Welcome to Brendon and Eilean's Blog!!

So Long 2011!!

2011-12-30T09:16:00.009-06:00

2011 was supposed to be the 'and baby makes 3' year. Just like in science, theory and reality don't often meet. We found out in March, after my exploratory surgery, that we're part of the rare 5% of infertile couples that have 'infertility of unknown etiology', which is the I-paid-a-lot-to-go-to-med-school way giving us a big ol' shrug o'dumb
and sending us on our merry, albeit childless, way with a referal to Heartland Clinic. We're starting the first type of fertility treatments (Letrozol, for those in the same situation) in January. *fingers crossed* *pray for us* *burn incense and chicken bones and chant to a fertility goddess for us*

Since our world wasn't being shaken up by a stork, NRC decided on a restructuring plan that saw me leave my job of 12 years as a tech at IBD and start fresh at CancerCare. When I saw who else was being "work force adjusted" into unemployment, I got the feeling that I'd be next. A feeling that was confirmed at my exit interview when the DG said "your unique skill set (government-ese for "we're not sure what you do here so therefore, you're uniquely skilled to do that thing you've been doing for a long long time") wouldn't be needed here much longer." When a position at CancerCare opened up, I applied, had a good interview, and left IBD. That was a really tough decision because B still works there, my friends are still there, I was really comfortable with my job and knew how to run magnets, my boss was AWESOME, I knew where things are and who to talk to about them - to go into a lab that doesn't have a single magnet in sight, doing weird blots and spinning disk microscopy, having to understand new acronyms (CCMB, PTMs, HER2s, BNIP, etc).... It's been 6 months of feeling completely overwhelmed and really dumb, but I'm settling in. I'm still overwhelmed and feel dumb, but at least I know where the copier paper is stored!

It wasn't even just leaving IBD that was hard, it was leaving the lab that was the hardest. Watching everyone else pipette and dilute and section, stuff I LOVED to do, and instead, going to endless meetings to discuss leverage potentials, trying to find someone competant at CIHR (a work in progress), or fighting with ResearchNet to *not* crash on the day a grant is due... Well, it's tough but it's also different, the people are great, and I really hope to be there for a long long time.

We'll see what happens in 2012! Hoping you guys have a Happy New Year's!!

Memories of 9/11...

2011-09-08T19:30:00.002-05:00

I can't believe it's been 10 years since 9/11. I hate to sound cliched, but it really does seem like yesterday. Perhaps it's because footage of the towers collapsing, soldiers in beige being deployed, and constant reminders of "Muslim terrorists" (because no one remembers or admits that there are Christian terrorists) and ever increasing, less effective airport security. And with this weekend being the 10 year anniversary, I thought it'd be interesting to find out what people remember from *That Day*.
As remember that morning, I was eating my usual bowl of Cheerios while watching Breakfast Television on A-Channel with Jon Ljungberg broadcasting from the Pancake House at the Forks. He and the guest chef were making waffles with cinnamon apple sauce and whipped cream. I looked at my pathetic bowl of Cheerios with utter disdain. Watching Jon ruin waffles but covering his mistakes in heaps of gooey steaming apple cinnamon and whipped cream, mmmmm. I shut off the tv and ran down the 7 flights of stairs to Kathy's apartment so we could, as we always did, walk to work together... laughing and joking about wanting waffles now. We got to work, she headed upstairs to her top floor corner office, I headed to the new computer lab. My "To Do" list was to uninstall Windows XP and reinstall Windows 2000 because NRC hadn't cleared XP to be rolled out to all NRC computers yet. Once the new-old operating system was installed, I got to test out a demo of Office 2000 on these new computers!!

*As a complete aside and unrelated to 9/11, that year, my boss had come back from a conference with a 128kb mem stick. It was the size of a iPod is now and cost nearly $200USD. That's neither here nor there, but after having a high school student working with me all summer, I'm starting to realize I'm old and technology hasn't changed A LOT in 10 years. Anyways, back to my story...*

Shortly after formatting the 500Mb hard drive that cost me nearly half my annual IT budget to buy them, our Facilities Manager with the Napoleonic complex came over the PA system and said, "We are streaming the news in the Herzberg room if you would like to watch. Understandably, network access is slow."

I email Kathy with a descriptive "WTF?" email so we agree to meet downstairs. We arrived at the Herzberg room moments before the second tower was hit. It was an unreal experience to stand there, hot chocolate in hand, giggling and laughing as we always do when we're together to turn and see the tower get hit. I remember going cold instantly and just saying, "Guess that means America's at war now."
Kathy answers "Yeah, but with who?"
I recall her saying "This seems like one of those times that Bruce Willis is going to pop out any minute and save the day."
Yeah!? Where was Jeremy Irons with a German accent as authentic as Mel Gibson's brogue in "Braveheart"?
It really did seem like this was some unbelievable Hollywood movie, that people weren't really being burned alive or jumping from windows, two more planes weren't getting hijacked, the Pentagon lost a wall. (.... or did it... conspiracy theorists have loads of ideas to the contrary about the Pentagon crashes)

We just stood there for over an hour watching the news feed until the first tower fell. I couldn't handle much more so I went back to my computers, numb and cold and feeling sick. Maybe watching the progression bar of Windows installer made my world seem normal. Maybe being in a silent, windowless room by myself would make the events go away, or stop, or even realize that it's a big hoax.

As often as I could, I would try to get online for updates or go to the Herzberg room to see the latest news. I would spend the next 2 days completely obsessed with anything relating to the events of that day; staying up late, getting up early, just to find out any updates.

What about you? What are your memories?

Thoughts from our side of the city - redux

2011-08-07T09:43:00.003-05:00

Six months ago, I blogged about my first impressions on living in Transcona. I think it's time to re-address some of the issues. Yes people still don't know where it is, no there aren't any pink flamingos, however there are some changes in this part of the city that I see as a step in the right direction.
1) Lack of coffee shops.
As previously mentioned, there aren't any coffee shops in T-cona unless you count the lone Starbucks on Regent Ave. That in itself is weird, having only 1 Starbucks store in a 10 km radius but I've also discovered that down the street from me is going to be a "gourmet coffee and tea shop" opening soon at the corner of Plessis and Grassie. The location is terrible but I'm looking forward to having somewhere to go for coffee if/when my "other side of the city" friends grace me with their presence.
2) "Downtown" Transcona.
Again, I wrote about how weird it is to hear people refer to "going downtown" meaning that they're driving 5 minutes east on Regent Ave. But our city councillor and the local Transcona Biz are trying to revive The Downtown to make it more attractive for pedestrians and patios. If Corydon is Little Italy, this would be what, little Ukraine?? Perogies instead of gelatti? Anyways, they tore down a dilapidated building before the firebugs could get to it, and are creating a green space called the "Centennial Square". Okay, so it's actually a circle, but it's such a rarity to have a green space these days that I'll skip the semantics / geometry debate. Also opening in The Downtown, a COFFEE SHOP!! This one is being run by L'Arche, a local organization that helps special needs adults find meaningful employment, so in addition to being a coffee shop, it helps people too!! Double karma points.
3) Speaking of green spaces, the new Transcona Trails.
I'm not giving any credit to Harper or Katz, but the city managed to get infrastructure money out of the feds and paved 5km of trails running the entire length of T-cona and connected it to existing trails that starts near our house. I think it's brilliant! Every time we use it or drive past it on the way to/from work, there's always people blading or biking past. It's not often that the city does something right AND promotes a healthy lifestyle but this is one of those rare examples.
4) Community Centres.
I think there are more community centres per capita in Transcona than any other part of the city. But they were all built at the same time, so they're all about 40 years old and falling apart. However, they're renovating the one nearest to us to become a Wellness Institute and are proposing to tear down an old community centre to make it into a huge YMCA. As expected, there's a small but vocal group opposing any changes to "their" centre, insisting that some paint is enough of an improvement. *sigh*

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

2011-07-23T08:24:00.018-05:00

Apparently, I've been negligent in keeping my blog posts up to date and there are some readers that rely on it for entertainment over their lunch break. Ooooh, the pressure!! And given how many things have happened last month, maybe it's time to put it online for your amusement.

There's a new president of the NRC and his entire role, best as I can figure, is to eliminate and destroy 100+ years of Canadian scientific accomplishment in the name of progress and competitiveness. Yes, I'm choosing my words carefully, for good reason, but I give the NRC 5 years (coinciding with the end of this president's term) before it's gone and the thousands of technicians and scientists are left unemployed and taking their skills elsewhere (re:out of Canada). Because that'll make Canada more competitive in science. *snort*

Anyways, off my soap box. After losing 10% of IBD's staff in the first round of cuts, I saw the writing on the wall. A position opened up at CancerCare Manitoba and I took the opportunity and decided to leave before I could get cut. In my exit interviews, I was told that it's good I'm leaving because my "unique skill set" (re: whatever it is that you do, besides look after the coffee machine) wouldn't be needed much longer. And for an institute that millions in the hole, me quitting is a heckuva lot cheaper than firing me.

I had 4 days between jobs and, as Brendon well knows, leaving me alone in the house for more than a day guarantees that something is going to be painted. And if there's something that needed painting, it's our bedroom. As Oprah hath bequeathed, so therefore it hath be true, a bedroom should be sanctuary and should only be used for two things. And one of those is sleeping ;-) The bedroom was a horrible yellow colour. It's more yellow than margarine but not really lemon yellow. It's like a faded Post-It note. Sanctuary? Nope, it's like old office supplies! *That* does not inspire that other use of a bedroom (the not sleeping one) if you're remind of being at work. Brendon started by repainting the back wall before we moved in last year. Leaving us with this.

Meh. Well, it left me unsatisfied. Nothing worse than an unsatisfied wife in the bedroom right right?? LOL! Still bland and still "faded Post-it note" yellow, but without the sponged back wall. Worse yet, the yellow wasn't evenly painted, so you could still see the roller marks and dry wall tape in some spots?! With Brendon at work, I got out my ipod, my brushes, and my painter's tape and got started.... :)

Ta DAHHHHH!!

Okay, so it's beige. Again. Like 95% of the rest of the house, it's a combination of beige and brown. Technically, it's Behr "Castle path", and that's in the grey/red category but it's a variation of beige. But it's not yellow!! So that's the bedroom finished. Well, for now... until I insist we replace the carpets, heh heh.

Meanwhile, I still had 2 more days to myself and I was out of paint. To make a long story short, this 3 yards of soil...

became this... (Brendon and I had built the flower beds and 2 boxes ahead of time)

which has grown into this...

60 square feet of boxes is now growing 2 types of tomatoes, green peppers, zucchini, beans, peas, garlic, onions, lettuce, potatoes and carrots. The flower beds are a mix of annuals (sunflowers, zinnias and celosia) and perinneals (digitalis, daisies, echinacea and a few others I can't recall their names but the red ones in the front of the picture).

Oh yeah, and I got a new car. Sexy sexy!!

