mmm, virusy

hey. so, some time in the fairly recent past, my computer got that about: blank virus. I got rid of it, but now my sweetie pie's parents have my computer and it seems to be infected again. I had gotten 2 programs to get rid of it, I believe one was called something like Browser Hijack Blaster or something, but I can't remember the other one. I'd like to remember so that I can get them and fix my computer, even though I don't have it anymore. They're going to bring it up next time they come so I can fix it. Good times. I'll also be able to get my files and stuff off it though, which is nice. Anyway, if anyone has suggestions for really good spyware / virus removing software, that'd be great. I have adaware, but it just doesn't do it all the time.

thanks.

archives, nice and organised

haha, not really, but what the hell do I care. It took me forever just to get them all to display, I'm not sure what's wrong with what I had before, but it stopped working. Blogger doesn't really like when you tell it to republish the entire site, it tends to just say 0% for like, an hour, and not do anything. So for now, that's what it's going to look like.

edit: apparently my making it a list thing *did* work. it was all just bunched up before. whatev.

I put up a thingy on the right hand sidebar that shows how people get referred to my site, it's pretty fun. It has kind of an ugly giant advertising button that I can't get rid of, but it's interesting to see how people are finding my site. Some people are just searching 'moderately spicy', (come on, bookmark me!), while others are doing searches for totally random things. I hope they're finding me useful.

This is annoying, because I wanted to post this morning but Blogger wasn't working. I'm liking it less and less lately, but I do so love it when it's working. I tried to set up some other programs, but I'm so used to having Blogger do everything for me, that I have no idea how to do anything in the more advanced-type programs that expect me to think for myself. Anyway, so I have no idea what I was going to talk about, but I did have a couple of things, and now, obviously, I have crap.

It's super nice out, so I think I'll go clean off the deck chairs (how DO they get so scummy from being snowed on??) and have a sit outside for a bit. The windows in this apartment are really hard to open, so that in itself was a bit of a workout. I'm hoping to induce labour. I was out and about today, and every single cashier asked me if I was due soon. I said yes, today actually. That's fun to do, you should try it. It's true though, and so not really fun, because the baby was supposed to already be here. He's a jokester.

Hey, it's Van Gogh's birthday, check out Google. They're so fun, I wish I got to design the logo things.

"Then they had some kind of emotional reaction and vomited."

It's one of those things that's funny, and yet not funny at all, at the same time.

I thought it was interesting to know that they make their chili from scratch though. Good for them!

"Somewhere, somebody is missing a finger."

See what I mean about funny and not funny at all? That line is worthy of Horatio Cane himself!

super funny

I had a hard time with some of the answers, I've never really thought about what kind of food my dream man is like, but it's fun regardless.

dream date finder

leave a comment telling me who you got, and I'll tell you who I got.

technical difficulties

Why don't I have archives for Feb / March? Since you can't just republish your archives any more, I republished the whole gd site, so it's probably all the new colours now, not really what I wanted, and still no archives for Feb or March. Weird. Or, I just checked, and it didn't even republish everything, it just pretended to and took a really long time, but only redid the March page, which doesn't show up on the archives link page, and the index. Useful.

My printer turns on and makes working noises, but when I try to print something, the little icon comes up and says it is offline. Not helpful. We unplugged it from the computer and plugged it back in, and it 'found new hardware' and installed, but now is not working again.

It's spring, and almost Easter! I need to get myself some tulips I think. Not lillies, they're bad for kitties.

Speaking of kitties, for those concerned, it seems George may have a small ulcer in his stomach, which would explain his random barfing since it would get irritated from time to time. We're treating that with delicious medicine that he loves (ha), so hopefully this'll do the trick.

a note to (stupid) pet owners

Just because it's still technically winter, doesn't mean that you can lock your dog in your car with the windows up. It's about a million degrees in the sun today, and it will still get quite warm in the car. You are an idiot, and deserve to be kicked squarely in the face.

Would I have gotten in trouble if I had broken a window in that guy's car? I don't think I should. I'd probably get in more trouble for doing that than he would for endangering or killing his dog, because that's the super effective way that animal cruelty laws work.

random updates

I had possibly the worst sleep of my life last night, and have been wide awake and starving since about 5. I've eaten lots, but am still hungry.

