Ok. This is all the help I'm getting to pack, good times.

This is the kind of crap I'm running into while doing said packing. Despite the fact that we've had the dehumidifier going since about March, it's still a disgusting basement hole of an apartment, when you get down to it. Not happy. Very happy to be moving to a 2nd floor apartment.

Well my 26 things page is all finished, almost. I need 4 more pictures, so check back on the 1st and it'll be all done. Or just wait until the 1st to go at all, then you won't be disappointed. hehe. Check it out, if you like.

I was up really late last night working on it, with lots of help and input from Mitch, who has a damn fine website going from Jolly Old Hong Kong. Check it out too.

Ok. Now, I'm not putting up my 26 things pictures yet, cause I'm not done, so you have to wait. ha! I do have several other pics though that I'm just going to list off here, that will open in new windows. Enjoy!
a closeup of a dandelion gone to seed
a heron, I couldn't get too close cause the dogs ran after me and scared it away
a starfish we found at mid-tide on the beach. they grab right on to your hand!
this one is in 26 things, but I just love it so much!
my mom and I built this, she's taking it home to her garden in PA
a pretty sunset
my dog Angus in sleeping in the shower, he's weird.
after the rain...
same evening, a bit later
more sun and clouds action
same shot, through my Dollarama sunglasses
kayakers at sunset
neat clouds

Moving is so fun.

I've called already the power and phone companies and credit cards, and am now calling my bank to change my address. I still have to call for cable and cell and Future Shop card. Yarg. I had planned to pack this morning, but it's not happening. I hate automated telephone things when you actually need to talk to a person. I've actually had them try to stuff me back in the automated system when I had specifically told them I needed to talk to a human. Bastards. I did just get off the phone with a very friendly girl at Aliant though, so that helps. I'm on hold right now for CIBC. Good times, good tunes. ha!

I'm sitting here with a purring, very soft cuddly kitty on my lap after having had a lovely week with my parents at the cottage. I get to move out of this hole in 3 days. I'm pretty happy. I'm working on pictures, and want to use a pic of my new apartment as "new" for the 26 things but I won't have any pictures until after the 1st, and will have too much going on that day to be updating links and whatnot. Anyway, I took 143 pictures in the past week and a half, so I'd better get on that.

oh yeah, I've been at the cottage for the past few days, and will be again probably until next week, so no updating I'm afraid. I do have some killer pictures though that I'll post when I get back.

I saved a baby robin today. I think it got mauled by a cat, its wing was bent and it was too small to fly properly anyway. I thought it had had its tailfeathers chewed off too, which would have been too bad, but they just hadn't grown in yet, so that's good. I took him to a wildlife rescue place in Truro on my way home today. Truro wasn't exactly on my way home, but that's ok. It's a pretty drive from Tatamagouche. He chirped the whole way, it was a good time. He'll be nursed back to health and then released there, where there are lots of other robins, as there are everywhere. Apparently only 1-2 of the 5-6 hatchlings actually make it past fledgeling age. They actually have a new place set up that's for songbirds who are injured beyond repair but can still live normally in captivity, as a reminder that people should keep their cats inside. Interesting, no?

Is karma only a boomerang if you're a jerk, or does it work if you're a good person too? I'm sort of still waiting. I won $2 on Super 7 the other night, but I don't think that counts. Especially since the ticket was $5.

Good news for everyone, I say...

Ok, so yes, I got a new apartment, as of August 1st. It's goddamn beautiful. It's quite large, and bright, lots of windows. The couple living there now has it set up with 2 couches and 2 big chairs in the living room, as well as a kitchen table at one end (not in the kitchen) and there is still a lot of room. The kitchen itself has an island, and the bedroom and bathroom are both good sizes, so I'm so excited it's ridiculous. AND, it gets better. The landlord owns a paint store, and the apartment is above that. This is very good news, for 2 reasons. Reason 1 is that he'll provide me with paint if I should choose to change the colour (which right now is off-white, so *as if* I'm not going to paint. Trading Spaces here I come!). Reason 2 is that the store closes at 4:30, so after that the whole building is mine. Not that I can party in the paint store, but I can "entertain" (daquiri parties?) and blast music and whatnot and not offend anybody, cause there's nobody to offend!
I have to call and get everything switched over for the 1st now, so that should be fun. I'm hoping I can at least keep the same phone number, or maybe I'll get it switched over to something cool, like 55-Sarah! Mine now has too many numbers with no letters to spell anything.

This is really neat! It's called 26 things, and it's sort of a photo safari/scavenger hunt thing. I'm signing up, so is Tirésa, and I think everyone with a camera should too. But hurry, we only have until August 1st to get all the pictures.

