Ringing in the New Year!

I just realized that FLIB-ur-teejib-it (n.) turned three years old on Dec 27th. My only excuse is that I've been a tad busy. And tired. And overwhelmed.

Highlights of this year:

• May: Going to Rome/Southern UK (pictures are still not up!)
  
• July: Getting knocked up
• Aug: Finding out I was knocked up
  
• Sept: Finally finishing my Evil School

This whole baby thing has really taken over my life. So far, we've managed to mostly re-organize the house, purge I would say about one-sixth of what was originally there and clean out most of the baby's room.

There's still some large furniture in the baby's room that needs to be moved out, and we were prevented mainly from the four large snowfalls we had within a span of two weeks! This is the most snow I've seen ever fall on Lotusland! Nonetheless, it doesn't mean we haven't made great headway in the the baby-front. I've been doing a lot of reading on what the baby needs before I go out and buy things like strollers, car-seats, clothing, baby's development, etc.

We did buy a little bit of stuff: a swaddling blanket, two organic cotton onesies and an organic cotton sleep sack. The biggest purchase so far was the Natural Rubber crib mattress. A regular crib mattress costs anywhere from $80-100. This one was significantly more, but we feel it's worth it. Why a Natural Rubber mattress? I'll be answering that question in a later post, but here's something to get you started.

What to look forward to in 2009:

• Well, I'm still pregnant, so you'll be hearing a lot about that. A cloth diapering session and prenatal classes are on the calendar
• I'm giving birth to a baby! Enough said. Being a mother should be interesting....
  
• We're slowly greening our house. I was going to start up a separate green blog, but then I got knocked up, and quickly realised that maintaining yet another blog won't be feasible.
• And other things as they come along...

I am determined to post at least once a week in 2009, even it is only "My baby won't sleep and mummy is sleep-deprived.". But you'll definitely see a bit of a shift with FLIB-ur-teejib-it (n.) next year as I go through my own life changes.

Repeat after me...

SNOW BELONGS ON MOUNTAINS AND ONLY MOUNTAINS!

So within a week's time, we got about 30cm of snow dumped on us. This is the most snow that I've ever seen fall in Lotusland. Ever.

For those of you who are enamored with snow, you cannot say that love snow only when it's convenient for you. If snow becomes an inconvenience, you still must love it, and can never change your mind about not loving it later on. Or else you become a hypocrite.

I hate snow. Refer to first sentence of this post.

This picture was taken today. The big piles of snow is our front yard, and the trees beyond that is our neighbour's yards. Hubby and my mom spend a fair number of hours this past week just shovelling and shovelling and shovelling and shovelling...

Never mind the stoopid people on the road who are scared, can't drive in the snow, get their cars stuck because they have bald summer tires on or their cars just isn't powerful enough, whatever. People become very selfish when it comes to winter driving around these parts. It's every person, or vehicle, for himself. A passerby told Hubby today that there were actually people down the street from us who were getting into a big fight. While he didn't have full details, we could probably guess that people were getting very frustrated by the snow and not being able to go or get around anyone else.

It will be one of the few Christmases when it's actually a White Christmas, but honestly, white Christmases are so over-rated. Forecast says it should be raining later this weekend. I can't wait for that.

It's a BOY!!!.... Maybe....

Okay, I really don't know the sex of the baby, even though we wanted to find out. Alas, we went to the detailed ultrasound a few weeks too early, and the policy of the ultrasound clinic was that they didn't tell, period, until 20 weeks. I was 17.5 weeks at that point. We were a tad disappointed, but had since gotten over it.

Really, the only real reason I wanted to know was so I could focus on choosing one name instead of two. I'm not a fan of choosing a name that you can change from male to female (eg from William to Willamina). I also want a name that was clearly male or clearly female, and not something androgynous, like Jamie. Not that Jamie, William or Willamina are bad names, but they just not my cup of tea. (We have other criteria too, but I won't get into that right now).

So who has been telling me it's a boy? Well, pretty much everyone. This Chinese Birth Chart, also predicts that it's a boy. I'd conceived in July, so you can guess how old I am.

