Making jewelry again!

For the first time in a very long time, I made earrings today. Before the last craft show in June I'd gone kind of overboard by creating lots and lots and lots of earrings. I'd hoped to sell a lot at that show but I was sick :( Anyways, since I'd worked so hard on jewelry before that I couldn't really make myself make more.

Until today, anyways. I was able to make six relatively simple pairs of earrings. I even listed three pairs so that I'd have some new stock for my sale. Tomorrow I'm going to work on the bag (the parts I can do, anyways) and when I take breaks I'll organize my beads. While I haven't made anything, I've certainly been buying beads :) I haven't put anything away and I have a ton of re-organizing to do. I hope that I'll be able to do that over the weekend and then work on the custom necklace and some more complicated pieces.

I'm very much looking forward to getting everything in its place and getting my work area set up again. I'm itching to do some more jewelry work for the holiday season. I'm glad that my jewelry dry spell is finally over.

Not much sewing for me

My sale is still on... take 25% off everything except custom orders in my store. Please wait to pay until I send you a revised invoice. Otherwise, I have to issue you a refund! :) Happy shopping!

As you know, I've got a custom order for a messenger/laptop bag on the go right now. I'm going to use brown strapping and I've ordered some in a wide width for the over-the-shoulder strap. Unfortunately, they aren't going to be shipping it until tomorrow at the earliest :( That means that I won't get it until Wednesday at the earliest. Sigh. I can do some stuff, but I can't do most of it until that strapping arrives.

Now, I do have some 1" brown strapping that's used for everything but the shoulder strap... but there are actually different colours of brown. And I have at least two of them. So I can't use any of what I have until I get the other stuff in so that I'm using the same colour brown everywhere. I did order 1" strapping from the same place.... hopefully it won't be a third colour of brown.

I did manage to get a dress sewn for myself today in that pattern I'd bought. I think it looks really nice; I'm quite happy with it. I'll see if I can get a photo of it for you.

Sale!!

I received my 100th "heart" at etsy (meaning that 100 people have listed me as one of their favourites), and to celebrate, I'm having a sale! Take 25% off the already-reduced prices in my shop!

Sale goes until midnight EST, September 5. Please wait to pay until I've sent you an updated invoice.

Happy shopping :)
http://angelstuff.etsy.com

Crazy sexy cancer

I watched Crazy Sexy Cancer tonight. I thought that I would be upset by it, but it didn't really bother me too much. All of the women were young and had different cancers. The main woman is awesome, of course, but she spent most of the show talking about her alternative approach to her cancer - eating macrobiotic diets and that. Her cancer is different than mine because hers doesn't really grow - she has cancer (24 tumours) but it's stable and has been for 2 years, so she hasn't had treatment for it.

I wish that my cancer would behave that way. Right now I'm stable and that's good, but if I end up with 24 tumours, well, things are pretty darn serious. Maybe not deathbed serious, but "I'd better have a lot of options left" serious.

Anyways, it was sort of interesting. I don't think it was quite like I expected, and I don't think I'll buy the book, but it was still interesting. The main message is that you can live a life even though you have cancer. Life doesn't just stop happening - it keeps going, and it can still be good. Even if you have cancer. That's a message for everyone, not just cancer patients.

Bellydancing fun

At least I made it to bellydancing today... after sleeping in until noon!!! It's hard to believe that I'm sleeping so much. Sigh.

There was a creepy guy standing in the front entryway of the building after the second class. The instructor locked the building shut but later there was a creepy guy outside. The studio isn't in the best area of town but they have never had those kinds of problems. Strange.

In the first class tonight we were working with the ball and I was able to stay with my hands and knees on the ball for quite a while - and then I was able to take one hand off! How cool is that? :)

BTW I missed the lunar eclipse last night. I think the sky was clear but if I'm sleeping I couldn't see it. Did any of you see it? Was it awesome?

