Life's Whirlwind Adventures

Arriving in Vancouver at my friend's house was a surreal experience.  In all the time that we had been friends, I had never actually stayed over at her house.  So this was a virgin experience for me.  We had a lot of plans and a lot of things we wanted to get done but there were a couple things that had to be done at a certain time so we worked out our schedule to work around these events.  We also had to hope that the weather would co-operate, let's just say that for this prairie girl, Vancouver weather is not very desirable.  But Friday dawned and it was bright and sunny ready for us to get up and explore the area that my friend called home. We walked down to Victoria and looked at all the stores on the street.  We bought some groceries from the stores and then headed home to have breakfast.  Let's just say the eating habits on this trip left something to be desired for my dieting and workout regime but holidays always seem to screw with eating habits.  The markets on V

Ok I admit it, I have too much shit!! Too much stuff that is cluttering up my house, stuff that needs to find a new loving home, stuff that I can so do without because it is in the bottom of some bin in my basement and has not seen the light of day for years.  So why am I holding onto it??  You got me? I even got two new cookie sheets a couple weeks ago and instead of tossing my old cookie sheets I just added the new ones to the old ones, like I would ever use the old ones again. Well maybe I would for camping but then they don't need to be in my cupboard anymore.  And my basement is a natural disaster zone, you can't walk through it without stubbing toes on stuff.  I also have too many clothes and need to purge my closet.  It's hard for me to do this, because I am sure that I will wear some of these clothes again, but maybe if I just get rid of them I won't worry about having to wear them again.  The same could be said about my shoes.  Now my shoe collection is not a

May long has forever been a weekend of great apprehension for me. It's the weekend that is supposed to kick of summer and for the most part I always find it falls flat.  If I go camping it rains or, worse, snows.  If I stay in town it's hot out and I wish I was at the lake.   Never since I was sixteen have I had a great May Long weekend, it's kind of like New Year's Eve, so I decided to make a change this year.  I decided I was going to go to Vancouver to visit friends.  I found a great deal on Westjet and I booked my flight, made arrangements with a girlfriend to set up my jewelry to do show one night and it was all set to go.  A week before the trip one girlfriend said she couldn't do the show anymore so I asked another friend who said she was willing.  Then it was about planning out my trip, setting up things I wanted to do while I was there.  Some of the things that topped my list were going to the Ocean and Stanley Park.  I also wanted to see some of the sigh

Winning the lottery, or creating something that then offers me the luxury of making millions of dollars is a dream many people have.  I am definitely not exempt of this dream.  Often times I find myself daydreaming about all the places I would go if my bank had a higher balance than it does at this point in my life, Greece, Hawaii, Scotland, Ireland, Norway just to name a few.  Purchasing a house or houses and reliable cars and paying off debts would also rate high on the list.  But, it is the philanthropy that I would find the most fulfilling.  Having an exuberant amount of cash in the bank would greatly change any one's life, and I know exactly how my life would change. The travelling bug bit me at a young age, I am not sure if it bit me so much as embedded itself deep within my psyche, but I love to travel.  My trips have taken me across the western states and across Canada, but I have never crossed an ocean or been on a tropical vacation.  Having a surplus of money in the ban

A few weeks ago I had posted on Facebook that I made some delish bacon cheese burgers.  I had altered my bacon burger recipe slightly and just that slight improvement created a fabulous burger. Last time I made bacon burgers I ground up the bacon and it made the burgers dry.  This time, I only cut up the bacon into larger chunks.  It made all the difference. Here is the recipe as I did it with some pictures. 12 pieces of bacon 1 lb of hamburger 2 eggs bread crumbs Onions garlic cheese cut into cubes(optional) Take the bacon and lay it out flat on a cookie sheet.  Bake it in the oven for 10 to 12 minutes at 350 degrees. Take the bacon out and let it cool.  Prepare your hamburger as you would normally for regular hamburgers.  I use two eggs, bread crumbs, garlic seasoning and onions.  I mix this all up together with my hands to get everything mixed up evenly. Cut the cooled bacon into cubes and add it to the hamburger meat mixture.  Mix all the ingredients together.  You ca

In my life as a teacher there are a few tasks that I find mind numbingly boring.  They are tasks that I can barely motivate myself to correct or complete on any kind of consistant basis.  Some of these tasks are behind the scenes, things the students never see or encounter me doing in front of them, but some of them are obviously part of my planning for my classroom. It has focused me to think about some of these tasks.  Why do I find them so mind numbing?  If I find them mind numbing, what do my students think of the ones they are being asked to complete?  How can I make some changes so that we all have a better learning experience?  One of the tasks I hate to correct are assigned questions and worksheets.  HATE!!! I just hate worksheets, I know they are great busy work and a way to get the students to do something while you are planning something else, but seriously they are so tedious to correct that I often find I am ignoring them and I never get to them.  It's sad, but I k

