Twenty-five random things about me

As posted on Facebook

25 Random Things About Me

1. I ignored this note thing until Minda harassed (okay, gently prodded) me about it!

2. I love staying at home with Baby J and would like to be able to do it all the time and never go back to work, but part of me is actually looking forward to going back to work...I may not feel the same way in September, but we'll see.

3. I have a serious book addiction. I have put myself on a book diet which means I am not allowed to buy books for myself unless someone gives me a gift card to the bookstore. I've been borrowing books from my aunt and uncle's collection instead. I tried to pare down my collection when we unpacked this time, but I only managed to find three books I could bear to part with.

4. I have a love-hate relationship with our new place. I'm hoping the hate part will go away once we paint and maybe get a couple of pieces of new furniture...

5. The smiles I get first thing in the morning from Baby J make getting out of bed worth it and bearable...even when she decides to wake up before 6:00 am.

6. I only lived in London for just over 1.5 years total. I've lived in Vancouver for 10+ of the last 13 years. London feels more like a second home than Vancouver. I still feel a bit transient in Vancouver. I have good friends and family in Vancouver, but I feel like many of the special people in my life are scattered around the world...probably because of the time I spent living in Hawaii, London and Switzerland!

7. When I'm working, I only get to see Alex for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half everyday - it's hard and we try to make up for it on weekends. That's part of the reason I'm enjoying maternity leave so much - now I get to see him for four or five hours a day and we even get to eat together!

8. I love going to bed early and getting up early, but I also like staying up late and sleeping in. I need 8-9 hours of sleep to function...unfortunately it usually works out that on the days I stay up late, I need to get up early. Not so good for the sleep quota.

9. I worked in an industry that required talent and skills that I know I don't possess. Thank goodness I was in administration not production, because I have those skills. When I told people where I worked, the looks of disbelief I got from the people who knew me were great. The looks of relief when they heard I was in administration were even better! They made me smile every time!

10. I have an irrational fear of birds. All birds. Alive birds, dead birds, stuffed birds, photographs of birds in books.

11. When I was a kid I thought there was a monster/bad guy/bird living under my bed. I'd turn the light off and take a running leap from the door to my bed so the monster/bad guy/bird couldn't grab my ankle. Good thing my bedroom was tiny.

12. We shared the Blue House with at least two ghosts.

13. I learned more about the Bible from my AP Lit class than I did from Sunday School.

14. When I was in high school, I used to go camping at least once a month. I miss it and I'm trying to convince Alex that camping is fun.

15. I don't like condiments, but our fridge is full of them because I married a condiment fiend.

16. I love that my family is large and that we enjoy spending time together.

17. I had my first migraine when I was ten or eleven. At the worst, they were coming every seven to ten days. My usual trigger is abrupt changes in barometric pressure or altitude. Sometimes lack of sleep, too much sleep, dehydration or food can also trigger them. They have varied in severity and frequency since I started getting them. One of the best side effects of being pregnant was the complete absence of migraines, even when the Vancouver weather was crazy!

18. When I was admitted to the hospital three weeks early to have Baby J, our coworkers knew, but we didn't tell our families until she had arrived safely.

19. I'm a pack rat. Really and truly a pack rat. It's mostly organized, but I know I don't need all that stuff. I'm trying to be more ruthless at getting rid of stuff. It's working better in some areas of my life than others (see #3 above and #20 below).

20. I also have an addiction to stationery and all things related to it. I have three drawers and a bread box full of stationery. I have more pens than I could possibly ever use. But certain types of paper demand certain types of pens. Too bad we're no longer a society that uses the postal service much. I'm kind of on a stationery diet too, but it's not working so well.

21. I have a big postcard collection that started when I was seven.

22. When I was at boarding school I got so much mail that they were surprised at the bookstore when there was nothing for me to pick up from my mailbox. Even when I lived in London I got lots of mail. Not so much now...but that's okay!

23. Maybe my addiction is to all things paper - books, stationery, postcards, letters? Hmmmm...

24. I love having an empty laundry basket but I hate doing laundry, in particular the folding, hanging and putting away part. I never iron, but when I lived in London, I found ironing sheets to be very relaxing and a good time to think!

25. Everyday I look at Alex and Baby J and I can't believe they're my family or how happy they make me! I think I'm pretty lucky to have both of them!

The ghosts are mad

In the past week, we've had a bunch of light bulbs burn out - some really old, some recently replaced, some in the mid-range of light bulb life - the faucet in the bathroom go nuts, the tap-tap-tapping has come back but stops when we ask nicely, and there has been a lot of noise from the suite upstairs...the empty suite. I think we've upset the ghosts with all the move activity. And it's not just one suite, we're all moving. When K. moved out the ghost activity picked up a bit - the tapping came back, but this is more.

Sigh...I should go buy shares in GE.

And no, I'm not crazy. Really.

looks like it's ours

I think we have our new place. We pretty much just have to sign the agreement and we can move in shortly...but we won't...we'll wait until January.

We'll wait to have one last (and really a first) Christmas in the blue house. We'll wait until we made a few trips to the Salvation Army with some good stuff that we just don't need or want anymore. We'll wait until the ghosts have calmed down a bit. Strange things have been happening lately...like the shredder turning itself on, things falling over for no reason and not leaky taps dripping. I think the ghosts know something is up...smart ghosts.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the new place.

