Older than the Ganges

Intradermal injections are a tricky thing; in the past I've had RNs who have refused to give them due to the degree of difficulty. You could imagine my concern when I saw the walk-in doctor looked like the walking dead.

As I waited for my name to be called, I wondered if it would be rude to ask for another doctor. I grew more worried as he called for each patient with a small, weak voice (not even leaving his desk to do so). He finally called my name. I took a deep breath, walked into his office and prepared for the worst.

He seemed to come to life as he greeted me at the door. He even clapped with joy upon discovering that I was done my build-up shots. He tried to stay very organized as to not confuse the bottles. Very sloooooooowly he set the bottles, needles and papers in place. I tried not to giggle as he farted loudly with every shuffle.

Just before the first needle, the phone rang. "Always ringing!" he shouted. He picked up, exclaimed "I have no time for that! I'm busy shooting!" and I tried not to giggle.

Fiiiiinaly after the first needle, he pointed, clapped and shouted "There look, perfect!"

As I was leaving, he noticed my name on his papers. He told me his cousin has the same last name and asked if my family was from England. I explained they were actually from the Ukraine but the spelling of our name was changed when my great-grandparents moved to the US. "If anyone asks, you have relations in South Asia. Goodbye, cousin!"

Most adorable doctor, ever!

Dream Home: Art Deco - Guest Room

Click to embiggen

Full disclosure:

• The fairy poster is Art Nouveau
• I changed the colouring in several of the pieces so they match better

but it is my dream home so I can do what I want.

Dream Home: Art Deco - Dining Room

Hmmm, I'm not entirely happy with this one. I don't know if I'm just annoyed by how difficult it was to colour correct the silver objects* but I might have to redo it.

Click to embiggen

*Silver objects reflect their surroundings so the lamp was purple, the candle sticks were brown and the tea set was yellow. I did the best I could.

Dream Home: Art Deco - Living Room

This is actually the 3rd inspiration board I made for my dream home in Art Deco. My second inspiration board was made using my favourite pieces so it would seem anti-climatic to show anything after it. Saving the best for last...

Click to embiggen

Dream Home: Art Deco - Front Entrance

I've been in a creative funk as of late. I've taken a cue from Dooce's inspiration boards and decided to create some of my own. For several years I've been collecting pictures of art deco furniture as inspiration for decorating my future home. BBC Home describes the style of Art Deco as

• Geometric and angular shapes


• Chrome, glass, shiny fabrics, mirrors and mirror tiles


• Stylised images of aeroplanes, cars, cruise liners, skyscrapers


• Nature motifs - shells, sunrises, flowers


• Theatrical contrasts - highly polished wood and glossy black lacquer mixed with satin and furs

Here is my first attempt at an inspiration board:

Click to embiggen

I'd appreciate your feed back and let me know if you've created your own inspiration board.

Cleverness Found

Eights years ago, I lead a professional development workshop at another high school. I took less time than expected to prepare so I started thumbing through magazines left on the teacher's desk. I found on a scrap piece of paper stuck stuck between the pages. It read:

Politics is the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a close resemblance to the first.

Take a lesson from the weather: it pays no attention to criticism

Health nuts will feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals, dying of nothing.

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again. :)

#1 Thing I Have Learned: Never take life seriously, nobody comes out alive anyways!

The nice thing about Facebook

is I can hide all the posts of the idiots that I'm too polite to unfriend. Seriously, once upon a time if you found someone annoying you could avoid them. With social networking it seems like you can never get rid of anyone.

30 Days of Living Strong

Over 6 weeks ago, I began a post about my frustrations with food allergies and meal planning. I was tired and frustrated. Before I finished it, my sister suggested that I need to keep track of what I eat and then decide what to do.

A month ago, I set out to find a computer program that could help keep track when I came across Live Strong's Daily Plate. Not only can it let me keep track of what I eat but also my daily fitness (as required by my physiotherapist and chiropractor). I enter in foods I eat and the activities I complete everyday. I can then view my "Food Diary" and see all my entries for the month. Here is the entry from today:


A by-product of tracking my foods, I've been learning a lot about portion sizes, calories and daily recommended intake. For one thing, I don't consider myself to be a big meat eater but I still consume more protein than needed


I'm not content with simply filling my stomach. I want to give my body what it needs to function properly. I'm considering getting a paid account so I can track nutrients as well as calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, sugars, fiber and protein.

In short, YAY me for keeping with it for a month!

My food goals for myself

• reduce my intake of refined sugars


• eat more fruit and vegetables


• eat more food made from scratch


• return to a more carefully planned rotation diet

My fitness goals for myself

• reduce my resting heart rate


• strengthen the muscles of my left hip


• strengthen the muscles of my left shoulder girdle


• be "at level" in my Pilates classes (Reason: see previous 2 points)


• reduce the need for chiropractic and massage therapy appointments

Let's hope that I can keep with it and meet my goals.

How many points are fractional Scrabble tiles?

For WEEKS, I've been having problems with the Facebook Scrabble app:


The bottom part of the board is from a game my mom and I are playing. On top of that, when I put Scrabble tiles on the board they disappear.

Beware the Lion in Waiting

I've been trying to install OS X Lion since yesterday. Today, after many hours, I was at least able to purchase it. It has been sitting, waiting for over 3 hours now to start to download.

When Beautiful People Look Bad With Mustaches: Part 2

Happened to be looking up some info on the cast from The Killing. I came across a picture of Joel Kinnaman


This is what he looks like on the show


I realize that he plays a recovering drug addict but can't that be accomplished without weaselly facial hair?

Part 1: When Beautiful People Look Bad With Mustaches

Happy Father's Day!

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Janice who was the first child,



first grandchild,




and first great-grandchild*.


