Back Again

Well here I go again.

Spring is finally here. There is little to no snow left. We had an ice storm a couple of days ago that wasn't too nice. I've been working on my getting master prestige on Call of Duty Black Ops 3. It's starting to look like I'm going to run out of bad weather to make it lol

I didn't get approved for my unemployment insurance benefits for my Christmas break, so I didn't bother applying for it for March Break. I'm debating if I should apply for the summer, or try and find a part time job. I guess I could try finding a job and if it doesn't work out then apply for EI again. I should have enough hours by then to get it.

I'm excited for the opportunities of having time off in the summer. At the same time, worried that I won't have the money to take advantage of said opportunities as they arise.

Definitely something to look forward to this summer, my Brotha-from-anotha-motha is coming to visit with his small humans in tow. We also visited some friends from eastern Ontario that we don't see often and they may ship us one of their kids to visit for part of the summer as well.

Last weekend was the one year anniversary for Ye Ole Man and I. We got our tax return recently so we booked a weekend away down in the city. We also went to Medieval Times, which was something we've both wanted to do. It was a blast! Evening filled with Lords and Ladies, good company, good food and entertainment too. I would love to go back if we can afford it!

This week I got assigned to a bus route that actually takes me to Barrie every day, twice a day. So far its the earliest run I've had to do. I've been getting up at 5:15 ugh. Not fun. I've had a nap both days this week (glad monday was a holiday!) and will probably have to for the remainder of the run. I feel like I just got myself used to going to bed at a certain time, and getting up at a certain time. Just to go and fuck with it all and have to get up even earlier!

It really messes up my day, I get home earlier than I'm used to, which isn't a bad thing, but then I have to go out earlier in the afternoon to be in Barrie for 2:20 so I have almost no time to do anything during the day. Yesterday after my nap I had to drop something off at school for the kid, then come home to put dinner in the crock pot, leave again to visit him on his lunch to come home and leave 20 minutes later. Today I'm proud to say I got in a shower and went and picked up my new eyes.

Small victories.

Speaking of which, it's getting about that time for me to go.

Cuba!

Be forewarned that this post is probably going to contain a lot of pictures. Also, blogger and I don't really get along so they might be all over the place depending on what blogger decides to do with them.

plane

My sister and her fiancé decided to get married in Cuba. I wasn't going to miss my sisters big day, so we hopped on a plane and went to freaking CUBA.

looking at planes

Once we arrived in Cuba we had to find our luggage and then get on a bus for an hour drive in the dark to our resort. We got there and were pretty tired from the flight and all that so we didn't do too much the first night. But here's a gecko thing. They were everywhere at night, every corner you'd walk around, one would be scurrying away.

He doesn't like paparazzi

towel art

We would leave gifts for the maid every day. Things like crayons, clothes, soaps because we were told they don't get a lot of that stuff or it was really expensive for them. So the maid would leave works of art on the bed for us.

Pictures of the resort:

Lounging on the beach:

Everywhere you go there, they drive old cars from the 50's because they haven't been trading with the states since then so there isn't many newer vehicles. We were told that many Cubans know how to fix cars because they'd have no car to drive otherwise.

We went on an excursion, horseback riding. It rained pretty much the entire time we were there. Everything got soaked, so I ended up trying to lay out all my money to dry.

R: CUC L: USD

Every night there was a performance of some kind. This one is water acrobatics.

more towel art

I found that the sand was quite different there. It was definitely softer, finer than our sand. Also going swimming in the ocean once you've been horseback riding and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes is very refreshing and cleansing feeling as the salt water sears your wounds.

horse drawn carts everywhere

huts with no glass windows

more huts

We went to the Pasquera market that was walking distance from the resort a few of the days we were there. One day we took a double decker bus into Guardalavaca to a bigger market.

more old cars

On our last day there we took a tour of the city of Holguin (pronounced HOLE-GEEN CITY).

City of Holguin

Hill of the Cross looking up

Hill of the Cross looking down

The Hill Of The Cross was a place Pope Frances (if I remember correctly lol) visited recently.

It really is a spectacular view of the whole city.

We also got to walk around downtown Holguin and visit some shops, see the locals.

And here we are on our last day, walking out to our plane.

