As you can probably tell, I am not super-excited that I haven't given birth yet. I was really keen on having this kid in February, though not for any particularly good reason, and the fact that it is not going to happen is a little bit of a bummer. At this point I have basically convinced myself that I will be induced next weekend and that my likelihood of having a C-section is now much greater. I know there is still a good chance that I could go into labour on my own during the next week, but right now it doesn't feel very likely. Nothing whatsoever is happening!!! I am starting to understand what Amy went through when she had Liam. :)
Since I have now been off work for about 3 weeks, you may wonder how I am keeping myself busy - I have not been too successful with that at all. I am trying to catch up on all the emails I neglected over the past few months, I've been looking into writing a will, I need to check out some mutual funds to try and revamp my RRSP (but I really have no motivation to get that done), my brother tried to convince me that I should actually do my own taxes this year for the first time (instead of having my accountant/mother do them for me as usual), but I don't know if that is likely to happen since I don't even have my T4 yet. What else??? I am working my way through book club books, but as interesting as they are, I can't seem to stay awake while reading. I haven't been getting out to walk Trus much, because of the cold weather and because I only have a certain amount of endurance for him pulling me along at this point. Hopefully we can go when it warms up later today. Other than that, I have been watching far too much stupid TV. I am trying to stay away from it, but sometimes I do just get sucked in for a few hours. And my desire to clean really hasn't kicked in yet - I understand that it can be helpful in stimulating labour, but a lifelong aversion to cleaning can't be overcome just like that! :)
So that is my whiny post...expect a few more over the next couple of days! :)
Friday, February 29, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
It's finally ready!
The baby's room that is...not the baby him or herself. We're still waiting for junior to make a grand appearance, but since we've finally done everything in the baby's room that we were planning on doing, I feel a little better about the idea that the baby can come any time. It is somewhat ironic considering the baby will likely sleep in our room for quite a while before moving into his/her own room. However, I strongly felt that anything we didn't get accomplished before the baby was born was seriously unlikely to happen anytime soon after the baby was born. So we are now good to go on that front.
This is me at 39 weeks and 2 days...and counting. I am wearing my new Lululemon sweatshirt because I love it (it is orange after all), even though it is very uncomfortable when I do it up. I am still not quite at the point that I desperately need to get the baby out, but if this whole pregnancy thing extends into March, I am not going to be a happy camper! I am also a big fan of the double chin in this shot. At least my swollen ankles aren't showing here... :)
Anyhoo, that is all for now...happy weekend everyone!
Monday, February 18, 2008
Amazing quilt!
This is kind of a test to see how this blogging from Flickr function works - but I thought using a picture of the quilt Julie made for us would be a good place to start.
We would like to use the quilt as a wall hanging in the short-term and we are currently trying to figure out how to hang it on the wall with no damage to the quilt (or wall). This kind of thing is my major pre-occupation these days!!! That and laundry, which I have been putting off for too long now. So off I go... :)
We would like to use the quilt as a wall hanging in the short-term and we are currently trying to figure out how to hang it on the wall with no damage to the quilt (or wall). This kind of thing is my major pre-occupation these days!!! That and laundry, which I have been putting off for too long now. So off I go... :)
Sunday, February 17, 2008
New Blog - February 2008
I have decided to start a new blog, since I plan on being much more diligent about writing this year while on maternity leave. I am going to migrate all of my old posts here so that I don't lose them, but the chronological order will be a little messed up. Hopefully I will write something new very shortly - hopefully there will be something new to write about very shortly!! Still no progress on the baby-delivering front as yet...but stay tuned!
My first entry - July 07, 2006
Not quite sure how I ended up starting this blog. All i did was ask a simple question to help someone else start one and look what happened. Oh well, perhaps I will actually like this - if I remember to write entries. It seems to me this is an awful lot like a journal, which i have never been particularly good at doing.