I'm worried about my cat. He's at the vet, getting xrays, a barium series, and bloodwork to see why he keeps barfing. He's so tiny and cute, it makes me sad that he's sick. Animals being sick is always sad though, because they can't tell you what's wrong, and most of the time don't even show that something is. I'm also a little annoyed that my other cat doesn't seem to care that George isn't here. I feel awful leaving my cat at the vet's, I can't imagine how I'm going to deal with like, dropping my son off at his first day of school.

I want to meet my baby. I'm going insane. I am not, nor have I ever been, a patient person. This is worse than waiting for Christmas, because at least you know exactly when Christmas will arrive. It can't just show up 2 weeks early or a week late.

11am and 2pm are the worst times for daytime tv. Even HGTV and TLC don't have anything good on. I'm not sure how TLC can get away with being called that, it's totally non-educational. A&E is also, as MadTV put it, now neither artistic nor entertaining. Dog the Bounty Hunter? Come on.

Ever since I was in the hospital, I'm far too aware of what's on tv at any given time on any given weekday. Not good.

I bought the new Jack Johnson cd the other day, while I was out to get The Incredibles on DVD. If you haven't seen it, you really should, at least rent it. Also, as expected, Jack's new cd is great. He's mellow, but not so mellow so as to make you want to shoot yourself in the face. I think I may start a sidebar column here for my sister's musical recommendations. She's usually way ahead of the game, and right on the money.

It's St. Patrick's day, and I'm wearing red. That's not right. Did you know he wasn't even Irish? He was born in Wales and kidnapped by Irish pirates, and sold into slavery in Ireland. Looks like things worked out alright for him after that though.

I got paid today, finally. I'm pretty happy about that. I still don't have any money, but at least I have less no money than before. Does that make sense?

It took me 21 minutes to write this post. I'm easily distracted.

It took another hour before I was able to post it, because Blogger is being a piece of shit.

edit: Georges is ok, apparently. This is good news, of course, but still frustrating, because we don't know why he barfs. Apparently some cats just do. Also, Mort keeps hissing and growling at him because he has vet / medicine smell on him still. Poor guy!

blockbuster

I've been wondering what exactly the deal is with this 'no more late fees' thing, so I looked it up. I thought I'd share it with you, since most everyone I know rents movies. I've actually been thinking of joining zip.ca or something similar to the US Netflix, but haven't yet.

Anyway, so if you rent a movie at Blockbuster, you can keep it a week past its due date. On the 8th day, they charge you the price of the movie - new price if it's not available as a pre-viewed sale yet, and pre-viewed price if it is, and they subtract the price you paid to rent it. If you end up returning it sometime in the next 30 days, you'll get that sale price money back, less a $1.75 'restocking fee'. I had heard bad things, but that seems like a totally reasonable system to me. If you're going to keep the movie for over a month, you really do deserve to have to pay for it. I'm one of the 'oh, crap, the movie was due back at noon' customers, who gets it back, but maybe a few hours late or the next day occasionally. This is great for me.

domestic goddess

hells yeah. I made turkey pot pie last night for supper, and it was effing delicious. The hardest part was making pastry, but it wasn't too bad. If you're ever looking to make said pie, basically you just mix all of your leftover turkey dinner stuff - meat, veg, gravy, and put it in a pie shell, and bake it. Mmmmm.

In other news, my cat has been barfing a lot, so we're taking him in for some tests this afternoon. I took him in on the weekend and the vet said she couldn't see anything wrong, but could run tests if I wanted. I opted for no, because apparently I'm a bad cat-mom. She did say though that her cat does the same thing and there's nothing wrong with him, so I felt not bad about not testing. So, hopefully they'll find something, but it won't be anything serious, and they'll fix it.

We have everything put away in our apartment, basically. I know I said that a while ago, but everything is organised now and looks good. We got a closet organiser that took the fiancé's dad the entire afternoon to install, but now we have shelving, which is very useful, since we only have one dresser between us and I currently have 2 wardrobes. The office needs some shelves or something, it has this giant desk thing attached to the wall, with one drawer and no shelves, so all the computer stuff is just scattered all over the place.

