Great Big World Out There

so long, and thanks for all the fish?

Greetings.  I'm wide awake even though I have to be ready to get on a plane at 7am.  My cousin, bless his heart, is picking me up on his way to work to drop me at the airport.

He'll be here around 530. Ugh.

In other news, I hurt my back on Sunday. I was shopping for a swimsuit top at Walmart. Could that be more pathetic? I wasn't even trying the damn thing on. I'd found a bottom I liked, but was looking for a tankini top. I reached for the lower shelf and snap.  

Something very unpleasant had happened in my lower back. I remember uttering a sharp bark/squeak of pain and then leaning heavily on my shopping cart.  

OY.  I bought the bottom but have no top to go with it. Dang. I figured I'd be able to go get something later. 

I made it to church, where I made it through the service (at which I was playing) by laying upon the floor with my feet up.  I made it home. Barely. I had to call my brother to bring/cook/serve my supper.  

Misery.  

Enough of that though. It is getting better, I had massages, got some excellent drugs from my doctor, finished the abstracts for the meeting I am going to in Brazil in august and basically worked myself to death.

Also I found a cane that has sparkly butterlies all over it. I don't need it all the time but the breakthrough pain in my back makes me nervous.  If I have to walk far, I want the damn cane. The moments where I move wrong and it seizes up with intense unbearable please kill me now pain for (admittedly, small) amounts of time make me nervous.  I do not wish to fall down.

So I'm leaving my blackberry at home BUT I am taking my guitar. Hoping they'll let me gate check it in Edmonton and pick it up in Los Cabos.  I am a little nervous about it going missing but that's why you have insurance.

Speaking of insurance, I think I have diving insurance IF my back is well enough to do the diving.  I have my snorkel and mask packed. I have my referal papers. Heck, I even printed out my itinerary. I never do that. But I plan on loading up on painkillers once I get on the plane and they make me LOOPY.

So best to have something that has my information written down. Just saying.

With that I am going to bed. Not sleepy but tired and it hurts my back to sit.

I really am this dumb

I have a confession to make.  About a month ago I was in Ottawa, attending a meeting. When I got home from Ottawa I could not find my glasses.

I could not remember putting my glasses in my suitcase, purse, etc so I assumed I left them at the hotel in Ottawa. A reasonable assumption.  When not wearing contacts, I've been wearing a ratty, bent, scratched, piece of crap pair of glasses I'd managed to scrounge up from the depths of one of my cupboards.  

Basically they suck. I hate them. 

So tonight, having arrived in Great Falls and encountering bad weather, we decided to stay here for the night. (doomed we are to stay in Great Falls. A pet peeve of mine).  Since it is snowing, we cannot put out the slides. Since we cannot put out the slides, there is nowhere for me to sleep. I cannot drive all day tomorrow without a decent night's sleep, since I'm already fairly tired. I announced to all and sundry that I was going across the Flying J parking lot to stay at the Crystal Inn.

I gathered my stuff and my mom mused about getting her own room at the hotel.  Which, frankly, is ridiculous. Why on earth would we pay for 2 rooms? Stupidity.  So I said I'd get one with two beds, voila, done.

Turns out this was a good decision for the generator on the trailer is not working, the thing my dad keeps his teeth was frozen and the hotel was only $99. What a deal!

What does this all have to do with my glasses? Wait.  There's a p0ol here. It was just after 9 when we decided to stay, so I had to go collect my swimsuit. It was in my suitcase. The same one I took to Ottawa.  I was looking for my makeup/toiletry bag and the swimsuit when my hands closed upon my glasses.

Seriously? How the hell did I miss them when I packed the suitcase yesterday? I didn't clean it out, but you'd think I might have seen them. So. Now I don't need to run out and get new glasses in Mexico like I'd planned (but what the heck, that might be kind of fun!)

In other news, I think I can talk my parents into geocaching tomorrow. Exciting! 

I did something else stupid today but now I cannot remember what it was. Oy. 

In exciting news, the hotel includes breakfast so for once I managed to pay for a meal for my parents. HAH! Also free internet. Yay!  I don't have to pay for a shower at the truck stop! Yay!

Well now I have nothing further to say and I have a pile of geocache travel bugs to log. 

random observations

When I say random observations, I really mean it. I am about to discourse on various and sundry items that may strike my fancy.

***

Watching Storage Wars. I hate watching storage wars without the benefit of having pvr'd it first. I hate commercials. I hate the boring bits where people yell at each other. I just want to see the bits where you find out if they made money on the locker or not. That's the good part

***

The older I get the lamer my liver becomes. I am not as good at assimilating hydroxyl groups as I used to be. Drank some water. That's good.