En suite is finally done!

2011-02-19T15:22:00.005-06:00

I've already posted about how much I hated the en suite and how everything in it was white: floors, walls, cabinets, fixtures etc. Here's the pic from the Kijiji ad when we first looked at the house.
So in August, I painted the cabinets. In October, it was the walls.
Last step was the flooring and thanks to my fantastic incredible father-in-law, my ultrafantastic truly amazing husband and 6 hours of a Saturday we'll never get back, here's the final result!!
*BLISS*!!!!
We used Allure tiles from Home Depot. It's a floating floor so there's no adhesive, just two sides that stick together using contact cement. Isn't it beautiful??? *sigh* I'm going to go admire our work again... happy happy!!!

Thoughts from our side of the city

2011-02-06T11:40:00.003-06:00

It's been a year since we sold our West End house so I thought, given my 11 months of being in Transcona, that I'd share what my impression is.

1) No one knows where Transcona is.
Tell someone that you live in Transcona and watch their eyes glaze over. And it's not just Winnipeggers who think T-cona is that uncharted part of the map described in latin as "Here there be dragons", our utility companies think the same way. Case in point: MTS called us (at the old house) to tell us that they offer HD and PVR in the West End now. I said "Great, but we're moving to Transcona. Is it there?" Lonnnnnng pause, he comes back "No, we don't offer service outside of the city." What? After moving here and dealing with the mind-boggling ineptitude that is MTS, we discovered that we don't have call display or answering machine on our land line anymore. I call MTS to find out what happened and she said (and I quote) "Different parts of the province have access to different features. If you lived in Winnipeg, you could get call display." I called back the next day (once my jaw had been picked up off the floor) and got everything fixed by someone who knows geography better.

2) Regent Ave traffic is as busy as St James, but without the suicide lanes.
Driving in the area of Regent and Lagmodiere on the weekend is akin to Route 90 or St James. But, someone with a background in traffic flow patterns realized that left turn lights are a good thing and used them A LOT on Regent. Too bad the city can't rehire that company and fix the train wreck that is St James and Route 90. Instead, they're putting in *more* shopping in that end. Can't wait to see the parking lot on Sterling Lyon when Ikea final plunks down here.

3) Transcona is it's own city
Okay, this is the weirdest part of living here. Transcona has it's own downtown, complete with decorative arch! So when I tell someone I'm going "downtown", I have to specify if I mean "Downtown Winnipeg" (ie far away) or "downtown Transcona". I had lunch last week with a group of Transcona residents (transconians? transconites?) who admitted to me that they haven't left Transcona in months. She said "Anything past Nairn is too far away. Besides what do you need to see that you can't get here?" We have 3 chinese restaurants and a thai restaurant withint 1 block of each other. Does that qualify as our "chinatown"?

4) Transcona is a small town.
And just like Pinawa, everyone here knows each other. Or tries to find out if they know each other somehow.
Case in point: The woman and her daughter that deliver the weekly flyers were stuck in their dead car outside our house on a really cold day in December. We invited them inside to warm up while they waited for a tow truck and when they found out that Brendon and his brothers all went to TCI, they spent time trying to figure out if she (as TCI grad in the early 90s) went to school with anyone of Brendon's brothers. When her husband came to get them, turns out he (like most people in Transcona, including my mother-in-law) works at the Freshwater fish processing plant (did you know Winnipeg has a fish processing plant?? I sure didn't...), then we started the whole conversation over again trying to figure out if the husband remembers my mother-in-law. Thank goodness the daughter doesn't work at New Flyer or else we'd have to link her to our friends.

At the same lunch last week, a woman admitted to me that she's lived in Transcona and gone to the same T-cona church for 32 years but is still referred to as "new to the area", but her kids are "neighbours" because they're born/raised here, and yes, came back to raise their families. Yup, it's more like Pinawa than I'd like to admit.

5) Coffee shops.
We don't have one. Seriously. There's neighbourhoods elsewhere in the city that have 2 or 3 on a single corner but the closest Starbucks is Regent and Lag. Depending on how you draw the boundaries, it means Transcona doesn't have a Starbucks. And Timmy's? Only 2. There's a Timmy's inside the Safeway on Kildare (Transcon Proper) but no stand alone Tim's until you go down Regent, past the casino, where you find 2 within a block of each other.

6) Pink flamingos?
I don't know where this notion that T-cona is filled with tropical plastic birds but I've never seen one.

7) Jacked up chromed out trucks with swamp tires and growling engines?
Sadly, yes. We've got that in spades. I'm sure Princess Auto can't keep the "Calvin peeing on the Ford logo" sticker in stock because they're everywhere here! In T-cona's defense, there was a truck down the street in West End that was covered in chrome diamond plate so there are men with Freudian complexes throughout the city.

Holidays!!

2010-11-07T13:43:00.003-06:00

Normally, while you're on holidays, in the back of your mind is always the thought "what's going on at the house", especially in this province where November can be either freezing cold and rupturing pipes, or a freak storm creates a random flood that can destroy a basement. We've always had wonderful friends and family coming to our house to look after our Kitty and this time, Brendon's parents will be coming by each day to give Kitty her special pills and her special food (low protein so her kidney failure doesn't progress faster). The pills have to be wrapped in a chewy treat so they don't have to wrestle her to the ground and ram it into her throat; she may be old, skinny, toothless, and clawless but she can be extra nasty to strangers. But this trip, we have added security from our neighbour. Oh yeah, one of the neighbour's house has an extensive camera system that monitors his house 24/7, with a live feed on a password protected website, and is backed up daily onto DVDs. Yup, we live next to Fort para-Knox. He has, the last time I counted on the way to the mail box, 7 cameras that covers 3/4 the radius of his house; 2 are night vision, 1 has a microphone, there's even 1 on the door bell. If anything were to happen to our house, as he told Brendon one day, he's got it on disc. He said that he can't "see into your house or anyting". This is supposed to make us feel welcome to the neighbourhood?! It's creepy creepy creepy. But being thousands of miles away and knowing that he's "covering" our house, is pretty reassuring. Just wonder if insurance can give us a discount for his paranoia?
I wonder if he's reading this...
I wonder if he's reading this as I type it next to the window near one of the night vision cameras....

Second Honeymoon!

2010-10-31T11:45:00.006-05:00

In a few weeks, we're going on our second honeymoon! Feel free to start hating us. Hard to believe it's been a year since we were on our first honeymoon in the Dominican! We've been saving up our Air Miles for years and years until we'd have enough for a decent trip. Last year, we were *close* to having enough, so a year later, and many many trips to Rona, the Liquor Mart (yeah, that was a lot of work and arm twisting...) and Safeway for bonus miles, between the two of us we managed to collect about 8500 Air Miles. It is enough that the trip costs us 1/3 the normal price. The trip, for both of us, for a week, all-inclusive, is only costing us $900 instead of $2600. Did I mention that you can feel free to start hating us? Yeah, well, when you're only saddled with a ridiculous mortgage and a cat with kidney failure that requires pills, shots and special expensive food, you may as well blow all your Air Miles and nearly a grand on a trip. You'd be stupid not to!! We just loved the Gran Ventana and the Dominican Republic so much that we talk about going back all the time. I was looking at other all-inclusive resorts in the same area (Jamaica was top of my list, as was Costa Rica) but we just kept coming back to how much we loved the Gran Ventana. So, we're going back.

And yes, I know what you're all thinking so I'll beat you too it. No, this trip is not about making a baby. It's because we want to, can afford to, and will go to a fantastic resort, drink rum, and soak in Dominican sun for a week for $900. Nyah nyah nyah! :-P I know... I'm ridiculously mature for my age. But I get enough flack from my seriously-overly-concerned-about-my-reproductive-status co-workers with their constant opinions about why I'm not pregnant yet, that we need a week off in the 200% humidity, melanoma-inducing sun to get away from their daily advice about what worked for them, or recommendations from their friend of a friend of a niece of a neighbour. I'd like to pretend that I'm exaggerating about their daily comments, but I'm really not. I put on a little weight, they comment that I'm "starting to show" and rub my belly. Oh yes, that actually happened, (hence the new treadmill which I am using regularly). I complain that I'm not feeling well, eyebrows shoot up and a big grin spreads across their face with a "knowing" smile. Since when did sinus headache qualify as a symptom of pregnancy?! *sigh*

(follow-up... Just checked on WestJet Vacations and the trip we're taking is on sale for $750 per person, nearly $530 per person less than we're paying for the same dates. Dammit!!!)

The En Suite

2010-10-17T16:38:00.009-05:00

The one room I whined and nagged Brendon the most about changing ever since we moved in, is our en suite. Actually, I whine and nag Brendon in every room, but the one I complain about the most is the en suite. It's white. It's really white. I'm talking "Blinded by the white" white. It's retina-searing, "okay, I'm awake now and seeing spots if you turn on the lights in the middle of the night to go pee" white. White linoleum (except where it's yellow from the previous owner's bath mat), white counters, white sink, white toilet, white vanity, white blinds and the inexplicable green "accent piece" behind the diagonal toilet and the window sill. Yeah, I don't get it either, but it's what was here when we moved in.
So I started my en suite transformation with baby steps and bought a new mirror. Then I bought melamine paint and did the vanity. We'd looked into getting a new vanity but because, for whatever reason, there's no shut-off valves on our plumbing, so we'd have to get someone in to do that first and melamine paint is $40, plumbers are $200. That just seemed like a lot more work than just painting it. Then I bought the new flooring, but that's currently under the bed, awaiting inspiration.

But after much nagging, Brendon finally relented (like he had a choice?) and said we can paint it this weekend so I rushed over to Home Depot before he changed his mind. I tsp'd the walls and we taped off all the baseboards and framing before painting. It's a small bathroom and he was done with the roller work in an hour while I finished the edges and trim. Here's the 75% completed en suite now. *sigh* Bliss.... :-)

AWESOME!!! The wall colour is C-I-L Tomorrow's Taupe with Cocoa Mousse on the cabinets. I prefer Behr paints but it didn't come in this colour, which is supposed to match the faux grout lines on the new flooring which hasn't been installed yet because it's going to be very difficult and we'll probably need some help with it. What you can't see in the photo is the diamond-shaped shower on the left that'll be one of the problems of putting in the new floor with the toilet being the other half of the problem. We can't do much about the shower, but the toilet? Looks like it'll be easier if we just lift it out and put the flooring around it instead of doing ten million cuts.

And in about a month from now, the view from our window will be this...

if Brendon's lucky! We're heading back to the Dominican for a second honeymoon!! We had enough Air Miles that we can go for a week for $900 for both of us. Normally, it's $1200 per person! Can't wait. If you ever get the chance to go to D.R., I highly recommend the Gran Ventana. It's a spectacular resort!!

New Clothes Dryer!!!!

2010-09-16T19:17:00.003-05:00

Sooooooo excited!! I've heard that air drying your clothes is better for the environment and for your clothes, so we invested in a new $1400 dryer for the basement. It's even got mp3 capabilities!!

