Heh

Yesterday I was being a hooligan and throwing some eggs of questionable freshness over the wall and into the abandoned empty lot next door, when I heard an indignant voice shout

"Hey, what are you doing!"

I gasped and froze, and then scurried to close the garage door like a little kid who's about to get busted.

Then as a cover I came in and started doing dishes, only to have the Ninja come downstairs and ask how it went...

I confessed that I'd been scared off by a disembodied voice, when she smiled and admitted that she had been watching the eggs explode next door, and unable to contain her bubbling giggles any longer that she'd been the one to yell at me, and had been laughing since the eggs stopped exploding :p

Feeling satisfied

I recently caught wind of a bombshell that was dropped at a homeowners meeting by the board... they want to levy a "special assessment" which equates to $9000 per home-owner due by August, and if you didn't pay "they'd just take out a lien on your place". They assured everyone quite indignantly from what I heard, that what they were doing was perfectly legal in our CC&R's (the community's local governance documents).  The fact that most of the people who live here can't afford $9000 in 5 months seems to have escaped them, and the fact that if they *did* have that lying around... they wouldn't be living here.

It didn't sound right to me, in fact it sounded like a giant steaming load of BS.


So I took to the internet and did some exploratory Googling and happened upon the California Civil Code section 1366 which confirmed my suspicions.  There is a housing code for the state which supersedes each local CC&R your local laws can be more specific but they cannot disregard the state law. It very clearly states that you can do this *BUT* there are dollar amount limits, very specific situations in which it can/must be done, AND you have to have a quorum of half of the home owners on board.

This recent declaration violates the California Civil Code on *almost* every count.

I have a feeling someone was banking on nobody doing their homework... and that everyone would grumble, carry on in their ignorance and just take their word for it.  In which regard, I'm quite pleased that the bug I placed in a few ears seems to have wiggled past the unfocused anger and manifested itself in others looking up the Civil Code as well. *satisfied grin*

My work here is not done, I don't know what is going to come of this hot mess yet, but I'm still pleased with myself for stirring the pot that needed stirring. 

Monkey see, monkey do

A friend of mine recently re-laced his ball glove with paracord, which didn't seem like a bad idea... and when I got to thinking, I realized that it meant I could pick from any number of the brilliant colours that paracord now comes in *grins*

Of course having thought that, it didn't take long for the pocket of my glove to blow out... so after limping through an afternoon of catch using a shoelace, I picked up some pretty green paracord and embarked on my own re-lacing journey...

You know that moment, when you reach a natural breaking point in something you're working on? That moment where you should stop and call it done, but you're feeling overly confident with your recent progress so you keep going. Like the longer you keep at it the faster you're going to get... that is until you hit that plateau...

Yeap, definitely should have stopped at re-lacing the pocket and the sides...

I've learned a few things though, be ye so foolish; 

You should undo the lacing around the bottom of the palm first rather than last... as it would have opened up waaaay more options for fishing the other lacing pieces through.  I've learned that although handy, forceps, needle-nose pliers, zip ties and masking tape in any of the combinations you can think of... are not the appropriate tools for the job.  Also the tensile strength of a paperclip is not up to the task of fishing doubled over paracord through a leather hole with pliers...

Paracord does not like to be tied the way nice rope likes to be tied, nor does it melt and shrink up neatly the way anything with the appropriate amount of nylon in it does... but a couple tubes of electrical shrink wrap and a hot glue gun later, I fixed it's little red green wagon. Ha!

So here you go, it may not last long... but I think it looks pretty!

Big girl bike

I bought this bike from a co-worker of mine who got it because he figured no-one would want to steal it... (except me apparently) I can't even explain how so super excited I was to find out it was my *favorite* colour blue!

So, I rode to work the other day... all the way, all by myself! 

It took me 45 mins to get there... which isn't bad considering it's a single speed. The ride home though, felt like I was going WAY faster, and indeed I made it back in a mere 41 mins ;)

The best part of being down in the US though is that I biked 14.44 miles... not bad, but when you say it in Canadian... I biked 23.23 kilometers!! Doesn't it just sound way better that way!?!?!

Pah, puny human!

Every once in a while karma reminds me that I'm only human. In the way, that only karma can.

This generally happens any time I start to think that my superior immune system renders me impervious to the plights of weaker ones.

That's about the time I'm reduced to a pathetic, achy, congested, sneezing, snivelling mess of a human being. Unfit to walk to the corner store. One that is about as far as possible, from the supposed peak of evolutionary development we like to consider ourselves to be...

But this cold has got me thinking (for the briefest of moments anyways)... That seriously? This runny snotty mess is the most efficient way we've come up over the last six million years to get rid of internal disease and pestilence?