I have recently joined Goodreads.com, which is a wonderful thing for me because now I can record all the books I have read, and rate them and if I ever forget, well hopefully there is an electronic copy of the list of books I have read.  I am trying to read 100 books this year, but we will see how it's going, I have read 29 books so far, if I picked books that weren't 1000 pages maybe I could read more, but I seem to like these long stories. I started rereading the Earth Children's series by Jean M Auel.  The sixth book just recently came out in hardcover and I was able to purchase it at Costco the other day.  It was perfect timing as I was on the fifth book "Shelter of Stones, and was really looking forward to the release of the sixth and final book.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this series, I have read the first three books like 4 times now, but this is my second time reading the 4th and 5th book.  All in all I feel this series is a great series to spend time reading

Throughout the year we have some great Hallmark holidays, days that society has dictated to society that they should buy cards for a special person. These days include Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and St. Patrick's Day seems to becoming one of these days as well. The only two of these that I feel are appropriate are Mother's and Father's Day. I agree that Mother's and Father's should be celebrated, and I love the cards I get for Mother's Day and the gifts.  I also love Father's Day, it was always a special day in my life growing up and now more so because Dad is gone do I find that I appreciate it more each year.  I am not a fan of Valentine's Day, for romance I much prefer that to be celebrated all year, not on a day I can see coming on the calendar.  Just a personal bias. Now I am hoping that everyone out there had a great Mother's Day, whether you are a mother or were just celebrating with your mother.  I had a fanta

I have recently joined Goodreads.com where I can rate books, look at what other people are saying about books and I can also share my writing on this site within different groups.  It's been a pleasure and blast having only been signed up with them for a week or so.  In one of the groups I joined they have a monthly writing contest where you can submit a story in a certain genre and the other members of the group can vote for their favourite. This month the main genre is romance with the secondary genre being fantasy.  Now either genre will be accepted so you can submit one story a month, but it has to fit into one of the two genres otherwise you are disqualified.  I decided I wanted to try to write a story that I could post and I wanted to do a romance story.  I love my chick lit stories about romance, but I wasn't sure if I could write one. It's not like a lot of romantic things have happened to me in my life. I mean really I am the girl that continued to go on a date w

The Do It Yourself Wedding Projects are driving me crazy!!!  I just don't feel that creative and sometimes it is just about enough to drive me crazy. I think I have figured out what my next project will be and I need to complete it this weekend.  The project is my wedding favours.  I am making 60 favours as I have about 50 confirmed guests.  Yeah for a small wedding sometimes wish it were smaller but maybe it still will turn out to be smaller. I wanted to do something for my wedding that would be personal to both Adrian and I and something that our guest could keep if they wanted.  That's when I started looking around my house for ideas of things Adrian and I both liked.  What were somethings we collected and displayed around our home that if people saw they would be like, oh yeah that's so Jenn and Adrian. We have a plethora of stuff in our house.  We have hundreds of DVDs, thousands of photographs, hundreds of books (mostly mine), tools (mostly Adrian's) and shot

I received an email a few weeks ago from lovely Mr. A, it had a bunch of short little notes just commenting on the state of society or events in history.  One said DearDear World, Please stop freaking out about 2012. Our calendars ends there because some Spanish d-bags invaded our country and we got a little busy ok? Sincerely, The Mayans Another said Dear America , You produced Miley Cyrus. Bieber is your punishment. Sincerely, Canada and still another said Dear Osama Bin Laden, Marco.... Sincerely, United States I must said the produced some giggles from me.  I enjoy funny emails, but if you didn't know the context of these jokes they might not be funny.  How funny would it be if Bin Laden had responded Dear United States Polo ....... Sincerely, Osama Bin Laden And now we are dealing with the death of Osama Bin Laden.  How do you feel about it? I am personally relieved, but it was not something I was thinking of every day.  Every once in awhile some rogue thought wou

I am a proud subscriber to MacLean's Magazine. I love getting that magazine in my mailbox, it is so much fun and it helps to make me feel like I am staying on top of the news, which if I am honest I don't do that often, hardly ever really will you see me watching the news.  I know bad, bad girl, I should watch the news more, but I just don't it's depressing. A couple weeks ago the cover of MacLean's magazine had a picture of the Pope and the title asked if the Pope was Catholic.  It intrigued me and I kept it around hoping to have a chance to read it.  Which I finally got to do at the breakfast table as I wolfed down my cereal and it was a really interesting article.  I should preface this to say that I was a little disappointed when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benidict XVI .  I did not have a lot of faith in him, and felt that he would be a very conservative pope which would not necessarily be the best thing for the Catholic Church especially since th