Can I blame it on the moon?

It's been really crappy lately. Is it happening to you too?  Lots of crappy things happening, and not just to me, almost everyone I talk to is having a weird and crappy week. I hope you aren't.

And I'm tired. Tired of all the little niggly things - missing clothes, rude people, horrible news stories, broken fences, crappy work stuff, compromised credit cards, invoices sent in error that aren't easily fixable and of course the nosy relative story. Everything takes time to resolve and deal with. Things aren't going smoothly. Of course I'm trying not to dwell on them and I'm watching my 'frame of mind' to ensure I'm not looking for things or placing a bigger emphasis on these things but they are  there. And last night at dance almost everyone had what they called a crappy week too! What's going on?  Many ladies in the class said the same thing -they had a crappy week but dance class is often the brightest spot in the week. Sure, we don't practice as seriously as some and maybe there's a little to much talking but no matter how I feel when I arrive, for an hour and a half I forget about life and learn new things and have a giggle or two and I do feel better when I get home. I love my dance instructor and I love the ladies in my class and thank goodness things are good between Jp and I, and Eco is the best little dog in the world. (I'm sorry that your dog isn't as great as mine - LOL)

But back to the crappy week - are you having one too? Do you think the full moon has anything to do with it? Or does it have to do with the long weekend - will it be that much more enjoyable because I can escape the crud? What do you do when you have days like this?

Curious coincidences?

About 5 times in the past week, I've rescued something before the situation became worse -first there was our portable dishwasher that started to zap at the wall outlet, I was across the hall at the time, so I raced over and pulled to melting plug from the wall - it appears the outlet had shorted out. Jp had to cut off the old plug on the dishwasher (which by the way is 40 years old - can you believe that?), replace the wall outlet and replaced the circuit breaker in the box just to be safe. But what if we were in the yard, or even at the other end of the house, could it have started a fire?

A day or so later I awoke when the fan in the bedroom made a noise like to motor seized and the fan stopped oscillating. I hopped out of bed to turn it off. Would it have whirred until it burst into flames?

A day or so after that, the dishwasher (again, poor thing is getting a bad rap) was running and something smelled like it was melting, I opened the door and found a spatula that had fallen through the racks and had melted in 2 spots on the bottom drying element. No further harm was done.

Yesterday we were sitting having a nice family brunch when the light in the fish tank started to short out, so I hopped off my chair and dove under the table to unplug the aquarium light, and then removed the stinking hood from the aquarium so our whole house wouldn't smell. No more lights for the poor fish (gee, anyone want a free fishtank, I've been told I must get rid of them.. ) The boys think this could have been a house fire, but I think all the water in the tank would have helped to stop it from going further - although I might've had some cooked fish....

And then today, I was inside and heard a stellar jay squawking - as they always do - but then something didn't sound right so I went outside to find a very guilty looking cat hovering over an adolescent jay. He lost most of his wing feathers and had some bleeding but I think he could recover. I had put box out for him with some food and water, but a couple of hours later, it's  since disappeared - I'm pretty sure my neighbour took over it's care as she too, didn't want the cats to attack this poor little birdie again.

Gee,  5 things that I that prevented from becoming worse. Are they only coincidences? Or is there a bigger message? What do you believe?

Mini Vacation 2012

I'm back from a mini-vacation - 3 days in downtown Vancouver - it's been a while since we've had the time to leisurely stroll through the various areas so we started on West 4th and Broadway and over then next two days walked  Robson Street, Pacific Centre, Harbour Centre, Sinclair Centre, Gastown, Davie Street. It was interesting to see how much has changed over the years and semi-shocking to see so many vacant retail units there were, especially in the malls.

Harbour Centre from our balcony

Looking down from our balcony

We also took the SeaBus to North Vancouver and toured around the Lonsdale Quay where we  found some yummy places for dinner. We actually had other plans for dinner but it looked and smelled so good we couldn't resist! We started with a very fresh prawn cocktail at Screaming Mimi's and then had some brisket with mashed potatoes and gravy at Sharky's Chop House. Mmm MMmmm. I finished with a bubble tea and bought some fresh chocolate chip cookies for a late night hotel snack.

Fresh Fish and Seafood at the Quay

At breakfast there was some yummy dark coloured cheese in my omelet, intrigued we asked the server about it and she sent the chef over with a sample - it was Guinness Cheddar and boy was it delicious, especially melted in an omelet! Have you had it?

Then later while sitting in the Mexician restaurant, La Casita in Gastown, I accidentally made eye contact with a woman walking by - well she started yelling about "why couldn't you just leave it alone? You know his face was burnt! Why couldn't you leave it alone?" and on and on. She yelled at me through the window of the restaurant and then went around to the front and opened the door and yelled at me some more, then spied a bottle of hot sauce on a nearby table and squirted it in my direction. As soon as I realized my mistake of being caught looking at her, I didn't look at her or in her direction again.  It's one of those things that you can't undo once it's been started. I had my back to the door when she came in the restaurant but I just sat there and did not turn around as I didn't want to agitate her any more. I just kept an eye on the restaurant staff to see if I needed to duck or anything. Since no one else did anything about it(I guess they managed not to make eye contact), she soon moved on as quickly as she came - like a big ol' hot sauce spraying gust of wind!

We lucked out by having sun for the first two days, but then we were hit with snow/rain which made for a very chilly walk back to our hotel. It's a good thing we had a late checkout  - I had time to take a warm bath and change into dry/warm clothes before heading home.

The gas fireplace is the main heat source in our house so we turned it off while we were away, but because of this and because we don't have a furnace our house was down to 13 degrees C when we came home. Brr. That takes a while to heat back up again. Thank goodness for our  mattress heater.

Eco had a great time at the neighbours and now we're back to life as it always is - doing laundry and cooking and cleaning and working.... (sigh) it's good to be home.

A Fork is a Fork is a Fork?

At breakfast this morning, dear hubby tells me his fork feels heavy and I tell him that they all came from the same store, so they should all be the same but gee, let's just weigh it and see.

Well wouldn't you know it, 10 forks weighed 1.1 ounces and his fork (plus 1 other) weighed 1.2 ounces!

Have you ever heard of this? The man can tell the difference of .1 ounce? I think he needs to change professions to take advantage of this skill!