She was so blessed to have such wonderful men in her life.

Happy Father's Day!

*At least on one side of the family

One of THOSE People

I realise I haven't written in a month but to be fair I've been sick. Yes, I've been sick for the last month. I can't believe that I've become one of THOSE people who seems to be sick all the time. It started with dizziness then about 5 days later my ears started to ache. Convinced it was an ear infection, I went to the doctor that informed me that it was only viral that it could last 2-4 weeks.

After 3.5 weeks of not doing much but watching TV and improving my Tetris skills, I started feeling much better. This was following by 3 consecutive nights of not being to sleep very well which was followed by 2 very busy days and then I ended up being sicker than before. Bleh. I returned to the doctor in which I was informed, it is still only viral and all I can do is rest. Double Bleh.

Don't get me wrong, I love watching TV and I really am a home-body by nature but I'm sick of being stuck in this house. Yesterday I was feeling that best I have in a very long time. I was feeling awfully restless so I decided to go on the treadmill. I don't know what I did to my neck but by afternoon I could barely hold it up. On top of that I've had tension headaches the last two days*.

As far as the immune system goes, it really isn't a surprise how sick I've been considering the amount of black mold I've been exposed to over the last 3 years. I had black mold in my classroom in Calgary after a flood. After I quit that job and as I prepared to move back to Regina to return to university, I discovered black mold under my bathroom sink. Upon returning to Regina, I experienced increasingly worse migraines, fatigue and various other ailments. My doctor and allergist were just convinced that my immune system just need some time to recover until I ended up in the hospital twice.

Blog posts that I've started in the last month but intend to finish someday:
- Crush of the Week: Whedonverse Edition
- Memorable moments of each year of my life

Sorry this wasn't terribly witty or well written. If I want to get back to writing, I figure I just need to start even if it is awkward.

*I have no idea why because the most stressful part of my day is trying to get past level 9 of Tetris. It really is my own fault since I'm not an ambi-turner.

The people in your neighbourhood

For the third night in a row, there were some strange noises outside keeping me awake at night. Finally figured out that the neighbour has been doing construction work in the middle of the night. I've been hearing hammering and the table saw all night. Blah. I wish I was brave enough to go over and tell them to stop.

I realise I finished 3 sentences in a row with the word night but I'm too tired to care about variety in my writing.

Spam or just a creepy person?

Comment left on my blog:

Hello Dearest,
My name is Judith, I found your contact today and I would like to start a good relationship with you, if you are interested please contact me through my e-mail for easy communication and from there I will scan my photo and send to you. thanks from Judy.
God bless you.

Who wants to be a princess?

Have Royal Wedding fever? Always wanted to be a princess? Try the princess maker.



Princess Janice

One Ticket

It has never been easy for me to make friends. The "get-to-know-you" stage has always been the most difficult because I'm complete rubbish at small talk and even worse at flirting. I've had many close friends move away and others starting families. Instead of complaining about how I don't get to see old friends as often, I became resolved last October to overcome my nature and meet new people. Easier said than done...

I've met a lot of interesting people in the last several months that I would love to get to know better. My greatest difficult now is asking "Hey, want to hang out?" I'm always looking for the perfect opportunity that never comes. Case in point: I have an extra ticket to a Salsa night this evening. I originally bought two because I figure that it force me to ask someone to go with me. I did ask someone but there was a miscommunication as to when it was so now I have an extra ticket again.

There will be other people there I can hang out with tonight and I know I will still have fun but that really isn't my point. I feel like the ticket is a symbol of my current inability to "put myself out there". Did I have time to ask someone else? Yes. Did I have people I wanted to ask? Yes. I'm not sure if anyone of them would have been able or interested in attending but I certainly didn't ask to find out.

Even though I'm not talking about romantic relationships specifically, my situation reminds me of the Herman's Hermits song "No Milk Today":

No milk today, my love has gone away
The bottle stands forlorn, a symbol of the dawn
No milk today, it seems a common sight
But people passing by don't know the reason why

How could they know just what this message means
The end of my hopes, the end of all my dreams
How could they know a palace there had been
Behind the door where my love reigned as queen

It isn't a symbol to anyone but me. It probably doesn't bother anyone but me.



PS This is my new dress that I will be wearing this evening

A Blogger's Dilemma

I'm having an online identity crisis. Things have changed so much in the 3 years since I have been out of teaching. I've been thinking about this for awhile but I am really feeling like a need a non-anonymous online presence. The braveness started with posting links to my blog on twitter then on Facebook. It was hard to admit to people I've known my whole life that I had a blog for years. I've done a pretty good job of keeping my professional and private life separate online.

If I started new blog but how often will I post to the old one? What would I post on the new blog? Do I take some old posts and put it on the new blog?

Should I just scrap my current blog? I like a place to share/vent my silliness and certainly think it would be unprofessional. About a year after I started my blog, I had hundreds of visitors a day but now on a good day I don't even have a tenth of that. Maybe it should just be contained to Facebook?
Even though I'm Facebook friends with most of my readers, you just don't have the same control. On the other hand some of my best writing on this blog was about the hockey playoffs last year. This writing is not related to education but certainly not unprofessional.


Would you (all three of my readers) be worried about being connected to me using my real name? So many bloggers I know have worked so hard to stay anonymous. What happens when one is anonymous no more? My dad and sister are anonymous bloggers but would be no more if I did not handle things carefully.

SO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT.

There's No Rest for You Here (a haiku)

Saw dust in the air
Jackhammers beneath my feet
When will they be done?

Sweet, Delicious Nitrates (a haiku)

"Have bacon for lunch"
Beyond doubt, I have no choice
Scrabble foretold it


Current Scrabble game between myself and May-B.