I'm not impressed.

I would ponder this further, but my congestion has backed up into my cerebral cortex and everything is grinding to a halt.

No match for even the tiniest of virus and bacterium.

Absolutely pathetic.

It goes both ways ;)

We overheard this on the radio the other morning on our way into school, and it made me laugh so hard...

"Try as we might, we can't seem to keep Canadian culture from invading ours... Tonight, the Ducks play the Kings in a preseason game in the Honda center!"

And the winner of the cutest Granny evarrrrrrr!!

See! Look how cute she is *beaming*

My  Granny is amazing. She is 98 and a half and broke her hip just a couple of weeks ago, tripping over a pillow while making her bed. Hey Mom I found a good reason not to make my bed! She's up and walking on it already, seemingly faster than she was before she broke it, which is a great sign!

"All they do is come in and stick me with needles" she said. but she passed it off with a *tough cowboy sniff* "It doesn't bother me any though."

Less than a week into rehab she's done with the place and ready to go home. Patience is not one of her virtues, and I'm pretty sure that's why it isn't one of mine either. She basically summed up the rehab exercises with... "They're so simple, all you have to do is move your leg back and forth. I can do all that." and I'm not exactly sure who Granny was referring to, but it made me laugh out loud when she muttered "There are so many dumb people"


During our she told us so many stories some we had heard, and some we were just hearing for the first time. It is absolutely incredible the things that she has experienced in her time here...

Stories of the first radio, Granny highland dancing to a program and her brother coming home and turning it off. Their first company phone in their home... their phone number was 771-J, and her best friend Muriel was 771-W. It was so cute when I asked how they put the letters in, she looked really confused for a second, until I remembered that things used to go through a central switchboard operator and her puzzled look just melted away into a solid confident yep, that's how we used to do it.

Granny has always told me to make good memories in my life, and to save them up for when I get old. But nothing drove that sentiment home as when she said "I see a lot of faces here that don't look like they have good memories.... I have a lifetime of good memories" It always makes me smile to hear her say that ;)

The thing that touched me the most though, talking about all the things she remembered, was when she said "Your Mom and Dad getting married..." and gazing internally into her memories, as her voice trailed off she whispered "I remember all of that"

Playing within the laws of physics

Isn't it interesting that the self-brewing cup of coffee that I couldn't get a single drop more out of this morning due to air lock, managed to leak all over the inside of my purse this afternoon?

I thought so too...

Overthrown

Every once in awhile my body mounts a riot to overthrow the dictator and say enough is enough, and enforce primeval law.

The law is simple, thou shalt exist as closely as possible in an optimal state of warm, dry, rested and fed - not necessarily in that order. This coup occurs whenever I hit some secret threshold, and curfew isn't lifted until the imbalance has been restored.

Yesterday morning I was alright, but by noon I felt like I had been hit by a truck, I had a nap at lunch and a Montster just to make it through... I felt like I was hung over and dehydrated, but the worst of it was I hadn't even had the fun of deserving it! I mean yeah I've been going, and my body is still recovering from my weekend wipeout up at Silverstar... but during the drive home to let the dogs out I felt awful, like when you're so tired you're nauseous and your eyes itch.

I *barely* made it to 8:30 before I had to hit horizontal or my body was going to do it for me regardless of the location...

So I find out this morning, through talking to the cleaning lady at work that she feels exactly the same way I did yesterday.  So maybe I'm not crazy, maybe I was just fighting off a massive internal assault and didn't even know it!

Yes, this is also a long winded explanation as to why I didn't post the next installment of The Roadtrip last night :p

Fish Tails

A couple days before the trip I had finished all the last minute running around and had reached the point of "hurry up and wait" ... wait to buy fruit because you can't take it over the border, wait to be on vacation, wait for Faith to get up here...

*twiddles thumbs*

Of course when waiting it helps to have a bit of a distraction...like puttering around Swan Lake when Ed says "I think I got something" ... "no, maybe not" ... "yeah I got a big'un!"

I thought for sure he'd hooked onto a log, or a patch of swamp grass... so while we puttered in circles around his line I took pictures like this

...and then the tip of his line jiggled, and not just once. It was that very distinctive tug... tug... tug-tug that fishies do! Except that this fishy wasn't running, this fishy had swum straight down to the bottom and was camped out.

After wrestling with this guy for at least 45 minutes we had traded the pole back and forth a number of times, stretched, repositioned, finished a beer, and traded back again... and he had moved about 6 feet, with the grace of a bulldozer. It was 'round about this time we decided that it was a scuba diver messing with us because there isn't anything this big in Swan lake right? Right.

