The Pug Factory

I stumbled across this today and thought you all might find this pretty funny.

Surprise Homecoming

TLC has this new show, Surprise Homecoming, where US servicemen surprise their families after they come home from overseas. I'm really on the fence about this show. I think it's great that these men and women are being honoured with some time in the lime light, however, I'm not sure that surprising people who have to psychologically prepare for a reunion is a great idea. I hope that everything has gone ok with these families.

Today was pretty low-key at work and this afternoon Lenny and I did some errands in significantly cooler weather.Words cannot describe how much better I'm feeling in this weather. Thank the LORD the heat wave is on its way out. I'm actually looking forward to biking to work tomorrow if this weather keeps up.

A surprise birthday party

This weekend Lenny and I went up to Mildmay for Mark (his stepdad)'s family reunion. It was pretty hot outside but the air conditioning inside the house was oh-so-awesome. In addition to the wonderful food, mingling, and A/C, I was also surprised with a wonderful birthday lunch today! You never know when the next time everyone in the family is able to get together, so this worked out well for everyone and Totally caught me off guard. :) Here are some pictures from today, courtesy of Alanah,  as I forgot my camera yesterday for the reunion.

25?!?!?! Holy caboodles. How did I get this old? 

"Aww man!" :)

"Ahhhh!" -- Alannah caught some pretty precious moments here.

That's better :)

Making a wish! I think I'm still in a bit of shock that there's a birthday party here.

"Yay!"

Reading the cute sauce cards :)

I like this informal pic. It's too cute :)

This one's nice too :)

Showcasing a funny doggy card

Chocolate Scrabble. Nom nom nom! Note Lenny's awesome expression here too. :)

And finally Nico (Alannah's boyfriend) trying out the chocolate fountain for the first time. What a fun way to celebrate!

Thanks again to everyone in Lenny's family -- you guys have made me feel so included and loved and I couldn't ask for anything better.

47

I just want to make a virtual note here that I survived 47 degree weather today. It may have been only 35, but with the humidity, 47 was the high at 4 pm today. Wow. Thanks to a lot of whining and a very kind Lenny, I got a drive to and from work and only had to spend about 30 minutes walking outside for the totality of the day. That aside, even laying down just in front of the fan, I feel like I`m melting... I should mention that I`m SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo incredibly grateful that my sister Paula gave us an air conditioner so that we can at least sleep in the cool.

This evening we went out with the dinner club at Lenny`s work to a place near the market called Gambrinus. They have something like 40+ types of beer available so everyone had a good time.

That`s about it for interesting things that happened today.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

Leave it to Lenny to figure out how I"m supposed to survive this 37 degree plus humidity weather. Last night I came home feeling quite lousy with a large headache I'd had since the early afternoon. Despite drinking an abnormally high amount of 2 1/2 litres of water over the course of my time at air conditioned work, he force fed more more liquids (that include juice though -- yum! -- what a treat!) and ordered some pizza (also a treat! yum!). I think the pizza/salt in all that delicious meat and cheese really helped to perk me up for a bit but after an hour or so I was back to my big ol' headache.  After he got back from a 22km bike ride and 3km run (seriously!) he made me lie down upstairs and bed and lo and behold, I fell asleep at 7 pm... and am waking up now at 7 am... Lenny does know best. I feel so much better this morning.

As for other news, my mom's surgery on Monday went really really well. She says the pain was less than a root canal and seems to be in really great spirits. How great are drugs these days?! I think the entire family is supremely relieved that everything went well.

A blogger that I've been following since before she had children probably five years ago, had her third healthy child on Sunday. Many of you have heard me talk about Wendi at some point or another and her incredible journey of infertility, adoption, and surprise unaided pregnancy after nearly 10 years of infertility treatments. Hop over to http://flakymn.blogspot.com/ to see baby Abigail.

My new job has been going well. So far this week I've attended some training on PeopleSoft, played musical students within different teacher's studios trying to balance everything out, and have answered about a gajillion e-mails.

Well that's about it for news. I've got to go take out the garbage and recycling now as Lenny forgot to last night during my 12-hour sleep... :)

Allergico ma non allergico di Stompin' Tom!

This morning I had maybe 1/4 cup, if that, of orange juice, and alas my throat is so sore right now that my voice has dropped. :( Let's add orange juice to the growing list of things that have been confirmed allergens. Boo. I haven't been feeling well since last Saturday when I had 4 raspberries fresh from the Guizzetti garden, so maybe I'm just not in the best of shape to "handle" orange juice, but sheesh, 'tis a bit ridiculous.

This week has been really rough health-wise. I think the heat exasperates any ickyness and biking to work hasn't really helped. Work has been very quiet and not overly stressful at all. I'm settling back in with my former co-workers quite nicely and I feel like I'm contributing and feeling productive.