Slowing down

I don't know what happened to me today - for whatever reason, I slept and slept and slept. I got woken up at about 8:30am because Ian needed my driver's license for our rental car (our normal car is going in to be fixed after being rear-ended). I got up, took my pills including Ritalin, and went back to sleep at about 9:30. I got up around 12:30pm again.

I had some errands to run and when I got back I was still very tired. Instead of going to Well-fit, I slept. I took my second Ritalin today, too. I'm exhausted again and will be going to bed soon. How did this happen?

I do know that my pain is up a little; I had been lowering my painkiller usage a little bit. For whatever reason the pain is spiking a bit - could that be the reason why I am soooo tired?

Anyways, it looks like this custom bag is really going to go through - I'm so excited! Of course I've spent more on options than I'll take in, so I hope that I get another order soon.

Cross-border shopping fun

We did go to the US to shop at Jo-Ann's Fabrics today. We went to two different stores and I bought a ton of different fabrics in the clearance department that could be used as bag linings or outer fabrics. I also bought some denim at 50% off. I don't really have any pants that fit because of the weight that I've gained, so I was thinking that I might sew myself some pants. Of course losing weight before fall would be the better option... but there's always room for new clothes :)

I've put the fabric and webbing choices up for my custom job; you can see the fabrics here and the webbing here. The current outer fabric will be the same as was used for the first bag. One of the big differences between that bag and this custom one is that this client wants it to hold a laptop. So I had to get padding things and some ripstop nylon to use as an underlining (for water resistance).

The entire day was exhausting, I must say. We left around 9:30am and didn't get back until 8:30pm. Ian was very patient with me as I looked and looked and shopped.

Just a little bit of Busker-watching

We went to the Busker festival this afternoon but the only buskers playing when we got there were the ones from last night. Then it started pouring rain, we got drenched, and we left.

We came back later in the evening and the same buskers as we'd seen yesterday were playing again, so we wandered around a bit. If we'd known that we were only ever going to see these ones we might have chosen to see something different yesterday :) Finally we got to see a new busker - Andy Zap, a comic from Australia. He makes fun of the audience members which is very funny. He does very little juggling. Eventually he strips down to a purple unitard and does an act involving audience members. It was ok - some of the things we've seen before. If you've seen the other acts that are playing, go and see him.

I don't think we'll go to see any more buskers tomorrow as I need to go to a fabric store in the US. The custom messenger bag order is actually coming together (yay!!!) and I need to get some supplies that I can't get here. This person wants the bag to hold her laptop so it'll have a slightly different construction than the previous bag. I'm charging $100 for these custom bags, which seems like a lot but which won't actually make me any money. Oh well; I'm doing it because I love it and because I want to make things. Making a profit is a bonus, I guess. Maybe someday I'll be famous enough that I can charge way more. Then y'all can say that you knew me when :)

Buskers!

It's the Waterloo Busker festival time again, and Ian and I spent some time there this afternoon and evening. Apparently the Waterloo fest is highly rated amongst performers which might be why they get them from places like Australia. Who knew?

We saw three full acts today: Wheel in Motion, Bamboozled, and Jeff Collins. Wheel in Motion was really, really good - we recommend that people in our region plan to see them. It's a duo act from Quebec with one person using one of those giant acrobatic wheel thingies. The first part of the show is fantastic - it's funny and it's attention-grabbing. The acrobatics are really, really good.

Bamboozled are a couple from Australia - Pandora Pink and Mr. Spin - who do a bunch of juggling, hat tricks, and cigar box tricks. Their act is good and their juggling is pretty spot-on. They're quite funny, too :) It rained through part of their performance but they kept the show going anyways. This was good, especially since it stopped raining, but it made their final trick harder. If you happen to be around while they're on, go and see them. It's worth it.

