Wilson Family Picnic

On Saturday the whole family drove to Bolsover for the annual summer picnic. We always meet in a park that used to be an old school house. I think the date on the school was 1901. Jason went inside and said that there were the pictures of the classes dating back to 1900, pretty cool I thought. Each family brings some food to share and everyone enjoys good food, and catching up with what everyone is up to.



After eating, we usually have some games. This time each family had a quiz about the family history. The group shot is our family trying to figure out the answers to the questions. My mom is in the middle, pen in hand, recording the answers, and in this picture, they had just called on my dad about one of the questions.





Grandpa talking to my dad and Jason about something. Ryan is in the foreground enjoying some watermelon.






A picture that Caitlin took of Jason and I.








Ryan trying to lean his way out of the picture. But, I gotcha!








Caitlin and Mark. Notice what it says on Caitlin's shirt...

Visiting Old Friends

On Friday, Jason and I trekked out to Peterborough to see the lift locks. After watching a couple of boats go through we headed on to Belleville to visit Sarah. Sarah and I have been friends for many years, but it had been two years since we had since each other, which is far too long in my opinion. The last time I saw her, her daughter Victoria was just a baby. Now as you can see she is a bouncing, babbling, happy, nearly two year old. She is such a sweetie, so cute and smiley :) And oddly enough (at least I thought it was odd), she loves pickles. In the picture of her by herself she's munching on one of the many pickles that she ate while we were there. As we were headed out, she waved from the door until we were almost to the end of the hall. I'd love to have taken her home with me :)
On another note, Oden the cat had quite the hair fetish. I would petting him, and the entire time he would be sitting there totally mesmerized by my hair. Then he would make his attack and go at my hair with mouth and both paws, trying his best to eat it. What an odd cat! When I tried to push him away he would just climb onto the back of the couch and try to get my hair from there. He was very determined and persistent in his quest to eat my hair.

*Hack, hack, sniffle sniffle, snort*

Having a cold in the middle of August is terrible. I caught a cold bug sometime early last week and have been going through various stages of misery. Started out with a stuffed up nose and a plugged left ear. The plugged ear switched to my right ear, still a stuffed nose and mild cough. Then no more stuffed ears, but a very sore throat and dry cough. Every time I swallowed it felt like needles going down my throat. Then yesterday my throat was killing me, I had a cough that comes from deep in my chest and nearly lost my voice completely. This morning my voice was back, and my nose is no longer stuffed, and my cough is a very deep, satisfying one. I'm hoping that this means I'm almost through it. A whole week of this has been torture, especially when the weather is sunny and warm.

Great Big Sea

Hooray! I just checked Great Big Sea's website and saw that they are releasing a new album in October 2005, The Hard and The Easy. I can't wait!

Hair Count Diaries: The Quiet Before the Storm

All is calm and quiet right now, and I have plenty of spare time to go galavanting about. I've enjoyed trips to Cleveland and the UP so far. One last trip to Ontario coming up, when I will visit my folks. One last hurrah before I turn recluse and have no time to go a-wandering. I'm soaking in all the relaxing I can right now because come August 29th I'll be leading a double life. Software professional by day, education student by night. I have a jampacked calendar waiting for me, and likely many long nights trying to fit everything in. I might be tearing my hair out at the stress, and sheer magnitude of stuff I need to get done, but hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.

Hair Count: 110,000 strands

Tahquanemon Falls

The Upper (left) and Lower (right) Tahquanemon Falls. The upper falls were certainly larger, but I preferred the lower falls myself. There were more trails to wander through, and each new bend in the path gave a different view of the falls.

Row, Row, Row your Boat

At the Lower Tahquanemon Falls on Friday we took a rowboat to a small island where we could get a better view of the falls. After wandering around the whole trail, we hopped in the rowboat to go back to the mainland. Asia insisted on "helping" row the boat :)

Johnny Depp

Another quiz... Which Johnny Depp are you?

You Are Sam From "Benny & Joon." You are very talented at physical comedy. People are in awe of your abilities. However, you have many quirks which can either win people over or completely annoy them. But you're a sweetheart through and through, and it's hard not to love you.

Enneagram Test

Test time, what type are you? Take Enneagram Test

My top two were types 9 and 2. Just a short test, but surprising what they can figure out from a few short questions.

Type Nine - The Peacemaker
The easy-going, self-effacing type. Nines are accepting, trusting, and stable. They are usually creative, optimistic, and supportive, but can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They want everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but they can also tend to be complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness. At their Best: indomitable and all-embracing, they are able to bring people together and heal conflicts.

Type Two - The Helper
The caring, interpersonal type. Twos are empathetic, sincere, and warm-hearted. They are friendly, generous, and self-sacrificing, but can also be sentimental, flattering, and people-pleasing. They are well-meaning and driven to be close to others, but can slip into doing things for others in order to be needed. They typically have problems with possessiveness and with acknowledging their own needs. At their Best: unselfish and altruistic, they have unconditional love for others.

Maureen and Yemi

As promised, on the left a picture of the happy couple outside the reception hall. And below, one of Maureen and I inside the reception hall. Such a beautiful bride, and a very handsome groom. Congratulations!

Testing Blogger Images

Blogger has added the ability to post images to your blog, so this is my test of this feature. Kind of handy actually, saves me having to upload them to Hello first. This is a picture of Jason giving me the evil eye, heh heh. Though it really looks like he's winking.

