Ah, the long weekend! What a wonderful thing.

I was worried I wouldn't be feeling up to doing much, as I started to feel pretty lousy on Thursday, and even went home early from work on Friday. But yesterday was better, and today I feel fine, so hopefully whatever it was has passed.

Aside from the Lord of the Rings casting announcement, not much happened this week that was newsworthy. But yesterday Karen and Gill came down, and we went to Mandarin for lunch, did some shopping/browsing up Yonge Street, and then came to my apartment for picture viewing, CD listening and video watching, which was all highly enjoyable. I need to get the Altar Boyz CD now. Oh, and Jason Robert Brown's as well. A couple of pictures are attached at the bottom, courtesy of Gill:

Me, Gill and Karen

Me and my Tiger!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Brent Carver! Gandalf! Lord of the Rings!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

That is all.

So I am back from the dodgeball tournament! It was quite a production, I've never seen anything quite like it. There were about 100 people there, on a family farm, and they had bands and food vendors and a tent city, and a dodgeball court constructed from hay bales and wagons. Unfortunately our dodgeball team was not very successful (we lost all three of the rounds we played), but the day itself was a lot of fun. It was an absolutely beautiful day weather-wise, and we also played volleyball, and I wandered through the barn and met some of the animals.

When we arrived back in the city this morning, we went for breakfast at Sunset Grille, and then I've been cleaning my apartment ever since. There were lots of things I've been letting slide for a while, and I finally got some of them done. So it was a productive day, even if not a very exciting one. And now that I've actually done my floors, I can get back to reading more of Harry Potter!

I wish it wasn't time to go back to work already tomorrow. :-( This week is not looking too exciting, so if I don't post in here for a while, you'll know it's because nothing is happening!

Yay, it's Friday!

This week has gone pretty quickly. I finally started reading the Harry Potter books, and am really enjoying them. I'm about halfway through the third book at the moment, and the only reason I'm not further is that there have been some other things going on as well!

Yesterday was a "Hawaiian Summer Fun Day" at work. It sounded like a pretty stupid idea, but actually worked out pretty well for me - I got to spend an hour and a half handing out punch and leis while people arrived, and then in the afternoon we had a silly relay race, and my team won! So I ended up with $10 in Tim Horton's gift certificates. All in all, it could have been worse!

Last night I went with Peggy, Jenn, Michelle and some of her friends to see "The Taming of the Shrew" down at the Beaches. It was a pretty good production, but the theatre is set right beside the lake, and it's a sort-of tent concept with a big opening behind the stage. While this was lovely for the set, the mosquitoes were absolutely terrible, and really distracted us from the show.

This weekend I am going to a dodgeball tournament just outside London (Ontario)! It should be interesting - I'll post with details when we get back on Sunday. Have a good one!

This has been a pretty slow week here - my major excitement is that I found out they are opening a Spring Rolls restaurant just down the street from our office. That's going to be so fantastic, it's my current favourite restaurant! Now I can just pick up take out on my way home .... hmmm, maybe that's not such a good thing, at least not for my wallet!

The doctors think they may have finally found the source of my mom's problems over the past year and a half, which is good! Unfortunately it's going to require surgery, but if it makes her feel better, it will definitely be worth it. She's still waiting to find out when the surgery will be, but we're hopeful it will be as early as next month.

I am going to be spending this weekend just cleaning up around my apartment - with all the exams and everything else going on, it is really a disaster zone, so it's going to be quite a project. And I am already procrastinating on it, at 9 in the morning. :-) Have a good weekend!

As promised - here's me as a blonde! :-)

Whew, it's about 34 degrees outside, and feels more like 40 with the humidity, and it's supposed to stay that way all week - we certainly can't complain about not having any sunshine this summer!

Luckily it wasn't so humid on the weekend, though it was certainly warm. I wore tons of sunscreen though, and managed to come back without any real burning. Jenn, Michelle, her boyfriend and another friend and I all went down to Nathan Phillips Square in the afternoon where they had a bunch of art exhibitors with booths set up. We wandered through that for a while, and then checked out the Second City comedy stage at Yonge & Dundas, which wasn't all that funny, unfortunately. But Peggy and Shannon joined us there, and then two more met up with us at the St. Clair site, where we listened to a bit of jazz and then went and had supper on a rooftop patio with opera going on in the background.

After supper we walked up to the Eglinton site, and after finding the Big Heads (which were not nearly as big as I'd been hoping), we retired to the beer gardens for a while, just catching the end of Jeremy Fisher's act, and then making our way to the front of the crowd for East Village Opera Company (well, I made my way to the front, and the rest sort of followed by default!). EVOC was great!! I had missed them when they were here in the winter, so I was really excited to see them perform, and they didn't disappoint. Tyley was awesome, and the whole band is so enthusiastic. I really loved it, and everyone else enjoyed themselves too. I said a few words to Tyley afterwards, and then they all ended up at the same bar we did, but we were pretty beat after a full day in the sun, so after one drink it was time to call it a night.

They said they will be back to play the Mod Club in October, so I will definitely have to go there, and I'm sure some of the others from our group will join me too.

