Birthday

What a joy! This birthday I am spending at NAIT taking a web server for windows course. I know, I know, you can hardly contain your excitement at my luck and wish you could spend every second hanging onto the professor's drone with me. Fear not, I will gladly re-enact the weekend to Bach's Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor with an oboe accompanyment. Tickets are limited so please sign up now.

But it will be good for me to sit in a class. I am signed up for 3 esri gis courses and have yet to start them after 6 weeks. There are just so many other things to do. This class starts in 1 minute!! I'd best get prepared. I'm thirsty and my lips are chapped - how will I ever concentrate with such irritants?

And in reality, I will be celebrating my birthday on a number of occasions so I shouldn't complain. Wednesday we had cake at work =) Saturday I'll have a bbq, cake and a movie with a couple of friends. May 11th we're having a girl's pizza, movie and pool party!! I think it will be very exciting.

But birthdays are a very good excuse to get together! What other day can you justify eating so much cake without any guilt.

Ha Ha! And thanks to Nik and Jim I have some wonderful princess pink duct tape!!

Dating

I think dating may be an art form. Either that or a cruel form of self-inflicted punishment . I have mentally and emotionally evolved over the last two years that I've been attempting to date. Yes, it has been drastic enough to be evolutionary. It's hard to gauge success as there is an amazingly large learning aspect that has to count for something!! I still remain happily single, busy with all things unfortunately not conducive to dating. Mild glitch, I'm working on it.

In the beginning... I was alone... (Surprisingly I still am. ha! ha!) I mean, I was reluctant... well perhaps extremely reluctant to sacrifice my hobbies and activities to go on a date. Now, I can't say I am any more willing to make a sacrifice, BUT I do leave more nights open to the possibility of dating. And then it all collapses and I am booked solid for two weeks straight. =)

I was brave enough to invite a beau to a few events with friends... Nothing like a night with friends to (a) reveal my true, yet seemingly outrageous date expectations, (b) bring to my attention all the flaws of a date and (c) reveal my actual comfort level with my date. But you know, it's okay to meet a nice guy and get to know each other; it doesn't always have to work out. Perhaps next time.

However, after meeting a wonderful young man with whom I have tons in common, one would think I should snap him up. I guess I just haven't figured things out yet. My one friend told me that I should watch out or I'll get bad dating karma... but I think you have to meet and date different people to meet the right one sometimes, and it's not like I'm being mean, I don't think. I know some philosophers say we are inherently evil, but after years of councelling I thought I had become a nicer person. =)

Perhaps I am too romantic at heart, but every princess deserves her knight. Oh right, in Shrek the princess needs to be rescued... why the heck did I become so self sufficient?? Oh right, I got tired of waiting for prince charming. =) I love myself!!

Well, I just made rice krispies squares so perhaps I'll eat lots of them to make me feel better about dating... or perhaps I'll eat lots just because I really like them. =) You're right, it's the latter, cause I don't really feel bad about dating today.

Building

You'll notice from my picture that I was interested in building at a young age.

Well I have good news! The basement is just about done. After working at home for the last four days I realized my heightened stress level was due to lack of physical activity. I haven't played hockey in 5 weeks due to an unfortunate collision which resulted in a severe strain to my rotator cuff and a series of micro-tears to the tendons at the front of my shoulder. *oh sigh* After a series of intensive physio-chiro-massage treatments I am feeling almost new. The rotator cuff is not causing me any pain but the tendons can still be excruciating at times. I finally went back to hockey last night and had a wonderful time. Yes, my shoulder is sore today, but hopefully some ice and vitamin I will cure that. And I feel great today!!! Life is great - mad? frustrated? annoyed? What are those?? *ha ha*

Natalie and Fawn you'll be relieved to know that any homicidal thoughts have passed and I am very happy with the contractors... well I have yet to really see the finished product because I can't go downstairs for 24 hours when the cement dries... only 5 hours to go. And to boot, I have a new electrical outlet in the basement... granted I'm pretty sure it didn't have a permit, so I'll get it inspected before I close up the walls, but that's still months, or perhaps years away =)