Happy Friday

Tis Friday once again, the eve of another great weekend hopefully. I'm hoping for nice weather tomorrow, hoping for a good beach day :) I took some pictures at Maureen's wedding that I've been meaning to post, but as you can see I haven't done so yet. I'll try to remember Monday to put the pictures on my flash drive.

I've been busy this week constructing a set of shelves out of some leftover plywood. I was hoping to get them all pieced together last night, but my drill ran out of juice :( All well, I guess it will be next week before I get them done.

In other news, its my little brothers birthday today. Though he's not so little anymore, he's 21 already! Makes me feel old. So Ryan if you see this, happy birthday!

Hmmm, what else... Oh my family will be in town next weekend, and my long lost roomie returns this week as well. So it will be a fullhouse next weekend. Should be fun though, I'm taking my folks to check out the Petra exhibit at Calvin.

Ring Bearer's Pillow

Last night I finished off the ring bearer's pillow for Maureen's wedding this weekend. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, nice and simple.

Fourth of July

For the fourth this year, Natalie, Jason and I drove up to Muskegon. Dropped Natalie off so she could meet up with some friends, then headed down to the summer celebration. It turned rainy and cold so we headed back to GR to watch the fireworks there. It looked like the rain would hold off, but it didn't. Jason and I found a dry place to wait for the fireworks (and to dry off a little :). A rather wet, but fun fourth of July.

Spring Festival in Zurich

Just turned the page of my Lonely Planet calendar to July. The location for July is Switzerland, and the picture on the 11th caught my eye. Its a picture of a snowman on fire, the caption is "Spring Festival, Zurich". I was curious, so I googled.

Found this:

Monday is the high-point of the festival with a two-and-a-half-hour-long procession of the 26 guilds to the large park in front of the Zurich Opera House. There, precisely at 6 pm a towering pile of wood is set alight. On top of the wood is the so-called Böögg, a snowman-shaped figure packed with firecrackers and representing winter. As the flames creep up towards the Böögg, members of the three mounted guilds ride three times around the fire. To the cheers of the public, the Böögg begins to blow apart. As soon as the head explodes, winter is said to be officially over. This original spectacle, which is watched by tens of thousands of excited people, is accompanied by the traditional Sechseläuten in March. Customs & Traditions in Switzerland

Thought that was pretty cool :-)

Bumper Sticker

Well behaved women rarely make history.

Happy Summer!

Just checked my calendar and realized that today is the first day of summer. So, happy summer everyone :)

TGIF and Nutty

Its Friday once again. Took Nutty over to the new apartment last night. She cried the whole way there as expected, you'd think I was torturing her or something. When I brought her upstairs she climbed out of her carrier then gave me this look. She was very cautious and not too sure of herself. I put out her food dish, and put out fresh litter in her litterbox, but she was not interested in any of that. I left the door open and "locked" her in the laundry room, then went downstairs to get some more stuff from the car. When I came back up the laundry room door was open (it pushes open) and I could hear her crying somewhere in the building. The silly cat had wandered off down the hall and was lost. I retrieved her from the second floor and carried her back upstairs.

I finished unloading the car, then warmed up some leftovers for dinner. By this time Nutty had situated herself behind the washing machine and was crying from back there. No matter how much I coaxed she would not come out. When I left to go back to the old apartment she was still hiding out behind the washing machine.

This morning I got up early to bring another bunch of stuff to the new apartment and to check on Nutty. I think she slept behind the washing machine, because that's where she was when I first got there. But her food was gone, and she had used the litter box, so that's a good sign.

Reminds me of her first night in our apartment as a kitten. She cried that night too, and slept behind the washing machine. Hopefully by tomorrow she'll be adjusted to her new surroundings.

Say cheese! A picture from a while back, onroute to Da Cheong's birthday dinner.

Keys

Of late, keys have been the bane of my existence. It started on Friday, when in my rush to get out and enjoy the weekend I left my keys sitting on my desk. I grabbed my purse and headed for the door, locking it and pulling it shut behind me. No sooner had I done that when I realized that I had forgotten to pick up my keys. Doh! I tried, very unsuccessfully to get the door open again with a credit card. Thankfully I had my phone, so I was able to call Jason to come rescue me. I stopped at the apartment office to get someone to let me into my apartment building. It was then that I realized that my spare car keys were locked in the garage with the other stuff that I had packed. And my garage key was locked inside my office, along with my mail key. So it ended up being a car-less, mail-less weekend.

Monday morning rolled around and I was still car-less, so I walked to work. And there were my keys, exactly where I had left them Friday afternoon. After work I headed to my new apartment complex to sign my life away. They gave me my new keys and I headed up to check out my new apartment. Started doing the rounds, kitchen, living room, bathroom, etc. I was very happy with it, by the way. Headed out onto the porch to look in the utility closet and check out the view. Looked around for a bit then went to go back inside. Tried to turn the doorknob...guess what?!? It was locked! So there I sat, no keys, no phone, stuck on my porch on the third floor. Man I felt dumb. Luckily I only had to wait about 10 minutes (that felt like forever) when I couple came out of the building. I called down to them and Mike from apartment A came to my rescue. I'm glad I left the apartment door unlocked!

I can't believe that I locked myself out twice in the matter of 4 days!