Jeff Collins is a single juggler who used to be part of a duo act, apparently. He claimed to have been on Sesame street but that may have been a joke (you might remember that I don't get jokes :). His juggling is ok and his patter is fine. His jokes tend to be a little off-colour which he excuses by saying that the kids won't get it anyway. If you had traveled to see Wheel in Motion and Bamboozled isn't playing, then you could see this act. He said that he is retiring from the road after this fest is done because he is married and has a five-week old baby. I guess if you're going to see him, you'd better do that this weekend.

The festival runs all weekend, and Ian and I will be there tomorrow and perhaps a little while on Sunday. There are more acts we want to see, after all :)

ps - we have SIX flowers on our two brugmansias!!!!!!!!!!!!! the plants are only about one to two feet tall - the flowers almost overwhelm the plants :) The pink flowers are so pretty :)

More bellydancing

I missed a night of bellydancing while we were at the cottage. Since there were only six nights, that's a lot of bellydancing to miss. Fortunately, my bellydance studio allows us to make up classes at another time. I chose to go to two classes tonight; an introductory course and a veil class. The veil class was great! It was really hard, though. When working with veils, your arms have to be straight which places a great demand on your arms and shoulders.

I'm glad that I have been working out because my arms can take some of it :) My left shoulder (the surgery arm from 2000) isn't as strong as the right one and tends to get sore faster. I don't know what to do about that; maybe I'll talk to the people at Well-fit and see if there's something to be done.

Our backyard

Our Brugmansia (Angel's Trumpet) is finally flowering with its dark pink flowers! We'd overwatered it the winter before last and almost killed it. It spent all of last summer recovering and making itself into two plants. We separated those plants and this year they both flowered! We're pretty happy that they're still alive and doing well :)

The brugmansia are joined outside by about nine orb spiders in many sizes from baby-sized to almost fully-grown. Some of them like to put their webs parallel to another web; I don't know where they'll get much to eat doing that inside the cedar bush. Oh well; no one said spiders were smart.

And in an unrelated note, someone contacted me about making a bag like the one here but that was more girly. Hopefully this person will reply to my questions and I'll actually get to make another one. Not that I'll make that much money off of it, but it's not about the money, is it? Either way, it's nice to have strangers express interest in my work.

I need more time. Or money. Or both :)

I bought a sewing pattern today for a dress that I like. I'd tried on a similar dress by Calvin Klein but it didn't fit seeing as how it's built for non-short people like me. Fabricland is having a sale this week on their McCall patterns and I bought #5466. This pattern is very similar to the dress I tried on and I think it'll work. I also got some fabric for it (on sale for $5/m, down from $15/m). I've washed the fabric and done all of the pattern adjustments.

I'm still working on a new purse, and I got some of it done today. I hope it looks good when it's done :)

I also bellydanced in my marathon 4 1/2 hour bellydance night. She's setting up the schedule for next term, and there's so much I want to take! She might offer an advanced choreography class (that she said I could take) at 4:30pm on Thursdays which might slightly overlap with curling. We'll see. She's also offering several yoga classes, a core stability ball class, and other bellydance classes. If only I had unlimited money!

Sewing, sewing, sewing

For whatever reason, I have this crazy need to sew these days. Yes, I should be making jewellery, but I want to sew instead. Fortunately I'd bought all of those fabric remnants before :) I washed a bunch of them today and have figured out a design for a purse.

Some time back I'd started making a flower focal piece using dyed feathers, tulle, and some stones and crystals. I finished that flower today and have designed a purse to go around it. Actually, the purse design can be used for other purses that I might make.... and I'm thinking that a couple of them might be well worth it :)

I'm looking forward to working on this first purse tomorrow. It really shouldn't take that long to make except that I'm using four layers of fabric as my outer fabric. I also have a dentist's appointment at 8:40am and I'm bellydancing at 5:30pm, so I may not have quite enough time to finish the first purse tomorrow :( We'll see.

The gift secret revealed

Soooooo... have you have been dying to know what the super-secret project I was working on was? No? Are you at least a little curious, if I'm going to tell you anyway? :) Uh, good, I guess.

