Skipping Church

I was reading Rusty's blog and happened to Notice that he didn't go to church today, well I'm sad to say, neither did I. We had a "snowstorm" last night and today, and well Carolyn's car just isn't really equipped to make the drive in. So we stayed home. I did take some pretty pictures of the view from my window however!

See how pretty everything looks...There's nothing like snow that hasn't been touched. Mind you by tomorrow it will be all brown and yucky looking, but for today it really looks like a Winter Wonderland.

So I'm happy to say that I have finally finished Grey's Anatomy Season 3. Man is that show ever addicting. All I have to say is that Meredith and McDreamy better stay together or I will be Sooooo mad. I've invested enough hours in that show that I feel I'm entitled to the ending that I want. It's like the Ross and Rachel thing. They just need to be together.

One week from today and I'll be back in the Scosh. (I feel bad since I'll have missed 2 weeks of church back to back. Next week it's all about the airport.) I'm pretty excited about that since I haven't seen my family in 8 months. That's a pretty insane amount of time. Plus you know, there's the whole Ocean thing, and friends...it should be a pretty good time. Plus there's all the presents that await me :) I can't discount the cool presents. I'm excited...7 sleeps to go!!!

Ranting

Ok so I'm a total copy cat and figured that I would totally go for Julia's whole rant blog...what can I say, I totally loved the idea. Even if it makes me a horrible person for ranting when I should just be patiently loving everyone all the time....

Rant #1: I HATE hanging out with drunk people. I went to my work Christmas party last friday and as much as I truly love my co-workers, I'm sorry guys, but I don't want to hang out with you when you're drunk. It makes me uncomfortable. I don't see how loosing all your inhibitions and doing things you would be totally embarrassed about when you're sober is fun. I just don't get it! Perhaps it's just because I'm a stick in the mud, and because I don't know what it feels like, but I don't care, drunk people are not funny to me. It just makes me sad.

Rant #2: Julia if you think the whole plow thing is bad in Halifax you should see what it's like in London. The don't even START plowing until there's 4 inches of snow on the ground, and if you're not right down town, sidewalks don't get done at all. Seriously, Hello, Safety anyone???

Rant #3: I hate taking flack for not going to YSA activities. Honestly, there was a point in my life when I lived for those things, and all I ever wanted to do was hang out with the YSA, at whatever activity was coming along, but I've outgrown that and I just like hanging out in my apartment with a good book, or TV show or something. I'm all about small groups, and sometimes a large activity is fun, but organized activities with chaperone's just makes me feel like I'm 14. I'm not less active, I'm just a homebody.

Rant #4: Piggybacking on Rant #3, I DO NOT want a YSA activity at my Parent's house on New Years Eve. That BLOWS!!! All I want is to stay home with my mom and eat Chinese food and watch sappy chick flicks. Unfortunately for me, my cousin seems to think that the YSA have to have a party on New Years and someone convinced my mom it was ok to do it there. Anyone want to spare me from that torture and invite me somewhere else???

Well, I'm going to stop there because Honestly I think I could go on and how sad is that??? Pretty bad eh! Oh well! Well, two more weeks until I go home, I can't wait to see the Ocean!!! I'm super excited!!!

Here's a picture of Annick, Lisa and I at the Party on Friday night....I think this was actually before the drinking started :)

Christmas, Christmas time is here...

I love Christmas! Whats not to love? Pretty lights, pretty paper, and beautiful trees! Ok, so I could totally do without the snow, but nothing can be perfect :)

So Caro and I put up our Christmas tree last weekend. We went on a field trip to Wal-Mart and picked out the 29.99 special :) It's not the most elegant tree I've ever had, but it's fun. We had an awesome time wandering around picking out decorations. Here's a picture...(please excuse the movie poster behind the tree...)

It's not the most spectacular tree in the whole wide world, but it doesn't look completely hideous. Or at least it doesn't until you turn the lights on. Let me explain, so I like white lights, but Carolyn prefers the colored one's so I said fine, we'll get the colored lights not really thinking that they could be all that bad. However at Wal-Mart when we went, all they had were these new fangled LED lights. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for saving the environment but man, these lights are HIDEOUS! They're completely floresent. They make a perfectly average tree turn into the tackiest tree in the whole wide world. So as were putting this thing up I'm almost peeing I'm laughing so hard. I took a picture but it really doesn't capture the complete Nightmare of these lights!