Ok, so Smarties has a new kind, Sundae Smarties. They come in 8 flavours: chocolate, strawberry, orange, banana, caramel, vanilla, raspberry, and wildberry. They still are brown inside like regular smarties, but do not taste like chocolate. Except for the chocolate ones. hehe. Anyway, my mom really likes smarties, so I got 3 boxes. They're not very good. I tried one of each flavour and had to take a break from eating for a while. Grant just sees 'smarties' and gobbles a mouthful, and the look on his face when he chewed....I laughed my ass off. He had to spit them out, I still laughed.
Poor guy.

Did you know that on the bottoms of Bounty chocolate bars there are little palm trees and the word Bounty stamped in? Pretty neat.

I'm growing veggies in little pots outside my window: tomatoes, peppers, beans, and watermelon. Everything is growing, to an extent, but the beans are the only thing showing any signs of producing something.

Giant bean!
Bean, actual size.

There are about...5 beans so far. I'm pretty excited though, regardless, because most of what I've tried to grow up to this point has just died. The calla lily Erin gave me is still going strong, and a daisy plant I got from school in June is not only still alive, it's flowering again!

yay me!

I'm going to look at an apartment tomorrow. "Avail August 1st. Bachelor or 2 bdrm apts with balcony. elevators, storage lockers, laundry facilities, close to drug store. $340-$550 per month. Seniors welcome." They take cats, and I'll feel pretty safe living with seniors. I asked the guy if it's only for seniors or for anyone, and I was joking, but he said 'well we do make exceptions, how old are you?' I said I'm 24 and a teacher, and I guess that passed criteria because I'm allowed to see it. I'm looking at the bachelor, maybe the one bedroom, we'll see. $340 is a pretty tough price to beat, esp for cats allowed and laundry faciilties, security doors etc. I'm going to take a drive by later to see if it looks decent from the outside, but I'll probably go regardless tomorrow, some places look really dumpy outside but are nice inside.

I'm pretty excited, it might be cool living with old people. I don't like to par-tay much, so it shouldn't be a problem at all, and maybe they'll bake me brownies or something!

ok, links now open in new windows. enjoy. it's a really simple script, fortunately, from the Javascript Source where I've gotten some fun scripts for free, so there's their plug from me. Which opens in a new window. haha...

Damn, but my kitty is cute, eh?

what's with the lack of comments people? I'm feeling a little unloved over here...

I really liked that song when it was out long ago, in high school, and my sister found a mixed tape (bwah ahahah) with that on it, and it made me happy, so there you go.

Also, I went to "Butterfly World" at the Boardwalk here, and it was really neat. It's a giant dome full of flowers and plants and butterflies fluttering around freely, and they land on you and whatnot, and it's really cool. And, of course, you can take pictures. Anyway, I went on Saturday and I haven't gotten around to posting the pictures yet, so for Jenn, who's been harassing me about it, here you go.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Tell Her
Del Amitri

Tell her not to go
I ain't holding on no more
Tell her something in my mind freezes up from time to time

Tell her not to cry
I just got scared that's all
Tell her I'll be by her side, all she has to do is call

Tell her the chips are down
I drank too much and shouted it aloud
Tell her something in my heart
Needs her more than even clowns need the laughter of the crowd

Tell her what was wrong
I sometimes think to much
But say nothing at all
And tell her from this high terrain, I am ready now to fall

Tell her not to go
I ain't holding on no more
Tell her nothing if not this; all I want to do is kiss her

Tell her something in my mind
Freezes up from time to time

Well, still not happy, currently trying to figure out what exactly I'll be able to do in the fall as far as paying rent and bills goes. If I don't have a teaching job, I'm not really sure what I'll do. I can have my tutoring job, but that's only 20 hours/week and won't cover everything. Supply teaching is pretty random most of the time, I can't count on any number of days guaranteed per week. I could live with Grant's parents, but I don't really want to, A, and B, I can't supply in Moncton if I live in Rexton, they don't give you enough time for that kind of travel, so that would give me about 3 schools within reasonable driving distance, which is silly, and if I'm not in Moncton every day, I can't tutor there after school. Getting a roommate isn't an ideal situation because I don't really know anyone who needs one, and I'll likely only need one for 4 months, which would be sort of inconvenient for everyone involved. So if anyone out there has recently won the lottery or something, I'd sure appreciate some of that! I'm not expecting to be rolling in dough at this point, but I did expect that I would be able to support myself.

big sigh.

sorry I'm so depressing. We did go see Pirates of the Caribbean tonight, it was really good. Quite entertaining, and it's got that Elf from Lord of the Rings, Orlando Bloom. 2 interesting facts. Johnny Depp is 40, and the girl who plays Elizabeth is only 18. I'm astounded on both counts. It makes sense that Mr. Depp is 40, but he sure doesn't look it.

anyway, yeah, it's 1:24, so buenos nachos.