Ha ha ha. We upgraded from our stationary bike to a treadmill. I've wanted one for a while but the floor at the old house was tipsier than I was in my first year at university so we bought a bike instead. With the new house and LEVEL floors in the basement (shocking change!!) we decided to invest.

The upstairs bathroom is a work in progress. I finished the cabinets and we'd do the floors this weekend but I have a performance at the Prairie Theatre Exchange. Will post photos of the new bathroom later, but if you want to see pics of me dancing, go here.

All done

2010-08-08T18:03:00.005-05:00

I hate saying these words, but I'll have to eat crow and utter those little words that Brendon has never heard from my lips.... "I was wrong."
*shudder* I was wrong when I said that I could find a dry waller for less than $1000. It's possible, but very difficult. I called one guy in Lac Du Bonnet three times without answer. Turns out, there's so much business in and around LDB that he can't come into the city for extra work. I called around to a number of places in the city. Those that did answer their phones said that they wouldn't come for anything less than a grand. Apparently, Naomi Campbell's attitude is infectious to the construction industry (though she will get out of bed for blood diamonds...). I did find one company that's too busy but knew someone that'll do it for cash. After a few phone calls, he said that'd come and install our 1 lousy piece of drywall for $400. Seriously. 1 piece of dry wall 8' long and 4' high! It took him four trips to the house over a weekend and a grand total of 47 minutes of work which works out to an incredible $8.51/MINUTE!! It's not bad enough that after all our collective years of post-secondary education that we never learned to shower, but to know that someone working under the table makes 25x what I make just blows my mind. However... to defend the construction industry... my university classes had dozens and dozens of MSc's and PhD's all studying med mic without any jobs to go into. I'm sure his class had maybe ten or twenty people in it, all whom had jobs lined up on the second day they showed up at school.

He wasn't out of the house 15 minutes before I was upstairs with the paint roller and a glint in my eyes!! Once the paint was dry, I tacked down the carpet and put in the baseboards. We're back to where we were 4 months ago, but here's the end result!!

Still a work in progress because we still haven't put up the photos and stuff on the wall, and I want a new computer desk instead of a kitchen table.

My next project, the en suite... or as Brendon calls it "The bathroom that no one else sees so why should we waste time and money decorating it???? Please please please don't make me paint anything else!" Or, as I call it, "The gawd aweful room with the white floors, white walls, white counter, white cupboards, white white white." First step is to paint the melamine cupboard a walnut brown, the same colour as the vase in the corner.

The rest will be a "mushroom" colour and I really like the fake tile floors at Home Depot. My "honey do" list is growing again.... someone warn Brendon!

Plumbing update...

2010-07-19T16:15:00.008-05:00

The stain that started it all....
So in my last post, the contractor was going to remove the wall. Here's what it looks like now.

With it open, our contractor was able to investigate all of the water damage. As you can see, there's virtually no damage to the dry wall anywhere. There's a tiny little bit around the tub and there's visible water damage to the subflooring underneath the tub but that's about it. (Yes, that's our snoopy Kitty in the room as I'm taking the photos). Brendon got the fun job of staying home the day they removed the wall and didn't find any damage. The contractor then went into the bathroom and said to Brendon that it must be our "showering practices" that caused the damage; that we use the shower head wrong and as we use the bathroom, we're hosing down the walls and floors, causing enough water to accumulate on the floors that it seeps into the adjecent room and soaks the carpets. Oh, and we don't use a shower curtain because we're complete dolts and haven't learned how to shower. He said this as he was sitting on the shower curtain. Cue the irony....
Given that Brendon's bald, it's hard to understand this guy's story... that we're too dumb to shower properly and we're in the shower for so long, splashing around like a bunch of little kids at a water park, making a huge mess, when we lather rinse and repeat?? Uh-huh, and I've got a bridge in San Fran....
Anyways, the contractor left and Brendon was still pretty gobsmacked with the baloney that they were feeding us that the Manitoba school system neglected us by not offering a "how to shower class" in school. Guess all my years in school, I opted out of the useful classes, like showering and basket weaving. The contractor recommended getting a plumber to fix the leak that was coming from the faucet. See, the thing is that the faucet that sticks out of the wall to fill the tub... when you start the water to have a bath, the water comes out the faucet and sprays against the wall. Brendon demonstrated this to the contractor, even showing how when you pull the lever to make the shower work, that the spray is even stronger ... that maybe *this* might be the problem?? No no no, couldn't be a leaking faucet causing the water in the other room!! It must be our showering practices. *argh*

We called a plumber and had him come in to remove the faucet and replace it. And since the wall was already open, we had him change the taps from a hot/cold 2-tap system to a 1-dial system that we liked better. Here's the bit of piping that the plumber removed and said "Well, here's your problem!!" (ala Mythbusters...)

I may be just a doctor that doesn't know how to shower properly, but I'm pretty sure that ain`t right. After removing the faulty section and replacing everything, we have our shower back and we're using the bathroom for nearly 3 weeks without a drop of water in the spare bedroom.

I had to email the contractor and our insurance adjustor twice a week for four weeks to get an estimate from him for how much the rest of the work that 'needs to be done' will cost. He wanted, get this, $1000 to put the drywall back up, $75 to remove the toilet, $100 to remove the flooring and $500 to put new flooring down and put the toilet back. There's some other stupid fees that he's charging but to fix everything, but suffice to say, it'd be $3000, minus our $500 deductible. We decided that we don't want insurance to pay for it and that we don't want to deal with him anymore and his accusations of incompetance on our part for not following shower directions to the letter.

Now we have to get the drywall back up to make the bedroom useable. We can maybe probably find someone in the city that's able to put up 1 sheet of 4'x8' drywall for under a thousand dollars. I know that trades and skilled labour is in high demand but I seriously doubt they're charging $1000/hr now!!

Home ownership is fun!

One step at a time...

2010-05-28T12:02:00.003-05:00

We called our insurance company about the water damage in the spare room and within days, we had a contractor (Rick) and an insurance adjustor at the house to inspect it. Rick brought out a hydrometer, which measures water content in materials and found that there's water in the subflooring underneath the vinyl floor of the bathroom. Most of the bathroom subfloor is damp. There isn't much moisture left in the subfloor of the bedroom so the mould that's growing there has been cut off from its food supply. So, the issue now isn't the mould in the bedroom, now it's the mould growing under the vinyl in the bathroom.
Our next step is to remove the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom to expose the plumbing, hire a plumber to locate and repair the leak. After that, Rick comes back to remov everything in the bedroom and bathroom, clean up the mould, and repair the damage. Best case scenerio, there isn't a lot of mould in the subfloor of the bathroom so it just needs to be dried, cleaned up and sealed before everything that was damaged gets replaced. Worst case scenerio, the entire bathroom is gutted right down to the joists and we get a new bathroom. We'll find out Monday just how bad it's going to be, and whether insurance will cover it.
*fingers crossed*

Dead ant, dead ant, d'd ant, d'd ant....

2010-05-23T08:10:00.004-05:00

Speaking only for myself and not for Brendon, I'm not going to say that I regret buying the new house, just that there have been significantly more problems that need immediate repairs than we'd ever had in 5 years at the old house. We've just discovered we now have an ant infestation. We killed 10 last night and 3 more this morning. Two in the basement, most on the main floor and 2 in the upstairs. Big, nasty, ugly, black ants. We found four (killed three) as they were coming in under the baseboards next to the fridge so we used black pepper (non-toxic to Kitty) along the baseboards as a deterant but we're off to Rona again today to get ant traps.

Our biggest problem began about a month and a half ago when we thought Kitty was sick and had peed on the carpets. The stain never really vanished from the (sorta) white carpets despite my best efforts. A few weeks later, after we were recovering from the worst flu either of us had ever experienced (I threw up every 20 minutes for 8 hours, he had a 102.5°F fever), we noticed that the stain was 3x the size and had spread from the original spot by the door and was now about 2/3 the way along the carpet against the wall that divides the main bathroom from the computer room. We moved the furniture that was against the wall and found the carpets absolutely soaked. After cleaning it up (again), we tried to locate the source of the water: either from the roof or from the bathroom. Both times that we noticed the stain on the carpets was after long days of rain, which would lead me to suspect it's a roof issue. But the fixtures in the bathroom are loose and leak, so Brendon and his friends worked on the fixtures to try and seal the leaks. We won't know if the problem is fixed until we get another few days of downpour. Fortunately, we have an en suite so we don't have to use the main bathroom. If there is water in the carpets after it rains again, then we know it's a roof problem. And before you ask, no, we can't access the attic to inspect the roof because the only attic hatch is outside, above the 2nd floor and we don't have a ladder tall enough, or nerves strong enough, to climb up and inspect the roof from the inside.
Now that the carpets have been peeled back, we can see the water damage to the underpadding and subflooring. No matter what we have to fix, whether it's the bathroom or the roof, we also need to replace the floors before the mould gets worse and aggrevates our allergies.
List of things wrong with this house that need repairs:

dining room window seal is broken and moist is between 2 panes of glass so it's foggy
deck is unlevel (Brendon has pretty well fixed this using shims and a car jack to level it as best as he can)
stairs from the deck to the backyard are rotten and falling apart
ants
furnace that can't heat the upstairs and
a/c that can't cool the upstairs
damaged carpets from previous owners dog
damaged carpets from water leak
questionable wiring in the garage that has blown out two light bulbs already

*sigh* I really liked this house.

1 month in!

2010-04-04T19:17:00.003-05:00

We've nearly unpacked all the boxes. We're still missing a 4L bottle of canola oil and the little plastic circle that makes the glass plate in the microwave spin around. Admittedly, the weirdest two things to lose during the move! We can't really microwave anything that isn't perfectly balanced!! The oil can be re-bought but the plastic ring really is microwave-specific? Sucks that we may have to buy a new microwave just for a $1 piece of circular plastic!!

As the boxes are starting to disappear, our house is starting to feel like our *home*. We've started decorating and putting up pictures in all the rooms so it's nice to see our stuff again. Brendon doesn't really like "messy" everywhere, but I like having rooms full of photos. I'm trying to find a balance between tidy and cluttered. We splurged on new furniture for the living room with navy leather reclining sofa and love seat, a "server" (topless hutch) in the dining room and a new bed, all from Paliser, plus a new bbq for the deck. Woo hoo bring on summer!!

We've been in contact with the previous owners of our new house and had them over just recently to pick up some of their mail and some of their gardening stuff that only recently thawed out. Surprisingly, we haven't heard from the people that bought our house. I sure hope the people that bought our old house aren't disappointed in their purchase. We went back a few weeks ago to clean it out, and I left in tears. So many good memories at the old place!!