Here are some other predictions, all by people I know. It's a boy because:

• I'm carrying high (whatever that means, when you pat the top of my belly, that's not baby, that all my organs and guts being pushed aside because the baby is taking up all the space in the rest of my belly. In fact, the baby is sitting fairly low)
• I'm carrying low
  
• If you look at me from behind, I don't look pregnant
• It kicks a lot (I'm not certain if this kid kicks more than average, this is my first time I'm pregnant, and I think it kicks loads!)
• I have tons of acne, and in places where I normally never had any. This is my personal favourite prediction. My mother looked at me one day, and declared me to have an ugly face (in Chinese), then proceeded to tell me it was because of my acne. With her years of motherly sage advice, she told me I have acne because I have male hormones running through my body, and If I had a girl, my skin would be clear. (My mother has had only myself and my sister, so of course she would know!) One of my staff also said similar to me. A friend of mine who had a baby this year, had lots of acne, and she ended up with a girl.
  

I do have some mixed feelings if it is a boy. Growing up, it was just me and my sister. I really don't know what boys do or are interested in: I can't relate. A part of me was hoping to give my kid a copy of Anne of Green Gables: after all, all Canadian girls must read it, it's practically a rite of passage. Boys generally tend to be more of a handful, and generally noisier and less gentle than girls. On the other hand, I hate, hate, hate! with a passion the colour pink, and would simply die if my kid would insist on wearing pink all the time. And boys tend to play the cooler sports and play cars, and not with Barbies.

We'll see in 16.5 more weeks what pops out....

A quick update on moi

Today I'm 22 weeks (about 5.5 months for those who can't convert quickly). I'm doing well overall. The kid's been kicking up a storm this past week. Hubby finally felt the kid kick the first time last night. Not once, not twice, but several times. The kid has been keeping me from sleeping well, I'm so not used to all that movement in my belly, especially at night when I'm trying to sleep. That I can still sleep on my back helps though.

I'm definitely getting bigger. Both my SI joint hurt now because the weight of the baby against my pelvis, and my feet feel like they're taking a beating. Last weekend, I tried picking up a semi-heavy box, and boy, did my SI joint scream back at me. I guess my hips aren't as wide as I first thought, ha.

In the next few weeks, I will be going in for my glucose test, which diagnoses for Gestational Diabetes. This is one of the things that I'm really worried about. While I feel that I'm a fairly healthy person, I eat pretty well, I exercise about 5 times a week and I try to get as much sleep as possible, I've already started cutting back my sugar intake, which includes pop and juice. I know I can cut back on more, but it's already so frustrating eating already. I've always been a picky eater, but now my food choices are more limited, I feel. Everything's beginning to taste bland, and find that there are times when I don't feel like eating simply because my food choices are getting bland and repetitive. I know that GD isn't selective, and you can do everything right and still get it. And with some (yet again) lifestyle changes, it's possible to keep it under control. It's really something that I'd rather not think about or have to deal with, so hence, this is making me a tad more miserable being pregnant.

We're almost finished cleaning out the baby's room, although you couldn't tell if you saw it, there is a ton of furniture in the room still. My goal is to have this room completely empty before Christmas, save for the baby stuff that's coming in, of course. This weekend, we'll be purchasing a new desk and I'll be moving my office space in with Hubby's. This will be an interesting arrangement, because if there's one thing I've found, Hubby and I don't share office space well.

Chistmas Tree!!

This past Friday, we bought a tree and put it up, and decorated it. It's hard to see but all the ornaments except for the balls and one Christmas angel (that I friend of mine made for me years ago) are all handmade and bought from a Ten Thousand Villages store. This is the first Christmas tree in probably at least 10 years I've put up, and definitely the first since getting married.

I'm quite a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas. As and adult, all I could see were people getting stressed out, people spending way too much on things that other people didn't particularly liked, and a general expectation of people having to buy gifts for others, etc. Generally, this holiday was getting too materialistic and too wasteful for my tastes.