So you can kinda see the purpleish glow emitted by these lights, but unless you see them in person, you really can't comprehend the true painful expierience. Let me just tell you, next year, if Carolyn and I still aren't roomates...she gets to keep the lights :)

I've been Tagged...

Ok, so apparently Jessica has seen me through her Romper Room Mirror and I now have to list 7 random things about myself. Who even knew you could tag people via blog? Oh well, it's a fun task so I'll participate. Here's my 7 Random things.


1. I'm addicted/obsessed with Lip Gloss. I know, no surprise there, but off the top of my head I can count 25 different tubes/pots/sticks of the stuff and tell you where they are, and those are just the ones that I know about. If a new type comes out, I have to buy it. Some people drink, others smoke, but I just apply my lip gloss. I've discovered that since I've moved out and my sister can't steal them, they accumulate very quickly. Honestly, perhaps I should seek some type of therapy for this.

2. I have a huge crush on Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) on NCIS. I'm fully cognizant of the fact that he's a fictional character but I can't help it. He's smart, funny, charming and good looking. What more could you want? (As a side note, I also really like Bob Brown (Scott Foley) on the Unit)

3. I LOVE office supplies. Doing up the Staples order at work makes me really happy. New pens, paper, pads and post it's just brighten up my day. When the Staples order comes in it's like an early Christmas!

4. I read at least 3 books a week. Does this make me a nerd, absolutely! Could I stop if I wanted to? Probably not. I can't help it. It's like some type of compulsion. Perhaps a therapist would tell me I'm trying to escape reality and by placing myself in a fictional environment it makes me happy and secure, but whatever I just love it. (Anyone have any good suggestions for books to read, cause I could use some!)

5. Sometimes I read the dictionary. Again, this is showing you just how much of a dork I really am, but it's super interesting. If I really want to spruce it up I read the Bible Dictionary. You would not believe the stuff you learn reading the dictionary. I'm thinking I need to invest in some good Encyclopedia's next.

6. I love the scent of Vanilla. I'm currently sporting Vanilla Shampoo/conditioner, body lotion, bubble bath, soap, and laundry detergent/fabric softener. I even have a couple of Vanilla scented candles I like to burn every now and then.

7. I like to listen to Christmas Carols super early. Drives my roommate nuts!!! I started playing them on November 1st. They just make me all warm and fuzzy and I love that!

Hopefully this was enlightening for you :) It was certainly fun to write them all down. Kind of liberating actually. So I guess now it's time for me to get out my Roomer Room mirror and see who I can see..."Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic mirror, tell me today. Have all my friends had fun at play?" I see Kristine and Kellie and Kristi...well ladies consider yourself Tagged. Sorry if you've already been tagged, but I'm pretty sure you only have to participate once. Have fun!!!

It's official, I'm Not a Terrorist!!!

All right, so I have no pictures for this particular blog, but I do have a fun story, which is totally better right! I like to think so! So for all of you who are reading this you can use your imagination which is WAY better then any camera I could have had with me!

As I'm sure you're all aware, now is a PRIME time if you plan on doing any shopping down in the Good Ol' USA since our dollar is so strong. Thus I decided that I certainly would want to take part in that great tradition of cross border shopping. Little did I know of the Adventure that would await me.

Ok so here in Ontario depending on what day you go and what border you cross at it can take anywhere from 30min-a couple of hours to cross the border. Well on Friday Holly and I decided that we were going to go shopping and so we drove to the Sarnia/Port Huron Crossing (It's about an hour away from where we live in London) after she had finished class for the day and it was around 3:30ish when we reached Sarnia. It only took us about 45min to get to the border guy (which really isn't so bad) but here's where the story starts to get fun.

Border Guy: Your Citizenship

Us: Canadian

Border Guy: The Nature of your visit?

Us: Shopping

Border Guy: Do you have any produce, Meats, yada, yadda, yadda?

Us: No

Border Guy: Do you ladies come across the border very often?

Us: Not Really.

Border Guy: Have you ever been randomly selected to participate in a search?

Us: Uh, No.

Border Guy: Well today's your lucky day cause the computer's randomly selected you to be searched today. (or something along those lines)

Me: Well at least this will be an interesting shopping trip.

Border Guy: (Kinda Chuckles) Well Ladies please pull over to the left and someone will direct you on what to do.