New home sweet home

2010-03-08T19:44:00.002-06:00

Moving day is never easy. Moving day with a 14 year old cat that's not good with change (not that I'm any better) is even worse. We spent since mid-December packing so by the week of the move, nearly every room was floor-to-ceiling with boxes. Kitty thought we were making forts for her to explore so she was jumping like a kitten from box to box. We'd been training her to get into her travel crate with less stress than 3 years ago when she nearly killed Brendon trying to escape from his clutches for the move to the old house. I took her, her stuff, and our frozen food and headed to our new Transcona house while Brendon waited for his best friend and his older brother and the moving company we'd hired to show up. I locked Kitty in the en suite while I unpacked and cleaned other stuff then let her go into the master bedroom while I read a magazine and sat on the floor listening to the radio. Brendon kept me in the loop through text messages and let me know when they were on the way so I could return Kitty to the en suite.
The movers really motored and unpacked with both engines on full. We stayed inside with clean(-ish) feet and hauled boxes from the front door to the right rooms while the movers ran back and forth to the truck and the front door. They packed the old house, drove across the city, and unloaded in under 5 hours. We're paying them $110/hour so the faster they worked, the better for us. And because we were running the boxes around the house, the mud and grit from their shoes wasn't being tracked too much on to the carpets that I'd spent 3 hours shampooing last week!
I started getting the kitchen set up while Brendon set up the basement. Took me about 5 hours (until ~9pm) to get the kitchen unpacked and useable. We actually have fewer cupboards and less counter space than our old house, but the square footage is larger. It's just really big and open, without much room to prep anything. Neither of us like the counters (or the cupboards for that matter) so we're pricing out new counters. Depending on the price, maybe new cupboards too???

But, all in all, the move went spectacularly amazingly well. The house is beautiful and we've got most of the rooms (except for the guest room) setup and almost 100% the way we want them. There's still lots more to do, but it's starting to feel like home pretty quickly!!.nce everything's done, I'll post photos.

Battle on 2 fronts

2010-02-28T18:09:00.002-06:00

We took possession of our new house on Friday morning after a flurry of phone calls and visits to the bank and to the lawyer's office to sign everything, including the bridge financing between our West End house and our Transcona house. Because I was performing on Friday night, we didn't head straight there after work. We'd gone over on Monday to meet with the sellers and pick up the keys and garage door opener. They weren't ready to move yet and the house was in total disarray so it seemed a lot smaller than we remembered from our last (and only other) visit in November when we bought it. However, on Saturday morning, when we'd showed up with paint brushes in hand, the house was empty and we spent about an hour running up and down all the stairs in disbelief that the house is now ours, at long last!! We'd gone to Home Depot and picked up paint to cover over the faux plaster look in the master bedroom and the orangey-yellow of the "office", a colour I particularly didn't like (But Brendon liked it). We thought we'd picked some really different colours, a deep plum for the accent wall of the master bedroom, and a mossy grey-green for the office (Behr's "Semi Sweet" and "Sage Grey"). But when we got them to our West End home, we realized we'd picked the *exact* same colours as we already have in this house. Our chocolate brown and teal master bedroom in the old house is now brown and lemon yellow in the new house. Our white and grey bathroom in the old house will now be white and grey office! Oooops!
No matter, the painting went quickly and I had another performance Saturday night at the Roller Derby bout at the Convention Centre. We did final touch up, some unpacking (mostly kitchen stuff and anything breakable) and cleaning today before rushing home to catch Canada's gold medal victory over US in hockey. Woo hoo!
Moving day is next Saturday!!!

Hiring movers

2010-02-13T13:07:00.003-06:00

Because we're taking nearly all the appliances and March is a finicky time of year, we decided to splurge and hire movers instead of risking life and limb (and lower back) to move the stove during an ice or slush or rain storm or whatever Mother Nature will throw at us. I went online and found three moving companies that most people in Winnipeg have heard of. I contacted all three and the first one emailed back immediately with a quote of $550 for our house. Sight unseen but based on the square footage and moving date. Further investigation into this moving company revealed that they have millions of dollars in unsettled lawsuits from across Canada from disgruntled clients, and have their Better Business Bureau title revoked because of the sheer number of complaints. And people from work have had terrible experiences with them trying to rip them off, demanding cash payments before unloading their stuff, destroying their personal items etc. Okay, so they're out.
Next two companies came to the house wearing company uniforms, gave us their business cards, discussed insurance options, packing options, and had a checklist to mark off what all we have to move. Their quotes came in within $50 of each other, nearly $800-ish. Moving company #2 has moved many of our friends and co-workers so they have a better word-of-mouth from people we trust.
Company number four is where things got uncomfortably weird. They put a mailer in our mail box and I figured for the sake of interest, maybe a smaller company would be cheaper and just as good. Well, not so much. I emailed back and forth with the boss (Let's call him W) to arrange a time for him to come to the house. That time comes and someone shows up at the back of the house. His name starts with a G, not W. And he doesn't have a company jacket, or anything at all to indicate which company he's with. He does, however, have Gov't of Canada business cards (which all look the same so we both instantly recognized that he's a fed, not a mover. He explained that this is a side job, which we didn't buy. No one, especially not a fed, chooses to move people's furniture on a weekend for kicks??). He brought a notepad, just a standard Staples 8x10 notepad and wrote down a list of everything we owned. He started asking really weird questions like "how old is that laptop? Wht's the value of that guitar? Do you have any other electronics aside from what's out? Those bikes look pretty expensive..." AWKWARD!! We couldn't wait for him to leave, and once he did, we both realized that he never asked when we were going to move. Seems like an obvious question to ask, you know, to make scheduling easier?? We're still convinced that G's going to rob us when we're at work. Either way, they came in a over $900 so aside from it being completely unprofessional and creepy, they were too expensive.

House is sold!

2010-02-06T10:54:00.002-06:00

We spent the entire Christmas break getting the house ready for showing, which meant taking down personal items, cleaning cleaning cleaning and repainting all the nicks and dents in the walls. We listed the house on Comfree on January 9th and the first request to see the house came the next morning while we were cleaning it. Of course, we turned down his request (he was in his truck parked in front of the house... creepy), but we got another call that night from someone who lived around the corner. He and his wife and parents came by the house and offered us over listing price. We were really excited and told him to go to a lawyer and write the offer on paper. They came back again the next day, again offering us over asking, but didn't seem to understand (despite 4 phone calls back and forth) that we wanted an offer written by a lawyer and not a personal cheque for the entire amount. He got really hostile towards us and accused us of trying to rip him off, rather than realizing that we wanted a legally binding document and not a verbal agreement. Silly us!

Every day after that, we were showing the house 3-4x per night to different people. The first and second people through on Monday came back twice to look again and bring family by for their opinions. The third couple brought an offer to purchase with a price we liked so we called back to the other people who were going to write up an offer and told them that we're going to take this offer. It was rather hard to make those calls and disappoint the other people, but we really liked this couple, liked the offer and it was more than we'd expected to make. (In hindsight, we should have listed the house for $160k or more because it would have been pretty easy to get that... oh well, hindsight's 20/20 eh?). We accepted their offer and had to wait 10 days for them to get their financing arranged with the bank. In the 10 days that we waited, we had 14 other people sign our "Call Back" list so if the financing fell through, we had other people waiting in the wings to swoop in and take our house. Sweeeeeeeet.

So their financing was approved and the house is sold after 6 days on the market. We're now packing up and getting ready for the move. Kitty's really enjoying playing in all the empty boxes and spends most of her time jumping in and out of them and investigating the growing piles of boxes in the basement.

We're on the move!

2009-12-11T18:10:00.005-06:00

If you want to jump ahead to the photos of our new house, go here.

Months before the wedding, we'd discussed selling our current house and finding something larger in anticipation that we'll have kids someday and the 2 bedrooms we currently have just aren't going to cut it. We'd thought about moving out to Oakbank but the commute is too long. Then we thought about going to East St Paul, but the houses are too expensive. Then it was St Andrews, but it tends to flood in the spring. We're starting to sound like Goldilocks eh? Too soft, too hard, just right.... We eventually agreed on the Kildonans and Transcona so we looked online at the MLS listings and Comfree for places within our price range that met our criteria (3+ bedrooms, 1.5+ bathrooms, double garage, quiet street) and went to some open houses. I won't go into too much detail, but some of the houses had some "unique" odors associated with them. Mildew, curry, and dog pee in some of them. We fell in love with a house on Alberhill and met with the seller's agent and had him draw up an offer to purchase, but unfortunately, lost the bid by $13,000.

Undeterred, we went back online and I found one on Kijiji.com that had had an open house the weekend before. We called them and arranged a meeting with the sellers to tour the house. It was 7:00 at night and on a street only blocks from his parents house (and where an ex-gf from high school lived). The online photos were truly terrible and we were both completely unmotivated to go see it and had convinced ourselves that it'd be another awful place. But, after touring through it for a half hour, we were absolutely in love! It doesn't photograph very well so please don't judge it from the slide show. It's a 4 bedroom (3 upstairs, 1 basement), large kitchen with newer KitchenCraft cupboards, new laminate flooring, A DINING ROOM, a fireplace, 1 full and 2 half bathrooms, and a walk-in closet in the master bedroom. House is 15 years old and a former Kensington show-home and the current owners are our age and we got along with them really well. While we were touring through, another couple came over to look at it, which was particularly awkward because we were filling out the offer to purchase and the deposit cheque! We discussed the details with the sellers and they called the other couple to find out how interested they were. They weren't seriously intersted so we got the house for $7k over asking price.

We finished the offer to purchase with the caveat that our lawyers would have to approve the offer, which is where things went off the rails. Our lawyer and their lawyer had communications problems but after 3 days of relentless phone calls and meetings, everything was approved and the house is ours!

We take possession on Feb 26th and aside from wanting to repaint the master bedroom and the second bedroom (the one with the exercise equipment), there's nothing much for us to do except sell this place. We're going to try doing it ourselves since it worked so well already. We're listing for $150,000 with possession after March 1st, so if you know anyone that's interested in a 2-bedroom, 1 bathroom, 750sq. ft. house in the West End near Polo Park with 2 parking spots, new eaves, new windows, new shingles, new insulation, new a/c, new monitored alarm, includes fridge and dishwasher, shed, patio, landscaped with perennial gardens and AMAZING neighbours on either side, give us a call!!

Honeymoon!

2009-11-21T09:25:00.003-06:00

If you want to skip all the reading, just go see the photos here.

We went to Puerto Plata in the Dominican for our honeymoon. We stayed at the 4* Gran Ventana resort and we can't stop talking about how amazing the resort was. On the flight over, we got to talking to other passengers who were going for their second, third or tenth time. One woman we met goes to this resort four times a year for 2 weeks to 2 month stints! I want her retirement plan!! We got the VIP treatment right from the start, with personal check-in service from the manager of the hotel, to an upgraded room with ocean front view, a bottle of rum and a fruit basket waiting for us. The room was great but the tv turned itself on and off at random times and the a/c broke twice in the first week so we got moved to a different room where the a/c worked but the tv had terrible reception. Oh well, can't win them all.

