Ouch.
Posted on July 25, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day, Friends
After a nice relaxing weekend I was doing dishes Sunday evening and I got a shot of pain up the right side of my head. I actually gasped. When I told Jeremy, he said, sounds like a migraine. I dont think I can remember having this before. After some sleep and a nice walk to work Monday I thought it was gone. Monday was a very busy day at work and by 2pm I was having pain again. I bused home (i couldnt stand to walk in the sun) and took some tylenol and went straight to bed. After a nap it was mostly gone but i spent the night feeling kind of hazy. Now I’m back at work and I’m not feeling very well. I pretty much want to just go home and hide under some blankets. Im gonna be tough and at least get my morning work done, but might be going home early.
I really need to be feeling better by this weekend. Jeremy and I are headed over to Victoria Saturday morning. Saturday night is a party at my friend Jacqueline’s house. The rest of the weekend will be taken up with our friends Adrienne and Russ’ wedding. Sunday is the wedding rehearsal and get together/ rehearsal dinner. Wedding is on Monday and we should be coming home Tuesday. It should be a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to it.
~L
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weekend update
Posted on June 20, 2006 | Filed Under Family, Home, Friends
Another busy weekend and I’m back at work already. I was lucky enough to get a ride to Victoria with my friend Adrienne’s sister, Sabrina, and her puppy Molly early Friday morning and we made the 9am ferry. Spent Friday and Saturday with Adrienne, Sabrina and others while we celebrated Adrienne and Russ’ upcoming wedding with a stagette and bridal shower. I documented the whole thing with my camera, but unfortunately I cant share them all. I will post some of them later this week.
Saturday afternoon I made it out to my parent’s place for a yummy home-cooked mom dinner and spent some time with my dad (mostly watching hockey!). Sunday morning my dad and I got up early before everyone else and went to Thetis Lake for a hike/walk…We saw a deer, but it was so far away the picture is really just of a brown blob. Then we went back home, woke up my mom and great aunt Pat and then we went out to Sidney for brunch and to the 1pm ferry home. I arrived home shortly after 4pm, had a short rest, then Jeremy and I cleaned up our place and cooked dinner. We had a fun dinner party with Mel, Chris, Jo and Scott and played a crazy game of Killer Bunnies. Note: The Ebola virus is BAAAD. Overall it was a great weekend!
Work is back to mostly normal, our manager is back at work after the big wigs realized they had no actual evidence…Im enjoying my new position so far, its more challenging and more fun! I have now fully staked my claim on this desk and moved everyone else’s stuff (sales guys used to use this one once in a while) to another one….muahahha.
Im looking forward to a quiet week of spending time playing with our new playstation2…i love megaman!
~L
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Camping and upheaval
Posted on June 13, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day, Friends, Drama
Last weekend was really great. We went camping at Skookumchuck hot springs. It was a beautiful weekend, no rain, great campsite right beside the river and good friends to spend time with. After the weekend I was relaxed and happy, and went to bed super early and got a great rest Sunday night.
Monday my work got very dramatic. Our manager went to Victoria for a meeting with bigwigs and we got a call that he’s not coming back. We all freak out, wanting to know whats up. Today, big wigs come to our office and tell us he is suspended (with pay) while they investigate. Systems people come with a locksmith to break into his office and steal his computer. Our compliance dept is claiming he did this sketchy deal which lost our branch $10K and we are all completely sure that it was a computer glitch because it all makes no sense at all and its completely absurd that he did it. Anyway, so now we got interviewed by HR and it is just all very sketchy and is making us all uneasy. Im not feeling very confident in their investigative skills. I guess Ill see what happens tomorrow….
~L
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New Laptop and Bellingham
Posted on May 22, 2006 | Filed Under Friends, Nerding Out, Vacation
Woo! On Thursday i finally got my new work laptop! Fortunately, it seems to be working just fine. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it working until just now.
On Thursday, I came down with what I think was a mild flu. At 2PM, I had to go home and spend 24 hours in that trance-like state that only dry-heaves and a fever seem to bring on :/. To pass the time, I got Windows XP going (it was pre-installed) and spent five-or-so hours repartitioning the hard-drive so i could install linux. Near the end of those five-or-so hours I realized that the Ubuntu 5.10 CD came with ntfsresize, which lets you resize those crafty NTFS volumes before resizing the partition. I shrunk the Windows XP partition from 55GB to just under 10GB, which should give me plenty of room for now. Windows continues to boot just fine from this new partition after a forced run of chkdsk (think ‘fsck’ for windows) to verify that everything’s OK. This is a big improvement over the last time that I attempted to do a dual-booting system with XP about 2 years ago; resizing NTFS volumes was basically impossible with FLOSS programs. To finish off, I tried installing Ubuntu 5.10, but various things didn’t seem to work, especially X.
