20 questions

Okay, I did not think these up. I swiped them off the Blog of note 'Someday I'll Get There' and she swiped them off someone else's blog for the very same reason I swiped them off of hers...because they're fun :o)

1. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Hmm...a mom for as long as I can remember. Then I also went through singer, teacher, ballerina, jockey and actress.

2. What have you done in the past week to help someone else?
Uhh...held doors and gave up my seat on the bus, washed the table in the activities room at the museum.

3. Who is the best-dressed person you know? Probably my cousins Eran and Krystine...and why can't I get rid of this underline thing?

4. What is on your nightstand?
A picture of my boyfriend and I, my battery powered alarm clock, books I'm reading, My jewelry box and a little Giddeons bible. It's a big nightstand :o)

5. If you were a cat, what kind of a cat would you be?
Gee, I think my cats have it pretty easy as the picture accompanying this post once again attests.

6. If you lived in a house surrounded by acres of trees, what particular type of tree would you want flourishing on your land?
Crab apple trees, hands down. They're so pretty when they bloom in May and the smell divine and then you get all kinds of birds in them when they come and eat the fruit.

7. What do you find to be very overrated?
Those oversized sunglasses. I find they look rediculous.

8. How many email addresses do you have?
Uhh...McGill e-mail, Oratory e-mail, Hotmail which I only use for stuff I consider less important since it kept screwing me over and people would sometimtes not find my e-mails until they emptied their spam, Yahoo mail which replaced Hotmail as my primary e-mail and Gmail which I got in case Yahoo goes belly-up.

9. Have you ever felt replaced?
Yup, a couple of times.

10. Would you rather watch football or baseball?
Uhh, hockey? But if I absolutely had to choose between just those two then definitely baseball because football bores me to tears.

11. What is the wallpaper on your phone?
The ocean.

12. Name a lyric from the song you're listening to.
I'm not listening to a song right now, I'm listening to classical music on the radio...as I do 95% of the time.

13. Do you use a feed reader?
Uhh...too new to the Blog thing. What's a feed reader?

14. What chocolate do you always leave in the box?
Leave a chocolate in the box? Are you KIDDING me? lol

15. What would you do if you found out your ex is engaged?
Uhh...which one? Okay, so the only two of consequence: for the first one I wouldn't be surprised as all, he's been dating the same girl for six or seven years now. I'd be really happy for them. The second one, I'd be kinda incredulous and hope the girl has more in common with him than I did and that she really knows about all his bad habits if he still has them.

16. Do words hurt you?
Oh yeah, definitely, even though I try not to let them. The whole sticks and stones thing is also very overrated.

17. Are you a talker or a listener? Is it ever possible to really be both?
Oh yes, it's very possible to be both because I'm both and I know lots of people who are both.

18. Have you ever walked on the beach at night?
Yes, it was awesome :o)

19. Who is your favorite professional athlete?
Saku Koivu.

20. Which TV show have you seen pretty much every episode of?
The X-Files, Road to Avonlea, Third Watch, CSI New York, Little House on the Prairie, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, The Adventures of the Black Stallion and ReBoot.

Spring has sprung

Sooooo, after months of cold and snow, Spring seems to finally be here (touch wood). Almost all the snow has melted, the grass has started to go just a little bit green in some some places and LOOK! There are things GROWING!!! Impossible to tell yet whether these are tulips or daffodils, but that was of little importance to me when I spotted them on the way out of work at job #2 this afternoon. I was just happy to see things coming back to life after months and months of cold and promptly began looking for buds of every tree and shrub I passed. Unfortunately I didn't see any, not that I was too surprised, but I promise to keep an eye on these flowers and let you know as soon as they're identifiable :o)

Here's another thing about Spring: the weather clears up incredibly quickly! This is what the Oratory looked like this morning when I showed up for work. Yikes, eh? This is actually quite a common sight when it's cloudy and either raining or has rained. The Oratory is the highest point in Montreal, so it doesn't take much to hide it from view when there are clouds around. It looks like this at least once a month and is partly cloud covered at least two or three times a month. It's still very impressive to see such a huge building practically hidden by the clouds though, it still gets me every time and I'm glad that I finally managed to get a picture of it!