It took us about 4 days to unwind completely and get into the "groove" of the whole honeymoon. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all buffets and the food was spectacular. We never ran out of options. The coffee was the BEST I've ever tasted, but probably it's because the beans are freshly picked and roasted from the local plantations. All our food and all our drinks were included and after a few days, all the staff knew who we were and always greeted us with a loud "OLA!!" and a big smile. We spent most days lounging by the pool, reading books, playing volleyball, swimming up to the bar for drinks from the best mixed drinks from Sanchez, and just generally, RELAXING. It was awesome.

We took three excursions from the resort. The first was the Outback Safari that showed us around the real Dominican. Parts of it were really sad, from seeing the "house" (more like a shack) without running water or electricity and using straw to cook dinner, to the schools, churches and hospitals that the Outback Safari company pays for, learning about how people make about $2/day but with a few cows and pigs that they can work their way out of dire poverty, the skinny kids running after the tour bus, to driving in the city and seeing the difference between rural and city living. We got to see a working plantation organized by and run by local women that grows sugar cane, tangerines, grapefruits, papayas, coffee, cocoa, pineapples and coconuts to sell at market to put their kids through school. We went on a brief river boat tour and a bumpy ride through the country to learn about the different species of plants and how their used by locals, and see the huge tracts of land bought by foreigners for their own personal resorts. Finally, we went boogie boarding in the surf at Carabrete beach, which was AWESOME!!

The second excursion was into Puerto Plata city. This was a disappointing tour since the tour guide wasn't the least bit interesting and it was more like a shopping tour than a city tour. We saw (and bought) rum from the Brugal factory, amber and larmar jewellery & hand rolled cigars (we got totally ripped off on these because neither of us like haggling). We also saw the Amber Museum (completely boring), the city centre (where we were swarmed with people trying to sell us stuff), and then went to the top of Mount Isabella by cable car. That was scary but cool. At the top was a statue of Jesus the Redeemer, but a smaller version of the one in Rio.

The third trip was to Ocean World and it was amazing, but ruined by the annoying and obnoxious guys from VIP World that kept harrassing us to go see the marina and buy into their time share. I've never in my life wanted to punch someone so hard as the forty-millionth time that Giovanny stood in front of me and kept saying "My Canadian friends...come come with me". Ugh. Aside from my violent tendencies towards the VIP World staff, the rest of Ocean World was really wonderful. We feed the love birds (they particularly liked Brendon's hat), swam in a pool next to tigers and watched the tigers have lunch, snorkelled in an artifical coral reed and Brendon got to touch a fish that was, no kidding, 2' wide! We watched the sea lion, parrot, shark and dolphin shows, watched a dolphin encounter (at $150 per person, we opted to watch rather than participate), and generally just enjoyed ourselves at the park. It was rather empty so there was lots of room to get up close to the animals and talk to the trainers.

Thank you thank you thank you!!

2009-10-28T19:15:00.004-05:00

I can't say it enough, but "thank you" to everyone who came, everyone who helped, everyone who wished us well, to everyone... just one huge THANK YOU!!!

We had the rehearsal Friday evening and it went much faster than we'd anticipated so once we'd done a "dry run" of the ceremony and decorated the church, we headed over to Boston Pizza. Two problems. 1) There were 21 of us and we'd made reservations for 16 and 2) we were there an hour early and during the dinner rush. So we stood outside and waited, but it was worth the wait. The staff was great and the food was really good. We gave all the groomsmen (including Francis and Ash) Buck knives as their thank you gifts while the girls got a shopping basket with local, organic and fair trade chocolates, pastas, coffees, teas etc.

Neither of us really slept the night before, despite taking a sleeping pill. We were both up and nibbled at breakfast by 6am. Kathy picked me and the rest of the girls up before 9am and we headed to Puressence Salon for hair and makeup. The guys came over to our house to get ready. Chelsey, our photographer extraordinaire, met the girls at Liane's house and we did some candid shots in Liane's basement and back yard. Keith came and got us and took us to Assiniboine Park for photos of the wedding party together in the conservatory. (We're not superstitious or honestly believe that our marriage is doomed if Brendon sees me in my dress before the ceremony!!) We did photos for about two hours, took a break for cokes and granola bars, before heading back to the church. The next hour was a bit of a blur as I waited downstairs with my parents and my beautiful bridesmaids while Brendon and his guys were in the rectory, joking around with Father Mark. All of a sudden "it's time" and we heading upstairs to start the walk down the long long long aisle. It's a lot longer when people are staring at you, instead of when you're there on any other Sunday!! The ceremony was quick, or it seemed quick to me. Ash did first reading (Ecclesiastes 4:912), my parents did the psalms (34) and Francis did second reading (John 3:18-24). Father gave a wonderful sermon before it was time to exchange our vows. We were both tearing up at this point but we hadn't started crying (yet!). When it came time to sign the license, my hands were shaking so much that I misspelled my name. Yeah, I signed it "Elean" so I had to ink in the missing "i". Whoops!!

After the ceremony, we did more photos of the family at the church and headed over to the Irish Club for the reception. Just like last night, we were early so the dj hadn't arrived yet and there wasn't any music. We hid inside the coat closet while we waited for the dj to arrive, then the mike broke, then he blew a fuse so we waited a little longer for him to fix that. We did our 'grand entrance' and started the evening. Ash was our MC and he did a fantastic job, from his hilarious opening speech, to getting people up and playing charades to cracking jokes the whole way through. I'm still hurt that he thinks I'm a pizza hut driver.... (PhD... LOL). Francis gave the roast to the groom while Kathy gave me her roast. Both speeches were absolutely hysterical and everyone was laughing! We did our first dance (Faber Drive's When I'm With You), and were then joined on the dance floor by the wedding party. The dance floor was full the rest of the night and we closed the place down with people still on the dance floor! Leave it to my girl friends to make the night truly special!!

The Irish Club came through in spades for us. We had our concerns about them hosting the reception, but we couldn't have asked for a better spot! The food was absolutely indescribably delicious. Perogies, baked chicken and cabbage rolls; it's a Manitoba dinner at its best. Everyone was having a great time, mingling, drinking, eating, dancing.

My only regret is that I wish I'd spent more time going from table to table seeing family and friends but there was so much to see and do that night. If I missed talking to you, I'm very sorry and I'm very thankful that you made it to our party. Thank you for making it a wonderful night!

I could write on and on thanking everyone in turn for everything they've done to make our wedding day the most amazing, special and fun time we've ever had and making the day so memorable. Thank you!

7....

2009-10-17T09:14:00.004-05:00

days left. What happened to the time? Seriously! It doesn't seem like it's been more than a year since we got engaged!
I picked up my dress on Thursday. It fits perfectly and it's safely in storage right now at a friend's house because if it were here, I'd be wearing it every day!

Brendon's tux should arrive this week. Can wait to see him! I think he's going to look like this...
Only with an dark rust coloured tie and vest. :-)

I'm going for my hair and makeup consultation in a few hours, then to the airport to pick up my sister and her family. They'll spend nearly 20 hours traveling to get here and it looks like the snow has held off long enough for them to enjoy a Canadian autumn. Just hoping in the next week, the snow continues to hold off and we can have some outdoor photos too!

174.25 hours left until we walk down the aisle. Exciting!!!

Fittings

2009-10-01T07:59:00.002-05:00

So I went for my first dress fitting yesterday. I was pretty anxious about it because of past experiences with wedding attire fittings. At one wedding, about 10 years ago (I'm not saying which of my bridesmaid's wedding it was), our dresses were made by the mother-in-law and there was a "communication problem" about my measurements, so the MIL made the dress relative to the size of my chest. There was so much extra material that the MIL ended up having to crawl inside the dress (while I was wearing it) and sew the dress onto my underwear to keep the dress in place. The front of the dress was so low that the 'girls' made an appearance while I was signing the guest book. My mother was there to photograph that incident. A few years later, as a bridesmaid for my sister's wedding, we were getting our fittings done at the Bay where the crazy Russian saleswoman kept commenting about how small my chest is (the same chest that was too large for the previous dress!) and how large my gut was. She recommended that I invest not only in an super push up bra with extra padding, but a girdle to hold my pot belly in!

Yeah, so there was a fair bit of anxiety when I tried my wedding dress on again. I haven't worn it since February when it fit nicely, a little loose up top, but the rest hugged me perfectly. We've been doing the P90X exercise videos for 8 weeks now and I've lots a total of 4.25" in my chest/waist/hips measurements. The dress is still snug in the hips (despite them now being 1.25" smaller) while the rest needs to be taken in only slightly. I didn't think it needed to be taken in that much, but the two seamstresses kept tugging and pinning and poking and commenting, and ummmmm, manipulating (is that the right word??) my chest because "they're so big but your waist is so tiny". LOL The dress will be ready in 2 weeks, so hopefully I don't change size too much in the next 14 days or else I'll have to pay another $200 in alterations!

Gov't paperwork

2009-09-22T17:11:00.003-05:00

We picked up the marriage license from Vital Stats today. It's a very long boring piece of white paper. I'm rather disappointed that something so important is amongst the large stacks of other boring-looking white pieces of paper, like the ones to register births and deaths. I don't know what I was expecting, considering it's a government issued document. I'm so used to wedding related stuff having tacky doves and roses and embossed rings on them that to see the *actual* marriage license is just a bunch of check boxes and fill-in-the-blank boxes (in French and English) is a bit unusual! Course, because it is a wedding related item, it cost 10x more than what it is worth!

Have you seen this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ff13zZ0h0k
Yeah, it`s like that. LOL!

Oh well, at least my PhD has pretty embossing on it. Cost me 150x more than the marriage license did so it should have some gold stamp on it!

It is weird to think about, that in 32 days, Derek and Jen are going to sign the license and make it a legally binding boring-looking document.

Dinner menu

2009-09-10T18:22:00.002-05:00

We met with Anne (events co-ordinator) and Tony (semi-retired caterer) at the Irish Club to go over the reception details. Here's what's for dinner:

Oven baked chicken
Vegetarian cabbage rolls
Green beans almondine
Honey glazed baby carrots
Perogies (fried, with onions)
Sweet & Sour meatballs
Pasta, tossed and caeser salad
Apple Crumble with vanilla ice cream

There'll be 2 bottles of wine per table and everyone gets 4 drink tickets to use at the bar, good for anything at the bar except Guinness. Guinness lovers (KATHY!!) have to part with 2 tickets for "a proper pint" of the Irish Ale. We'll have a separate colour of drink tickets for anyone who wants soda.