So we pull over to the left, they tell me to park my car (I was driving a rental) and they tell us that we have to go into a building and to please take our wallets, but no cell phone's allowed. So we get out of the car and head towards the customs office (I think it's customs...It's got all sorts of Home Land Security posters though, and I think they're a division of the FBI), and the nice guy who told me where to park took my keys and proceeds to start searching my car. Holly and I go into the building where there's a GIANT line and start our wait. Well we wait, and we wait, and we wait...and two hours later we finally get to the front of the line. Now let me say this about the Homeland Security People, they were pretty nice to Holly and I, however we were pulled over randomly, but to everyone else, they are MEAN! You do not want to mess with these people. They are rude and scary and they wear Guns! They have holes built into their jackets so that you can see these guns. Seriously, if you are doing something wrong at the border you should re-think that because they are not messing around. (Nor would I want them too really...they're just defending their country). You need permission to go to the bathroom and they practically frisk you before you go in! Once you're in the building you can't make any phone calls and you can't leave until you're cleared to go. No joke....it's almost like being incarcerated for a short period of time :) It's some seriously good times.

Anyway so like I said it took roughly 2 hours for us to get to the start of the line, where we get quizzed on where we were going (The mall up the road...no joke, it's about 7min from the border), why we were going, how much money we had on us, why we were driving a rental, our citizenship and where we were from. There's was allot more to it then that, but at this point I'm condensing things :) He then went out and re-searched my car (which took him 20min) and then came back and told us we were free to go. So we left the building to the applause of all the new friends we had made in line. (I'm actually not kidding about that. They clapped when we left. We were the only ones in line who hadn't been pulled over for some actual reason.) We then continued on our Merry way to the mall because at that point we only had a few good shopping hours left.

On a side note, here's my favorite two reasons I overheard people talking to the customs officers about why they got pulled over. These are actually REALLY funny if you hear the full story, but they're still pretty good in short version. So...reasons to be pulled over at the Border.

1. A Man was stopped because his license plate had come up as stolen. He had reported his car stolen two weeks ago and then thought it was a good idea to drive it across the border without letting anyone know he had it back. (Yes, it really was his car.)

2. 3 guys probably around my age told the border people they were going to visit their friend in Buffalo. (Big Red Flag as there's a border crossing in Buffalo and it's in the state of New York...we were at the crossing in Michigan...it doesn't matter where you are in Ontario, it is NOT faster to go to Michigan and then drive under the lakes to get to Buffalo. It probably adds about 3 hours to a trip you could have avoided by just driving to Buffalo.) Turns out they were going to a Cock fight and had a Rooster in the back of their car. That's right, they tried to get a rooster across the border.

Anyway all in all it was a pretty fun trip. It makes for a good story at the very least. I REALLY wish I could have taken pictures, but I'm pretty sure Homeland Security probably wouldn't have liked that so much. Needless to say, I'm sure glad to be Canadian. (Side note, I love that you can't bring produce and Meats into the US, and that they don't care about anything else, but in Canada they ask about tobacco, alcohol and Firearms. Good to know where the priorities lie!)

Sink Holes and Other News

Ok, so you know how I mentioned on Halloween that the city had had a water break and that there was a giant sinkhole accross from work??? Yeah, well here's a picture of it!

Granted this is an Aeriel view, and well, you kinda get to see the awesomeness of it. This is a pretty old picture though (a few days) and for some unknown reason they currently have a giant tent pitched in the Middle of it. (You know the ones that look like Circus tents but are too small...yeah, one of those) We're not entirely sure whats going on out there, but apparently this street is going to be off limits for the next couple of months. How crazy is that??? You just close one of the main intersections just cause there's a giant hole in it. Also as a side note, I didn't take any pictures yet, but they felt the need to make two more giant holes down the road, so there's a grand total of 3 giant holes on Wellington Street. What is the city coming too?

Who knew one little water break could cause so much damage??? Not enough to get me out of work though...only the rest of downtown ever gets that privilege :)

In Other news I'm heading to Port Huron Michigan tomorrow to get some Christmas shopping done. I'm pretty excited about that. There's just something fun about driving to another country just to go shopping. Even if it's only an hour away. I'm super excited to go visit all those fun stores that just haven't made it across the border yet! (Bath and Body Works anyone???)It'll be some good times...even if it isn't in the Maritimes. Anyway I'm going to head off to bed, big day tomorrow and all!

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween Everyone!