Since I can't come up with anything good to write about now, maybe I'll just sign off instead. Surely tomorrow I will have some good ideas!
The weekend - July 10, 2006
We didn't have that exciting a weekend but it was nice overall...cooked dinner on Friday (actually quite a change for me!), had a nice dinner out on Saturday at Kinki in the market to celebrate the unofficial good news about the job, and then went to see "The Devil Wears Prada". Of course Greg was one of about 5 males in the audience, but he suffered through it. I decided it was my turn to pick the movie because we had seen a fair number of movies based on comics lately (definitely not my first choice). Even though the movie was fairly superficial, there was a good little life lesson about being too attached to your job. I suppose I can relate to that and it made Greg think that he's right about me working too hard.
With respect to Kinki, that was my second time eating there. The first time I went with Rory and as far as I recall, we had great food and great service. I had heard in the meantime that the service was no good, but Greg and I really enjoyed both the food and the “atmosphere” on Saturday night. It wasn’t super-busy, but we had a seat under the covered patio and the food was delicious. It is definitely the best sushi I have had in Ottawa…though I suppose that isn’t saying too much. Honestly, for the maki I ate I would have probably paid a third of the price in Toronto. Sigh...My favourite Japanese restaurant in Toronto is New Generation Sushi (mostly it is really good quality fish for really good prices - there isn't too much "atmosphere" though!)
On Sunday we went over to Greg's parents' place and went for a swim in the pool. As you can see from the picture, our dog Trus is not much of a swimmer. Mostly he got his exercise from running around the pool and barking at us all afternoon. Have you ever heard of a dog that can't doggie paddle?
Sunday night we watched the movie Syriana. (Note: we watch a lot of movies. Greg takes DVDs out from the library and there is no predicting what will come in when. They get a lot of new releases around the same time that Blockbuster does and Greg reserves them online. Way cheaper…but sometimes a little bit challenging to watch them all before they are due.) At any rate, back to Syriana. It was definitely an interesting, gripping movie. But I can’t help but feel that I missed the point of about half of it. I’m sure I could watch it several more times to figure out what was happening, but who has time for that? Just typing this entry was almost more energy than I have…
"Bureaucratically Incorrect"
If there is anyone out there who has a copy of the book Bureaucratically Incorrect: Letters to a Young Public Servant by Bob Chartier, or knows where I could buy one, I would really appreciate it if you could let me know. It is supposed to be available at Chapters or Amazon, but my searches don't seem to be working. James was stunned that I hadn't yet read it and said that he figured all Ottawa-types would have gobbled it up. I seem to have missed that boat. 
The debrief on fasting and Cameras – July 18, 2006
So for all of you who are anxiously awaiting a debrief on the fasting…here goes. Greg essentially fasted from 6pm on Friday until 1-ish pm on Sunday. At that point he had a couple of carrot, apple, ginger juices from Booster Juice (barf in my opinion 
). Then it was on to several bowls of popcorn (air-popped even) and a few other munchies. Nothing really heavy or substantial though. I don’t actuallyknow whether the fasting did him any good in the end, but he was definitely quiet and lacking in energy all weekend. Don’t be alarmed…on Monday night he was back to his usual “annoy Alyssa to death” self.
My fruit fast certainly didn’t provide me with any of the results I was expecting – I’m sure no one wants the details of that. However, despite being hungry often, I was never really lacking in energy. And, not drinking coffee for two days didn’t kill me. It was worth it just to find that out really. I also cracked when Greg started eating popcorn, so i basically was on fruit only from first thing Saturday morning to 3pm on Sunday. I might try it again one day, but it would probably be wise to officially stop drinking coffee before that. So really, I might never try again!
The stupid thing we did was go to see Pirates of the Caribbean on Saturday night. Stupid because the movie wasn’t great (basically it is just more of the same), and because we were ready to eat the popcorn of the 10-year old girl beside us. Without saying please.