I mean, how many times you were given something, and while you were taught to be gracious and accepting, deep down inside, you didn't like it, it was going to go into a regift pile, put aside to be forgotten, or eventually, just thrown away (and then in my mind, I cringe at the thought of yet another item going into our landfill). I've been through all these things with my gifts, which is why as a general rule I don't give gifts any longer unless it cash or a gift card, or something that's consumable or recyclable.

However, I'd found myself this year reflecting on my stance on Christmas, and thinking to Christmases past when I was a child. Christmas was fun, magical and wonderous. I don't know if it's the preggo hormones in me, but I was becoming somewhat sentimental, and discovered that I wanted to at least recapture that for the kid, and also teach him/her a little of what Christmas is really about. The practical side of me said that since I had pretty much no ornaments, it would be easier for me and more economical if I bought them this year, and re-engage my tree trimming skills now than a year from now when I have figure all this out and keep an eye open for a crawling baby that was going to threaten to tip the tree over.

I also wanted to be more environmentally friendly with the tree, hence we trudged down to our local garden centre and bought a real tree, one that can be recycled. The ornaments that I'd picked from Ten Thousand Villages, I wanted to make certain that they would last us for a while (we also spent wayyyy more than I was intending, oops!, but it's promoting sustainability for others, which is a good thing). It's not very big (it's probaby not quite 6 feet tall), and it partially blocks the view of the TV, but I love my little tree. I'm starting to get excited about Christmas again.

My new mattress!

This mattress (not the bed frame or the pillows) finally arrived a few weeks ago after waiting almost four weeks for it. Let me tell you that the moment it arrived, my back was in bliss!

I blame the origins of my current SI joint problems on our old, soft, lumpy mattress. I think sleeping on that thing had put my hips out of alignment. And of course, sleeping on a sloping mattress didn't help my sleep at all.

My mid-and lower back pain have pretty much disappeared, thank goodness! My SI joint problems still persist unfortunately, because now I'm about 5 months along in my pregnancy, and I think the baby's sitting on a nerve or something. Sigh.

For those of you who don't recognize the bed, it's a Tempurpedic Rhapsody. It's somewhat more firmer than the Classic bed. It didn't take me very long to get used to it. Hubby took a bit longer, and even though he feels that his sleep isn't any different, we both have noticed that we don't feel the other move any more, and even hubby has noticed that he sleeps a little deeper now.

My only beef right now is that I'm a back sleeper, and I shouldn't be lying on my back for too long. I've been told that the weight of the baby may cut off some of the circulation to my lower body. But I've still found that I wake up on my back, and hubby's found me lying asleep on my back more than once. Old habits die hard! It's too bad I can't enjoy my bed properly for a few month more. Sigh.

The Great Purge

The Great Purge is something that we do every year. Typically, we look through every single item (and I do mean every single item), that is in our house and garage and make a decision to either keep it, donate it, recycle it, or throw it out.

The Great Purge is normally done once a year, but we haven't done one in about 3-4 years because all my previous free time was devoted to Evil Homework. If you think that The Great Purge is a mere afternoon's worth of work, you are sadly mistaken. The Great Purge take typically four full afternoons. This time around Saturdays in November have been devoted to The Great Purge.

Because we haven't done a proper purge in a few years, we have a lot of things to get rid of. I'm surprised at the amount of stuff we're getting rid of, especially if you've been to our house before, it ain't that big. Plus the fact that we need to make more room for the bebe, we are being less sentimental and more discriminatory when we make our decisions to keep or purge. Hubby's also managed to find a few things that he thought he'd lost or had thrown out.

So far so go, we're more than halfway through our house, although the piles of stuff is making it difficult to shuffle things around. Next week will be the kitchen, downstairs bathroom and the storage area. But the most difficult part (and this tends to be the most difficult part every time we do this) will actually be our two-drawer filing cabinet. There has been a constant debate in this household as to how much paper records to keep. Hubby wants to keep more, I want to keep less. Nonetheless, this particular part of The Great Purge, can cause marital discord if we don't set ground rules up first. And you'd never thought people would fight over a bunch of pieces of paper.

Anyways, wish us luck. I'm really hoping (crossing fingers) that we'd be done by next weekend, but history has shown that this is rarely the case.