Goodbye Cuba

It really was an experience none of us had ever done before, and who knows when/if we will ever do something like this again.

When we arrived back in Canada it was about 1:30am. We waited for all our luggage, and I got my Gramma situated to catch her shuttle, then we got on ours. Normally it would be about two hours to get home from the airport, we got home about 5am as it was the first snowstorm of the season. Welcome back to Canada! lol

Musical

This summer our family was able to go to two concerts. Unfortunately not all together, but still was fun.

For the first show, I entered a facebook contest to win three tickets to see Walk Off The Earth. You're supposed to tag two friends, so I tagged my friend Nikki and when she saw it, she also entered to win and ended up winning the tickets! So she took me and another friend and we had such a blast!

I would have taken the kids if I had won the tickets. It was a great show and we got to meet the band and I got my CD signed as well.

Next up was Taylor Swift. I had entered a contest previously to win tickets and I knew my kids really wanted to see her because they'd been trying to win tickets earlier in the year.

So the radio station called and kind of got me out of bed. I was a bit out of it and didn't know how to respond so I sounded pretty goofy on air. I don't have a single clue on how to upload the audio clip I asked the radio station for, so I guess that's out lol you either heard it on air or you didn't.

The end result was that I had actually won only two tickets to see Taylor Swift in Toronto. So I got online and got some friends and we started writing Taylor Swift on Facebook and Twitter and tried to get our hands on one more ticket in so many ways. I couldn't really afford a ticket at that point most everything was either sold out or very expensive and nowhere had tickets anywhere near where our tickets were going to be.

Eventually someone reached out to me and said that they were taking their daughter (which knew my kids) and that they could watch over mine while at the concert. As our only option, I took her up on it. The Rogers Center employee that helped me out was amazing. He took me and the girls down to where we needed to be to meet the other mom, then he escorted me back out.

So I now had a couple of hours to waste in downtown Toronto. So The Old Man and I walked around and enjoyed Ontario's capital.

Although it was hectic to begin with, getting down there and getting the girls inside, all in all it was a good night.

Sorry, I got no pics of T-Swift lol

Terrible

The point in time where you haven't so much as looked at your blog in months...

That's me, right now.

It is a constant struggle to juggle all the things in the summertime, between the car, the kids, the work and the other work, and the other, other work. Add a boyfriend in the mix too, and well, there you have it. Non productive in the writing department.

Things to come, or topics to write about in the (hopefully) near future:

• Halloween
• Thanksgiving (maybe)
• TayTay in TO
• Big News
• Other, other job
• Gushy mushy shit
• Sing It All The Way
• Beta
• Jane
• Camping!

That's a pretty long list... stay tuned!

Edgefest - Short and Sweet

For the first time in my life, I finally was able to see Our Lady Peace in concert. It feels pretty amazing to have finally done something that I've been wishing to do for the better part of my life. And it was fan-fucking-tastic.

I planned to stay at a friends house the night before and hung out with her beforehand. It was calling for rain the entire day, but luck was on my side and I didn't have to use the poncho I purchased.

Finally arriving to the place and after circling around for what seemed like 5 hours (read: 20 minutes), I finally just chose a parking spot which happened to be almost beside my friend I was looking for.

Time to ROCK

Just inside the gate, and with drinks

I decided I wanted to remember this forever so I took a photo sphere lol its much cooler when you view it on my phone because as you move around, and look into your phone, its like you're there.

Photo Sphere

Lastly, although I took a great many videos, this one is my favourite. Raine Maida said that they weren't going to do an encore, because there was a curfew on how late they could play, they were going to play until the absolute latest. The last song was Clumsy, the best end to an amazing set list. I had body surfed to get the front of the crowd, and was only inches away when Raine came out into the crowd. unfortunately I don't know how to upload the actual video, so this is what you get.

Clumsy

FACK

Holy Shitballs it's been a while. By a while I mean, forever.

After being discouraged on the car, there was a happy ending.

I have much to write. So many ideas, so little time.

The anniversary of Gramma's death was not long ago and I wanted to do a piece on that. Then the conclusion to the alignment plus the trip to the track and show. After that, there's The EDGEFEST.

See? All of the things to write about.

It will be soon.

On the edge of your seat yet?

Who am I joking?

fack.