On Friday I was on the upswing and decided to go to BJF after a bit of convincing by Luke. I left the laptop here and got a ride from Luke along with jen, Loranda (Luke’s sister), and Orlando (Loranda’s fiance). I wouldn’t have had any time or network connectivity anyway, it turns out. Overall, it was a great trip. Lots of juggling, some good shows (a renegade show on Friday night and the public show on Saturday), and lots of fun people to meet and hang out with. Sleeping in a rigged-together barn in the middle of a swamp is quite the experience ;). I think that maybe Luke cought whatever I had on Thursday, though; we had to leave a little early on Sunday because he wasn’t feeling well. Luke, if you’re reading this: I’m sorry if i got you sick, but you’re the one who dragged me with you :P. Either way, I’m really glad I went. I started doing 4-ball and won in a raffle these really neat micro-suede “G-Ballz” beanbag-style juggling balls — they’ve inspired me to try to learn a 5-ball pattern as soon as possible ;).
Got back home on Sunday at around 4 or 5-ish. Had some real food (after an “interesting” breakfast at the farm) and settled in. Made four CD coasters trying to burn the latest Ubuntu 6.x beta release, then decided that the whole stack of blanks I’ve got are total crap after realizing that i’ve never successfully burnt one with this new burner. I found a 12x CDRW disk and it burnt just fine. In the process, I found out that there’s a command-line cd burning program for windows (I forget the name just now, but it’s actually made by Microsoft). In the meantime, I found a really helpful page by someone who got Slackware installed on the Dell D620. Aparently, you have to actually “soft-patch” part of the video BIOS to get full 1440×900 resolution under X.
Anyway, got Ubuntu “Dapper Beta” installed, but X still didn’t work. Downloaded 300MB of updates from the APT repository while watching the first half Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with Laura. Followed the instructions on the afformentioned page, and voila: a Gnome desktop. Looks really nice with anti-aliased fonts and the widescreen ;). CPU auto-scaling works, but I haven’t tried an SMP kernel yet (it’s a dual-core CPU). Something keeps accessing the hard-drive all the time, which clicks every few seconds (maybe i need to mount everything ‘noatime’?). Sound works OK, but is crappy quality — speaking of which, i can’t find the speakers on this thing — and the PC speaker is so blaringly loud i’m sure the neighbours can hear it every time i try to use tab completion in bash :).
Anyway, i’m quite happy to have this thing up and working. This whole post is just an excuse to try out the keyboard. The verdict: it is fairly spacious compared to some i’ve tried. My wrists aren’t incredibly sore, but then again, that could be from not typing for 2 days. I’ll take the MS Natural Ergo 4000 over this any day.
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Busy weekend
Posted on May 1, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day, Family, Friends
Three days away and it felt like a week. Thursday night I raced from work to home to get the one thing I forgot to pack: my mom’s bday present…Grabbed it and ran back to the bus depot and made it to the bus in time for the 7pm ferry. The ferry arrived half an hour late so I was late arriving in Victoria, but hurried to Syn to meet Kristin and Jacqueline. While I saw Kristin at Easter two weeks ago for a couple hours it has been months since Ive seen Jacqueline, so it was really nice to spend time with them and drink some yummy martinis and to catch up on what’s been going on. Jacqueline and I made it to the last bus, leaving Fort and Douglas at 11:50pm! so early! and made it to her new apartment. I spent the night on her couch, and her kitty George spent the night running around and being hyper! Apparently he’s usually very shy, so I feel honored that he was curious and let me pet him and kept me awake 
Friday morning Jac was very nice to drive me to my friend Jen’s where Jen gave me a haircut and we got to have a good visit. I went with Jen to take her son Clay to daycare and then we went to Hillside Mall where I killed time browsing and she went to the doctor. On our way back to her house on the bus, Jen realized that she had a car I could have driven us around in! heh. She’s so used to not being able to drive it (with only her L) that she forgot I could! very funny…
After a little mix up of exactly where to meet, my friend Josh finally picked me up and we went to his place for a good visit, mostly involving us sitting around and listening to records, it was fun. Yet another friend I have barely talked to or spent any time with lately…so it was really nice to spend some time with so many friends in one visit.
I met my parents and brother at the Keg for dinner that night and we had a great time. Although I was so tired from a busy day that I pretty much just went straight to bed when we finally got home.
