Kristel @ QCW

and I can’t find it, and it’s huge, and gross, and oh god I hope it isnt crawling on me!!!  I noticed it on my lampshade, but it being rather soft, and the bug being soooo big (like 3″, so big!) so I swatted it off.  It flew to  my curtains.  Not wanting bug guts in my new curtains, I tried to get him off.  I did… and now I can’t find him.  And it’s freaking me out.  You don’t just let a huge beetle roam your apartment while you sleep.  So now I’m playing, Kristel, Beetle Hunter… and losing apparently.  I wish I wasn’t so freaked by bugs.  Especially since I’m pretty sure there’s no poisonous beetles in Canada, though I’m pretty sure it’ll go all smelly when I do squish it… and god it’s big, so cleanup won’t be fun!

So freaked, can you tell?

Going to keep looking, was just hoping my texting could coax it out.

(You know what the worst thing about knowing there’s a bug in your apartment?  Your skin gets all super sensitive, and everything little thing makes you think it’s on you, even though you’ve checked like 3000 times just to make sure nothing’s there.)

Update:  Well, it’s well past 1, and I’ve been hunting for 2 hours… and I can’t find it.  So either it’s gone, or just really good at hide and seek.  i even went so far as to change my bedding just to make sure it wasn’t in there.  I have no idea where it is now, I just hope I won’t wake up with it anywhere near me, or worse, have one of those I-was-sleeping-with-my-mouth-open-and-swallowed-it incidences.  (oh man.)  I’m hoping it’s between the glass & screen when I closed one of the windows, and not on my curtains hiding somewhere I missed, and I’ll wake up with it still there.  The only bad news, outside of the bug potentially still being in here, is in the process I might’ve mixed up my fabric stacks for my quilt, so i’ll have to lay them out all over again just to make sure everything’s right.

Happy Canada Day!

I’d go into some patriotic Canada thing, all about our elders, John A. MacDonald, the railroad, Canadarm, Terry Fox, and so forth, and how great that all has been to help build Canada today/Cancer Reasearch… but well all know that stuff — you came here to read about my day, not Canada’s, right?  (And like I said, we know this stuff cold, it’s been drilled into us since we entered the school system, so the history lesson can be skipped.)

So why was today stacked?

Stacked Rag Quilt Squares

What are you looking at?  (besides a stack of fabric of course…) you’re looking at 168 6″ squares for the rag quilt I’m doing.  I figured, I’m throwing out all those old jeans & sweatshirts anyways, might as well try to rag quilt them, and if it doesn’t turn out, the only thing that was wasted was my time, which considering my life is definately boring, said time isn’t worth that much, so to waste it is fine.  Anyways, I was hoping to get it all done today.  That didn’t happen.  It took HOURS and HOURS and HOURS to cut all that fabric.  I’m putting the jeans on the back of the quilt, and the sweatshirty fabric on the front.  Yes, I realize the jeans will fray (in traditional rag fashion) and yes, I realize the tshirt will actually curl onto it self.  I figure by putting it on the front, the curling wouldn’t get in (or around) the fray so much, or at least I don’t think so; plus the Jeans can handle more wear, and I’m thinking the back of the blanket always gets the most wear.  Now all I have to do is sew an X 84 times, then sew the squares together, and then cut the seams… oh man that’s sounding like a lot.  I could definately do it all in a day, I just didn’t think it’d take so long to cut squares.  But maybe my short attention span played into that… it’s very repetetive cuting 6″ squares over and over and over.  At least now I’m pretty good at it, and most of them are, at least towards the end, actually 6″ square instead of off by a little bit (which as it’s a rag quilt, doesn’t matter.)

Unfortunately, because I was cutting fabric all day, I didn’t do much else.  Watched the fireworks from my window though… I’m thinking I had the best view only because I didn’t have to be out in the rain.

Made Choco Munch (aka trail mix) today as well.  You can’t taste the cocoa at all, so next time, I’m thinking I’m just going to leave it (and the sugar to balance it out) out of the recipe.  You really don’t need it.  The rest of it was good though. (the rest = cheerios, shreddies, almonds, raisins, and some white chocolate chips for good measure.) The recipe told me to wait until it was all cool before adding the chips… I waited until it was *almost* cool, and the chips kinda half melted, but it’s definately better this way.  They don’t know what they’re missing.  Sure mine looks a little messier, but it’s soooo much better.  Totally worth it.  If you wanna try it out, I’ll post the recipe.