Seriously though, 2 rejections in one week? It's becoming awfully difficult to be motivated to apply for jobs when I feel like I have no chance of getting one. My presentation is excellent, very professional, but I just don't have the experience to compete with the other candidates. Why then, do they call me?
In other super news, I found out that one of the main reasons I didn't get the job from Monday was that they are retarded, and completely misunderstood part of my presentation where I told them quite clearly that I didn't bring some of the lesson plans I have because I didn't make them, but I did bring several examples of lesson plans I did make. Somehow that got turned into 'I have never made a lesson plan, here are some examples of ones I have scammed.'

not happy.

So I'm not feeling quite as bitter, I did have a good time at my institute the past 2 days, and I still don't have a job, but I do have another interview on Friday for an at-risk site in Caledonia, so once again, happy thoughts and crossed fingers are appreciated. I'm going to call tomorrow and see if I can't find out why specifically I didn't get the job yesterday, and if I have a chance of actually getting jobs or if they just like my presentation and like having me around in the office. Not to sound really snarky or anything, I know interview experience is good to have, but it is pretty frustrating to think that I really can't *get* any job I'm interviewed for because there's somebody who has significantly more experience than me who will win because of that. I'm still hopeful though, seriously, so I'll keep interviewing.
But now I have to sleep.

Ok. So if you do your absolute best and try your hardest and work your ass off and give a killer presentation that represents you really well and you're perfectly qualified for the job, and you still don't get the job, what kind of loser ass does that make you?

Just wondering.

Hey, look what I won at the fair! It was a dart game, and since all the games are rigged and my aim is crap to begin with, I looked away from the dart board thing while firing, and I hit 2 stars! Out of 3 tries, not bad eh? I'm pretty proud of myself, and the cheetah is damn cute.
Anyway, it's almost 1, I'm here by myself and the cats are giving me grief for not being in bed yet, so off I go.

Today is Grant's birthday. I bet he'd love to get happy bday wishes from strangers! haha....go for it!

wow. I was just looking for stuff, and came to realize that the webpage I stopped updating in November, since it was NBNet and we've been on Rogers since then, it still on the NBNet server. Weird eh? I thought they deleted those things right away. Apparently not. Check it out! Hey look, it's me in November. Short hair!
I also found some fun links that I had totally forgotten about, that I will add to the links section. Good times.

ok, how does one republish one's archives with the new blog editor? I edited the template and now it says "blogarchivewhatever" where the dates should be. rrrrg...

but damn, they're cute aren't they?

must....stop...posting.....giant.....pictures......

I'm so happy that Blogger and Google have joined forces; they're 2 of my very favourite sites! This has culminated in the supercool Google toolbar with Blogthis!. I do enjoy it, I can search now with the "I'm feeling lucky" option or search images from the toolbar. I can also blog whatever page I'm on at the moment, and while I haven't yet figured out the fine points of that feature, I'm sure it's a good thing.

Another reason I'm so excited though, is that a while ago I had this toolbar magically install itself on my computer, and man, did that piss me off. It didn't show up on Adaware or virus scans, and there was no uninstall. I could deselect it, but it would still be there. It didn't come up in any file searches on my computer either. So I search and ask for help but the best I could find was how to not enable 3rd party browser extensions, which is good, until I find this Google/Blogger toolbar that I want. Now I must kill it. So I search and search some more, and find out how to search and edit things in the registry, and I do, and I don't have that toolbar anymore as an option. The evil one, that is. Honestly, it wasn't that evil in itself, but I did not put it there or agree to its being put there, so that sort of made it evil.

yay me!

So we came up to Fredericton to put a damage deposit on an apartment for Grant, and we get here and the guy has rented it. Now, this is not even the most irritating part, it's just that he had our number and really could and should have called us to let us know to save us the driving up on a nice day when I would MUCH rather go to the cottage.

100 things is a lot!

seriously, bed now.

"Clearly an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease would more than offset any advantageous psychological effects of semen...."
Thanks Jenn for the sweet link!

I didn't get a job, the new blogger editor is sweet, and Mike's Hard Limonade is really tasty. I'm going to bed now.
Sinbad is funny too, gotta love Brad Pitt in cartoon.

ooh, blue...you like?

you know, I'm looking at this colour on my sister's computer, and it's kind of gross actually. I like they layout, it's quite similar to what I used to have, but I'm not seeing the beautiful spring green happy colour I was seeing yesterday. Blech. I'll work on it....

ooh, new colours!

Happy Canada Day!