Stagette & Shower

2009-09-04T17:30:00.007-05:00

Liane, Jen, Kathy and I had a fun stagette last Saturday. Not the traditional, phallic-shaped objects and embarrassing the bride type, but something a little more...mature? Sensible? We started with mani/pedis at Tiber River Naturals, a spa on Academy. We got matching daisies on our toes. Our nail techs were howling with laughter as the four of us were giving them ideas on how to embarrass people on their staggettes and stories from our past. Since our toes were still wet, we wobbled over in our disposable flip flops (carrying our shoes) to Pizzeria Gusto for dinner. They have a great selection of Chianti wines that I had a hard time choosing a bottle from the extensive wine list. Despite my best attempts at warning the staff about my allergies to mushrooms, I think I ended up eating a mushroom so I was sick later on that night. Other than that, spectacular restaurant! Though there isn't much room to throw a punch. Kathy wanted to pay for dinner but I managed a few good smacks and she relented to let me pay. The waiter managed to get a good picture of us embarrassing ourselves at the restaurant as we wrestled for the bill!! From there, we headed for martinis at Liquid Lounge, only to find the windows boarded up! :( So we went to Saffron's instead. It's getting cooler and buggier at nights now so we opted for the indoor bar and managed to eat have one drink before the karaoke started. We left to get cheesecake at Baked Expectations. Mmmmm, super dark chocolate cheesecake!! (and I wonder why my diet isn't working???) From Baked, we went across the street to Academy Club (don't remember the name) but it was a smokey (fog machine) techno bar; not really our style so we went to Toad for beers. A creepy guy sat directly across from our table and just spent the entire time staring at us and refusing to move and it just freaked me out, so once our beers were done, we went home.

Due to the mushrooms at Pizzeria Gusto, I had a rought night and didn't get much sleep before my wedding shower the next day at Val's gorgeous house in St B . It was SO MUCH FUN!! It was a potluck that could have fed a small army! Chocolate dipped cream puffs, chocolate layer skor bar cake, chocolate chip cookie Kahlua cake, vegetarian sushi, blueberry cheesecake, lazy daisy cake, strawberry custard flan, oh it went on and on. Everyone brought the recipe for their dessert so I have a great recipe book now.

Liane surreptitiously emailed questions to Brendon that I had to answer to find out how well I know him. Well, I got an A (naturally!!) because I only missed a few questions. Woo hoo me! Bonus points because most of the married women at the shower couldn't answer the same questions about their husbands of 5-35 years! I got a pin for each one I answered correctly. As you can see, I did quite well!

Another highlight was a spectacular photo album that Sasha had put together of photos of us from university and afterwards. I nearly cried reading her letter; it was so touching and to see how much work she'd put into to, especially considering she just got married 3 weeks prior, just made it more special. Liane and Kathy and Jen had done so much work that I can't thank them enough for everything they did!

Wedding cake fun

2009-08-16T20:34:00.002-05:00

We decided against having a traditional cake at our reception because 1) they're expensive and 2) they never get eaten. We've chosen instead, on having a large nanaimo bar slab instead since it's everyone's favourite. I went to Natural Bakery on Logan, who have the best nanaimo bars and they're walnut free, and asked how much it'd cost for ~200 pieces (enough for everyone to have 2 pieces). At first, they quoted me over $250 each ($1.25 per piece). When I called back to confirm the price, they said they wouldn't be able to get that much for us, but gave me the number of the bakery they buy the nanaimo bars from. I'd thought Natural Bakery made the bars on site, but it turns out, that they get them from Baker's Mark. So, I called Baker's Mark. They don't sell directly to the public, and the minimum order is $200 if I went through a commercial business. AND, Baker's Mark doesn't make the bars either! They're made by Mrs. Willamsen's in Calgary, frozen, and shipped to Winnipeg where Baker's Mark distributes them to other bakeries. I called Mrs. Willamsen's Bakery Inc in Calgary and they don't sell to the public either.

Now what?

Well, a co-worker suggested calling a different bakery so I went to Canada411.com and found Gunn's bakery and Weston bakery. Gunn's called back first and said that they make nanaimo bar slabs 24" long and 16" wide, enough for 192 pieces so everyone gets 2 1/2 pieces (if we cut them 1" x 2"). They'll deliver for an extra $8 and make it nut-free for me. Sweet!!

Brendon made our cake topper on a CNC mill. I can't really describe it, but it's so amazing that he should seriously think aobut buying and operating a mill from the basement just to make custom cake toppers!

My wedding shower is coming up in a few weeks and I'm really looking forward to it. Just hope the weather holds out and we get something resembling summer.

Random Update

2009-07-05T12:27:00.002-05:00

I checked the Irish Club's website and found out that our caterer had decided to retire...again. This is his third retirement, the previous two from being the head chef at the Fort Garry and from the Ramada Malborough. It was a bit of a shock and panic to the system because it'd never crossed my mind that he'd even want to retire again! I sent an email to the club to find out if they'd found a replacement yet, and they have!! *phew* Sigh of relief. We're going to arrange a meeting with him (or her) in late August or early September, once they've recovered from the craziness of Folklorama.

We also have to arrange a meeting with Ron, our DJ from Topps Music, to pick out the playlist. Which means, we have to have a playlist. And playlists are made of songs and we had to pick "Our First Dance Song" (see previous blog post). We'd heard a song on the radio a while back that we both really liked, but neither of us can remember what it was so I've spent a fair amount of time online trying to track it down. When I finally figured out what it was, I made sure to write it down in three different places so we won't forget again! We don't have an "Our song" and I'm sure in 20 years, we'll play this song for our kids and they'll groan in embarassment. Sweet....

Another sigh of relief is having nearly all of the RSVPs in. We're only waiting on just a handful of guests now, so we know that we're going to have about 80 guests, which is the perfect size! It's unfortunate that some people aren't able to attend because of prior commitments, like amazing cruises through Patagonia and Turkey!!, but we know that we're in their thoughts and wish us the best of luck for the wedding day (and for the rest of the marriage I suppose?).

I can't believe it's only 3 1/2 months left until W Day and there's so much more to do! I haven't even tried my dress on in 4 months. I should really do that, but what's more important is renewing my passport so we can go on our honeymoon to Puerto Plata!! Sooooo looking forward to two weeks there!

Back it goes!

2009-06-27T18:24:00.002-05:00

After picking up our rings and sorting out Brendon's, I finally had to concede that no matter how much weight I lose between now and October (less than 4 months away!), I won't fit my ring. For some reason, my engagement ring can come on and off my finger while my wedding band, which is the same size, goes onto my finger and won't come off. Some may see that as appropriate for a wedding band, but my finger turns purple if I wear it too long. I'm sure when Brendon said "Take your hand in marriage", he meant with all my fingers! So, back to Appelt's to get my size 5.5 wedding band increased to a size 6, while my size 5.5 engagement ring fits just fine.

Invitations are in the mail!!

2009-05-15T11:48:00.003-05:00

The invitations have been an endless source of frustration for me. We bought what we thought was a nice looking, easy DIY, kit from Michael's but what was supposed to be a quick weekend project has turned into a two month nightmare of epic proportions!! Most of the problems stem from computers and printers. We downloaded the template, included all the relevant information, and printed a "tester" only to realize that the font sizes and formatting was all wrong. After some tweaking, we got it the way we wanted and printed the first "official" invitation out. Only, my printer doesn't like printing on textured card stock so it smeared all the lettering. After getting permission from the IT department here (Shhhhh, don't tell!), I printed out the invitations at work early one morning...except the printer here doesn't have the same fonts as my PC at home so it substituted different fonts when I sent the first ones through the printer. Fixed that problem, but then the printer decided to randomly print invitations either left or right justified. Then one got stuck in the heat transfer unit and started to burn.

The next step was to punch out all the little oak leaves on the slider and thread the two brown ribbons through it, which seems like an easy task but when you have to do it 50+ times, it becomes an overwhelmingly tedious process. I did this (and made a huge mess) while Brendon was out at a hockey game. Kitty enjoyed playing in the ribbons and confetti as I wasted what few brain cells I earned at university, watching a marathon of Next Top Model (America's, Canada's and Britain's... the latter was the dumbest and most incoherent of the lot, sorry Patrick!)

From there, Brendon and I had to adhere the ribbons to the invitations to the decorative dark brown border and in the kit, they included 100 little double sided bits of tape which didn't hold worth a darn so we "borrowed" a few rolls of double sided tape from work to do the job. Surprisingly, Kitty didn't like being taped?

I have completely illegible handwriting, we decided to use my printer again to address each one. See above on my printer's dislike for textured paper...and as the week's dragged on and as the envelopes were moved around, all the addresses SMEARED OFF the envelope. I had to hand trace everyone's address back onto the envelopes so that Canada Post can deliver them correctly!

The final task was to seal the envelopes and when you see the stack ahead of us, the first thought was "Ugh, no way I'm licking all those" and attempted to seal the envelopes using a variety of different "time saving" methods...none of which worked and so, yes, we ended up licking each and everyone of them. YUCK! You'd think that the envelope maker would put some flavouring on the glue or something?! *shudder*

Long story short, they're on their way! Hopefully. I mean, we *are* dealing with Canada Post on a long weekend soooooo.... fingers crossed!

Follow up to last post

2009-05-10T20:25:00.002-05:00

So our salesperson at Appelt's called to say that Brendon's ring had arrived and, after a little pressure on him by me ;) , we headed over to the store to pick it up. Well, *A* ring arrived but not *his* ring. We'd ordered a rìng with a distinctive bevel on each side. The ring that'd arrived was "bevel-less". On top of that, it was the wrong size. Two saleswomen tried to convince us that the larger ring in front of us was in fact, the one we`d ordered, so the four of us headed over to the counter where the original rings were to show that what we wanted and what was in front of us were two entirely different designs. Not to mention the wrong size. Our original saleswoman looked at the ring that`d arrived through her monocle and tried to say that there was a `slight` bevel. But we didn`t order one with a `slight` bevel, we ordered one with a distinctive one!! They`re sending the ring back, getting smaller one that fits properly, and hopefully will have a bevel!
Needless to say, I`m a little nervous about my wedding band...which hasn`t arrive yet & I`m getting a little anxious about it being the wrong one, or the wrong size.

Rings 'n' Things

2009-04-22T20:59:00.004-05:00

We picked out our wedding bands a few weeks ago. We had one of those lazy weekends and heard a radio commercial on Power97 for Appelt's Jewelers "Wedding Band Blow Out" and thought we'd take a look. We've been searching for weeks for a band for Brendon, even going to a custom jeweler to see if we could get something designed for his, but nothing really suited his tastes. Plus, most stores have millions of rings for girls and usually only five rings for guys, none of which were good. Appelt's was the opposite, millions of rings for guys and only handful for girls.
Brendon's band is titanium, 8mm wide, with a beveled edge on either side. In the middle is a band of mokume game, which is a japanese technique where two metals are heated together and folded in half, heated again and folded in half. The result is a series of wavey lines of gold and copper. It's awesome! And it was on sale! Speaking of, a very similar band to match my engagement ring was also at Appelt's but for $280 less than what People's wanted so we bought my ring too.
We're still waiting for the rings to arrive, but as a thank-you for buying the rings, we got a gift certificate for lunch at the Gates on Roblin, which is an insanely expensive restaurant that we'd never go to...but if it's free we will!