Here's another fun picture I took Downtown this afternoon. I just love how you can get awesome shots like this thanks to skyscrapers, you canget such amazing reflections out of them, and you can see how, as I said, the weather can change very quickly here in the Spring. The skies cleared out like this about a half hour after I got that picture of the Oratory. Pretty amazing, eh? I was sure it was going to cloudy and misty at least until the afternoon!

My furry feline friends

So, for picture's sake this weekend, I'm decided to write about my cats, all three of them. Cinnamon was my first cat who passed away in November 2007. He was my 'dream come true' cat, the one that I was able to finally get at the age of nineteen after having wanted a cat from the time I was able to form coherent thoughts. He was ten when I adopted him and I had spotted him on the website of a cat adoption agency. The uncanniest thing was that his name was Cinnamon, the same name that I had given to a stuffed cat that I was given for my sixth birthday and he was, as you can see, a ginger tabby with white paws, just like my stuffed cat. We were clearly made for each other :o) Anyhow, I spotted him on the site in April of 2003 and was enchanted by him and I felt so sad at the thought that probably no one wanted him because he was older cat. So I kept checking the site day after day and then one day my mother told me that I could have him if I wanted to, so I contacted the woman running the agency and a few days later he was mine. We had a wonderful four years before he fell ill and I had to let him go. I was heartbroken when we had to say goodbye, but I already knew that I wanted another cat when I eventually got my own place, which happened a lot sooner than I expected.

In February of 2008, my oldest friend's younger sister, who was an animal care technician at a West Island vet clinic took in a cat who was expecting kittens that had been found wandering around Île-Bizard. That cat was Quinn, my lovely blue cream toirtoiseshell and she ended up having five kittens, four males and a female. The first time my friend took me to see them I said 'You know I can't take one, my mom doesn't want another cat in the house!' Well, I saw them and I said 'Fine, I'll move out and take two.' lol So I did, within a month I had found an apartment and I moved out on the first weekend on June and took Quinn and her only female kitten with me. I named the kitten Magique and she chose me by falling asleep in my purse and my hands on my third visit to them. She's turned into a real looker, and she and Quinn get along very well and make very good companions for me...even if Magique can be a bit of a brat :oJ

So there you have it! If anyone has any pictures of their pets they'd like to share or stories about them, feel free, I'd love to see and hear them!

Butterflies Go Free

Hi there!

I'm so busy with work these days that I don't have much time to post. Sorry...I had to post today though, I just couldn't help it :o)

I went to the 'Butterflies Go Free' exhibit at the Botanical Gardens today. I make a point of going every year, despite the fact that I can now only go on weekends and invariably end up spending an hour and half to an hour and three quarters winding my way through all the greenhouses in an incredibly long line to finally make it to the butterfly greenhouse. It's well worth the wait though and the greenhouses are pretty and I can tale pictures all the time I wait, so it's not like I'm standing in some dull line at a cash register or amusement park doing nothing. I always thoroughly enjoy the experience and I find it so relaxing to see the butterflies, I don't even mind that there's a crowd...well, except when they step into my shots lol

Here are a few pictures I took today, I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them :o)