It's a bit smaller than what we're used to, but it will do...I will post some more pictures on we take some. Like maybe when there's stuff in the apartment!

not-the-blue-house

bedroom looking out towards the other bedroom and the living room in not-the-blue-house

kitchen in not-the-blue-house

Oh, and not-the-blue-house needs a new name. Not-the-blue-house doesn't quite cut it. Not after the hobbit hole and the blue house.

Suggestions? Or maybe the apartment will name itself after we move in.

Stupid pedometer and the overuse and abuse of the word so

My pedometer sucks. I walked all over yesterday and by the time I got home only about 1,200 steps had registered...not even close to the 4,000 that was my goal.

So I checked the calibration like the instructions said. I walked my 20 steps and if it was calibrated the thing should have read between 19 and 21 steps. I did it five or six times. The counter moved, oh, five steps over the course of 100+ steps. Not good.

So I figured the next step was to reset it and if that didn't work, I'd pop the battery in and out and if THAT didn't work, I'd take it back this morning.

So I pushed the reset button and held for four seconds as instructed. And then the screen showed 12008 except somehow I must have broken it because the bottom bar on the 8 was missing.

So I made a cup of tea.

After a while I thought I'd try to reset it again and if that didn't work, I'd take the battery out. Reset didn't work. The cover didn't come off. But the numbers had changed. It now said 12258 and the 8 was still missing the bottom bar.

So I gave up and went to bed.

This morning I realized that my single function pedometer has ghosts because it's a clock. That thing, it's a clock! It was reading 09348 with a missing bottom bar this morning and a few minutes later, it was reading 09398. Which means the 8 is an A for am. I got the cover off, popped the battery out and reset the thing. It's working. My little walk to work this morning brought me close to 2,000 - already a better showing than half a day yesterday!

Maybe it was the ghosts?

The power went out in half the house last night...we had power in our room, but not in Kelsey's room, in the living room and in the bathroom. GHOSTS???

When we got up this morning, there was no power and the furnace had been off for something like over 16 hours...it was a little chilly...

The outage meant the computer that had held on to its internet connection so well despite every other part of it failing (both the floppy and CD drives have been added to the list of dead parts) is now effectively dead. Well, that's not quite true, it operates in Safe Mode, but that's not so useful. So....as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm relying on a temporary solution. Okay, Shannon, just buy a new computer already!

We're glad to have the power back and to have the heat back on. It seems our neighbours had partial power too and the people across the alley had none...we think they had to shut the grid down to fix the problem...oh storm 14. Hopefully it's the last of the storms!

The other inhabitants of the Blue House

the blue house

Alex and I live in the Blue House just steps away from everything we could ask for in a neighbourhood - a giant grocery store, six or seven produce stores, two Greek import delis, a used book store, a kids book store, a craft shop that carries emergency knitting supplies like needles, stitch markers, and wool, the doctor's office, a pharmacy, a camera shop, three Starbucks in two blocks, countless other neighbourhood coffee shops, three bakeries, a Cupcakes shop, a library, major bus routes, a gas station, restaurants, clothing shops, card shops, dollar stores, pubs, a movie theatre...well, you get the picture, except to go to work, we figure we can do everything else we need to do (and somethings we didn't think we needed to do or didn't know we *could* do) on foot except visit the dentist...

Before Alex lived with me in the Blue House, Roslyn lived here with me. And before that, I lived in the Hobbit Hole...You might have known all that.

hobbit hole

But did you know about the occupants of the Blue House? No, I'm not talking about our WONDERFUL landlady, K, or the downstairs tenant, R. Nor am I referring to the various creatures who thought they should inhabit our back deck all summer long. I'm talking about the other inhabitants of our suite.

When I first moved in, one morning I made my bed, fluffed the bed garnish pillows and turned my back to the bed to do something else. When I turned around, there was an indentation of a head on one of the pillows. I ignored it.

The taps in the bathroom kept being left on, except, sometimes the last person in there was CERTAIN the taps had been fully turned off. K called a plumber.

The tap problem disappeared after the bathroom fiasco this summer was over...

Then there was the tapping that came from no where and went away when we said things to it like "Go away, we can't sleep." It stopped not long after Roslyn left and we forgot about it until it started up again a few weeks ago. It's not as loud or as frequent, but it's there.

Then, one night, a few weeks ago, I woke up to Alex making a very scary sound. Seems he had woken up and seen a man at the end of the bed staring at us.

Yeah, I ignored that too.

I guess I'm a bit skeptical...But I often feel like there is someone in the house with me when Alex is at work. I'm never frightened, but I don't feel alone...

So the part that made me really believe there are at least two other inhabitants in our house was when I came home last week. I was at one of my classes and it's a later class and sometimes Alex beats me home. So I peaked through the window as I was opening the door. And there was a girl/young women staring back at me. She had long straight hair with bangs and a poofy old fashioned blouse on.

I didn't tell Alex right away...he gets a bit weirded out by that kind of thing, but I told Stacey. She said that ghosts only show themselves when there is something big happening in the house...a big change of some sort...who knows what's afoot in our house, but it's kind of interesting. I told Alex yesterday and he didn't take it too badly...he said I should write about it...so I am...and that's our ghost story...

If they appear again or if strange stuff happens, I'll let you know!