So the past few days at work have been absolutely insane as I'm on this Incentive Committee at work and we've been running what we call the 3 days of Halloween. So all I've done is run around like a chicken with it's head cut off making sure that the games all went well (they did), that we had all the prizes (One of them was stolen out of my boss's office) and that generally things were going ok. Now that it's all over, all I want to do is collapse! (Part of that however could be do to the copious amounts of candy I've consumed all day) However it's only 8:30ish and thus, too early to callapse just yet!

Ok so remember my supervisor Jim? You know the one who doesn't mind when we call him names? Well here he is, all dressed up like BamBam. I have to admit I just about peed my pants when I walked in to work and I saw that Jim had on a shorter skirt then I did. He took it all in stride though...he only hit me with the club a couple of times :)

Here's a picture of my "crew" at work :) You know, the people I spend most of my time with and have even been known to socialize with outside of the dreaded office Building. Unfortunatly Annick is hiding Martin who dressed up like a fisherman...he did a really good job too. He had on those really cool pants that are waterproof. I was impressed.

Other then today being Halloween the only other exciting news we had today was a giant waterbreak in downtown London. There was a giant sink hole accross the street from work and they had to close off all the streets. Just about everyone got off work today. Not Citi though...the building pretty much would have had to sink into the giant hole for us to get the day off work. Which I guess could be good or bad depending on how you want to look at it!

In other news, I finally got around to cutting off all my hair. This isn't the best picture I've got but at least you can see the Length. I had 12 inches cut off and I donated it all to Charity. I don't know if you've ever cut off 12 inches of your hair before, but can I just tell you about the amount of extra shampoo I used that first morning??? Someday I'll post a better picture of my new hair cut but I just think this one is funny. Carlos (in the middle) is wearing a wig just in case you were wondering...cause I would have been...it's some pretty frightening hair!

Well, I'm thinking it's time to go collapse now...I'm wicked tired and sadly today is not a friday. I hope you've all had an awesome Halloween and that you don't feel as sick as I do because you ate WAY too many of those little Chocolate bars. Ugh, just thinking about them makes me ill!

I know I suck...

Ok so I know I totally suck, since I haven't updated my blog since who knows when...and since everyone has been so kind as to remind me that I haven't updated I thought I would take this awesome opportunity to do so. I'm going to apologize in advance as I don't currently have any new pictures but I promise I'll get some up soon...maybe even this week being as it's Halloween and all.

Um...so news, ok so it was thanksgiving a few weeks back (and my birthday but that's a whole different story) and I had the awesome opportunity to go to my family's up in Cambridge. Now I have to admit I had only met my cousin Heather once at a family reunion back when I was like 14 and the rest of her family I couldn't recall ever having met so I was kinda excited slash nervous to go. See Heather is actually my dad's first cousin, so she's my second cousin once removed (no joke, it says so on my family genealogy website) and I really didn't know if it was going to be awkward or not. But it worked out ok, it was totally cool, and I even got to hang out with my really cool cousins Wes and Matt who are 6 and 3.

See how cute they are! Matt is the one on the left and Wes is the one on the right. We got to play bugs...I got to be the snakes. They were pretty slimy but I guess boys go for that kind of thing. As a side note, I am aware that snakes aren't bugs, however they were mixed in with all the other critters and it beat being the spiders. Who wants to be the spiders??? Not me!

Anyway it was a great Thanksgiving dinner and it was fun getting to know the Chatham side of the family. It's also exciting to know that I have family closer then New Brunswick. I'm not all alone in the giant province of Ontario! I too, have someplace I can spend the Holidays :)

I did get a new calling...I'm the Family History Enrichment Specialist...I'm not sure what that means, but I'm sure it'll be fun. (When I asked Brother Cole he just shrugged his shoulders and told me to ask the Relief Society president.) Should be good times...I don't think I'm actually in charge of anything for a change...makes for a nice break :)

All right, so I do have to head to bed now, but I promise I'll try and update a bit more...it's Halloween this week after all!

Puppies and Releases

Well,

Where do I even Begin??? So yesterday I got a e-mail from my branch president asking if I could meet him at Church this morning at 10:30. (Church starts at 11:15) Which immediately told me that I was going to be released today. So I called Holly (the Relief Society President who also happens to be one of my best friends) and asked if she knew what was going on. Turned out she had a meeting this morning at 10. Right off the bat we knew that meant that the presidency was being released and sure enough that's what happened. After a year of being the Enrichment Counsellor I am now officially nothing. I'm callingless. Which initially brought on feelings of happiness and excitement, but now I'm feeling pretty empty. It's a weird feeling being released...and I'm not sure how I feel about it anymore.