The trouble was we only had 5lb test on, so we couldn't just haul him up by his ear and see what kind of fish he was... Then being the extremely large, wise old fish that he *must* have been, he got bored of fishing with us and removed his new piercing on the weeds that I was so certain Ed had caught in the first place... and swam off without so much as a flip of the tail.

And that my friends, is how fish tales are born.

Shortly after some of the widdle pike took pity on us and let us catch them... just to take the sting off ;)

Patience is not one of my virtues, but after going fishin' with Ed I believe that you just need the right person to wait with... of course the scenery helps too ;)

So much for this being "The Sunny Okanagan"

Rain rain...go away.

Come again a-nother day. 

Sa-mantha wants to play. 

Rain rain GO AWAY!

It's been raining on and off like this for what feels like weeks now. The highway is washed out in Sicamous, and there are massive mud slides between Revelstoke and Golden. Revelstoke damn has now opened the flood gates twice! Our lakes are rapidly approaching maximum capacity and running out of places to keep all this water... at the rate things are going people are going to have to start storing it in their bathtubs and living-rooms... and that's gonna suck.

I'm a wet-coast girl, but I could be done with the rain for a little while. I hear Colorado is burning to the ground, couldn't we send them some of this water?

Please? *bambie eyes*

It could be worse. I know this... but still.

For the most part I have exceptionally good luck and good timing, but when I don't... well it all slides.

This afternoon I went with Aaren to pick up an antenna tower he bought from another HAM operator out in Armstrong, I'd carpooled with m&m this morning so I just gave her my keys. Obviously I didn't think this one through very well.

I got dropped off at my house as I found out she was out at a piano recital. But it's okay, it wasn't really a big deal because they have one of those coded locks... so I walked the 30 seconds up to her house and punched in the code, tried the door, and it was still securely locked.

Punched in the code, listened ...and nothing. Punched in the whoops I just realized I'm moderately dyslexic ... code. Hmm third time, maybe the lock button clears it... punch. in. the. code. *beeeeeep*

Mukka hiya fungoweeee! I really hope that isn't hooked into an alarm system *feverishly texting* ... No, wait... it stopped. *phew*

So here I am standing outside... my spare car key is in my apartment, and my apartment key is attached to my car keys that are sitting on the kitchen counter just beyond this coded door. I really wish I was the hacking kind of nerd right now...

I give up. I didn't want to go to Zumba anyways. So there... *sigh* yeah I did :(

But it's okay, it's really no big deal. All the important people in my life have a spare... I'll just walk over to Shazam's...

Eyah. Not so much... they're at soccer *of course*. Just break in she says... the window over the hot tub, or the bedroom... alarm's off so you don't have to do the mad dash through the house. And "Hamburgers are in the drugs" this message brought to you by autocorrect. *smiles*

Sll*cht* ... sll*cht* ... hmmm or not breaking in. Apparently this is the one time that window is actually locked!?!?! Wtf over!?!?!

By the time I'd tried both windows and decided that I might as well attempt to squiggle around in my utility skort and let myself gracelessly into my bathtub window, they were on their way home...

I know it's not "one of those days" ... the weather is warm enough, it's not raining, and I have people who love me, but it kinda feels like one of those days. My outlook was much improved by that burger in the drugs fridge though ;)

First world dilemma

So as you may recall I had a plan. The plan was that I was going to grow my hair out... Because you know, it's been a long time since I've had anything outside of the super-short pixie cut to hockey hair range... and long hair just looks sooooo gorgeous when you curl it, and omg *giggles* look at all the cute things you can do with it!?!

*Ahem* sorry, my inner valley girl snuck out for a second.

Anyways it was going pretty well, well it was going relatively well... alright so it wasn't in a pony tail (the only condition the Approval Committee had when I said I was growing it out) but it *was* twisted and flipped up in a hair clip most of the time. Yes, that is a HUGE step up from pony tail for me.

Right, so I had realized that this long hair things wasn't nearly as cool as I had hoped... but I knew I had to give it a fair chance. So a couple weeks ago I got it coloured and had a style cut into it.

 
Super cute right?? Then I got suckered into had my rubber arm twisted  into playing ball in that tournament in Kamloops... Well it was frizzy and all over the place and then all up in my face when I was driving with the windows down and that was it, I'd had enough... I was done with the long hair.

Chop it all off!

Since then, pretty much everyone I know, has said in the most diplomatic way possible... "You look waayyy better with short hair" So not that I care what anyone else thinks... but I love it! Sooo it's back, and by popular consensus it will most likely stay back...remind me of this 5 weeks from now when it has turned into unruly hockey hair and needs to be trimmed *again*

Genius... or what?