Oh, I also got the flowers sorted out. The first florist wanted $352 for everything (included delivery from 'Scona). What bugged me is that she wanted to give each bridesmaid only 3 daisies for $25 each, but the sign behind her head said "5 daisies for $15". Huh?? So, I got the phone number of florist that works from her basement. She wants $260 for everything and the bouquets will be larger & more elaborate. AND, she'll make me a trial bouquet out of silk flowers as a template to approve, and I get to keep the slik bouquet afterwards. It'll all be daisies, sunflowers, and chrsythanemums with some fall leaves and berries wrapped in gold ribbon. The bridal party will have daisies. :-)

Free Press Announcement

2009-03-28T10:24:00.004-05:00

We posted our engagement notice in the Free Press. The girl at the FP office said that "it might" be in today's paper, so I didn't want to send out an email telling everyone to go buy a paper in case it wasn't published. However, it was so here it is for those without subscriptions.

No, Brendon doesn't have leprosy and lost his nose. It's just a scan from the paper. When the Free Press updates their "Celebrations" website, the original photo, nose included, will be online.

Engagement photos online

2009-03-13T19:47:00.002-05:00

We got the disk of photos from Chelsey today. Click here to see them. There are so many good ones, it's hard to pick which one is my favourite!

Marriage Councelling

2009-02-20T12:55:00.000-06:00

One of the requirements of getting married in a church is that we have to attend a marriage retreat where we'll be discussing a variety of topics related to being married, including sexuality, money, family, etc. It's to designed to get us talking about the "big" issues and make sure we're on the same page for our future together. This is in addition to the PMI (pre-marital inventory) test that we took back in January and scored 93% on it. Fr. Mark pointed out that we are one of the oldest (or did he said oddest....) of the 8 couples going to the retreat so it's not surprising that we scored so high. One of the other couples at the marriage retreat scored 20%. I can't wait to meet them tonight....

I just hope we're not stuck with any real churchy people.

Engagement photos

2009-02-15T11:42:00.000-06:00

Our fabulous photographer Chelsey included engagement photos as part of her photography services for the wedding. Since it was included in the price, it'd be stupid not to do it! We agreed that after Christmas would be better, and then I got busy in January with my defense and my thesis revisions, and then the weather turned horrible, and then...well, there was always something that would come up. So, I emailed Chelsey and said "How about next weekend? Let's hope that the weather is nice." It was a random weekend that the three of us were free, so we met at Kil-Cona park, just off the Harbour View Golf Course in Transcona. The photo session was surprisingly fun. Chelsey's really laid back so we could just be goofy. I didn't really want lots of stylized posed photos of us looking awkward. I'd rather us look like us, so we have pictures of him throwing snowballs at me, me slipping on the ice and him "helping" me up (but more like pushing me around), me jumping on him for a piggy-back ride, playing on the swingsets, etc etc. She had some great ideas too, so we brought out mugs of hot coffee had close-up pictures of us canoodling in a tree with the steam coming out of the cups. I haven't got the proofs yet, but I'm sure that in the hour that we were knee-deep in snow, she managed to get a few pictures of us that don't make us look too dorky! One of the neatest things was the frozen pond next to the club house. The ice was perfectly clear and there were sections where a column of bubbles had frozen in the ice. Chelsey took photos of the frozen bubbles with my ring on top. I can't wait to see that picture!

The reason we drove across the city to go to Kil-Cona was that it was the site of our first "real" date. Not that we hadn't gone out on a date, but our first date was to Pizza Hut and renting movies from Blockbuster, and having a bbq at Derek and Faith's house for his birthday. Going to Kil-Cona park was our first romantic, out in public, new couple in love, afternoon together. Here's a pic from that afternoon taken in the paddleboat with his cellphone camera. Paddleboating with someone that can squat 200lbs isn't easy. The boat keeps going in circles!! :)

And the winning continues!!

2009-01-26T17:46:00.000-06:00

One of Brendon's tasks in helping with the wedding plans was to find the dj. At the wedding show, I picked up many brochures from different djs around town. Topps music was one of the booths I'd stopped at had a contest to find the hidden link on their website and email the secret code to their webmaster. The first email in to their office on Jan 25th wins free dj services at the wedding. He had everything ready ahead of time and found the website that tells the exact time. At 12:00:02, he hit send.
AND WE WON!!
Very exciting!!! Ron, the dj, called right away and I babbled incoherently about how happy we were to win this! Ron told us that people had been emailing 6 or 7 times trying to win. Brendon sends in one email and we win!

So my $15 investment into the wedding show has netted us a free dinner for two at Pineridge Hollow and a free dj. For all the craziness, the show was worth it!

I'll try not to rant too much...

2009-01-21T19:42:00.000-06:00

I joined a group of friends at the annual Wonderful Wedding Show on the weekend and I have to say, it's more crazy, more intense, more crowded, and more surreal than you can even possibly imagine. I wish I could have taken a picture of the throngs of people surging through the Convention Centre, pushing and shoving to get brochures and enter draws for the free stuff. By the end of the three day show, over 10,000 people had gone through (at $14.50 per person) the main doors and into wedding craziness. It really was bedlam with laser shows, djs blasting music, PA announcements for prize winners (including me!!), girls running around in ball gowns and wedding dresses, getting accosted left-right-&-center by salespeople vying for your attention. At some points, I said to Kathy "I'm starting to feel anxious and claustrophobic". It really was overwhelming the number of people and the amount of noise!

I went Kathy and with another bride, her fiancee, her three other bridesmaids, our shared maid of honour, one of her flower girls, and I think a sister(?). Kathy and I had a plan. We mapped a route (counter clockwise). We synchronized our watches and took off, ditching the rest of them to manage on their own. Sorry, it's evil to ditch, but a necessary evil when you're in crowds that rival a Bejing marketplace.
I needed to find a dj and a florist. It occured to me about half way through that Brendon might want to wear a tuxedo, so I picked up brochures for him. I entered contests at many displays, hoping to win something else. We were done seeing everything in about three hours. Exhausted, sore, bruised, and hungry, we flopped into the chairs and tucked in for the fashion show. The fashion show was entertaining, and not in the "Oooooh ahhhh" good way. It might have been the low blood sugar and the blistered feet that brought out the snark in me, but I know I said "Oh sweet merciful crap, what the???" more than once. We had to keep the language PG because there were kids around in earshot. The highlight of the fashion show...ok, the two highlights for me, were 1) the extra long veils and skirts that kept getting stepped on or stuck onto the runway and watching the models trip and get yanked backwards while maintaining a fake smile. And 2) the overly tanned, silicon enhance, pouty model trying to "strike a pose" at the end of the runway which may work if she wasn't wearing 40lbs of crinolins and satin and lace. It's hard to jut out a hip and look all Tyra Banks ANTM when your dress walks into a room 5 minutes before you do!!

After getting home, I dumped out my goody bag of brochures, recycled 90% of them and kept the info on djs. There weren't very many florists there, but I did get a chance to see House of Silk's bouquets. What I want, a simple daisy/sunflower bouquet, is about $160 at one of the florists. House of Silk was $38. Our $200 budget for bouquets/corsages/boutonneires (sp?) is really tight so House of Silk might be a viable, but still gorgeous, option. Kevin and Jamie used their services and Jamie raves about how realistic and beautiful her bouquet was. Hmmmm, something to ponder.... We have to decorate the church and if we decide to go with flowers for the church, they have to be alive and stay at the church afterwards. I don't know what we're supposed to do. I'm planning on wearing my mother-in-law's veil during the ceremony, but remove it for the reception and replace it with flowers in my hair. Live flowers may not survive a night on the dance floor but silk ones will!

The upside to the show is threefold for me....
1) All the vendors you can possibly think of are under one roof. It's one stop shopping but it's easier if you have only a few things you want to look for. It's not the perfect place when you're indecisive or thinking you can plan for everything all at once.
2) I met a financial advisor and we're meeting her next week to discuss retirement planning strategies. It seems dumb to some people, but long-term financial well being is more important to me than $160 bouquet I'm supposed to (but not) throw away at the end of the night!
3) I won a door prize for a dinner for the two of us at Pineridge Hollow in Oakbank, which will be lovely in summer when their massive gardens are in full bloom. Very romantic!

We're going to premarital counselling next month. I'll post more on that later. Should be fun. We're the oldest couple going (ugh) but also, according to Fr Mark, the best matched. Can't wait to see the young, poorly matched couples!!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T21:13:00.000-06:00

Hoping that everyone had a wonderful holiday and celebrated in their own way with the people they love! Cheers!

So unique that everyone's got it!

2008-12-19T10:21:00.001-06:00

I made my final payment on my dress yesterday (yes, I braved the -40 windchills and ventured outside to pay it off!). I was so pleased when I picked the dress because, as the salesperson assured me that my dress was unique, original, the only one they have like this, "designer" (though I can't remember which designer is it, not that it matters), and is only carried by their store ;-) ;-)

Once I bought my dress, I immediately went online to find dresses similar to it so I could show people what it looks like. Well, I couldn't. Not that I didn't try, really I did. Brendon can attest to the fact that I spent more time online on wedding dress website after I bought it, than before. And he still catches me looking online! But I couldn't find ANYTHING like it at all anywhere. That made me feel great! The dress really was original and unique!

Yeah, I've got a great big "SUCKER" written across my face now. I've started seeing dresses like mine all over the place now. The feature of the dress that I liked the most, which is the asymmetrical drop waist and the halter top making my torso look 9' long, is everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE! I can't go past a single wedding dress store in the Downtown (in the eyeglass and wedding dress district, not to be confused with the hammock district...) without some type of copy of my dress in each display window. So much for unique and *only* being carried at their store! (If you're really dying to know what my dress looks like, the closest I can find online is Mori Lee style 4507. It's not exactly the same but it's pretty damn close.)

On the upside, I am glad that the "Baked Alaska" look is slowly disappearing from stores. Some people (like Rilla) can pull off this look, but not me.

My sister comes home today (assuming the blizzard in Toronto isn't too bad) so at some point in her vacation, we may go to the store and try on the dress again letting her, my mom and my nieces have a look since the only people that know what it looks like are Kathy, me, Liane and my saleswoman. And since I switched to a new cell phone last month, I don't even have a grainy blurry pic to show off.

Theme song?

2008-12-13T17:42:00.001-06:00

We've booked our photographer, the beautiful and insanely talented Chelsey Goodman of XOX photography. She also happens to have a MSc in Medical Microbiology... some people are just too ambitious eh?

Our next step is to find a dj, so I was online looking at different dj's in the city, which lead to websites on the top wedding songs , which lead to websites on just how many songs we're supposed to dance to. There's the First Dance Song, the dance with our wedding party, my dance with my dad, his with his mom, one for cutting the cake, another for when he throws my garter (which we're not doing), yet another when I'm throwing my bouquet (which we're also not doing), and apparently, another song when my maid of honour (Jenny) and the best man (Derek) are supposed to go around collecting money from all our guests to help us pay for our honeymoon. Huh? The last one is where I just started laughing. That's a ridiculous number of songs for us to be on the dance floor before the party's supposed to start!