Thursday night Lenny and I went to see Stompin' Tom Conners. Despite the worst sound engineering I've ever experienced, the night was still definitely worth it and Tom was the consummate entertainer; such a heart-warming evening. These were some of my favourites:

Tillsonburg



Ketchup Loves Potatoes -- coincidentally one of my coworker's Wedding Song



Ballad of Stompin' Tom -- by far the saddest song, but gives you an idea about his background



The Hockey Song -- arguably his most famous song

Warrior Dash

This weekend Lenny and I trekked up to Orillia to participate in the first ever Canadian Warrior Dash. This 5km race involved getting very very very muddy, jumping over cars, doing "high knees" through a stretch of mismatched tires, climbing up and down 3 ski hills, jumping over burning hurdles of fire, and did I mention getting muddy? Here are some of my favourite pics of the race.

Some of the many excellent warrior-themed costumes

They had a jumbo tron live streaming video of one obstacle where the participants were crawling in mud under some barbed wire.

Lenny with one of his friends, Jodi, also participating in the race. They got these free hats for signing up :)

The fire hurdles as demonstrated by another one of Len's friends that were doing the race (Mike). You can see another climbing obstacle in the background.

The team of researchers from London that were in the same wave as Lenny.

A very muddy Lenny & Jodi at the end of the race.

A close-up of just how muddy Lenny got.

Each participant got some warrior food and a free beer when they finished. Here's a pic of Lenny's turkey leg :)

This was the pile of muddy sneakers to be donated mid way through the day. It got much bigger after the other 5000 participants went through the course.

All-in-all it was a supremely well-organized event. I wanted to watch Lenny do it this year to determine whether or not I could sign up to do it next year, but after seeing this I think it's not for me... I value being clean and not being challenged this much in my exercise. Alas, I will go again to watch Lenny have the hugest of grins on his face as he gets muddy muddy muddy! Seeing the outfits was also quite amusing...perhaps next time I'll get an outfit together for Lenny and his friends and maybe even Dakota (the family dog)!

Google wins again!

In all the free time at work I've been having, I decided it'd finally be a good time to set up Wifi on my cell phone so that I can send emails, etc. without my computer. After THIRTY minutes walking up the hill in 30-degree weather to visit our lovely friends at Information & Technology Services (ITS), and THIRTY minutes watching them try everything I'd already tried before, I was mighty frustrated. Alas I come home today, google the problem, and this lovely random  How To forum tells me within 30 seconds that one of the settings was wrong. I changed it and tada, I have internet. Arg. Man that was such a frustrating experience. Tomorrow should be better though; Internet always makes the boring times go better.

Just thought I'd vent and share. Work is going well, but I'll feel a lot more settled once I have more access to the networks, phones, email, internet, etc.. Nothing else exciting to report, so I'm afraid that'll have to keep you entertained for now!

Canada Day Weekend Adventures

This past weekend Lenny and I did a whirlwind tour of the Toronto area with his family this weekend to celebrate our freedoms.

First was a stop off at Lenny's Godparent's daughter's graduation party. Antoinette is the first of this family to graduate from university so a lot of people were there to celebrate and enjoy the delicious food, including these fine desserts:

The bakery that made many of the desserts we enjoyed (in Etobicoke):

One of three plates of cannolis. Nom nom nom!

This is sadly the best pic I have of some of the younger people that were celebrating. Antoinette is there on the left, followed by Rosemary (Dominic's girlfriend), Dominic (Antoinette's brother), and Lenny's brother Zac.

On Saturday we headed to the Mosport International Speedway to see Lenny's stepsister Meg's boyfriend John race. It was actually pretty neat and I enjoyed the outdoors a lot more than I thought I would! Here's a pic of John's spiffed up car:

I like this pic of Lenny enjoying watching the warm-up rounds.

Here's a close-up of the car; a souped up BMW:

This is a $500,000 car that Len spotted across from where we were sitting most of the day. It wasn't racing but it sure did attract a lot of attention and curious onlookers:

Mark (Lenny's stepdad) showcases the superb Jimmy Johnson (a NASCAR driver) #48 burger flipper that Lenny and I bought him earlier this year. This was the first time it was used, and as you can tell, Mark was pretty happy about it:

John had a few sets of tires and it was great to see the car lifted up, the tires exchanged, and then let back down again. Here's Mark going to town on the front tire:

The two actual races of the day were just over 30 minutes long and encouraged the use of chairs. From front to back is Mark, Vanessa (Zac's girlfriend), Meg, and Zac:

A pic of John rounding one of the curves.

Silvana (Lenny's mom) and Dakota had the "coolest" seats in the area:

Dakota LOVED this day and it was wonderful to see a happy doggy waving her tail all around for hours. :)

I don't have any pictures of it, but we also had a dinner with Lenny's best friend Marcel and a lunch with my sister Paula.

My new (temporary, 4-mth) job is going well but I've been collating so many documents that my patience level is quite thin. For that reason, I'm going to end things for this post here! :)