Winter Driving

At last, I remembered a topic I wanted to write about!

People like to make fun of me because I have this ability to get into car accidents easily. My first couple of years driving, I got myself into quite a few accidents. I was then deemed a "bad driver" by most people, including myself. I believed that I was a horrible driver for a long time.

I now believe I was mostly wrongly accused. In the beginning, I chalked it up to being a novice driver. While the beginning of my life driving and accidents associated could be said I was a novice driver, the rest, not so much. Therefore I just figured I was a bad driver.

Looking back on just the last few years of my life, I have been in far less accidents and received far less tickets. In the matter of tickets, I actually went over year with not a single one, until I was driving my friends car on the highway one day in the spring and was paying too much attention to the idiot tailgating me rather than my speedometer.

As far as accidents are concerned, the only one that I feel the most fault for is the first one. I blogged about it a long time ago, and unfortunately can't link to it as it's been archived. I lost control after a major snowfall (driving a manual), it was my first winter driving and it wasn't plowed. I should have slowed down more before trying to turn the vehicle.

The rest are mostly history, but thinking about them, I have felt that in every instance I did my best, and did what I could to avoid them. In the few most recent ones (by recent I mean years ago lol) I was hit by another car.

There is always the "what if's" but I don't blame myself for them. Anymore. I was hit and I couldn't have done anything about it.

All that being said, looking back the last few years, I have noticed some things. I didn't realize how bald my tires had gotten until someone pointed them out. I avoided many accidents, in some pretty bad situations. I have spent a lot of time driving in the last couple of years. I drive many more kilometers every day than anyone I know (unless they commute to the city).

I'm not a bad driver. I just don't have great luck or the perfect circumstances most of the time. I have had plenty of practice and I have learned how to avoid collisions very well, even with bad luck and crappy circumstances.

Recovering

This weekend I had a Halloween party. It was originally my friend Yandie's party, but she had to cancel due to obvious reasons. So it was weird that she wasn't there. I did visit her on Sunday in the hospital.

This weekend seemed surprisingly long. I get Saturday and Sunday off which has been absolutely glorious and I have felt I've used them all wisely! The party was Friday night, and I'd say a good 15 or so people showed in total. Not all at once, but most stayed a decent amount of time, some left earlier than others, some showed up late, but all in all it was a good night. I was definitely on the edge of complete and utter foggy intoxication.

I had a friend here for the weekend. Saturday was very much a hangover day. Unfortunately the "Kids Party" was from 1 - 3 and luckily not many RSVP'd and even less showed up. Some cleaning got done, mostly lying around being hungover. That evening a friend of mine had asked if we wanted to go out with her to the bar as they were doing a second weekend of Halloween festivities. So we went and did that, and my friend actually won a costume prize, so that was pretty cool. I opted not to drink, as I was still a little hung over from the night before. Seeing as I wasn't drinking, I might as well drive everyone.

Upon leaving the bar, my locks didn't want to work. I really thought we were screwed. I used a lighter to heat up the key a few times and luckily I was able to unlock the door. It's rained quite a bit here, and with temperatures dipping below the freezing mark I guess my locks are moist. I really wanted Jane to be away last week, but the beater hasn't had much love going for it and I'm not sure when it will be on the road.

On Sunday, we slept in again (time change yo). The Boyfriend and I worked on the beater and got the exhaust all welded up. Then the girls and I left for the big city to visit Andie, as The Boyfriend left to go deer hunting for two weeks with his family. I've heard of one small buck being shot so far.

The ride down seemed to take forever, trying to park seemed to take about the same. Finally after being parked and finding The Well Traveled One, we had some dinner. I had Thai mmmmmm I want more! We took the subway downtown, the girls were very interested in the trains and how things worked. It didn't take long before they were just like everyone else lol

Kids on the subway

I only visited about a half an hour with her before leaving. She seemed like she wanted to sleep. So we toured back to the subway and went back to the yorkdale mall where we found one store that was open so we wandered around a bit. I bought a book, and we left. One relieving stop on the way home, and that drive seemed much faster. Probably because I had company in the passenger seat to talk to.

Now today, among other things I have to do, I want to get this place back into order. The Boyfriend tidied up a lot on Saturday but there's still a lot to be done.