(As a Public Service Announcement, I've found out that Future Shop actually take old CDs in for recycling. This is awesome news because when we went through our pile of media CDs (non-music, computer software CDs), we found about 50 or so that we had to throw out. Anything that we can recycle is better than throwing it in the land fill.)

Happy Anniversary to Me!

Today is Hubby and my 6th wedding anniversary. Wow!

So we celebrated by going to watch Tropic Thunder last night. It was an okay movie, and although a satire, not as funny as I thought it was going to be. But the two that I thought shone in the movie were Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise. Robert Downey Jr. was very good, as a direct quote from the movie "I'm a dude pretending to be a dude playing another dude!", which is exactly what he did. The picture shows how much you can transform someone when the makeup job is good. It took me a while to figure out that Tom Cruise was in the movie, I thought he did a really good job with his character (the makeup for both actors helped them keep in character), but I didn't recognise him at first. High acolades from me as I'm not a huge Tom Cruise fan. I give the movie 7 out of 10. It could have been higher, but some of the humour was a little too base for me, in particular the scene where Ben Stiler holds up the head. And that's all I'll say.

Tonight we went out for dinner with a bunch of friends at this trendy restaurant on 17th Ave in Calgary call The Living Room. The restaurant was definitely one of the better restaurants I've ever been too, and although it was a bit pricy, it was really good food. I can understand the price because they used high quality ingredients, and more black truffle than I've ever seen in one meal. I'll post up pictures when we download them. But definitely two thumbs up!

AWOL again

Well, I've gone AWOL again. I really apologise but I felt that I had to ignore some parts of my life for the time being in order to get my Evil Homework done. Evil Homework is done and handed in. While that is a big sigh of relief, I have still yet to pass my project. Apparently, there may be a slight hiccup that may prevent me from passing, but I'm hoping that I will still be able to get the Pass I've been waiting for for three long years and just completely move on with my life.

Coming up soon will be a summary of our London/Rome trip that we took in May, and pictures to follow shortly after that. Plus other things that are happening in my life. More to come this week, I promise!

Happy Canada Day!

Hello fellow readers! I really apologise for not keeping a consistent posting schedule. June was a pretty rough month for me. After coming home from our vacation, I was hit with catching up on work, still working on Evil Homework, getting over jet lag, and healing my ankle that I had twisted right in the middle of the vacation. While that was going on, I somehow managed to come down with a medium-grade fever (it went up to 102F at one point), had a trip to the local ER (and never going back if I can help it), all while trying to get back into my regular routine.

Now I more or less feel like I'm back to the regular routine. As already alluded to, I'm still dealing with Evil Homework, and my back is still killing me because of all this sitting in frot of the computer for 12 hours every day. Including weekends. Sigh.

However, I've been making a better effort to not trying not to ignore the rest of my life. I've seen three movies since coming back: Iron Man (for hubby's birthday), The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and KungFu Panda. All very good movies and worth seeing.

Now that we have started the second half of 2008, I am really hoping to get back on the blogging wagon. Some of you had already asked me: WHERE ARE THE VACATION PICTUES?!?! Please note that hubby and I (mostly hubby) had taken over 600 pictures. They are online, but not properly labelled. I esitmate that I'm about 1/8th the way through the process, and considering how busy I am with life, it will take a while. But my goal is to get them completed by end of July. Same with Evil Homework. Wish me luck.

Anyways, have a Happy Canada Day everyone!

Back home!

Hubby and I got back home from our vacation yesterday afternoon. We're severely jet-lagged, but we had a fun time. I'll be posting my vacation comments shortly, probably in about 4 parts, including the pictures.

I've spent some of today getting stuff done, and most of today (like about 10 hours worth) catching up on work email. I probably need another couple of hours tomorrow to be really caught up; I need to hit the ground running come Monday when I go back to work.