Kinda proud I remembered the bit ab0ut the hydroxyl groups. Go me.

***

Perhaps trying to practice my guitar after consuming some hydroxyl groups was not a good idea. I spent a lot of time practicing one little thing, as suggested by my teacher but it probably drove my hotel neighbor crazy. I am ok with this.

***

Isms, in my opinion, are not good.

***

Oooh! It' a storage wars marathon. Explains why it is episodes I have already seen. 

***

Dill pickle is one of my favorite flavors. 

***

I ate a salad tonight without any kind of dressing. It was kinda disgusting. Yet I ate it because I'd been consuming hydroxyl groups. It had a little bit of salmon with it so that kind of made it more palatable. But not much more palatable. The hardest part of supper tonight was forgoing the strawberry shortcake and the stuffing that went with the turkey. Le sigh.

***

What else do I know? Not much. I found (was emailed a course description) a stats course I want to take in Maryland in December, or New York in February. Neither of those are particularly palatable things to be doing but the course sounds seriously interesting. For a total nerd like myself.  I have determined that I do not want to do a PhD in statistics. It's good to know that. YET. I kind of think it would be interesting if it were not for all the math I would have to do. Ye heavens, how I hate math. It takes me a long time to learn the math.

I could learn the math though.

NOOOOOOOOOOO.

***

Steve Jobs died. Sad for his family. I'm not a huge apple person, I have an ipod or two, but other than that....

***

It is late. I should go to bed. Random thought are slightly more interesting.

***

Dirty jobs is a fascinating show. I just like watching Mike.

***

Am tired, done. Going to bed.

I keep finding things

to do. Oy. I just remembered that I was supposed to send some information to some students - completely forgot. So now I'm trying to make data mean something when I look at it and think - dang. Now what do we do with this stuff?

I have a guitar lesson in half an hour and I should have spent some time practicing. Oh well.  I'll spend my time looking at data instead. Just need to set an alarm so I remember to go to the lesson.

***

 It's after 11 now, and I am tired. I did my lesson, got a lesson in a practicing technique (odd that I won't take to time to practice something properly on the guitar but WILL do that on the piano/organ) and then came home to look for the speeding ticket I got a few months ago. I'd set a reminder in my head that it needed to be paid before I left for Banff tomorrow and my brain clicked on. 

If only I could have remembered where I'd put the stupid picture of my car. I went through piles of paper. Lesson: deal with the mail when it enters the house, don't leave piles of it hither and yon. HATE. 

On the bright side, I found it and I got to spend an hour or two going through piles of mail. Nice to cross that off the list.

Then I did a bunch of stuff that needed doing, but I seldom feel like doing. I washed out my garbage can. Matched up odd socks. Cleaned off my nightstand (mostly). Emptied the recycling bin under my desk.  Cleaned the kitchen sink. Tested the new LCD projctor I bought today. Took the water I bought a week ago out of the car and set it on the garage floor. Carried more crafty crap downstairs. Put some mystery shopping receipts in an envelope, addressed envelope and now I just need a stamp. Maybe I'll mail that tomorrow.

Emailed people, tested some software (didn't work) tried to investigate some data but stymied by stupid software.

Sigh.

Now I am more tired having read that. I made a list of things to do tomorrow morning so I don't wander around aimlessly waiting for the basement ceiling guy to show up and then waiting for the people I am driving to Banff.  

Maybe I'll get enough stuff moved out of the crafty storage room to move the filing cabinet that I put together July 1 out of the living room and into the office. Then I can move the computer out of my bedroom.

Ahhh. Mission accomplished. I have bored myself sleepy with what I've written. 

progress

I just spent the afternoon doing some half-assed basement work. I swept the floor. I moved paper shelves downstairs. I moved a lazy boy from my garage which probably explains the slight twinge in my back. Not pain, but I am more aware of my spine than on a normal day.

I have a chair that is comfortable in my basement, so that's something.  In my defense, gravity did most of the work re: getting the chair to the basement. The hard part was getting it into the house in the first place.

I should go take a picture. One moment please. 

That's just one corner of the basement.  I think the fireplace is too small for the space, or I need to put something above it. I am thinking about a nice mirror or similar.

For some reason I felt it necessary to take a picture of my feet and an errant leaf yesterday:

I feel taller looking at that picture. Then along my walk:

Don't I look thrilled ? I do not photograph well. This was about 1/3 of the way in. I think I'd already spent time crawling around in the dirt looking for a geocache that was 10 feet away from where I was crawling around in the dirt.

Awesome.

***

My legs are still rather sore. I recommend walking 6 miles for fun if you can manage it, just be sure to keep moving the day after you do that if you aren't used to walking that much in a day. Oy. I felt every muscle when I went downstairs to turn off the lights just now - I'd been sitting and every muscle had seized up. 