The gift has been shipped and the recipient has it; it was a messenger bag for my niece commissioned by her mother. I've put the bag up for sale so you can see it here. My sister will buy this from etsy so I can keep track of what I make. I'd be thrilled to make more bags similar to this one - keeping each of them unique - and I'll be putting up a custom item for that. If you're part of my family then I can work out a reasonable price for you if you want one or more of these for someone :)

This afternoon Ian and I watched Stardust. It's a movie based on a book by Neil Gaiman. The book is fun and is a relatively easy read. It's a very good story with humour, adventure, love, challenges, and magic - a combination that it very hard to resist. The movie is much like the book but in movie form. They did a fantastic job of adapting the screenplay from the book; the feelings evoked by the movie are very similar to those evoked by the book, and that's quite an achievement.

The story is great, the acting and special effects are awesome, and the cinematography and scenery are spectacular! We highly recommend this movie. It's probably not for really little kids as there is some implied nudity and sexual situations as well as some violence that could be scary to young'uns. It should be just fine for older kids, though :)

I don't get jokes

We had our first accident ever today :( Ian was driving and we were waiting behind someone turning left at a green light. The person behind us rear-ended us. Sigh. Nobody was hurt at all, thank goodness. Both vehicles got off the road, inspected the damage, and exchanged some information. There are small dents in the bumper where the other vehicle's license plate screw hit the bumper. We don't know what the bumper composition is but we expect that this might be a one-time-only bumper (like helmets) where if the foam is cracked it won't protect us again. We expect that we will have to get the bumper replaced; I'm pretty sure that this will cost more than our insurance deductible and so we'll be contacting the insurance company tomorrow.

It turns out that we didn't get quite enough from the other people. We got their insurance, address, and license plate, but we didn't get the driver's license number that's needed for the reporting forms. Also, the person gave us their name as "C. " with no complete first name. They said that they'd been hit from behind and that pushed them into us - which could have happened, I guess, but the vehicle behind them drove away and none of us got their license plate. There was no damage to their rear bumper, either. The first thing the passenger said was that she'd been in an accident earlier this week. Hmmm. And the driver apparently had had surgery on his forearm recently. It feels a little fishy to me. I guess it doesn't matter.

In Ontario (I'm not sure about the rest of Canada) we don't call police to the scene of a fender-bender like this one. Instead, within 24 hours of the accident, you have to go to a Collision Reporting Centre. There you fill out forms about your vehicle and the other person's information. In an ideal world I suppose both parties would go there at the same time but that didn't happen today. The form does ask for both parties' driver's license number, so we'll know to get that if this ever happens again. Actually, we'll make up a little form to keep in the car - not that we want an accident! But just to be safe.

The centre wasn't busy and so we got everything done in about 20 minutes. When we finished filling out the forms, the police officer checked Ian's driving record. He said that it was perfectly clean except that it was expired because he didn't pay the renewal fee. I froze and started to worry.... but then both of them said that it was a joke. Right. I don't get jokes :)

The officer didn't put a sticker on our car indicating that the damage had already been reported because the damage is hard to see. We do have a police report number, though, which we'll need for the insurance company. I'll call them tomorrow. We will take our car in to our nearby Honda dealership because we don't trust that any other dealership would correctly deal with the hybrid technology. I don't expect this to be an issue with the insurance company. I hope I'm right :)

After all that we headed into Toronto. We were going to the Shoebox Tour show and wanted to go to the big Winners at Yonge and College. It took about 2 hours to get there because the Ex is on and traffic was slooooooow. Both Lakeshore and the Gardiner were jammed. We did get to the Winners in time. It's very big and has a good selection of clothes from a variety of designers and if it had been less busy and we'd had more time I would probably have spent a couple of hours there. I guess it's just as well that I didn't spend that much time there because I didn't buy anything.