Yesturday I was trying to find frozen bread dough. Sounds simple, right?  Yeah, aparently not in guelph.  I couldn’t even find fresh dough at any of the local specialty stores.  Looks like I’m going to have to resort to pizza dough for the reunion, because making my own bread dough is just so… time consuming.  And yes, I know I’ve made a statement on how my time isn’t worth that much, but when you spend all this time kneading and mixing dough, it seems to drag on, and it seems to me that if your time is dragging, the task you’re doing is worth less than your time (does that make sense?  i’d go back and try to fix it, or at least my run on sentences, but it wouldn’t be worth it.)

I think that’s it for tonight.  Happy Canada Day!

I got a new plant today.  I’m 99% sure it’s a bromeliad… I think.  But it’s got this white sort of powdery, yet kinda just dirty stuff all over it!  Which is what’s throwing me off.  Should I be wiping it off, or letting it be, or going to my nearest garden centre for… mold helping spray stuff…?

Ha.  Gallery.  how fun.  even if it is only two shots.  not sure how it’ll look, but wordpress wouldn’t make it look bad.

So any ideas on the white stuff?  Oh, and is it like most… tropicals?  As in, keep it moist, and in sun, and it’ll like you?  I’m going with yes… and after some mid-post research… the intarweb agrees with me.  Too bad I’m still not sure about the white stuff.  At least the research did tell me that it’s okay to let the baby grow off it for a while (aparently until it’s 1/2 the mama plant size) so it doesn’t have to be moved yet.

Hooray!    I finished them last night, and when I got up this morning, on the brief moment the sun was actually shining, I noticed that my room wasn’t nearly as hot, or bright as without them.  (as planned!)  So happy.  Pictures are below…

Curtains Closed

Curtains Opened

You will notice that it did make the room dark enough with the curtains closed for me to need to use the flash!  They might be a little girly, at least heart-shaped anything, shamrocks or not, does seem girly to me, but I’m the only one who lives here, and they’re not *that* girly (hey, they could be pink!)  Not bad for $3.99 a meter, eh?

On a sidenote, you’ll notice the new poll.  it’s the best I could do in the 10 seconds i decided to think about it, to make it Canada Day themed.

…is in Guelph!  Or at least will be within 3 hours.  I’m not watching the show, but as the show is at the Ragin’ Caygeon’s, and there’s no way they’re going in through the front door, I’m thinking I’ll be able to watch them enter the building if I watch for them.  I’d take a picture, but a) it’ll be dark by 8pm considering how much it’s pouring, and b) generally I think those nearly-paparazzi shots are pretty lame.  Theory of a Deadman!  Whoot!

On another note, working on my curtains.  Should be done before bed.  I was going to use that hem tape to save myself from having to sew a straight line, but the canvas is a little too dense I think because the tape is peeling.  Oh well, the point is, it should be done tonight, so I won’t get up with the sun tomorrow morning, and might be able to sleep in until 8 if I’m lucky.  Will take a photo when finished.  Oooh, and then you can see my new nightstand and the paintings from Ikea!  the paintings look like they’re hung too high, but when my bed’ll be under it in the winter (or that’s the plan) they’ll be right, so I’m not too worried.

My martini print fell down the other day.  It was a very scary crashing sound.  Not the point.  The nail fell right out of the wall… and I used the special 3-pronged picture hanging kind too.  This time I used the 1-prong with a longer nail, and we’ll see how it holds up.  The problem with the longer nail is that it hits the steel between my walls… so I can’t get it in as far.  If we’re lucky it’ll hold up.  If we’re not, well… let’s not think of that just now.

Did I mention it’s pouring?!

There was a *really* close thunderstorm this afternoon.  very very loud when you’re on the 9th floor.  It was sooooo close, it shook everything and several things fell off my shelf.  Thankfully, this building seems well constructed enough that nothing’s leaking, or broken, or on fire, etc…  (ha, living with a fire seems just so ridiculous.  man I need to be getting more sleep…)

For those of you who are interested, Michelle says she’s pretty much recovered.  So that’s good news.  And she got two awards for her diploma!  She told me what they were, but not what they were for (high grades, dedication, etc.) so I can’t tell you.

Harry Potter!! Soon!  (Okay, I’ve been *very* good about not mentioning HP in nearly all of my posts.  Give me a break!)

Family Reunion’s this Sunday.  Should be good, as long as the weather’s nice and we don’t all have to fit in my parents’ house.  (not that there’s that many of us, but still…  There’s hm, let me count… um… 22? since Margot & family aren’t coming… and that’s of course assuming people aren’t bringing along any others that we don’t know about.)  Dad’s also *promised* that we’ll do the majority of the hanging out in the backyard.  That is, no parties on the front yard/porch in our lawn chairs with a table of food and the bbq going, while my dad makes remarks at everyone passing by, who look at us like we’re nuts, oh, and completely redneck.