A new topic – I’m thinking about getting a new camera. Mine still works fine, but the lack of optical zoom does drive me crazy (and yes it is that old and that low-level a model that it doesn’t have optical zoom). Of course we have Greg’s nice camera, but he isn't super-keen on me using it and I do find it somewhat complicated. I would just like one that I can take anywhere and get great shots, without worrying about it being too delicate or attractive to thieves! If anyone has any suggestions about a good camera to buy in the $3-400 range (all in), I would love to hear them!
Ahhh, life! - July 15, 2006
I started an entry the other day and then lost it because our computer is super-unreliable...I haven't been willing to try again until now.
Big news of the week is that I sprained my ankle on Thursday night at a Flossy ultimate game. (See photo from a non-eventful Flossy game from the week before J, courtesy of Jody.) While the sprain isn’t that bad, hobbling around is fairly annoying. Most annoying however, is that Rory and I just signed up to do the Ottawa City Chase on July 22nd – you can check out what it is all about here: http://www.citychase.ca/en_site.asp. Not that we thought we might win or anything, but in order to get into the spirit, teams at least have to do some running. Even Rory and I. So I guess we’ll have to see what can be done because it would be a fairly expensive default. I still really want to participate though!
Other news of the weekend is that Greg and I are doing fasts of a sort. I guess mine really isn’t a fast, but instead I am only eating fruits and drinking water – it’s supposed to be very “cleansing”. Greg is only having water for the weekend. I am a little worried he’s going to pass out, but I suppose people do this sort of thing all the time. Should be interesting to see if we are still talking to each other by the end of the weekend, since my weekend diet does not include coffee. Could be treacherous!!!
Catch-up time – September 6, 2006
I have been completely derelict in my blogging duties and have not written anything in over a month. That said, there is much to catch up on!
I’ll start back in July, when Rory and I did the City Chase in Ottawa. She’s already blogged about it (here) and I will add my two cents. We decided to enter the race fairly last minute – we had both done it back in 2004 and had a lot of fun, but we both had different partners then (yay Deb). Anyway, on a lark we paid up and ended up doing really well! Experience definitely counts in these things. We ended coming 29th overall and we were the 2nd place all female team. It is reassuring to know that we were that more than 10 minutes behind the 1st place all female team so that even if we had run a little faster and a little more, it wouldn’t have made us first! We agreed that we didn't really love any of the checkpoints, but mostly enjoyed the fact that we were pretty smart about the whole thing and finished well. No matter what people say, winning (or doing well) always makes sports, games, urban obstable challenges, whatever - much more enjoyable!
Anyway, I highly recommend the City Chase as a fun way to spend a Saturday. The only irky thing is that it costs a fair bit to do ($150 per team) and it is questionable how much of the proceeds are donated to charity. There are no claims of charitable contributions that I can see, but I believe the organizers partner with a not-for-profit of some type every year. I can understand that this is a fairly expensive event to put on, but I would generally feel better about forking out the dough if I at least knew a little more about how much money goes to good charitable organizations.
Wow! I am a blogging slacker...November 06, 2006
It really has been a very long time since I last wrote anything. Two months exactly in fact. Part of the problem is that my work cut off access to this site and flickr.com, which makes me far less inclined to do any major typing. It is so much easier when I am already on the computer and looking for a slight diversion from the day-to-day grind, I mean, super-exciting work.
Anyway, much has actually happened over the last two months, some good and some quite bad. Not going to go into the bad details, but needless to say, I will be glad when this year is behind us. On the good side, we just bought a new house! Actually we settled everything back in October and it really was a surprise to everyone involved. We hadn’t really been planning on moving anytime soon, but when this house went up for sale we were pretty curious about the inside and the backyard, so we went to take a look. One thing led to another and we ended up buying it. We are very excited about the whole thing, but unfortunately we won’t be moving in until July 2007. Sigh…but at least that gives us some time to get our own house fixed up and hopefully sold quickly in the spring.