My place of work

Hello all,

So I had to go into work today, a Sunday, from 9:00 A.M. to noon and was none too pleased about it when I woke up this morning suffering from 'Spring Forward' sleep deprivation after having failed to go to bed early last night...failed miserably actually, try 1:15 A.M. 'Spring Forward' time. So my body thought it was 12:15 when I put my light out and 6:00 A.M. when I got up, ouch...Plus it was cloudy and misty out and when i finally made it out the door, on time may I add, my bus which was supposed to come at 8:52 went by just before I got to the bus stop...at 8:47. What a jerk, eh? So I started walking to the metro station at a pretty good clip and had the bus in view the whole way there, figuring he would stay stopped at the station for five minutes to let his schedule catch up with him, which is what they should normally do and always do when I'm sitting on the bus GOING HOME and just want to get there already. Nope, he just kept right on going. DOUBLE JERK!!! Plan B for when the bus system fails me miserably, I took the metro from Snowdon to Côte-des-Neiges station and walked to work from there. Unfortunately instead of being on time to work as I should have been, I punched in at 9:18 . Eeek, can't wait for my boss to see that tomorrow, luckilly I'm normally very punctual, so she shouldn't be too hard on me over it. Anyhow, I got to work out of breath and sweaty and grumbly, but my mood improved quite quickly once I was there. It was Sunday, people were cheerful and prayerful and the place was even more full of positive, hopeful energy than it normally is on a weekday. Yup, you read right, prayerful. For those of you who don't know, I work at St-Joseph's Oratory and have for the past 6 & 3/4 years (will be 7 on May 28th). I love my job, absolutely love it and no matter what other job I do and how cool it is (I recently started working as a tour guide at the McCord museum as well) I will never love another job the way I love this one. How can I not love when, like today, I walk in there grouchy and within minutes have a genuine smile on my face. The Oratory has brought me so much over the years, comfort when I've been going through tough times, wonderful friends, amazing colleagues, but most of all it showed me what truly makes me happy in life: people. I love being around them, working with them and sharing my love for the Oratory and it's story with them. I truly have a passion for the Oratory and the goal its founder Brother Andre had when he built it, to give the people of Montreal and the world a place to come and find hope that their problems, no matter how big or small, would be solved if they just had enough faith. That's what I like to share with people I give tours to at the Oratory, how the Oratory started out as a small glimmer of hope in one small, frail man's heart and grew to become a beacon of hope for people of all ages, cultural backgrounds and religions (I have given tours to buddhists, Sikhs, Protestants and people of the Jewish faith as well as Muslim children).

So folks, if ever you're having a hard time, and you're open to the idea give the Oratory a try. You don't even have to pray or be a big time believer, or even a believer at all, you can just come and sit quietly for a while and think, you won't find a better place for it. The Oratory is huge and as long as it's not between March 10th and the 19th, Easter or Christmas, I can guarrantee you'll be able to find a nice, quiet corner somewhere and you'll come out feeling at least a bit more peaceful :o)

9-1-1 grandparents

No pictures with this post folks, sorry...but I hope to give you a good giggle and some of my photos will come soon!

So I set out this afternoon with my little grocery cart to go and buy litter and canned food for my cats. It was really nice and mild out and I had been looking forward to the walk. I got to the store and took an 18kg bag of litter and the usual 18 cans of food and put it all into the cart and went back on my way, thinking that I might not enjoy the walk home as much as I had enjoyed the walk to the store since the cart was pretty darn heavy and I had to pull it uphill all the way home. I crossed Sherbrooke and got to the corner of my street and went to cross it so I'd be on the side of the street my apartment would be on when I got to it. I stepped off the curb and the cart followed me one wheel at a time, but then I heard a crack...the left wheel of my cart had broken off and pieces of it were were scattered on the corner. Uh, oh...there was no way I was going to be able to carry the stuff all the way back to my place and the cart was going to go nowhere on one wheel. So I pulled out my cell phone and called my grandmother, who was most disapointed to find out a wheel had broken off the cart since she was the one who had gotten it for me (I was most strongly opposed to having a cart for the longest time because I only ever saw older ladies pulling them around). She asked me where I was and then told my grandfather who said he would come and rescue me in my stranded state and he was there about 15 minutes later and we put my wounded cart into the trunk and he drove me home and brought my cart in for me after agreeing with me that there was no saving it. Despite my original reticence at having a pull-cart, I have to admit that I really do hope to have another one soon...hopefully with more solid wheels that will allow me to go on and off of sidewalks without them breaking and stranding me, because the next time my grandfather may not be home to save me :oJ

Snapshots of my world

Hi all,

So here we are, another site for my photos. I think I've finally found the solution to my photo posting issue. I finally see to have found a place where I can post as many pictures as I want without having to worry about running into a 'free account' space limitation or my pictures getting swiped off of Facebook and used for an ad campaign without my consent or my getting any money for it...this hasn't actually happened to me, but it has happened to Adam which is why I very rarely post any really fantastic pictures on Facebook, just wacky party pictures mostly ;o)

So here's what I'm going to do, I'm going to start posting pictures in archives and each time I post pictures into that archive I'll explain what inspired me to take them. It'll make it more fun for both you and I and it will give some insight into my 'creative process' :o)

Enjoy!