Anyways, think I better get back to my ironing before I have to move the board to the living room since my bedroom doesn’thave an overhead light.

*update*  Curtains are done!  a whole inch shorter than intended, but they were too long intended anyways, so I’m happy.  (possibly even happier now that I’m lounging watching Big Bang Theory )

Sick and tired of deleting new, stupid, spam users.  So I took the registration back off.  If you want an account for some reason, let me know.

Outside of that, not really annoyed.  Kinda content actually.  Maybe a little nervous that I’m now going to be some beaver leader and the lady I’m supposed to call isn’t picking up, and I’m wondering if it’s worth leaving a message to call me back tomorrow, but calling her during the day wouldn’t work so well because she talks soooooo fast that I couldn’t get her full daytime (work) number & extension.  I wasn’t even fully decided that I wanted to join Dad’s whole scouting thing, and now I’m in far too deep.  Because if I tell her I don’t want to, and I’m still not sure if I want to or not, Dad will be embarassed, and probably a little hurt by it, and then I’ll feel guilty.  I wonder if i’m mostly just nervous about mingling with some of my dad’s crowd, or even scarier, wearing my pants as far up, or as faded and 90’s as they do.  I’m not a huge fashion freek, but faded blue jeans up past my waist is definately on my not-good-fashion list.

I started reading the House of Night books.  Very good.  And about vampyres.  i’m excited.    I started on Wednesday night, and I’m into the last one (5) tonight.  Thankfully, I’m sure I’ll be done in a few hours if I don’t take a break to kill something on the xbox, so won’t be up past midnight like yesturday night (or early this morning depending on how you look at it.  My light was definately out by 1 though)  Anyways, if you liked the Twilight books, you’ll like these – they’re kind of the same thing, the vampyres of course being differently defined and spelled, but their language is a little more coarse, and the attitude sometimes feels more like Jacob and less like Bella… but I guess you’d have to have reached farther in the Twilight books to get that reference.  I’ve been told I should read the Sookie Stackhouse books yet, but i’m thinking I should wait.  Still have a bunch more books sitting on myself that are dying to be read – either because I haven’t read them in a while, or because I picked them up during, or shortly before, my Twilight Obsession and they’ve been partly read if at all.

My bookshelf is still sitting here.  My dad was supposed to come take it away today.  That didn’t happen.  So it’s still here.  And in the way, and ugly and broken.  Oh, speaking of broken things, I was cleaning out one of my boxes today, and found the wheel that was broken off in the move off my old nightstand.  So I fixed it, and put it under my desk, and now I have a filing system that consists of more than just throwing my bills and such in either my kitchenaid box, or one of various canvas bags.  Speaking of Canvas, my curtains still arent’ up yet.  surprise surprise.  I’ll do that tomorrow, assuming Hunted is finished by then (and it will be)  the scary part is that I’ll have to wait a few months for the next book, and it’ll be like waiting for HP all over again, except maybe a little better – if only because it’s still new, and HP I’ve read sooooo many times the books are falling apart and I’m sure I could recite several of my favourite passages for you if I felt the desire, but I don’t, so I won’t.

This post was supposed to be how annoyed I was.  Hmm, I guess just removing the registration took that all away.  Who needs meditation to feel relaxed and completely neutral?

Listening to Go Go Go Joseph… there should really be more to this comment, but there’s really not.

K, been writing for far too long… time to go back to reading.

I read far too much!

On a sidenote, before I go, haven’t heard from Cemetery Guy.  Probably good thing.  If he did email me and was interested, I’m not sure he’d have much sense, and you know I couldn’t possibly go out with a guy with no sense…   (shhh, no telling.)

I like making up words

Moved my bed under the window (which surprisingly makes my bedroom feel bigger) and slept with the window wide open, and when I got up, I had a bit of a sunburn.  Fantastic.  (note the sarcasm)

Curtains will go up tonight!  Regardless of whether they’re the new ones I have to cut & hem, or whether they’re my old ones that I’ll have to dig out.  I forgot how bright my apt was in the summer.  And hot too.  But I can start the a/c if I want, and that’d probably fix that problem, but I’m stubborn, and I made it through yesturday without it, and the longer I wait, the less my hydro will be.