We did see the show. It was held on the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health grounds at a theatre there. This is in an area of town that's not all that good. Just to the east it's getting better but this area hasn't finished being revitalized. I was a little uncomfortable in the building for the addicted and mentally ill; I felt very much like we were invading their space.

The show was awesome! The first half had a lot of unicycling which was interesting. The second half, with the Shoebox troupe (see here, too) featuring Jay Gilligan, was fun. It was sort of like we were watching them sit in their living room trying stuff out. It was very arty, in a way. Jay Gilligan played one of a couple of theremins there.... I think I've listened to all of the theremins I need to for the rest of my life :). I like some theremin sounds but I thought it went a little over the top.

At one point in the show, one of the guys had called two people up to the stage - when he yelled some keyword they were to twirl some ribbon things (like rhythm gymnastics). He balanced a chair on his chin and then it fell on him. I was stunned and worried that he'd hurt himself! He fell to the stage and yelled out his keyword. Apparently this was a joke. Yep. I don't get those :)

As you can tell, it's been a long, eventful day :)

One thing I wanted to add to yesterday's discussion on boundaries..... I had set some extremely rigid boundaries relating to someone in my family. My boundaries were much too rigid and were very hurtful, both because I forced them on this person in a mean way (using forceful, arrogant, self-righteous tones of voice that belittled the other person), and because I didn't respect that person enough to let them have boundaries; I forced mine on that person. In doing this, I hurt that person very badly.

I've apologized for this before but I'd like to apologize again now, knowing what I do now about boundaries. I'm very, very sorry that I did this to this person. Yes, I needed boundaries but the way I set them and enforced them was hurtful and mean. I love and cherish this person very much and I accept this person for who they are, no matter how they might change (or not). I don't know how I can make this up to the person, but I will continue to work on learning to set and enforce boundaries in a gentle, loving way.

Where are my boundaries?

You might remember that Ian and I went to a Skills for Healing retreat at the end of June. You might also remember that by the end I was very frustrated with the group and that I was questioning whether or not I'd return to Hopespring - I'd certainly had enough of Hopespring people at that point.

Since then, I've stayed away from Hopespring (except for the Young Women's Group) until today, when I went to a workshop exploring ideas from the retreat. We were talking about being a whole person and how to accomplish changes we might want to make. Each person decided what "being whole" meant for them and what they would like to change to be more whole. I consider myself to be pretty well-rounded and whole but I do have issues with anger and anxiety that I'd like to change.

Basically, the process is that once you figure out what you want to do, you figure out what you need to do to get there. We were told to set priorities, make choices, and set boundaries.

This naturally led into a discussion about boundaries. This was the most useful part of the workshop for me. They said that boundaries "are a system of limits that enhances your ability to have a sense of self". The facilitator also talked about how boundaries can be rigid, flexible, or very loose. Flexible boundaries can change a bit with a given situation but don't disappear; loose boundaries may not exist or may disappear often; and rigid boundaries are not at all flexible.

The facilitator said that flexible boundaries are the healthiest to have. Rigid boundaries don't allow the person to change in response to a changing situation. Loose boundaries often mean that the person has no sense of self.

When I was younger, I had very, very loose boundaries. I allowed people to treat me badly and I made a number of choices that were quite stupid. I didn't recognize that it was possible to be with a person and not be with them all the time (this is where boundaries between two people mesh, and it's not healthy because neither of the people has a complete sense of self on their own). Over time, I've learned to develop boundaries but I'm still pretty bad at it; I tend to make mine rigid and unyielding at first.

I have learned that making rigid boundaries this can hurt other people unnecessarily, in part because the way I conveyed the boundaries was hurtful and in part because rigid boundaries don't show respect for the other person. In setting rigid boundaries, I was saying that I didn't respect the other person enough to allow them to be themselves; they had to behave as I wanted them to and that's not allowing the other person to be themselves. I am learning to develop flexible boundaries, but it'll take time.