The baby continues to mambo daily, showing that he's not running out of room like he's supposed to. I just keep expanding to accommodate his giant-ness. Very thoughtful of me, no? I'm officially full-term now, and am hoping to go into labour at any moment. My sister's coming up tomorrow, that would be a fun way to welcome her! Anyway, see the preggo blog for full deets on preggo stuff, and some whining.

2 things

part I: so gross

I toasted myself a bagel this morning that I had bought on Wednesday. Seems safe, yes? I then ate half of aforementioned bagel before noticing spots of mold growing on it. Not cool.

part II: why I'm a dork

Because I find stuff like this really interesting.

I rrrrolled and won!

I think that's a good sign. My first rrrroll up of the season, and I won a coffee. It's no thousand dollars, true, but it's better than a re-essayez. I gave it to my almost father-in-law. He was up here yesterday painting the nursery, and had a bit of an accident where the gallon bucket of paint knocked over and spilled all over the carpet. No good. Somehow though, he managed to get it out, and you'd never know anything was there if you didn't know. Even though I know, I can't tell. Mr. Clean and Shout Oxy Power did the trick. And lots of scrubbing.

My cat barfs a lot. The vet thought it might be worms, and gave him medicine for that, but he still barfs, so as I suspected (how would an indoor cat get worms?) it seems not to have been that. My vet said it could be hairballs that won't come up, so I'm now trying "intensive hairball treatment". It's basically normal hairball stuff, from the vet so it's a little stronger, given en masse for 3 days. Poor George. He hates it, so I have to squish it into the fur on his front leg so he'll lick it off. I feel bad using his natural instinct to be clean against him, but there's not much else I can do. I'm not cleaning up barf daily, that's just gross. I'm giving some to Mort daily too, he likes it, and it can't hurt. I'll switch to weekly after a bit.

Hmm, what else is exciting. I soaked my showerhead in vinegar and scrubbed it with a toothbrush so that water will shoot out of all of the holes, and in a relatively straight fashion. Who needs CLR? Not me! I also read reviews of a bunch of stuff on the Shopping Bags website, you should too. They've reviewed everything. Even cats. I also went with a friend to the Clay Café and painted a dinosaur piggy bank. All in all, a productive day, and a damn interesting one.

rrrrrroll up the rrrrrim!

I love it! I very rarely win anything, but whatever. It means that spring is coming, for one thing, and it does make drinking your coffee / hot chocolate more exciting. I had another ultrasound today, and am still not very impressed with the hospital here vs. the hospital in Moncton, but this will just have to do!

things are still a bit of a mess here, but there are a couple of piles of empty boxes, so when they get dealt with it'll be slightly better. I have roughly 8000 pieces of old mail, bills and such, that we don't need, but I have to go through them and see what's old and what's recent, and shred the old stuff. Good times. I also have a good-sized pile of cds and disks with no labels on them, so I have to go through them and see what's blank and what's useless. I just got my final bill from NBPower, apparently I've established an excellent credit record with them, and they thank me very much for my business.

OK, survey time. I hate Rogers. It's just a fact. They just sent me my final bill for our cable / internet service at the old place, since I've closed the account. Thing is, 2 things. One, the account isn't in my name, and they hassle me *every* time I call in, even though my name is attached to the account so that I'm able to call in and change things. Two, we didn't ask to have the account closed, just moved to here. Thus, them sending a bill to me personally, telling me to contact them soon to pay it before it gets sent to collections (pardon?) sends me into a near rage. I know I overreact a bit, but I just can't stand stupidity, especially when it's making me look bad. So, I don't really think I want to deal with them. We have to for cable, we have no options here other than sattelite, which is no better and no cheaper. I was going to downgrade my internet to hi-speed lite/express, which is still faster than dial-up, but only $30/month instead of $44. For the amount of downloading etc that I do, should be fine. Aliant has a deal on right now, that if you sign a year contract, their regular high-speed is $30/month also. Would be faster than the Rogers lite hi-speed, and I wouldn't have to deal with Rogers for internet. Which is good. They say there's a $35 installation charge, but I'm hopeful that I could work my way out of that, since I'd be switching to them and signing a contract. If not, I'll tell them to eff off, I'll stay with Rogers. Who has Aliant, is it good? I haven't had it for a long time, not since it first came out and was super super fast. I know it's not that way anymore, they (as well as Rogers) cap how fast you can download and upload. I think I'll just switch, it can't be worse, and their service is so much better. At the very least, they haven't truly pissed me off lately, and Rogers has, several times. They sent someone to our apartment to do the move, install the cable here, and the next week had no record of any of that, the request to move or the guy having been here. What? Just awful.