Have to do laundry today, but there’s a 50% chance my amazon package will arrive today.  It was scanned in Kitchener at 1am, so it could have made it out with today’s delivery.  I just don’t want to be downstairs switching loads when they come.  I have sooooo many problems with my post office when it comes to picking up/mailing packages.  When it comes to picking them up, I generally get a notice in my mailbox two or three days after it’s arrived, and sometimes, since I do watch my tracking numbers, I go to pick it up, pick it up, and then I get the notice two or three days after anyways.  So guess i’ll wait until 1:30/2:00 to start, assuming the washers are free then.

Been playing Assassin’s Creed.  I don’t totally suck, but I’m certainly not the greatest either.  Trying to collect flags for informer quest thingy and in the 2:00 I collect 7 of the 20… yeah, so maybe I do suck.  At least at this quest.  Kind of annoyed that in this city I can’t jump across the roofs as I could in the old one without notifying any guards.  But that’s how you make things hard, right?  So it kinda makes sense…  Graphics still pretty awesome.

Been getting telemarketing calls from some place in NH.  I call them back, they don’t have an answering machine.  Fine.  So last time I called, I clicked the “9″ to “lower my interest rate” just so I could talk to someone.  He says, “Great, you’ve decided to lower your interest rate”  I tell him, “No, I want to be taken OFF your call list.”  He hangs up.  WTF!?!  So now I don’t know if I’m off the list, or whether they’re just going to sell my number off to someone else.

Speaking of my package… like a couple paragraphs back… It just came!  Hooray!

So I should start laundry now then…

As I told the delivery guy, “Have a nice day!”

Oh oh!  Almost forgot (well, I did if you’ve read my post before I update it) Haven’t seen you guys for a while, did you want to come down again?  Not this weekend, but sometime within July?  Let me know!

Dad came over, and he screwed the bookshelf into the safety thing, and the safety thing into the wall, and now the bookshelf doesn’t move.  The doors went on, straightenend, and we’re good.  There’s a bit of a gap between the two doors, but it really isn’t that bad, so I’m happy.

He fixed the one drawer for me, and now I’m happy.  Aparently I just didn’t have the muscle to pry off the top.  But now it’s off, and on the right drawer this time.  And it’s all been put together.  I doesn’t fit in the space I want it to, so there will be a gap between the wall and the nightstand, but I’m happy.

Too bad the old bookshelf didn’t leave with dad, but maybe I can hide it out of the way until he comes next.  The a/c came out of my closet today (though it isn’t installed, I just dragged it out) so maybe it will fit in there.

I was cleaning out my old nighstand and found a postcard at the very back addressed to my old physics teacher in highschool.  I thought to myself, “I should mail this to him, he might laugh.”  I tell Mom of my great plan, and she tells me he’s dead.  What?!  Aparently he died when I was knee deep in exams one year and she didn’t want me to get upset that my favourite teacher died, when I’m already so stressed, so didn’t tell me, and forgot about it when exams were over.  Gee thanks Mom.  At least I didn’t mail the postcard.

Anyways, I think I’m going to go clear off my bookshelf so when Dad comes it’s all ready for him to screw the new one to the wall, and take the old one away.

It’s father’s day.  I’m at Dad’s (and Mom’s)  Waiting for Uncle Harry & Aunt Renee.  I hope they’re here on time because I’m starving!  Up again at 5:30am, because the sun is soooooo bright sooooo early.  Have to make those new curtains soon.  I’d hang up the old ones, but I’m thinking I’d just get lazy and those new curtains would never get done.

Dad says he can fix that drawer.  Of course he hasn’t looked at it yet, but I’d like to think he’s right.  Worse case Scenario, I’m thinking we cut the top off of that plastic, and then pull the drawer back off, and then either trim it down or push it farther into the wood.  Either way I’m thinking I’m fine.

The bookcase is mostly assembled… correctly I might add.  But those doors are heavy, and my carpet’s uneven, so I’m thinking installing the security thing on first would be a good idea.  I’m thinking we’re going to have to drill a couple more holes though.  The doors they sell fit the top half or the bottom half perfectly… including the shelf in the middle.  Which means if I want doors on both halves, well, they overlap for a shelf width, which would be bad.

Bought Dad some books for father’s day.  He hasn’t opened them yet, and he doesn’t seem to want to yet, so I’m going to have to wait.  Hopefully he doesn’t have them, because shipping them back to amazon doesn’t sound like fun.  We don’t know if he got Grandpa a gift — normally he does and we just put Jeff & I’s card on it with theirs, but this year… all I know is he has a card.  He thinks Grandpa’s given up on giving us gifts, so why not on him?  I don’t really like that idea, especially since Grandpa has alzheimers, and forgets things within minutes.

Speaking of Grandpa… he went for gas, three blocks away, an hour ago.  Hmmm… Maybe Dad should be going to find him…