After all that excitement, I slept in yesterday and spent a lazy day just playing on the computer and watching a couple of movies (I joined the Columbia House DVD club, AGAIN). Today I'm still pretty sleepy (is it the weather?), so I've been vegging since I got home from work. Yeah, I should be doing something about my inbox, but I have a feeling it's just going to be an early night instead.

I'll try to have some pictures of my new hair up in the next couple of days - it is really blonde! I guess I must admit Zorana knows what she is talking about. :-) It's going to take a little while to get used to, but overall I really like it.

This weekend is the launch of the Hallmark Christmas ornaments! Sure, some might argue mid-July is a tad bit early, but I'm pretty excited about it. After all, Christmas is only 167 days away!

A few sombre words before I get on to my usual trivial babbling. Obviously I was very upset by the bombings in London yesterday. Anything like this is so unbelievably senseless it makes me angry and frustrated and devastated and sad all at the same time. And yet, I wasn't that shocked. It certainly didn't compare to the feeling I had when I heard about New York. Does that mean we're at a point where we expect this kind of thing to happen? If so, it's really sad. All my best wishes are with the families of the victims, and especially those who still don't know where their loved ones are.

And moving on to the trivial stuff...

I know I promised New York pics, but I'm not quite that organized. Instead, I will give you pictures of my Tiger! Surely that's just as good. :-)

And, I have also finished my Russia photo album! Hooray!! Check it out: Russia pictures. I haven't added a mini-album to the photo section of this site yet, but I'll do that when I do my next re-design of the site, which will be in a few weeks.

At the moment, I am in the process of bleaching my hair - after a few attempts at lightning it using various blonding cremes, Zorana finally convinced me that peroxide is the only way to go, so I am giving it a shot. Cross your fingers!!

Yesterday Peggy and I went to see War of the Worlds. It was quite disappointing. I mean, the story was well told and all, but there wasn't really any point to it. We were both left with a "so what?" kind of feeling about it which was pretty unsatisfying. And there were some pretty disturbing parts too.

Tomorrow is the street festival, and it's turning into an all day thing, since we're going to go down to Yonge & Dundas and Nathan Philips Square during the afternoon to check out things down there, and maybe to a club once we're down with EVOC. It should be a blast! I'll post all about it later.

I guess that's about all for now, I better go wash this stuff out of my hair. Here are the pictures of Tiger - have a good weekend!

Yes, I am alive!! I can't believe I only made two entries in here in June. You must think I'm living some fabulously exciting life ... yeah, right!

I have just gotten through the most horrible long weekend of my life. Absolutely glorious weather for all three days, and the only time I left my apartment was to go to work for a couple of hours on Saturday. The rest of the entire weekend, not to mention the past two days, was spent studying insurance concepts for my last two exams, which I wrote yesterday and today. Thank God they're over!! Truly, I don't know when I have been more miserable. And it was self-inflicted! I was re-reading a journal entry from last July, where I was theorizing that I would have to complete 5 courses in 3 terms if I wanted to finish on schedule (so that I could graduate this winter), and saying that I didn't think that was very likely. Well, provided that I pass the exams I just wrote, I have actually done it. What the heck is wrong with me?

I don't think I've completely realized that I am free, but it will hit me soon, and then there will be rejoicing. :-) To celebrate, I am going to see War of the Worlds on Thursday. I wanted to go opening night last week, but nobody was free to go with me. And I should have been studying anyway. This time will be guilt free! On Friday Zorana and I are going for lunch at Mandarin, and then on Saturday, Peggy, Michelle and I are taking in Summerlicious as well as East Village Opera Company playing at the Toronto Street Festival two blocks from my apartment. Sweet!

Tiger and I made a return visit to the vet to have his blood work done. They didn't find anything that might be causing his heart murmur, but did find evidence of early kidney disease. I'm not surprised - it's very common in older cats. So it's likely that this will eventually kill him, but they said he could still have years left. I am taking this news remarkably well. I guess I do realize that he will have to die of *something* at some point, and this is not the worst option. Not that I won't be a wreck when the time actually comes, of course. So now we are just waiting for the results of his rabies test (it had to be sent to Kansas!), and he will be pretty much good to go for moving to the UK!

Let's see, did anything else happen in June? Well, I went to a work function at Skydome, which I've been to the past couple of years, and it was a lot of fun again. Peggy and I also went downtown on a Saturday night and went to the Madison, where we harrassed the piano man to play our favourite songs, and then stopped along Yonge Street for wings at 2 in the morning before heading home.

Check out my cousin Erin's new blog! Even if she did mispell my name. ;-) She's been in South Korea for the past year, and is now contemplating spending some time in Spain. I am highly jealous.

I've been working on my Russia photo album, but am having some trouble deciding on a layout that I like. Hopefully it will be up in a matter of days though. I should also have a few more pics from New York in May to share with you in my next entry.

And now, since I was up at 3:30 this morning to study, I am going to go to bed. And forget everything I ever knew about binding authority and effective management and claims incurred to equity ratios!