Needing to lose weight

I gained a bit of weight while on our vacations :( The weight is in different places than it used to be, probably because I'm in menopause. Blah. I've decided that I want to get a bit more exercise in the hopes that the weight will come off.

So I biked to Well-fit today. I plan to bike to Well-fit while the weather is good - in the past, when I've ridden my bike on a regular basis like this the weight has come off more easily. Hopefully my plan will work.

I have thought about doing yoga. It's offered as a session at my bellydance studio (which is expensive) and also at Hopespring (which is free). I think I'll try the one at Hopespring and see how that goes; if I don't like it then I'll try the bellydance one. I don't know what types of yoga are offered at each place, but I'll find out.

New and improved young women's support group

I got to go to the Young Women's Support Group today - I haven't been there in two months and I've missed it. There had been problems with the facilitator and they've brought in a new facilitator; I think this new one is going to work out. She has lots of great ideas and I'm really looking forward to attending the groups this fall.

The only thing I didn't like about today's group was that we talked a bit about cancer being a gift. There are a lot of people who see that getting cancer gives them a new lease on life and is therefore a gift. I disagree with this idea as far as it applies to me - I can't speak to whether other people have benefited from having cancer, and I can't say that it hasn't been a gift for anyone else.

Anyways, it bugs me when people make the blanket statement that cancer is a gift. Sure, I have different priorities now than I did before my first cancer, and I think I'm a better person now than I was before.... but is my cancer a gift because I've made these changes? I'm kinda thinking no. I was making these changes after I quit drinking (before the first cancer) and I expect that I would have got to the place I'm at one way or the other whether or not I'd had cancer. I guess there are people that would say that quitting drinking was my gift.... which it was, but not necessarily just for that reason.

But I digress. Before the session started, I talked to the interim facilitator of the young women's group (she's also the facilitator of the Spirituality and Healing group) about belly breathing. I guess you could say that it's a form of meditation where you breathe deeply into your belly and then slowly breathe out. It's very relaxing and I find that it helps me get unstressed and unanxious in a hurry. I think I mentioned before that I was having problems with getting wound up and anxious about some things. That isn't healthy and it doesn't do me or anyone around me any good. So I'll continue to work on the belly breathing as a way of dealing with this.

My eyes

Remember I had my eyes checked and my glasses prescription needs to be updated? Well, I took my glasses in to the optometrist yesterday. They'll be shipped to Montreal, the lenses installed, and then shipped back, so hopefully I can get them back by the end of the week. Anyways, since my normal glasses are(hopefully) on their way to Montreal, I'm wearing an older pair pf g;asses. The prescription is pretty close to the last one as I think my eyes only changed by about 0.25 or so that time.

Interestingly, I have three pairs before the pair I'm currently wearing; they go all the way back about 10 years. It's funny to look at them; not all were perfectly flattering on me. They do reflect the time that I bought them, of course.... but glasses that go halfway down my face are not the best style for me :) My face is too round and too short for that look to work well. I do remember feeling attractive in those ones, though.

Wearing an old prescription is pretty tiring on my eyes. I'm wearing contacts to drive because they are the last prescription I have and so are theoretically better for driving. The only thing is, my eyes are very dry and if I wear contacts for longer than a couple of hours (like today) my eyes start to drive me crazy.

My eyes are very grateful to be under glasses now, and will be even happier when I go to bed :)
On a completely unrelated note, I was able to borrow a drum (technically called a doumbek) from my bellydance studio so that I can practice using it. This is pretty cool :)_

More doctor's appointments

I saw the pain and management specialist today for follow-up. She's doubling my Ritalin dose because it I'm still sleeping a lot - 11 or 12 hours a day. I think she expected more of a benefit from the radiation, but we decided that it wasn't worth changing my pain meds now since they seem to be working just fine at managing my pain. My pain is under control and doesn't reach the same peaks as it used to. I haven't been able to significantly reduce my painkiller intake, but then again, I haven't had to increase it, either. She did say that if my pain increased again that I should see her and we would try morphine or dilaudid for the pain.