Now we're discussing what our "First Dance Song" should be. We don't have an "our song". It's not like we met at the bar and this was playing in the background. We had our first kiss at work in the loading docks so there wasn't any music there either! We have to find something we both like, and that's proving to be a bit difficult.

His favourite song of all time is Threat Signal's "When all is said and done". Go ahead, click the link...ummm yeah, you can see why that's not going to be a particularly good "First Dance Song". I like bands like BNL, GBS, and Blue Rodeo so my pick would be something like "Dark Angel". Course, I'm a sucker for love songs so Josh Radin's "Today" and Amanda Marshall's "Marry Me" are on my list too. He's veto'd all my songs so far (booo!) saying they all sound like soundtracks to a bad teen romance movie! :-(

So far, the only one we can agree on is Nickelback's newest song "Never Gonna be alone". I have a feeling that it's going to be a very popular song when it's *officially* released on the radio.

We still have 10 months to decide, but it may take that long to come up with something we can both live with! LOL

Plans are coming together!

2008-11-22T17:13:00.000-06:00

We had our first meeting with Fr. Mark to introduce Brendon and do the preliminary paperwork (names, baptism, ceremony date etc). We have to go back next week to complete the PMI, the Pre-Marital Inventory. It's 181 questions about our expectations about being married, about money, us as individuals, our future plans, personal beliefs etc. It's really quite weird but I think the entire point is to make sure we're both taking this seriously and have a chance to talk about all the important topics. We read the questions and choose either "agree/disagree". If there are topics that we have different opinions on, then that's something to discuss. And if there's a few important topics that we both agree on, then that's also something to discuss. My personal favourite question is "I am afraid of my future husband." Honestly, if it takes getting engaged, doing all the planning, meeting with the priest, then having a multiple-choice questionnaire to get that information out of me?? then there's a bigger problem! The question that made me laugh was "I have hobbies that I don't enjoy sharing with my partner" which I have to agree with! Apparently, that's bad. But I mean really, can you see Brendon tying on a coin belt and bra, getting on stage at the Fringe Festival and performing?? NO! (Although... the mental picture does makes me giggle!) I don't think having different hobbies is such a bad thing. I am worried about explaining tribal belly dance to my priest without making him blush! LOL

And we just put our deposit on the hall!! It's so exciting!!! We're toured three venues: the U of M Faculty Lounge, Red River College Princess Campus and the Irish Club. The Faculty Lounge was incredible and I have to thank Jamie and Kevin for recommending it (sorta...) but it was just waaaaay out of our price range. RRC was neat, but noisy and too industrial for us. All the exposed piping and concrete and glass makes a beautiful location, but it just wasn't the environment we were looking for. Plus, sound just reverbs off the walls so when the dj starts, you won't be able to hear yourself think! So, our last location was the Irish Club which we fell in love with immediately! It's so cozy and the pub is STOCKED! Plus there's a smaller pub off to the side with the dart board and the pool table so when we open up the dance floor, anyone looking for a quieter room can hide in there! Tony, the chef, used to work at the Marlborough and other big hotels in the city, but has decided to retire from large catering jobs (1200 people usually) to small events like ours (1/10th that). We have our choice of "anything you want" for the menu. We both have our hearts set on cabbage rolls and perogies, and probably a vegetarian lasagna and a meat...either roast beef or ham. The weddings so soon after Thanksgiving that we immediately scratched turkey off the list. Oh, risotto is also an option, which I know is a favourite of Catie.

And I got a quote for the wedding cake but while she was giving me the details, the fire alarm went off and they had to evacuate the bakery so... *fingers crossed* they haven't burned down!! Is that supposed to be a bad omen? ;-)

Guess I should update this more often!

2008-11-01T12:10:00.000-05:00

I haven't been updating this blog because, well, there's nothing much to update on the wedding planning front. We've just been really busy with other things to worry about the wedding that much. However, I'm happy to announce that we've starting working on the wedding plans again.

Things that we can now check off our list include:
1) The date.
October 24th, 2009. My niece has started school this year, which is crazy because she's only 3! But next year is Kindergarten for her and there's some rule about the amount of time she's allowed to miss school. So, I asked Holly when the four of them can come home for the wedding. She said the week of Oct 24th or the week of November 1st, so we went with October 24th. I urge everyone to start driving their cars more and using CFCs to speed up global warming so we won't get married in a blizzard. Hey, it could happen!!

2) My dress.
Funny story. The store that I bought my dress from, I nicknamed "The Ugly Dress" Store. It's in "The Wedding District" of Graham Ave, and I don't want to name it since I did buy my dress there! Kathy, Liane and I had planned a girls' night out and were going to meet up with another friend for dinner at 5:30. I'm off work at 3:30 so I suggested we kill the 2 hours in between and go dress shopping, more for fun than to actually *find* a dress. I suggested the "Ugly Dress Store" because the display dresses in the window were so hideous that Kathy insisted we go out to lunch the week before just so I'd have to walk in front of the window and see the monstrosity of red taffeta, gold sequence and cream tulle in a hoop-skirted, fake roses, glittery, mess. All that was missing was a curtain rod and it could have been something from Carol Burnett! I figured if we're going to have a good laugh at my expense, goto a store like that one! At any rate, I got there early and discussed with the saleswoman what I wanted. Or, more importantly, my list of what I don't want: no lace, no pouf, no train, no strapless, no ruffles, no bows, and most of all, not $$$!! She brought me about a dozen dresses that fell into most of the categories and $300 price range I specified. The second dress she brought me was exactly what I wanted and it fit with very minor alterations (halter strap a little too long, don't need extra padding in the front). I kept trying on dresses until Liane and Kathy arrived. I put on a dress I was hemming and hawing about, they agreed that it's not the best one. Then I put on the dress I really liked. Liane's reaction sold it. "It's Old Hollywood style". Bingo. That's what I was hoping to hear. It's really pretty and I've never seen another dress like it anywhere.

3) Attendants.
Kathy, Sasha and Jenny for me. Keith, Jarod and Derek for Brendon. Ash and Francis have graciously agreed to be the MCs for the reception, which I'm really looking forward to because they're two of the funniest and sweetest guys I know. Ash'll make me laugh so hard I'll probably bust a gut, and Francis will probably make me ruin my mascara!!

Location. Location. Location. We've started scouting out locations for the reception. We're meeting with the first co-ordinator next week. Of the 6 or so locations we tossed around, two have already been booked for that day, which kinda freaks me out!

Lists...

2008-09-06T19:07:00.000-05:00

We were at Safeway today picking up stuff we forgot to pick up yesterday (are we the only ones that happens to?? Is it too soon for Alzheimer's?) when I spotted "Duly Noted, A wedding guide to Winnipeg Spring/Summer'08" edition. Brendon's been joking that anything that says "Wedding", I make a quick b-line towards. I ``read`` the two magazines that Elda gave me that she'd inherited from Trish that they used for their wedding plans. This one was free and small and had local content, all things that the other magazines weren't. Like most bridal magazines, it's 99% ads and took the 3 block ride home from Safeway to read all the useful stuff. What I did enjoy is The To Do List at the back of the magazine. Left side is the bride`s list, right side is the groom`s. It made me laugh.

12 months before the ceremony, the bride is to:
-select the wedding date
-determine the number of guests
-look for a gown
-plan the colour scheme
-choose bridesmaids and flower girls (note the use of plural in this one....)
-reserve the church
-reserve the reception site
-reserve the florist, photographer, musicians or dj, and videographer

12 months before the ceremony, the groom is to:
-choose his groomsmen
-*help* select the ceremony and reception site

That`s it. He get 2 things. She gets 7. And one of his two things is to help her with one of her seven! The final countdown to the wedding (in three month increments), her list is 2-3x longer than his. And his list mostly starts with `Help to....` or `Go with your financee to....`
I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the book. So much for sharing the arrangements!!!

On a funnier note, Kathy found a wedding dress so absolutely horrible and ugly, it stopped her in her tracks (on the other side of the street) and she invited me out to lunch just to witness the monstrosity of bad fashion. It`s like the designer took elements of everything horrible and put it in one dress. It was metallic maroon with gold sequence, corset and boning, white and gold roses, rouching, hoop skirt, tulle, and bows. Scarlet Ohara would be proud...Actually, Carol Burnett would be prouder. The dress was only missing the curtain rod!

The Proposal

2008-08-27T11:53:00.000-05:00

Everyone's been asking how he did it so I'll fill in the story.

August 19th was our 1 year anniversary of Brendon moving into our house, so I wanted to do something special and romantic to celebrate our first year living together. We'd both talked about how we'd like to go on the Paddlewheel Queen for dinner, so I went ahead and made reservations for dinner the night of the 18th for dinner and dancing (yes, we danced!) on the cruise ship. We had garlic toast, seered scallops to celebrate my cook-off in Montreal, I had the basa fillets and Brendon had the stuffed chicken breast. After supper we wandered the decks and I even got to navigate the ship until we came to a bridge and I was too scared that I'd crash the boat so I quit!

I didn't realize at the time, but Brendon had been planning on proposing to me on the Paddlewheel Queen but I beat him to the punch when I made the reservations to celebrate our anniversary!!

On the following Monday, we had AAA Alarms come in to install motion detectors in the house. We'd been told it should be a two hour job. The installer said it'd be more like five, but he figured he'd be done by 2pm. Brendon suggested we go to the zoo afterwards, it was a beautiful sunny warm day. We could wander around and maybe toss a football afterwards. Sounded perfect! Little did I know that he was planning to propose at the zoo, or while we were picnicking in the park!!

Well, the installation hit more than a few snags, some hidden wires and loads of plaster in the walls. The installer had to enlist Brendon to help with the wiring and the five hour job actually took nearly 9 hours! We were both tired, hungry, the house was a mess with plaster dust from all the drilling, Kitty was a nervous wreck from so much noise and strangers so I went ahead and made tacos for supper. Brendon left for Safeway to get sour cream and salsa, putting the alarm set on "Away" so when I went to check Facebook, I set off the motion detectors, the alarm and the horn set up in the basement. It's amazing how quickly you forget your code when all hell breaks loose!! Pretty sure the neighbours know we have an alarm now!!

After supper, I was relaxing in front of the tv and Brendon was puttering around the house. He came into the media room with champagne glasses in hand and says "You know I'm a hopeless romantic" and

pulled out a bottle of expensive champagne he'd bought the day before, with my ring tied to the neck of the bottle and says to me "I want to be with you the rest of my life. Will you marry me?"

To which my answer was "Oh my god! Baby! Of course!" *sniffle sniffle* *sob*

So, now we're engaged! And the proposal was perfect!