Saturday morning I slept in a bit and then got up to take my moms car to go pick up Jeremy from the ferry and my family headed up to Duncan. We met them up there eventually after taking a little detour to check out the Mill Bay ferry schedule. We arrived at my mom’s cousin’s and great aunt’s place and commenced the big birthday bash/ family reunion. It was fun to see all the people that I usually only see every couple years or even more. Pretty funny to see my little third cousins all grown up wearing makeup and listening to their ipods…I used to babysit them when they were babies! eek Im old
I changed beds/couches three times that night trying to get away from various snoring, but I guess thats bound to happen in a house with lots of people visiting. Needless to say, it was not a restful sleep…I think I got to sleep around 4am or so…
We were able to catch the 1025am Mill Bay ferry and we drove from Brentwood to make it for the noon ferry, but with the horrible traffic in Van we didnt get to the bus depot until after 3pm. That was a long day of travelling…it was so nice to crawl into my own bed for a nap, after three nights of couch/uncomfortable bed sleeping…
It was a tiring couple days but Im very happy to have been able to see friends that I miss dearly and to spend some quality family time too. Im very happy that next weekend is looking to be fun and not too stressful, although this week at work will be pretty crazy. We are shortstaffed and very busy, but the plus is that I get to work an earlier shift to help out in the mornings, so I should be off work every day by 4 or 430 so thats great!
~L
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Good times.
Posted on April 6, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day, Friends
It appears that I havent written anything in a while so I’ll try to do a little update, for the whole three of you who read this. 
Work is going really well; I’m getting lots done and feeling in general quite productive, staying on top of mounting piles of paperwork. Only thing I’m annoyed at is that I’m still waiting for that promotion you heard about a while back. My manager is quite slow at hiring and so my replacement has not been found yet. sigh. At least the rest of the staff are starting to speak up and stand up for me, telling our manager to hurry up. That makes me feel good.
I’ve been working on being more healthy and active, starting with walking home from work as often as I can. And walking more in general. Thankfully my job requires me to go out and do errands in the middle of the day so i usually get some walking in during the day as well as walking home. In the eating healthy category, I’m trying very hard to eat less crap, including cake, pie, cookies, muffins, cinamon buns, chocolate bars, candy, chips, etc. Its hard to completely cut out, but im eating less of that stuff. Although, working in an office, theres always donuts, cookies, etc. around for us. Co-worker looked at me like I was crazy when I turned down reese’s pieces, but I dont mind.
Tonight I went to my first yoga class in a long time, taught by my friend Jen (thanks Jen!). It was really great, but I can tell my muscles are going to be unhappy with me tomorrow. It felt so good to work all those muscles that have been dormant. I am having nostalgia for my buff days, when I was training and rowing, running, working out…ahh to be seventeen and buff again! heh.
We had a really great weekend last week. Friday night after work we went to see our friend’s new band play at a pub downtown. It was the first time I’ve seen him play in this band. While its hard to let go of the past and the band that was and is no more, it was great to see him in this new group. I enjoyed it alot, and probably drank too much beer. They are off now for their Canada-wide tour and are currently somewhere between alberta and saskatchewan…
Saturday I slept in and then we went and met our friend Micah for an all-you-can-eat japanese lunch. It was really good. Micah likes going for japanese with me, cause I can never finish it all. heh. After a nice lunch, we went to Drixoll (sp?) games and hunted for new board games. We ended up buying one card game (Killer Bunnies and the Hunt for the Magic Carrot) and one board game (a new medieval stategy-type one called Caylus). On our way home we stopped and got some food and wine and met our friends Chris and Mel here to play our new games. The Killer Bunnies game was so complex that we didnt end up even getting to the other one. Whoever made this game up is quite disturbed. But its a lot of fun!
Sunday I slept in, and forgot about the time change, so I wasnt really on the go until almost 2pm. I somehow managed to get three loads of laundry done and the kitchen cleaned up before I left at 5pm to meet Mel. We went shopping on Robson St and had a great time, buying essential oils and underwear (not at the same store) Back to Mel’s to watch a girly movie and eat dinner. Our boys came home eventually, after their D&D party.
It was very good weekend! I think this coming one will be just as fun/busy. Pampered Chef party Friday night at Jen’s. Pedicures and lunch with Jen on Saturday, then Saturday afternoon Ive got a work party to go to for a couple hours, the rest of Saturday night is up in the air. Sunday is a free day, probably to do errands (groceries!) and housework, and hopefully if its nice out a big long walk…
There is alot of things coming up that Im really looking forward to and so Ive been feeling very positive and happy lately: Easter weekend in Victoria (I miss my parents) and April 29th is my great aunt’s big birthday bash on the island so ill be back there that weekend. In May I have two long weekends coming up, with possibly a camping trip!
