Early Christmas Present

I got an early Christmas present this year! Yesterday I was invited to my sister's company Christmas dinner . . . by her coworker Yvonne! Technically speaking it was Jennifer who called me to invite me, but she did it on behalf of Yvonne. It was a very nice gesture and a wonderful surprise. Ever since my brother-in-law Lance has been working for the insurance company, I've been hearing about the Christmas dinner from Jennifer. This year I will actually get to go! It's an all-expenses paid dinner at the Royal Oak restaurant :-) It's the same week as my own company's Christmas dinner, which happens to be the same week that I'm getting together with some friends to get some Christmas crafting done. It's going to be one busy week!

I'm very excited about this coming Christmas. I'm going to be spending Christmas day with my mom, sister, brother-in-law and step-dad at my step-sister's house. On Boxing Day I'll be with my step-mom, sister, brother-in-law and step-sister. We'll go visit my dad that day too. On New Year's Day I'll have dinner at my mom's house . . . and she's promised some delicious German food! Among the dishes being served: Rouladen and Spaetzle (German noodles). I've been promised leftovers to take to work the next day. It's going to be a big crowd that day - mom, step-dad, sister, brother-in-law (and his parents), step-brother and step-sister-in-law, possibly my step-sister and her family (including her in-laws), close family friends . . . I've lost count already!

Now I just have to get through the last few weeks of work for the year!

Can I get a "woot woot?"

It's a snow day! I managed to get halfway to work (walking) before I got the call telling me that school was closed today. Really, it's for the best. I was awake until about 4am last night (this morning), and during that time I watched two cars try to drive down my back alley. It took one car about twenty minutes to drive approximately thirty feet! I don't know where that person was going, but they were very determined to get there!

I'm off to take a much-needed nap. Enjoy the day!

SNOW!

I don't think these pictures do it justice, but it's snowing like crazy outside! This is the scene I can see out my window. That's not a major street, in case you're wondering. It's more like a back alley if anything. It's been snowing here since yesterday afternoon. Last week when people said it was going to snow on the weekend, I actually scoffed at them. I didn't think there was any way it was going to snow before December. Boy, was I wrong! If it continues like this all day, we're going to have a massive accumulation (massive by our westcoast standards, anyway). I'm starting to wonder what's going to happen in terms of work tomorrow. We've got people coming in from as far away as Abbotsford and Langley. What happens if they can't come in to work? What happens if our students can't come in? How much snow has to fall before we officially call tomorrow a snow day? Interesting question to ponder.

This is another picture of the snow outside. Actually, I was trying to take a picture of the snow falling, but I guess that part of it didn't turn out. To be honest, I don't particularly like snow all that much. It really throws people for a loop and it's wet and cold and difficult to walk through. One thing I do like about the snow is how beautiful and peaceful it makes things look. I also like how quiet it makes things seem. All the usual noises are muffled and it feels really calm. It's like nothing can get through the insulation. It'll be a different story after a few days when the snow looks more gray than white (or yellow in some areas, if you get my meaning).

On Friday when it became more and more apparent that we actually would get some snow, I taught my students a very valuable expression. I was asking them what kinds of things they could do in the snow and one of them said they could eat the snow. So I had to teach them "never eat yellow snow!" I thought I'd have to explain the meaning of the expression, but they got it right away ;-)

I LOVE Electricity!

My power is back on now - woot woot! It was out yesterday night when I got home and it stayed out until shortly before midnight. After I got all my clocks reset at 2:30 in the morning (what can I say, I was awake and it needed to be done!) I lay awake in bed until nearly 4 in the morning. Sigh. I left the house early this morning to deal with all the early morning "is school open?" phone calls at work and as I was walking down the stairs towards the door, the power went out again! Grrrr!

My power didn't come back on until two minutes before I arrived home. Yeah! Even though we had electricity all day at work, it was still nice to come home to a house full of electricity :-)

I think I've caught up on all your blogs now my friends. Have a good (outage free) evening!

Wishlist

My sister, the technogeek, has turned me onto a new online service called Wishlistr. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like - an online wishlist. With Christmas quickly approaching I thought I would set one up and add a link to my blog. Hopefully my family will stumble across the link and it will make Christmas shopping a little easier ;-)

Rain, rain, GO AWAY!