Trip to Alberta in August 2006 – November 10, 2006
As you can no doubt tell, this is a very belated entry about our trip to Calgary in August. I wanted to post about it because I had already started writing something and because it helps when looking at the pictures and trying figure out what they might be of! So keep in mind that this is just rough sketch of what we did because my memory is already failing. That won't stop me from being long-winded though!
So Greg and I took a trip out west in August to see Dan and Andrea and some of boomtown Calgary and surrounding regions. The change in theme for my page is in honour of that trip. We got to Calgary on a Friday night and there was instant drama as D&A had rescued an injured baby hawk on the way to the airport. They came to pick us up at the airport and the hawk was in a box in the car. We went to a wildlife rescue centre on the edge of town right away, which is where Greg took a couple of pics. All in all, a fairly eventful start to the week!
Over the next couple of days we toured around Calgary a bit, went to the Farmer’s Market and a Fringe Festival one-man show “Iraq and back” and then went to the Badlands and Drumheller to see prairies, canyons, dinosaurs and the Hoo Doos.Next was a 3-day trip up the highway to Jasper for Greg and I. We meandered a fair bit on the way up there, stopping at Lake Louise for a picnic, taking a walk on the ice at the Columbia Icefields and eventually making our way into the town of Jasper. Because I waited until we got to C-dot to make a hotel reservation, there wasn’t too much available. However ended up finding a neat place that only cost an arm per night – the Tekarra Lodge. The next day we went on a long hike on some mountain (they all started to run together after a while J) and then for a dip in the Miette Hot Springs. The hike was pretty cool (we ran into a couple whose camera equipment blew down the hill from the one of the “summits” – thank god it wasn’t ours), but the hot springs was huge disappointment. Basically it was a crowded, over-chlorinated, hot version of an icky public pool. Clearly we didn’t see the online pictures before we went there! One of the interesting things for us during the hike was the need to be very aware of bears and know how to deal with the situation if we came across them. Growing up in urban Toronto and Ottawa doesn’t really prepare you for these situations, so we paid close attention to Andrea’s advice. We didn’t see any bears in the end, which didn’t really upset me, but we definitely saw many other interesting animals we don’t come across every day!
Day 3 of the roadtrip was basically spent driving back to Calgary – this time we stopped in Banff and didn’t love it, but that could have been because of the torrential rain and the fact that it was way more crowded than Jasper. We did find a cool little bakery that actually had baked goods with no gluten, so Greg got to have a sweet treat for a change. We ended the night by having dinner with D&A, and A’s brother Matt and his girlfriend Tara at Spicy Hut, a pan-asian restaurant. It’s somewhat of a fancy description for a restaurant that is basically one step up in décor from the Thai Shan Inn, but the food was very good.
On Thursday, Dan drove Greg and I southwest to the town of Fort Macleod to see the one and only Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. It is essentially a museum carved into a hill where natives used to herd buffalo over the edge of a cliff for a mass kill. Kinda gory, but the museum and the way it is laid out is really cool. That night we headed over to Andrea’s parents’ house for a lovely dinner and nice relaxing time. Friday was mainly spent brunching, walking around downtown, camera shopping (so that I could save about $40 in PST) and then flying home. All in all, a great week of vacation! I hope we left some stuff to do next time we go visit D&A though. J
One interesting note…when we came back from the airport in Ottawa, we noticed that a house across the street from us had a sold sign on the lawn. Since the house hadn’t even been up for sale when we left, that it means it sold in under a week. Hopefully that bodes well for when it’s time to sell ours!!
I love food! - November 22, 2006
I apparently don’t feel like sleeping, which is why I am staying up to post this very important entry…ha!