I also got a prescription for the H. Pylori bacteria. It's a seven day course of Prevacid, amoxicillin, and clarithromycin called HP-Pac or Prevpac. I thought that the treatment for H. Pylori was a lot longer, but I guess they've made advances in this area, too. I hope it works :)

Cottaging vacation last week

As promised, here is the blog entry about the cottage vacations. Enjoy! :)

Sauble Beach

We started our cottage vacation at a friend's parent's cottage near Sauble Beach. We were there last year with university friends and most of those same friends were there again. It's great to be able to catch up with our friends again. It's amazing how much has changed in a year! One couple is expecting their first baby in January and another are getting married in September. I guess we're all growing up now and being adults. It feels weird, in a way. I don't feel grown up at all, so how could our friends be getting married and having babies?

Everyone slept in tents which was fun. It was like camping but with a shower and flush toilet right there. Ten people shared the one bathroom so you can imagine that there were some lineups! It wasn't that inconvenient, though, and fortunately there were no bathroom emergencies :)

We enjoyed our time at this cottage. both because of the people and the location. It's very low-key, with no internet access or tv, and it's very comfortable. The beach is very, very shallow - you walk 20 minutes just to get to the beach (they have a lakefront cottage) and then you walk 20 minutes to get to water above my shoulders. I spent my swimming time learning how to tread water.


Whitestone Lake Resort

We left Sauble Beach to go to Whitestone Lake Resort with a different group of friends. The resort is very nice and kind of casual in a bed and breakfast kind of way. It There was a restaurant on-site and a small store with snacks and gas at the dock.

The hotel is right on the water and has a small beach and dock. Our room overlooked the lake and had a balcony on which we could sit and read (or dry our swimsuits) which was very nice. The room had very high ceilings and a ceiling fan but no air conditioner. Fortunately it wasn't too hot while we were there so it wasn't too bad in the room. There was no tub although there was a shower. All of the furnishings were solid wood and antiquey, if a bit small for the scale of the room.

The restaurant ran on cottage time. Breakfast took 45 mins, lunch one hour, and dinner two hours. The service tended to be as slow it wasfriendly - and they sure were friendly! One weird thing was that they mis-named some things. For example, the menu said that pancakes were served with maple syrup when they were actually served with packets of pancake (table) syrup. Also, they served something they called a creme brulee which was neither creme nor a brulee. Things like this struck me as weird - I think the person who owns the place makes up the menu and I don't think she really knows much about food. The food did taste ok.

We spent a lot of our time swimming, playing with the two- and four-year old children of our friends, and doing stuff with the boat on the water. I practiced treading water and am ok at it now :) :) I also practiced swimming and feel much more comfortable in the water. I'm very proud of myself. I'm also proud of my one friend who jumped into the water from the dock. She's not comfortable in deep water but she jumped anyways. Yay!!!!

We did some tubing and I also tried kneeboarding. I was able to get up once and to balance on the board correctly once. In that order, which is not the norm :) Ian helped me a lot. Doing this was a very difficult and therefore rewarding experience for me. I'm afraid of falling into space or overturning in deep water, and I overturned a lot while trying to figure out how to balance on the kneeboard. The first time I tried I got really, really scared and thought I couldn't do it again. I forced myself to try again the next day and I managed to work through the fear then. I was proud of myself for trying something new and working through my fear. Ian was proud of me, too.

Ian had kneeboarded about 15 years ago and picked it up really quickly. He was doing turns and everything! He's very awesome :)

Sudbury

It turns out that Sudbury is only about two hours away from the resort. It was supposed to rain one day so we wemt to the Big Nickel (Dynamic Earth) and Science North. The big nickel is cool. There's a museum there that's like a mine tour. It was cool in its own way but maybe less interesting than the mine tour we did in Scranton. That one took us way deep into the earth and this one took us about 75 feet down. They played a movie thing as the elevator took us down, too. I felt that it was very touristy and a bit tacky.