Here's a picture of Amee, Holly and I. The Old Relief Society Presidency! Amee is the new Relief Society President here in the London 5th Branch.

Ok so Kate brought her Puppy Avery to Church today and he is the most adorable puppy EVER! He's training to be a Service Dog for Autistic Kids and so he's so well behaved and he just adores people. He crawls under your chair and just sits there and waits for you to be done. I love him!!!

Not much else went down today...it was the Thanksgiving break the fast...I did indulge in some candy throwing across the room...and by indulge I mean I came up with the Idea and someone else follow through on it. I think our target was pretty upset...she started biffing them back pretty hard. I don't know how she ever knew it was us, I mean we weren't laughing all that hard! :)

Anyway not much else going on right now, hopefully I'm going to get a haircut later in the week...you can tell from the picture it's getting pretty long. It'll be exciting to chop it all off. Well...that's it for today!!!

Bad Day

OK, so have you ever had one of those mornings where you know it's going to be a crappy day before even getting out of bed? Yeah, that was my day. I just woke up and had this ominous feeling that I really shouldn't even bother getting out of bed, because it wasn't going to be pretty, and I was right. Here's how my day at work started...

Jim: Kristiane, I'm so glad to see you this morning!

Me: What do you want?

Jim: They need backup today in credit authorizations.

Me: I don't wanna!

Jim: Yeah, about that, it doesn't really factor into the decision.

Me: You suck!

Jim: (With a maniacal smile) Have fun!

Jim is my supervisor and thankfully he's really good about us calling him names cause we do it on a pretty regular basis. Unfortunatly I think half his job is giving us bad news...so he's learned to not take stuff like that personally.

Anyway back to my horrible day, so yeah, credit authorizations means that

1. We get thrown on the phone all day




2. We have to talk to store reps about credit decisions




3. We have people yell at us because half the time we decline their sales. (not our fault, if people would perhaps pay their bills on time, or not use up all of their credit limit we wouldn't have that issue)

So essentially I spent half the day having people yell at me, and that's not even my job...too many people called in sick in another department, and I get thrown on the phones. Well, not just me, but that's really besides the point right now. Then just to make everything fun, I missed my bus. Yes that's right, I saw the bus drive away while I was just a few meters from the bus stop. All I can say is it's a good thing I have my I-Pod or I think I would have gone crazy.

Well, I'm home now and I'm going to turn my horrible day into an amazing day, since the season premier of NCIS is on tonight...it sure will be good to veg out a bit :)

I can't Belive I'm doing this....

OK, so I have to admit, I can't believe I've broken down and joined the Blogging craze. The only way I'm rationalizing this in my mind is by telling myself that it's like a journal, only online. And since everyone knows online is better then paper it's all good right???



So this week has been totally crazy! Work is getting to be a lot more work...however since they've given me a new job, and more money, I should probably stop complaining and just do what they tell me. I mean, doesn't it really make more sense that they would pay you more to make you work harder? But man, I so don't want to turn into one of those workaholic people.I mean I'm all about more money, but perhaps overtime is not such a great idea. I need time to do other stuff....like re-read Harry Potter.

So this is my new obsession...it's totally my family History...I'm lucky cause I'll I have to do it take the names from these books and input them into the computer. Easy right??? Hah! I've spent so many hours doing this, it's completely taking over my life! Not that I'm complaining cause honestly, how much fun is it to read all the scandels in your own family! I can't even begin to tell you all the crazy things I've discovered, my great great grandparents, yeah they were cousins!

Well I should totally be going to get ready for church right now, we're totally going to be late...Again. But berhaps I'll end by listing my summer Highlights since it seems that summer is now over (even though it's been 28 plus degrees outside for the last week)

My Summer Highlights

• Harry Potter 7 (come on people you knew that was coming)
• Camping in Palmyra
• Actually watching the entire Hill Cumorah Pagent
• Elder Ballard's Fireside in Toronto
• Ottawa conference (it was technically fall but i'm counting it anyway)
• Western Fair

So yeah, that was my summer in a nutshell. Perhaps I'll find some pictures to post...anyway that's it for now!!!