This post is random, I apologize.

good news / faith in humanity restored

Well. When I went to the hospital many moons ago...or a month, whichever...I did not think I would be staying long. I drove around a bit trying to decide where to park; I didn't really consider myself to be an emergency, so that was out, nor am I a visitor or a physician. That left only the street for parking. So I parked, smiling to myself that it was late enough that I didn't have to pay the meter. Then, well, I ended up staying for 2.5 weeks. I was able to get my car moved the next day, but it already had a ticket on it. Not for an expired meter, as you might expect, but for being parked overnight on the street in the winter, which as you know is strictly verboten here in the Maritimes.

I sort of forgot about it, since I never actually saw the ticket myself, until I got a friendly reminder from the City, telling me that if I didn't pay within 30 days of the violation, I'd get another notice and the fine would go up. No good. So, today, day 29 I think, haha, I call to pay my fine. Just on a whim, I ask the woman if I can possibly talk to someone about the ticket, since it was really unavoidable. It's $30, after all. She says sure, and sends me to the commissionaire. He's a super nice guy. I explain to him exactly what happened, that I know very well not to park on the street, but I didn't know where else to park, and didn't think I'd be staying for any length of time. He agreed that there was very little else I could have done, and changed the ticket to a warning.

Happy camper. I was fully prepared for them to tell me to shove it, but they didn't. That was nice of them.

floor space!

well, we're not quite done, but we put a good dent in the stuff that needed putting away today. I got all my clothes except sweaters away, which is no small task. I helped a little with sorting of boxes of junk collected from the computer desk and coffee table, and, well, floor, of the old apartment, so we've got most of that done too. The cats are very helpful with all of this, with their jumping in and out of boxes and whatnot. They've actually taken quite a liking to the nursery; it's nice and sunny in there most of the day, so they just laze around in the sun pools. I would too, if I were a cat.

I haven't showered yet today, and on any other day I probably just wouldn't bother, but I figure since it's poker night here tonight, I should look somewhat presentable. Does anybody want to buy an xBox? If I have to watch one more game of NHL 2005 I'm going to vomit. Seriously. It was very helpfully pointed out to me that I'll soon be surrounded by boys, except for some of my fish, but they really don't count. I'll be needing lots of girly visitors.

funny, and yet really offensive

weird how that works out. go ahead, click. via Kim.

Man, I'm still super bored. I'll be done bedrest on Wednesday, but I'm not even sure I'll make it that long. I start to feel really gross after a while of just lying around. Lack of movement and fresh air is no good for me. I saw a woman on the View this morning who's been on bedrest since November though, so I really have no right to complain.

Still working very slowly on getting things put away. It's a bit tricky to get all the clothes away, because I have basically 2 wardrobes now. At least one and a half. I don't want to store the regular stuff anywhere, because hopefully I'll be wearing those clothes in the not-too-distant future. I obviously also have to keep the preggo clothes out, because I'm ENORMOUS. I now have only 1 box of clothes in the nursery, but only because we moved the other one into the bedroom. Meh, whatever. I'm on my own all day today, which is brutal. I do have the cats, and they follow me around whenever I do get off my ass, which isn't often. They like having someone home all day to follow and sleep on. I'm interested but not worried at all to see how they'll react to the baby. The little experience they have had with babies, they are either afraid of them or just show no interest, since the little ones can't pet them or anything.

The couch and something more substantial than mini eggs for lunch is calling, so I should go and answer one of them at least. I may get adventurous and put some clothes away later, but no promises.

you missed me

so here I sit at home. Better than the hospital, I have to say, though not terribly more exciting. The TV is cheaper though. I'm looking around, and when I see something I can do that doesn't look too physically demanding (no bending or lifting or anything) I'll think about doing it. I put some baby clothes in the top drawer of the dresser yesterday, that was pretty exciting. They're all clean and just waiting for a baby now.

