Matt planned a surprise for me a few days ago. He gave me three clues as to what it was, and none of them gave it away. He got me into the car, told me to bring sandals (instead of heels) and the camera, and off we went. The surprise? He took me to the ocean! I love living on the ocean. We’ve been to Peggy’s Cove a few times, but I do like going a place with a beach from time to time to just soak it all in. Here’s a few shots from our trip to Lawrencetown Beach, and there are a few more in the flickr set.

Matt and I are both sick. It started with me, last Monday. I had a bit of a sore throat starting Monday night and by Tuesday evening my voice was almost gone and I was in tears because it hurt so bad. By Wednesday it was more a really deep chest cough and stuffy nose than a sore throat. However, I knew I was in trouble when Matt said yesterday that his throat had started hurting. Not good.

In other news, last week was very busy for me. I helped out with the international students on Monday. That was exciting. 125 foreign students in one building for their ESL assessments. I enjoyed it though - had a few conversations with children from all over the world, got to eat some food, get some exercise, and do something good for someone else all at the same time. Tuesday, I manned (womanned?) a booth at a volunteer fair at Dalhousie. I was recruiting new volunteers and looking around at the other booths to see what other opportunities there were in the area. Wednesday I rested, and then Thursday I went to the library for tutoring. I was so sick that walking to and from the library/bus terminals was torture, but I didn’t want to let my learner down. She’s had people blow her off before and I didn’t want to be one of them!

I’ve been playing (okay, crashing) in the Wrath of the Lich King beta the past few days quite a bit. I have a couple characters transferred over there and have started a death knight. A fun class, and I intend to make one, but I won’t be playing it as much as my already-established characters. I’m so glad to be a part of it - leaving feedback, reporting bugs, testing new content, and most of all, taking screenshots. Now if only the servers would work so I can get back to leveling!

PS: I’ve lost 4.5 lbs since I stopped going to the gym. Living my life healthier seems to be doing the trick! I can only imagine how well it’ll go once I start actually working out (intentionally) at home!

I’ve been very lazy about blogging the past few days, but that’s because I’ve been busy! Not busy doing anything spectacularly important, mind you. Just busy. Wasting time, I guess. I’ve been a bit antisocial, too, and I think it’s because I’m overwhelmed with my own stuff and while I completely appreciate that my friends come to me with their problems, I’m not doing a great job with handling them lately. So I do the best that I can and hope that they understand that I’m not trying to be a cold-hearted kind of person, but instead that I need to focus on straightening my life out first.

I’ve made a list of things that I need to do for immigration. The scary thing is that the list fits on one Post-It. I write big, too, so this means that it’s coming right down to the wire. I’ll be mailing it out hopefully by the end of the week. Scary? Yes. Terrifying. But I’m so ready for it all to be over already so I can move on with my life. The packet of information is already crazy thick, so I can’t wait to see just how thick it is when it’s done. Not to mention I’ll be waiting with my fingers crossed until the day that I get that envelope with the approval in it. Enough about that, though. I’ve already had my one allotted panic attack for the day regarding that!

I’ve spent the past three days at the beach. Not today, but the three days before that. Lots of sun, a bit of a burn, and lots of exercise. Swimming makes me happy. I prefer the ocean over lakes and to be honest, I prefer pools and wave pools over lakes too, but swimming is swimming and I’ll take it wherever I can get it! My shoulders and neck are a bit sore where they were burned but I have no regrets. I haven’t been out in the sun so much in over three years, so I’m well past due.

Last night Matt and I went with Jane and her boyfriend Rob to the casino for a thing with Matt’s coworkers. Jane and Rob are really close friends with Matt’s boss (they’re the reason he found out about the job!) so it was nice having them there. Another of Matt’s coworkers and his band were playing while we were there, and they were awesome! Absolutely fantastic band. It was nice to get out, have a night out, have some drinks and good music and just laugh. It felt so carefree. We gambled a tiny bit - when I say a tiny bit I mean that we used $10 in the slot machines and that was it. It was fun but we knew we didn’t want to spend too much. After the casino we decided that we really wanted some food (mind you, at this point I’d had a couple Smirnoff Ices and a Cosmopolitan, so I was along for the ride no matter where we were going!) so we stopped at a little pizza shop and got some take-out. Jane and I sat on the curb with our feet in the street and tried to figure out where everything was in relation to where we were standing (She definitely knew much more than I did about that!) while we waited for the food, and some crazy guy with no shoes came up asking for a light. After that, I managed to trip in a small hole in the sidewalk and skin my knee. Oh, the things you do when you’re a bit drunk. It was overall a great night though, honestly. I’d do it again in a heartbeat!

I’m debating whether to upload this short video that I have to youtube or not. It’s a guy at the casino that had obviously had a few drinks, and was apparently dancing with his daughter. Unfortunately he stopped shortly after I got the camera out, but I got some good footage! If I do upload it, you can bet I’ll be posting it here. It was one of the highlights of the night!

Apparently, in this case, I fail. For the past few days, I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with my computer, and why it wouldn’t let me go to certain websites (online banking being one of them). Then, I discovered that my MSN wouldn’t log me in on Trillian, and that made me want to pull my hair out! I then tried to download the actual MSN messenger (Live? MSN? Windows? Who knows, they keep changing it!) and install it, and that wouldn’t work.

All this time, and I sat here like an idiot, trying to figure it out. Matt sits down for a few minutes, tests a couple small things, and then realizes it’s my date. He did a few things to my computer about a week or so ago, and it reset the date. I knew it had, so I changed the month, day, and time back, but apparently forgot to do the year! My computer thought it was 2003, so none of the security certificate things for websites worked. What a dummy I am!

Matt and I rearranged the bedroom over the past few days, and it’s already feeling awesome in here. Lots of space and light and it just fits much much better! I’ve posted some photos on my flickr, but you can only see them if you’re set to a friend or family member. But it’s wonderful!