Had a hot bath and my muscles are happily, much more relaxed.

***

I have one day of work in the office this week, then 3 out of the office, then a Friday in and a long weekend. Bliss. Can't wait. Excited, all that. For I get to go to Banff for a conference this week and that is a good thing.

I also have to buy some stuff tomorrow for the conference so that will be nice. I like spending money that is not mine. Don't you?

With that, I head off to bed. It's not even 9pm but I am tired and I have a busy week ahead.

Away

I got home just a while ago.  I am happy to be home, but happier to have been away, seeing new things, doing stuff I've never done, adding things to the 40x40 list, crossing a thing off the 40x40 list.

When I say I'm tired of travelling, I'm talking about the travel that takes me all over Alberta to work on farms at all hours of the day or night. There wasn't a lot of control with that travel. It might have been fun to get to where we were headed, but then we had to work, work hard, and then drive back and do the same thing the next day, or the next hour, or the next week.

It got very exhausting. It meant I didn't get the stuff done in my office that I needed to do. I'm sitting on piles of data, piles. Lovely data. Am so excited about this data I can't stand it.

I'm just tired is all.  

Way back at the time football schedules were annouced and Edmonton was going to be in Vancouver for the reopening of BC Place, I decreed that this would be the away game I went to this year. 

When it got to last week and I spent Wednesday alternately napping and wishing I could be napping in the same sunbeam as my cat I wasn't so sure. More travel? Really?

Here's the thing, though. Travel on my terms is very different from driving 7 hours in one day to do something that isn't really fun, makes you sneeze dust out of your lungs for days while staying in hotels that while nice, are in places you wouldn't typically vacation.  If I want to have Sonic for supper, I pack my passport on a trip to Vancouver and cross the border to Ferndale. Discover I don't have enough fabric because I bought for two windows, not realizing that I had three in my basement? Head to JoAnn's for some extra fabric on the same trip to Vancouver.

Realize that I've never walked all the way around Stanley Park on the Seawall? Wake up this morning and decide that is a worthy 40x40 goal and then DO IT. (My legs are a little sore. I know more about this stuff from my MSc but it isn't interesting and I don't care to bore you with it).

I had a cupcake from the Cupcakes franchise on Denman in Vancouver. I watch the show so it seemed the thing to do. Gluten be damned! 

It was, ehhh. Whatever. They didn't have the kind I really wanted with the peanut butter icing or the pumpkin ones this morning, but I made do with a red velvet last night and a sweet sixteen this afternoon.  Each was nearly $4. For a CUPCAKE. 

Not worth the stomachache.  

***

I did some geocaching while I was away, naturally. Found a bunch in Stanley Park during my marathon of craziness. Some were wickedly awesome. This hobby takes me places I'd never in a million years think of going.  I even found a couple near the cardlock gas station I stopped to put gas in my rental car. Awesome. 

I'm just a few away from another milestone, so I have to think about what the next big one will be. There's one just down the road from me that should do nicely.  

Then I'm off to Banff this week so I'll grab a couple of caches while I am there, methinks. In fact, going to check out the maps now. Then I'm going to bed. 

***

You'll note I did not speak of the football game. It sucked. Learn to block, my eskimo friends. The stadium was lovely, the retractable roof kind of blah, the light show amazing, as were the ridiculous lineups for concessions. They didn't know 50,000 people were coming? Really?  Cold burgers, long waits, ehh. Not cool.  They had 4 tills for beer at the one place I waited in line for 15 minutes, but only 2 cashiers. 

Really.

Anyway. I'm sure they'll iron that out. I guess they haven't had such a crowd in a long time, hence they didn't know how to deal.  Edmonton has big crowds by most standards every game, so they've built the concessions to manage that. Bless 'em. We've still got the best damn condiments in the league. These things matter to me.

You know what was cool? They had a blimp that floated around the stadium dropping things (mini footballs with free room vouchers?) that I would have been amused to try flying.

Ok.  Now I have to go to bed. Am tired from all the healthy walking I did today.  And yesterday. I basically walked the entire length of Davie street from my hotel to BC Place last night (and back) because I felt like it (couldn't find a cab after the game).  

Saw girls puking, some guy dressed in some kind of creepy masochistic something or other (think furry blue boots, spandex, some kind of hood with pointy ears (ewww) complete with a harness/leash thing that was thoroughly disturbing. Dude (he was wearing spandex, eww) was with 2 other guys.

SO don't want to know what that was all about. 

Now that I will have nightmares, time to head to bed. G'night.

what else I did

So I stayed home from work today. I woke up with a splitting headache, a sore back (carry over from last night when I could not sleep) and a general feeling of icky-ness.