There’s another thing that I am feeling really good about: I have a family doctor in Vancouver now! (Thanks Mel!). I went to her this week and she was very nice and quite proactive about the issues I brought up. She referred me to an allergist that day and got me an appointment pretty quick (May 24th). This may not sound like a big deal to some, but its pretty huge for me. Sometime in my late teens I developed a fear of doctors. To me, doctors offices/clinics/the whole place, made me feel creepy, and I thought all doctors were condescending, hard to talk to, uncaring, unthoughtful and in general mean people. I stopped going to my famly doctor and only went to clinics when absolutely necessary. I’m not completely sure where this started, I think it was simply that I felt uncomfortable talking to my family doctor and didn’t realize I could just find myself a new one who was comfortable to talk to. Anyways, the fact that I seeked a new doctor out (and actually called the one Mel recommended) is a big step for me and I feel proud of myself, even if thats a little dorky.
And here ends my ridiculously long winded update which could have been summarized for you with a simple: “Im doing good”.
~L.
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Monday
Posted on February 15, 2006 | Filed Under Friends
The memorial for Laura on Monday was beautiful. The things that hit me the hardest were the readings of letters people had written to her.
One example was the letter her mom and dad wrote, remembering Laura as she grew up. They recounted a memory of Laura when she was 3. Her grandma had sewed her a little outfit and had forgotten to take out a pin from the pants. Laura wore them all morning with the pin pricking her until her mom found out later that day. They said that even at that young age, Laura would suffer pain in silence in order not to disrupt others. That made me cry.
Afterwards, Neil set up a slideshow of photos of Laura and that was really wonderful. Lots of funny photos that made us all laugh and smile. I hope that the day was healing and helpful to us all.
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Update
Posted on February 9, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day, Friends
I am doing much better. The gathering at Neil and Laura’s house on Monday was somehow comforting, to be able to give Neil a hug and feel that we were there for him. Neil told us that the memorial on Monday will be a celebration of Laura’s life and I am looking forward to going and being a part of that.
Last night was the first night in a while that Jeremy and I spent an evening at home and cooked dinner here. We have been at various friend’s places for dinner since Saturday. I made spinach salad and chicken and apple crisp for dessert
Jeremy and I started planning our mini-vacation for March, and I think we are going with San Francisco, so that should be great. Im looking forward to a get-away.
Had a really good day at work because I had a nice long meeting with my manager and was told that in the next couple weeks they will be hiring someone to take over my job, and Ill be moving to the elusive promotion. Yay! I get to keep the parts of my job I like and get rid of the stuff I dont, and a little pay raise, so it will be great. I hope…
I’m so looking forward to tomorrow. No work. Puttering around home. Baking birthday cake. It will be wonderful.
~Laura.
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shock
Posted on February 5, 2006 | Filed Under Friends
I am having trouble believing it but we lost a friend on Friday. It is exactly 14 days since I spent the whole day with Laura, having fun and shopping at metrotown, and now she is gone. When we parted ways she was so cute, looking at me like she was unsure if I was a friend who liked hugs or not. I gave her a big hug.
Our thoughts are with Neil and Laura’s family.
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At work not doing work
Posted on January 31, 2006 | Filed Under Day to day, Family, Friends
It was so nice on my way home last night to have it be clear, not raining, and still light out! Ive been enjoying the daylight lately by walking home from the skytrain rather than busing. Ive even been able to see some pretty sunsets, when it hasnt been cloudy and raining.
I had very busy weekend: Left work early on Friday to catch the PCL for the 7pm ferry to go over to Victoria to my parent’s place. Up early Saturday to meet Adrienne for brunch and four hours of bridesmaid dress-trying-on at the bridal shop. I found a style of dress that looked great and got measured. Turns out my measurements are hourglass-y but a bit higher in each than I expected…Ill have to be careful to not gain weight between now and July 31st. Being around all those wedding dresses made me want to find one heh.
Saturday night had a big yummy family dinner…mmm, it was nice to have some mom’s cooking. And then up early Sunday to make the 11am ferry and get back home. Made it to the bus station by 130 to find that everyone in the city was trying to get into or out of chinatown (for chinese new years parade?) and there was no way I was getting a bus, so I braved the rain and wind and walked home. Home just after 2 to crawl into bed for a nap and to warm up. Slept in a little but made to Mel’s party just a little late. As usual, Mel was a great hostess and we had fun, watching movies and eating goodies. Halfway through my second glass of red wine I realized that it was Sunday night not Saturday and I had to go to work the next morning
Last night was quiet and relaxing, and quite domestic. Did many dishes, and three loads of laundry and hung out at home with Jules, who was very happy to sit on my lap and watch tv with me. Im glad that the show about a plane crash didnt give me nightmares, it was kinda scary. Jeremy worked late and made it home around 930. Sounds like its a busy week at work and he’ll be working late…Ive been getting used to him being home right after me lately Anyone wanna do something this week? Ill be at home with my cat
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