Mothers Day, that time of the year when it can take some fairly creative family conspiracy to pull it all together. Subtle and not so subtle hints dropped and eventually received, sometimes approaching Roman court intrigue and manipulation in their delicacy and intricacy... I would love to tell you the intimate details, but my family reads this blog from time to time and I don't want to give away ALL my secrets...

...but at least our family has never done this. "This" I overheard in the change room at the pool this morning and it made me giggle in that "I can't help but overhear your conversation and laugh with you at your expense" kind of way.

Apparently it was this woman's birthday, and her son was born on the same day, who of course naturally thinks that day is all about him now. In any case she'd gone on to the Lululemon website and ordered herself a bunch of new clothes a couple days ago using the business/"aka secret emergency retail therapy" credit card...

Then while opening her presents stopped. *realized* and went waitaminute... This is all the stuff I just ordered!?!?!?! You guys just wrapped everything I just bought myself?!?

Like are you kidding me?!?

So while we may conspire to remind each other to phone and wish you a happy mothers day, and coordinate flowers and dinner cooperatively in the background... we haven't done "this"... although I must say it *is* fairly ingenious, and you would get exactly what you wanted ;)

Happy Mother's Day Mom, I appreciate you :)

Spring training

Today is the first day of training... I'm doing my first triathlon at the end of June with Michelle. It's a sprint triathlon which is supposed to mean it's a nice easy distance you can do while holding your breath...

The Kal RATS Sprint Triathlon: (750m swim, 18.5k bike, 5k run)

We did a nice little half hour warm up type run today... and we thought we weren't doing too badly until some dude with his golden retriever ran past us at mach 5 and made it feel like we were moving *backwards*

Thanks dude. Thanks a lot.

If you can't be good, be great!

It's always awesome when I learn that something I've done my entire life... often times things that made me that weird outlier dot on some graph, are scientifically 'discovered' to be a great thing to do!

Everything he mentioned is why I don't like watching the news, I never have... I'd much rather hear about all the things that make us, as a community of human beings incredible.  There are so many inspiring people around us every day, and by surrounding yourself with those people you can create your own average to raise yourself up to.

 "When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves." -William Arthur Ward

I, am an anomaly unlike anyone you've ever met before... that's just part of what makes me amazing ;)

Santa really does exist!

After tracking the progress of my friend and co-worker through the trials and tribulations of the amateur radio course, I think I was almost as excited as he was when he passed the test!

I then waited with bated breath for his callsign to be really for real official. Just so that we would be one step closer to being ready for the zombie apocalypse. Really that's just a nice way of making it sound way cooler than what it actually is, which is being *more* nerdy than we already are, like +5 to Intelligence nerdy.

Back to Santa, but I'll let him tell the tale of "All I want for Christmas is my HAM Radio Callsign" and believe me it's well worth the read *smiles*

S'not a small town

Last week I had one of those mornings, where I hadn't decided what kind of day I was going to have yet... and my coffee got on the wrong bus, and took the long way to work.

It started when I opened my car to find it unlocked with my wallet on my seat, *squints* where I don't think I left you? ...my glove box open, and a couple CD's on the floor... which is definitely not where I left you.

But as far as I can tell... I'm missing $20 and negligible amounts of change. Obviously someone felt that they needed it more than I did... and in the grand scheme of things really I'm okay with that, because I really appreciate that they left my pretty wallet, with all my credit cards, my certifications, and my license and didn't break any of my windows.

Which probably means I left it unlocked? I'm so not sure now. The weird part is I don't even really feel that upset about it, *shrugs* I mean I should right? Someone went into my car and rifled through my stuff. But they didn't leave a huge mess, or break anything... and really, it could have been so much worse.

Do you have any idea what a rigamarole it is to get your license replaced when all the supporting documentation you need to get it is in your wallet... and you need some kind of picture id (such as a license) to get everything else that was in your wallet replaced?

Do you see the infinite loop here?!?!?

I will gladly pay the $20 "I'm an idiot tax" to not have to go through that, especially since at the end of the day, I shouldn't have left my wallet there in the first place... Besides after all that, my day ended with a giggle. I was complaining to a friend that I'd had more than enough coffee to drink and it hadn't been working *all* day... to which she said

"You're over-caffeinated, dehydrated, and under-stimulated!" ~M

To the little puke...

Who stole my nephew's candy and made him emotional, you're lucky you aren't counting stars. We went trick or treating despite you, and I'm fairly confident we've got more booty than you do, especially since this is just his haul!

Miss Appropriation (of company resources?)

This just in, scientistical confirmation of how hot I am... literally *nerd face* Oooooh yeah! That is, only if you can ignore the fact that I look like a giant wiener.