Seeing the "mine" was interesting - we could see what conditions were like one hundred years ago, fifty years ago, and today. Mining there is almost all automated now. They blast out the rock and then send it to be sorted. This is very different from a coal mine where each vein is worked individually and surrounding rock isn't supposed to be sent up with the coal. I liked the mine tour just fine but I liked the Scranton one way more. Still, if you're up in Sudbury, I'd recommend taking the tour.

Science North was very cool. It's a science museum and there are lots of hands-on activities for kids of all ages. We even got to try riding a Segway! We enjoyed poking around there quite a lot. They have very nice turtles :) If you're in Sudbury, definitely try to go to this place whether or not you've got kids.

Overall, we very much enjoyed our time away from home but as you can see it was very busy. We were in the sun a lot and we both have colour and freckles. I liked it - it reminded me of when I was a kid and played outside all day and evening.

An update tomorrow, really

Yeah, I know I promised to update you all on our trip today, but I'll have to do it tomorrow. I spent most of the day working on the thing I didn't finish before I left and it's past bedtime now. The thing is finished now and it looks awesome! I can't tell you any more about it right now because it's a gift. I'm shipping it tomorrow morning and it'll arrive two days late :( :( :( :( I hope the recipient loves it like I do. I'm including some surprises as well.

Home, sweet home

We are home! We had nine wonderful days of sun, sand, water, and play, but we're very tired now. I'm going to read now (perchance to sleep) and so tomorrow I'll update you on everything we did on this vacation.

One thing: when we got home there was a message from one of my doctor's offices. The test I did for H. pylori came back positive for the bacteria so they'll be starting me on antibiotics by Monday. Hopefully fixing this will fix all of my tummy troubles. Wouldn't that be nice?

On the road again...

And we're off. I'd really hoped to finish the thing I was working on, and I really did work hard to finish, but I ran into a snag in the second-last step :( We have to get going and so I won't finish it until we get back. Sigh.

I'm looking forward to the trip, though :) I won't be updating my blog while we're away, so I'll leave you to read these sites:

Google news
Go Fug Yourself (a sarcastic fashion police blog updated daily)
Bluefly (a shopping site)

It's hot out there

It was very, very, very hot today and so I spent most of it sewing in the basement. I'm making a custom-sewed item as a gift and it is looking really good - just like it does in my head and in my drawings :) I'd hoped to finish tomorrow... we'll see. There's a small chance that I will provided I don't do everything two or three times over again like I have been. Many of the techniques and things on this item are new to me and when things are new I get them wrong the first (and sometimes second) time I do them :)

We are going away on Friday for a fun-filled week at two cottages. Our laptop just died (wah!) so even if we had internet access at the second place (there's none at the first place - we were there last year), well, we don't have a laptop. Unfortunately, this means that you and I will have to go without my blog fixes every day for a whole week!!!!! I'll see if I can dig up some other fun reading for you while I'm away.

Bike-riding

I got my bike out today for the first time this season! Ian was kind enough to get it ready for me so that I could ride it. He's in Mississauga tonight and I needed to get to Well-fit. Walking to the bus stop and riding my bike to Well-fit take the same amount of time and I figured it would be better for me to ride my bike.

As it happens, I had to go to Conestoga Mall afterwards and so rode my bike there and then home. That's a lot of riding for the first time this year! At least I've been doing a lot of exercise lately so my endurance and lung capacities are pretty good. I didn't have too much trouble with the hills I had to ride on, either.

The first time I ride my bike each year I remember how much I love it. This year is no exception, and I hope to be able to ride my bike more often this summer. I've been riding a bike since I was 12 or so and I love the way the wind rushes around me when I'm on a bike. I can easily get to a state where I think about nothing at all while riding; just the feel of the wind and the buildings rushing by me. It would be so nice to be able to get around without having to use the car :)