covered all the methods used there by Wednesday. But the added bonus is the other part of the lab is the baking division and they test the yeast by baking bread so we always have a fresh loaf available in the lunch room. The atmosphere is pretty laid back and Lise gives me things to do without constantly checking up on me and lets me be so it's all good. And there's no way I clocked 35 hours last week but that doesn't seem to be an issue. The only half-unpleasant thing is having to taste the yeast. Yup, that's part of quality control, making sure the yeast has a fermented taste or a nutty roasted flavour or is slightly bitter. Yeah, I like taste-testing the bread much better.
On Saturday we got tired of the tv acting up so we took it into the shop for repairs. Turns out the water that leaked from the toilet and dripped down on it wasn't too good for it. No, really?! So it's all fixed and we even have basic cable now so no more having to deal with the intermitent snow on channels like Global and CBS. That evening I got to stuff my face on homemade sushi at France & Dave's while Tim went to his MAW softball banquet and then curled in Valleyfield at 11 pm. Crazy curlers, I say!
Sunday saw me helping Ysabel trim her tree. On one hand it got me out on my bike on a beautiful day. On the other hand it saw me climbimg up a ladder at a somewhat precarious angle. But it's been done before, only on my roof which is just as unenjoyable!
We decided we hadn't seen Eric enough in the last few days (sorry, I have to pick on someone and this time it seems to be you!) so we invited him & Cathy & Christina, Cathy's sister, over for supper to celebrate Cathy's birthday (which reminds me, there's still pumpkin cake left to be eaten, better go take care of that right now!)
Yummy! But the keyboard is a little sticky now, oops.
And all was well until early Monday morning...