Although we did have a nice time, there was about a 24 hour period where it was very stressful. In order of appearance, on the first full day in Rome:

• It was raining very, very hard, and we were outside most of that day. Think of someone pouring water out of a bucket on your head, that was our day (no joke);
• Hubby had his wallet stolen. We spent a lot of time calling Canada to cancel cards and such. Our cell phone bills will be huge;
• Someone called me at 2am, on my cell, to tell me that the house alarm on my mom's house was set off, and the alarm company couldn't get a hold of anyone. Lots of panic calls back to North America ensued, again our cell phone bill will be huge. After several calls, I had managed to reach my sister in Seattle. Fortunately, it was a false alarm.
  
• I sprained my ankle and shin muscles. Found out today that I wasn't suppose to walk long distances on it. This happened smack in the middle of my vacation, so naturally, I kept walking long distances; it is vacation after all. I won't be going to my step class for a little while.
  

Off to Europe!!!

Yayay! We're going to Europe! I may post, but it'll be highly doubtful that this will happen. Definitely will when I return end of this month or in early June!

Off to Europe!!!

Yayay! We're going to Europe! I may post, but it'll be highly doubtful that this will happen. Definitely will when I return end of this month or in early June!

So here's the scoop....

Yes, I had promised that I would update my readers as to the status of my school thing once I found out what was going on with it. I've had a very busy and exhausting week, so that was my only excuse, and not a good one at that.

So here's the scoop. I didn't get a pass, but I didn't get a fail either. They (being the committee of people who looks over and grades these reports) didn't feel that there was enough substance in my report to warrant a pass. I had a very long talk with my advisor, and she felt it was partially her fault for trying to push me into finishing too soon. She didn't take into consideration the rest of my life (ie that I work full-time, and that am a manager who needs to work outside of work hours to get things done, and that I have a life outside of all that). To her credit, she was trying to help me finish quickly, there wasn't any malicious intent, just some misjudgment on her part.

So the bottom line is I need to do a major rewrite and add lots more information to the report. She's given me more time, but I really want to get this done by the end of July. She did a lot of brainstorming as to how I could improve my report, so I now have lots of fodder to work with.

In other news: work has been very stressful for me. I had someone leave, and haven't had a chance to replace her properly. The big problem is that this position is needed by a very large project that we are doing at work, and schedules keep slipping, and people keep breathing down my neck to hire someone else. Easier said than done. While that is mostly resolved, it's not completely. Without getting into too many details, there's a lot of pressure of getting this positions filled permanently. Sigh. There are other things going on at work too that is sucking up a lot of my time and attention, so I've been coming home every day last week completely exhausted.

Life: I'm going to Europe in 4 days! These last few days have been very busy with trip planning as well. Even though we've been in London a couple of times already, I'm still amazed at how much stuff there is to do in that city! I did a bit of a search as to what else there is to do and there are a ton of stuff that are not on the top 10 tourist attraction list! What we will be this time around is three out of town trips: Bath, Strafford-Upon-Avon/Warwick Castle and Leeds Castle. As well, we'll be hitting a few of the lesser known sites in London. I'll definitely post a full itinerary and pictures after we come back. But this is why I love London so much, there is always something to do.

Rome was a bit of a challenge to plan out, mostly because I'm not that familiar with it. What I did was print out weekly calendars and listed everything that I wanted to see, and planned out the trip that way. It's a bit of a juggle as there were several things I had to take into consideration, but I won't bore you with the details just yet, they are for a different post. I'll let you know if all my plotting has worked out. Needless to say, we will be doing lots of walking! I really hope that the weather will be good.

We still have some part of the trip that needs planning out (for instance, we still don't have a hotel for the last part of our trip), but things are coming together... I can't wait!

Rest of my life: well, somewhere amongst all the busyness, I need to go to see my chiropractor. Apparently my lower back is slightly out of alignment. My massage therapist caught it last week, but she wasn't able to fix it (the feeling of someone trying to push at your vertebrae is very weird). Part of the problem is that I physically need to be at work to get certain things done, like interviews, so it's been near impossible to go see my chiropractor. I definitely need to see him before I go on my trip, my lower back is warring with my upper back as to which part wants to cause me more pain an misery. Sigh.

Sigh...

So I had handed in my report on May 1. Although I told people that I was done, there is always a risk that I may need to tweak my report or some other such horrors to be had before I actually pass and get my credits.