Normally I enjoy rain, but there comes a point where it gets to be too much! This morning I woke up to another rainstorm similar to Monday's. I opted not to go for the rubber boots this morning and decided to take the bus to work - something I haven't done in about a year. I did manage to stay drier, but I got to work twenty minutes earlier than usual. Since I had done all my prep already, there wasn't much for me to do. C'est la vie! At least my pants remained relatively dry!

On the agenda for this weekend: lunch with my best friend tomorrow (mmmm, back to White Spot with the hot, competent waiter and the delicious sweet potato fries!), and a visit with my dad on Sunday. Monday is reserved for sleeping in and doing laundry since it's a holiday.

In technological news . . . I just downloaded Internet Explorer 7. It is very similar to Mozilla Firefox which I don't personally use but have seen in action a lot. I'm quite pleased with it so far. I particularly like the idea of tabbed browsing. I think I'll download it on my work computer one of these days. Speaking of work, it sounds like we're going to be getting new computers soon! My computer has actually held up quite well, but newer sounds better to me! We're getting flat screen monitors, which is really cool. As with all things though, I'll just wait and see.

Have a wonderful weekend lovely readers!

The secret to happiness is . . .

. . . dry pants! If you live anywhere in the Lower Mainland (and if you have to ask where that is, then you don't) you know that we got completely soaked today!

As I do every morning, I walked to work. I thought I was prepared. Clearly, I thought wrong. Let me paint you a picture. The walk to work is 20 minutes. I was wearing a t-shirt, a pair of brown pants, a sweater, my jacket, and rubber boots. I was carrying an umbrella. I knew I would get wet, but by the time I got to work I was TOTALLY DRENCHED! The entire right side of my body was completely soaked. I had to take off my sweater and leave it hanging over the back of my chair to dry (which took ALL day!) The right side of my pants were soaked through . . . and didn't dry until mid-morning. It was a very wet, uncomfortable morning. Luckily it stopped raining in time for my walk home.

In summary I repeat: the secret to happiness is dry pants!

Looking back

Seriously don't know what has prompted this post, but I was just sitting here in front of my computer thinking about the upcoming holiday season and how different this year is from last year. At this time last year I was suffering under the regime of "Dragon Lady" and pretty much just miserable at work. Now I have a wonderful boss and an awesome group of coworkers and the laughter is back in the school! There are a lot of new teachers, but as a staff we have managed to bond really well and have an awesome working relationship.
At this time last year I had just recently moved into my condo and was trying to unpack and organize. Haven't made a hell of a lot of progress in that area over the past year, but I don't really give a damn.
Right around this time last year I commented in a post that I was actually enjoying all the early holiday advertisements and things because it helped to lift my mood. Now I have a confession to make. It's probably as a result of all the subtle brainwashing by marketing experts over the years, but I really rather enjoy seeing all the holiday commercials after Halloween! It helps to build anticipation for the Christmas season!
I was reading some of the posts I made last year around the time I moved and I realized that I never posted the story of how I knew that I was meant to live in this apartment. My realtor had already shown me a few places and I wasn't really seeing anything I liked. I was getting a sense of what I definitely did NOT want in an apartment or an apartment complex though. I didn't want to live in a huge, impersonal building. I didn't want to live on the other side of the city close to Delta, and I didn't want to live on the first floor. One day after school my realtor picked me up from work so that we could go look at this place. I was quite interested in seeing it because for the first time after reading the address of a place I was going to look at, I could envision it being my address. When we pulled up in front of the building, I just knew. It looked exactly right for me. When my realtor realized that she didn't have the right keys for the front door and that we'd have to go to her office to pick them up, I was very disappointed. I actually wanted to say "hurry up! I have to see my new home!" We retrieved the keys and came back to the building. We came up to this suite and looked around inside. Since it was vacant at the time there wasn't a whole lot to see, except the giant dehumidifier set up in the kitchen to clean up some water damage left by the previous tenant. We walked around and my realtor said "so, what do you think?" I said "I love it!" She said "do you love it enough to make an offer?" I said "let's do it!" A couple of days later, it was all mine! I have not regretted the decision one bit over the past year. Interestingly enough, almost exactly a year to the day I moved into the place, a few of us were talking at work one day about buying property. The topic of conversation had to do with those home improvement shows and how there was one of HGTV that talked about how to set up your house to sell it. Pretty much all the stuff that they said was in the show about how to set up your house to sell it (new coat of paint, furniture in the house to help people envision what their furniture would look like in the house, etc.) was the exact opposite of what this place looked like when I bought it! I. just. knew. I knew that this place was meant to be mine!
I hope you have a lovely weekend my fellow bloggers!