The new place is great, very nice, very clean, which is a nice change from what we're used to when moving into a new place. Grant has gone to pick up the last of our stuff in Moncton, and is quite worried that I'm going to go into labour while he's away. I think I'll be ok. Big plans for the day include vegetating in front of the tv, thinking about showering (I just did yesterday, what's the rush?), and hoping that somebody else is as bored as I am and comes to visit me and my messy apartment. I'm pretty bitter right now that I'm not at the market; that's one of the best things about Fredericton. Hopefully in a few weeks.

oh, right

happy valentine's day!

haha

yawn, or, I think I'm dying

but at least we get red napkins on our food trays today.

I've had about enough of this, I'll tell ya. I now have a wicked cold, for which I can take Halls and cough syrup. Not only don't the work very well on the actual coughing part, but they do absolutely nothing for the sneezing, head about to explode, general feeling like shit symptoms. Sweet. So yeah, good times

Sorry for the lack of updates, but there's really not a whole lot going on here. I have some lovely flowers that have (miraculously) not died yet, so that's nice. My roommate (Madam Snoreypants) and her baby (I Only Cry at Night) have gone home, so that's nice too. She was really nice, but not much fun to share a room with at night. Also now I can open the curtain and get some daylight on my side of the room. I thought of asking to move over to the window bed, but then I'd have a different phone number and stuff. Plus, theoretically, I'm only here til Wednesday. Wish me luck.

My lunch has arrived and looks DELICIOUS, so I must be off. I did get ice cream for dessert, that's pretty exciting.

mmm, bedrest

so, obviously everyone is really concerned about why I haven't posted for so long.

...

jerks! all of you!

anyway, I'm in the hospital, on bedrest. It's a pretty rockin' time. I'll spare you the details, I'll post them all on the preggo blog, but suffice to say the baby wants to come out now, and we don't want it to! I'll be in the hospital at least until next Wednesday, or until I have the baby, whichever comes first. Hopefully next Wednesday comes first.

Due to the fact that I've been in the effing hospital for over a week now, there's very little going on in my life to report on. Hospital food is not very good, but I've had fantastic visits from friends and family, and have a good supply of pretty flowery plant things and candy.

The good news is that I did manage to (just) finish first semester. I had my last exam on Monday afternoon, got it marked (only 9 kids wrote, lord love exemptions), and got all my final marks into the spreadsheets so I could fill in the bubble sheets. I went to Toys R Us and made a registry for the baby, not a lot of things, but fun things. I came home, surfed a bit, and then started having a lot of braxton-hicks contractions. They're fake, they don't usually mean anything. Unless you're having them every 3 minutes. So, I came here, and haven't been allowed out since. Unfortunate. I week and 2 days to go. Emails and comments to entertain me are appreciated. I don't have to help in the moving to Fredericton, which is nice. For me, not for anyone else.

I'll be on a bit now that I have dialup and a computer, but for now, that's about it. Must off and update the preggo blog.

because it's fun to start posts with "because"

so, exam week is over, but we still have one day of exams. That's hardly fair. Effing snow. I say fuggit, the theatre arts exam isn't that important, let's just skip it. But no. So I have kids writing an exam Monday afternoon, marks are due Tuesday morning, then we have probably Tuesday afternoon to 'prep' for semester 2, and then classes start Wednesday. Super. I still have no idea what I'm doing. Well, no, I have some idea, but no concrete plans. How hard can it be to get through 4 weeks and 3 days, really? Also, my prep class is moving to period 3, right before lunch, which is exciting. It's period 5 right now, and I generally feel like doing absolutely nothing by the time last period rolls around, so it's not a really productive time for me.

In other news...I have no other news. I was looking for a bit more feedback on the new colour scheme, but no news is good news, or you're all just too lazy to say anything. Except for the, yeah, one person who did comment. Thanks, Kim!.

For now, I have to go cook my sweetie some supper, and then just sit the hell down and relax for a bit. It is the weekend, after all. I have my very first baby shower tomorrow, I'm pretty excited for that. That's about the sum total of my plans for the weekend though. Finish marking exams, and relax some more. Sweet.