My adviser had informed me today that she had to talk to me about my report. It's probably nothing more than I need to flesh out a couple parts of my report, but of course, I'm thinking worse case scenario, so I've been stressed all afternoon. I will find out tomorrow what the status is.

On top of all that, there is still trip planning and work is crazy busy. I need to get a certain amount done before I leave. This isn't a good time for my free time to be eaten up (yet again) with school work. Please just let me pass this thing.

Plus, my massage therapist told me today that my lower back is out of alignment. Which means another trip to the chiropractor, and I don't have time as it is. Stupid body, I'm not suppose to age.

It was also bad enough that I got to listen to our neighbour's dumb-ass kids (who are high school aged) get drunk and high on pot. With about 50 of their friends. And no parents. Two nights in a row. In the middle of the night. Two nights of calling the cops, and two nights of no cops showing up.

Sigh.

Going AWOL

(You know, I'd always thought that the term meant that the person went crazy. Not completely off the mark with my life right now).

Sorry, I haven't been posting for a while. It's not like I don't have things to say, I always do. However, I'm up to my neck with:
- Schoolwork - Due April 30th, so it's really the home stretch for me, I need to buckle down, focus and bang out a 100+ page report (plus peripherals) by my deadline. Cross your fingers for me!
- Work-work- I'm about 2-3 weeks behind on some of my email, bad me, and it takes me about an hour just to compose my daily to-do list. Sigh. One day I'll be caught up, just not today.
- The rest of my life.

As much as I would like to blog about my musings, honestly, it sometimes take me a hour or more to properly post something up. I can barely keep up with laundry, dishes and cleaning my toilet as it is (no joke). Never mind the fact that we still have trip planning to do.

You will hear more from me at the beginning of May, promise!

Dear Passport Canada

I will be going on a big European adventure in six weeks time. My passport will be expiring within 6 months by the time I start my grand tour, and thus, being the good citizen that I am, and knowing that it would be easier on me to cross international borders if I had a newly-issued passport rather than an almost expired passport, I am going to renew my passport.

Since January of this year, I have been trying to figure out your extremely complicated, non-explicative, new "simplified" process for renewing my passport. Your rules, I must tell you, are not simple.

First, I am puzzled and dismayed by your new rules for the passport photo. I understand that you need to scan the photo and you need to set it up so that it is easier to scan. However, those rules also ended up making me look like a washed-up bag lady. I also understand that you prefer that people have a neutral expression, in other words, no smiling. In my picture, I look like a pissed-off, washed-up bag lady. I also don't understand how my own dear mother managed to smirk in her photo, and you allowed it through.

Second, your instructions for the Simplified Renewal Form are not explanatory enough. Do I need to have my photo endorsed by a sponsor? Can I use the online form to do the simplified renewal process, or do I still need to bring in my form or mail it to the Passport Office? Do my references need to be passport holders as well?

Third, nowhere on your website did it explain that I could use the online form as part of the simplified renewal process. First of all, your ePass user account creation was horrible. Why would you get people to create a username that they won't remember is beyond me. I think I've already created three different accounts. Next, after somehow going through the entire process of filling in the form online, I had deduced on my own that this wasn't the simplified renewal process. I had just wasted 2 hours of my time. You need to inform people that the online form is the full form. But as it stands, I don't know what time I will save by filling in the online form, I still need to send in the application. I refused to do so as mail has been known to be stolen before, and I am not mailing sensitive information about my identity. My only other option is to stand in a queue, so I might as well just fill the regular form in the first place and saved myself the hassle and frustrations.

Fourth, I went to the closest Passport office, spent $2 on parking, on my day off (which I will waste in a passport lineup, and note, that I needed take this day off because I'm working on a very time-sensitive project), only to be told that they don't process passport applications for people who are travelling within 6 weeks. That would be me. I was also told at that office that I had to go to one of three offices that did process passports immediately for traveling citizens, none which are close, none which are opened on weekends or holidays. However, there is one opened until later in the evening, and that's the one I'll be going to, even if I have to fight traffic and cross a bridge to get there. Because I need to pick it up for fastest receipt, and I really don't have the luxury to take more time off during work hours to fart around in a queue.