I accomplished a few things today. I took a shower. A couple hours later I was cold so I took a hot bath. I ate eggs. Drank tea. Texted with a friend periodically throughout the afternoon.

I slept my way through at least part of the afternoon. I read a book that feels like an old friend. Carried my unused canning jars downstairs. Put the drawers in the dresser my sister helped me carry to the basement. 

Tried cleaning my piano room floor but that was utter disaster. HOW do my cleaning ladies do it? Looks like a dragged my mop through the mud then decided to clean the floor.

On the bright side, I spent an hour playing the piano, then 5 minutes dusting it. Then I closed my pretty piano and put the orange blanket back on top. So I don't have to dust it every other day.

I think I need a prettier piano cover.  

What else did I do today? Talked to my mum. Theorized budget scenarios based on some financial stuff for a project. Sweet heaven, I hate dealing with budgets. 

Perhaps that is why I am so tired?

Done. Just.... done.

I had to reschedule my guitar lesson last night for I? Was still in Westlock at 5:30, my guitar was at home, I smelled like the ass end of a chicken and was not prepared for a lesson. 

My teacher, being a reasonable soul, allowed me to come tonight.  I am learning that old standard called The Rose.  Can't tell you how much I actually hate that song. I was at a thing on saturday night and so help me, someone sang that song.

Gaah.  

That being said, it is a useful exercise to make my fingers play that stupid song on the guitar.  I suck at it, so I wandered over to my piano and played it there just to feel better about myself. For I? Don't need music to play that stupid song. On the piano.

Hell, don't need it on the guitar either.  Just kinda need to know what chords I should be playing. This is exciting because that means I'm figuring this whole guitar thing out. Even if my fingers are basically stupid. 

At the guitar. 

***

I am exhausted. It's just before 10pm and I've been thinking about going to bed for the last 30 minutes. 

I had a conversation with a friend this morning that basically went like this,

Me: 'I am burnt out. You are burnt out.'  

Friend: 'Similar prose about burning and being out. Done. Exhausted.'

Me: 'Agreed.'

Friend: 'Let us never do this again.'

Me: 'Agreed.'

So since I am burnt out, and I recharge best when I am somewhere other than here, I changed my flight from Friday morning to Thursday night. It did not change my car rental charge and now I need only add an extra night of hotel to my bill (found a cheapie best western with good reviews). Yay!

***

I saw someone I hadn't seen for a while this afternoon. Usual chitchat followed of the 'so, what's new' variety. I mentioned heading off to Vancouver this weekend. Was quite expectedly asked why.  For a football game, of course.

'That's it?'

That's it. What better reason to travel? I've seen the country almost from end to end (how I wish I'd helicoptered or similar over to Newfoundland last year) mostly due to football. I'll do some hiking while I'm out west. Probably find a geocache or 12 while I am travelling.

We'll see if I come back happier or more tired than ever.

I'm hoping for happier. I need happier for I? Am burnt out. 

annnnnd.... done

I don't have much to say. I had a snifter or two of wine this evening to celebrate the doneness of some farm work and I've kind of lost a bit of my typing ability.

Is OK. 

For the travelling work is done. 

Yay!

Now the work that freaks me out must begin.

YAY!

That's all I got. 

sick

I was sick today. So tired it hurt. Apparently it's a thing that is going around. All I know for certain is that I was tired, nauseous and lacking motivation to do ANYTHING.

I had a meeting this afternoon so I dragged myself in for that but my big plan to get some garage stuff was foiled when I got to the store and was so tired I couldn't hardly move, let alone make a decision on anything.

So I bought a giant fall mum and a bag of potting soil and called it a day. I have palm trees and such that need repotting. Gonna do that tomorrow if I am not still exhausted. 

The one thing I did get done today (other than attend a dreadful football game, seriously esks, what the hell was that tonight?) was order myself one of these babies:  the Fitbit

I read about it on a blog somewhere and wandered over to the link as perhaps you just did. I thought, ehh, just a pedometer. 

Oooh! That will upload to a website where I can look at graphs of what I have done. The data nerd in me is totally excited and thrilled about that. THEN I read about how it will track your sleep patterns.

SOLD.

I am so excited about this thing, I ordered it today and I expect it will take a week to get here. I wants it now, please.

EXCITED I AM YES INDEEDY.

The weather was weird today though. 27 degrees (or close to it) but overcast all day. Hot wind which was good for the crops that need to dry out a bit. 

Made for a lovely night for a football game. Shame my team stunk out the joint so bad.

***

I am tired, I am sore and I need to go to bed. Wish I had my fitbit to track how I sleep tonight. SERIOUSLY SO EXCITED.