I have to say, the electrician that came was very young and I'll admit I thought he should have had a supervisor. Granted he did hook up the wires right, but his tool pouch had only a fraction of the items he really needed, he didn't have a 2x4 to attach the electical outlet box to the metal framing, he forgot a vapor pocket for the exterior wall outlet, he took the screws out of my metal framing then wondered why the framing was loose, didn't want to cut the vapor barrier which would have made his job a ton easier cause he didn't have a knife or tape, couldn't run the wire right so the basement contractors did it for him and the drill bits he brought didn't match his screws so he had to use the basement contractors tools... I may have popped a critical artery during this process. Thankfully by 10 am Monday morning the basement should be done.

And now on with my day, I hear that taxes are due at the end of April and I need to gather all that up. I know I can hear the envy in your thoughts.

TTFN

The Mackenzie

So over a year ago I moved into my first home; the Mackenzie it is named. I love it... or so I still think. (Nice grey color to match the grey winter sky - I specifically asked for winter grey sky siding).

I have since learned lots about houses, from personal experience or watching Holmes on Homes or DIY Disaster on HGTV. In the winter my house has drafts... I see them building houses nearby and only putting Tyvek around windows, not all the way around the house, but condos are completely wrapped in Tyvek. Hmm... I bet the heat efficiency of my house would be better if my house was wrapped. There are a number of these little issues, like proper /complete insulation, sealing vapour barrier, and others that I'm sure would have improved the heat efficiency of my home. However, I hear my house was "built to code." Oh how I love that phrase. Yes there is a problem, but it doesn't really excede code so we won't fix it. Ha ha!

Not to worry, I'm turning into a bit of a handywoman myself; it was actually a necesity because of my tendancy towards perfectionism. =) But I really have no desire to tear down the ceilings to improve the insulation in the garage and my bathroom, nor do I want to take off the siding to add Tyvek. It's not really that bad, but it could be better. I am thankful that I found one deficiency as it is called that exceeded tolerance, cause I have no desire to fix it either. My basement is 2 inches higher in the centre than the edges... so they are going to fix it. Now we have some differences of opinion regarding what they should do to fix it. But do I have the courage and smarts to stand up and say I disagree... I'm not sure. They were supposed to be here early this morning or so I thought... at 9 I finally called... they arrived at 10 then left to pick up some supplies... they should be back by noon I think... to start work I hope... I'm questioning why I took today off from work.

Webpages & Sign Language

Well, I finished my webpage and it is ugly, but it was a great experience. I've wanted to create one for a while... but now that I have a blog, a webpage doesn't seem as enticing. Anyways, the point was to learn website stuff for work. Hopefully the pages I make for work will be better. It's a bit time consuming to create a nice one though. I think I might have to get a good night's sleep so I'm not crabby when I make the website. I want it to be pretty and crabbiness is seemily a damper on my creativity.

On a brighter note I had the pleasure of visiting my family this weekend and my neice taught me how to sign the alphabet. Wow!! I can still remember if today. One of the girls in her class is deaf so the students are learning to sign to communicate. I think it is fabulous. Hopefully next time she can teach me some signs for phrases. I remember some of my friends teaching their kids to sign before they could talk so they could communicate. I think it is fabulous!

=) TTFN

Nicole's First Blog

At the enthusiastic encouragement of my out-of-town friends, I have been forced to create a blog. To date I've chickened out of three attempts, hee hee, but now in all it's subdued glory, I present my first entry. You are welcome =)

Surprisingly I created my first webpage today too. Still needs pictures, but it has a wonderful Shakespeare quote on it... from the tutorial... thank you NVu and Christopher Heng at thesitewizard.com. Now to get a web mapserver up and running =)

Cheers for now!