So here is my advice on how you can better spend my tax money:

• Hire a content writer for your website. I always say if someone has to ask a question about it, your communication was not clear enough. Plus, this person should also be able to lay the content out in a more searchable format.
  
• Hire a usability or process expert to go through your very poor processes, which includes the really hard to use online form. Sure it may cost a lot at the beginning to set up proper processes, but in the long run, it will save you time, and save my tax money for more important spending.
• If you are going to turn away passport photos because they do not conform to your guidelines, you should have an on-site service to have the photo retaken, if a sponsor doesn't need to sign the photo (I am assuming this as per my first point above). Trust me, I am willing to pay for less of a hassle.
  

If you have already implemented the first two points, you are still wasting my money. Fix your problems now.

Signed,
Weed, a disgruntled citizen who pays way to much taxes into an inefficient system.

Happy Birthday to Me!!!!

Yayayayayayayay!!! It's my birthday again!!! Here's what I did to celebrate my birthday:

Went to the Hart House on Friday for dinner. Went out for Chinese food Monday night for dinner with the parents. Saturday, got my annual birthday hairdo. Check out the purpley! This also freaked out my mum, she couldn't understand why I wasted money dyeing my hair purple. I actually came this close to getting hot pink but I a) hate all things pink and refuse to wear that colour (makeup being the sole exception) and b) found the purple to be a little more subtle, but I was able to keep it fun.

Update on me....

I've been pretty busy. Busy being sick that is. The last few day I've been preoccupied with hacking up a lung. I think that there's a nasty flu bug that's been going around, and it was my turn to get it. I've called in sick two days in a row. It's rare that I even call in sick, never mind two day. And last week, I was also not feeling too swell either, I had to leave work early. I think I've been fighting the flu bug for a while now.

Work. Work is... busy. It's tough being a manager. I don't mind juggling 10 billion things. It's the people factor that I'm scratching my head on. Mainly, those who work under me. Don't get me wrong, for the most part, they do a good job. But there's something... lacking. I don't know if it's me, or the people I work with, if it's my style of management, or their style (or lack of it) of doing the job well, or a combination of everything. The project manager tends to measure how well a project is doing by the "nag factor". I seem to be nagging a lot with okay results, but I feel many times that I'm herding children along. This managing people business is hard. However, I will be getting my raise shortly. My manager actually asked me what I wanted. I had to think about it. (Okay, I did say 1 Billion Dollars, and he laughed and cried at the same time).

School. Less than two months to go. And the less said on that subject, the better. Sigh.

What's been occupying a great deal of my time is planning our trip to Roma! Yay! We almost have everything booked. I'll leave the actual planning of the trip itinerary until after May Day. Since we're also going to be spending a few days in London, I've picked up Frommer's Best Day Trips from London. I really want to go back to Bath, but there's a few other interesting side trips I would like to take as well.

I've just gotten my Visa bill for part of our trip purchases for flights and hotels, and yikes! But this will probably be our last kick of Europe for a long while, so might as well spend the money while we can.

Going back to hack up my other lung...

Geeks!!!

Today I went to this Microsoft bru-ha-ha event. Cheesy marketing, MS propaganda everywhere, but the best part: being in a room with 14,000 other geeks with bad haircuts and questionable fashion sense. Sadly, not unlike the picture posted here.

Well, I was somewhat interested in what they had to say in their new product offerings, and while I picked up on a few interesting points, it on the whole was not too thrilling. Of course I go for the free lunch (it was meh) and the shwag, but they make you sit through most of the session--pounding your every auditory and visual nerve endings with how wonderful Microsoft's products are, and how they can completely change your life around--before they give you your bag of goodies. Sadly, a string of emails about Tiramisu--that was being sent amongst my colleagues through the day--that I was reading on my Crackberry was equally as riveting, if not even more so...

To be fair to them, they are trying to sell a product, and have to do a credible job to suck us in. And because we're an MS shop, we'll be using those products. Eventually.

(BTW, Bill's the guy in the bottom row, far left with the blue shirt. His eyes are really crooked!)