Actually I changed my theme in honour of my dinner out last night at Mama Grazzi’s in the market. I had a great time catching up with Vanessa, but our dinner was really not fantastic. The food was so-so, and the service was actually pretty appalling once we thought about it. Our waiter had a cute accent, which I think he figures will help him get away with forgetting everything his customers ask him to do. And when reminded of things forgotten, he blamed everyone else for it. That drives me crazy!! So needless to say, I won’t be going back there in a hurry.
On the other hand, I had an amazing dinner out with Derek last weekend at the Whalesbone Oyster House on Bank Street. Of course any dinner with Derek is a good time, but the food was especially fantastic. We shared the lobster bisque, which was like fluffy lobster-flavoured butter (so good), as well as the crab cakes – they were also pretty yummy and I am not usually super-keen on crab cakes. We both had the maple miso cod and loved it. Though we considered having dessert, there was no room in the belly. If only they had had an espresso machine, the night would have been fully completely. But no worries, I would go back there in a heartbeat.
Enough for tonight…stayed tuned for an upcoming post on a recent heart-wrenching event.
December 31, 2007
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Hard to believe that I haven’t written an entry for more than a year, but just for Kevin, I am making sure to do at least one in 2007. Cutting it a little close to the wire, I know.
So 2007…what to say? It has clearly gone by in a blur. The heart-wrenching event I referred to in the last (long ago) post was actually the miscarriage I had in fall 2006. At the time I really wanted to write about it, more just as a cathartic thing, but one thing led to another and I never managed to get any thoughts down. Not that I am trying to gloss over it or anything like that, but time does bring perspective and the fact that I am now 7 months pregnant really helps to make the memories less painful. So that is where we are at – we are expecting our first baby on February 28, 2008. And yes, 2008 is a leap year! And no, we don’t know what the gender is – hopefully a healthy gender. J
Otherwise, 2007…I changed jobs and became a manager for the first time. Definitely a learning experience and one that I am so glad I had. Not sure what will happen following maternity leave, but I might well be in this job for a while longer. There are so many things that I would have loved to do in this position, but because of the pregnancy I really had to focus my energy on making sure the immediate needs were taken care of and my long-term view basically only extended to February. Maybe next time around I can tackle some of the bigger challenges. Ha! As though I am going to have more energy when I have a one-year old to worry about…
Greg and I also bought a new house this year – just around the corner from our old one. We are really loving it, slowly getting it more and more to feel like our home. Next challenge is to finish putting up pictures (maybe a never-ending task), and of course, to decorate the baby’s room. We (I) have a plan, but basically we are just waiting for stuff to come in and then I will put Greg to work! At least it is all painted already. A big hit with the house is the hot tub on the back deck - check out Kevin's blog for more details.
Otherwise, things were pretty much the norm. We went to Mexico last February for Ted and Jamie’s wedding – which was totally awesome. I love group trips!!! We basically chilled on the beach for 7 straight days with no guilt because we had been to the area before and didn’t really feel the need to go on any side trips. The wedding was great and of course Jamie (and Ted) looked gorgeous.
Another important event was Dan and Andrea's wedding in Toronto in October - it was also a fantastic time. Being D&A (or Dandrea), they had to do things their own way, and with a very detailed plan for all of it. But the planning definitely paid off and they had a really great afternoon and night, with a very fun party. 2007 was a good year for brothers getting married!
(Maybe just ignore the fact that I am wearing the same dress at both weddings...it was a comfortable dress whether pregnant or not and they were two totally different crowds!!!)
And we just saw the movie Juno – we both really enjoyed it. It was funny, without being farcical, and touching at the same time. I had to cry a little at the end (I am pregnant after all), and she did just give birth. And of course, I always enjoy movies with the subject of my girl crush, Jennifer Garner. Sigh…
Maybe I will try to write up a couple more restaurant reviews soon – considering that we may not get out to nice places much more in the near future. But then again, we do like to eat an awful lot, so I imagine we will make good use of the grandparent babysitters!Here’s to 2008 – hope everyone has a happy and healthy new year!
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