Quotable Thursday #63

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. – Walt Whitman.

Quotable Thursday #62

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope. – Bill Cosby.

Exotic Animal Tragedy

"A total of 49 wild animals were gunned down by police with pistols and high-powered rifles after escaping from a private preserve in Zanesville, Ohio Tuesday. The animals were moving into nearby neighborhoods, forcing residents of the town of 25,000 to stay indoors." - ABC news.

They didn't really escape, the man who ran the private zoo released them then took his own life. I feel sick from this story and felt the need to tell others about it. There is no blame to be put on the officers who shot the animals, they had no other options. The majority of the 56 animals released from the zoo were very dangerous --- literally lions, tigers and bears. The blame is to be put on the government that has some of the most lax laws in the country regarding exotic animals. I do not believe it should be legal for a private person or organization to own exotic animals. Sometimes I even have issues with small to medium sizezd zoos where the exhibits do not seem large, interesting or authentic enough.

Below is the ABC news clip that I watched as soon as I got to the internet this morning (I heard about this story on The Bear on my drive into work).

Dad’s bDay

Happy Birthday to my wonderful Dad!! Just wanted to send my love to him on his birthday.

Below is a photo of Dad (I assume taken by my Mom) and his first grandson (and my nephew) Jackson. Aren't they cute in their matching hockey Jerseys?!

New Stuff Part II

A couple months back Dave and I went on a shopping spree. Below is the car packed full of our purchases for the day:

I got a new bike, we both got new shows and other sporting goods and we spent some money at Future Shop/Best Buy and of course, we stopped by Henry’s as well. Dropped a great deal of money, but on useful things that did not go unused in the months since then.

This shopping spree reminded me of an earlier post that discussed my love of getting new things. It is one of my more materialistic tendencies that I don’t really mind to be honest.

A Grand Meeting

If I ever find a need for a meeting table this is the look I want.

It just looks so awesome…

Quotable Thursday #61

Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. – Dion Boucicault.

A Day In the Life as…

…an Indoor Air Quality Technician.

 

I often do site work for my Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Assessments and usually they are large scope assessments for entire buildings. These buildings are normally government buildings in and around Ottawa and some portion of them is normally unoccupied. A little while back I did and IAQ assessment for a building that have a few floors unoccupied and below shows what a portion of my day was like:

It is dark and pretty creepy but I ate my lunch here anyway as I could be on my own and still keep monitoring different locations around this unoccupied floor. I do however, love my little IAQ cart – it is so handy and makes work so much easier on these days.

My Mom’s Birthday

Today is my Mom’s Birthday and I hope she has a great one.

Above is a photo of Mom and I spending time with Jackson shortly after he was born.

Today also happens to be my parents’ anniversary – Happy Anniversary!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! Hope everyone has a great weekend spending time with friends and family and eating some delicious food!!

Ice Breakers

It is coming up on that time of the year again when little puddles of water start freezing over. The time of the year when you can walk over the newly formed ice and break it. I get a weird sense of satisfaction from breaking little pockets of ice like this. Unfortunately this time period is followed up by the freaking freezing Ottawa winter wherein everything gets covered by a metre of snow and all the drivers become idiots incapable of sensible driving. But let’s focus on the ice pockets that we get to break soon instead of all that nastiness.

Quotable Thursday #60

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers. – Orison Sweet Marden.

French-Style For Chris

I saw these in the grocery store quite some time ago and instantly thought of Chris. She loves french-style cut green beans and often requests them as Christmas presents during the holiday season. This is the first time however, that I had ever seen them in a frozen style – before this I had only ever heard of/seen them in the canned fashion.

Blog of Note: October

This blog doesn’t need me to help it get viewers or anything like that, but it is definitely one that I visit on a fairly regular basis: Cute Overload. Such adorable photos and videos with usually adorable and/or clever remarks about them. I have heard/read that it takes quite a lot of persistence to get a photo posted on Cute Overload, so what goes on there should be the best, right?

Good ol’ TImes

This weekend we had Justin over to the house for the first time in quite a while. Because of our work schedules or his, we just hadn’t gotten a chance to hang out as much as we would have liked to. It was really great having him over because it really felt like the good ol’ times. The boys played video games and I played on my computer. I baked everyone some cookies and did the normal chores like laundry, etc but it never seems as bad when it is mixed in with video game goodness. We did eat healthier than normal as I was making us food that fit into all of our trainer’s restrictions as much as possible (with the obvious exception of the cookies – though I think it should be noted that I made a tiny batch and it lasted the entire weekend). It was a lot of fun and makes me hopeful for lower stress levels when Justin moves back in with us in February.

It’s Been A while

So it has been a while since I last posted…quite a while actually. I think this may have been the longest break from blogging ever (well since I started blogging that is). The reason for this is simply that life has been crazy busy lately – in fact it has been kicking my butt. Figuring out how to be a good and attentive Aunt while keeping on top of my busy workload, classes and my own business all while planning a wedding and attempting to stay on top of my weight loss has just been wearing me down lately. I used to say that I was treading water and managing to keep my head above water but in the last few weeks I have started to feel my head drifting below the water level and at times I felt like I was drowning. There was (and still is) so much stress lately that I don’t really know what to do with it all. I haven’t figured it out, not in the least actually, and am still stressed and have so much to do that I can’t ever see not being stressed to the max, but I need to figure out how to live my life with all of these things in it as it is appearing to be a normal state of life for me.

All of this being said, I have found/made some time this weekend to work on my blogs. I am hoping that seeing regular posts go up for the next little while will inspire me to continue to find/make time for blogging as I really do enjoy it.