Sorry for the completely uncalled for cold shoulder. I have a legit excuse though. First of all finals snuck up on me and pounced without warning so everything (groceries included) got put on the back burner while i studied my tush off. Then my computer decided to go KABLAMMO, which rendered me almost completely helpless. It ended up at futureshop being fixed for almost 2 weeks and it's still not completely back to normal. I could have still updated IF i could remember my log in info, which i couldn't UNTIL this morning! in a flash of brilliant christmas genius i rembered it and so i can get online and wish you all a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! unfortunately i have no pictures to share because i am on my Aunt's computer down in NY and it's doesn't host my pictures.  So I will wish you all a great christmas and i am now off to grab another cup of coffee and visit with my cousins. 

sometimes you just have those days

Today was a fun/interesting day. I decided I was going to knit myself a hat. I started out really well, for a first time hat maker, but the problem was the circular needles I was working on at first were way too long and were stretching out my work to the point where it was messing up my tension. So I started again. but this time the wire part of the circular needles were all screwy and bent, which made working with them a living hell. To fix this I boiled them in water and they are now sitting in between a tonne of books and printer paper flattening out.

Later on Johanna, Jackie and I met up to go to Fair November (a craft show) in the UC (university centre). It was a bit of a let down this year, usually it's great but it just seemed to be a whole lot of the same things. There were a tonne of woodworking, sewing, and jewelry, but not much else. There were very few food people, and one or two metal workers. sort of boring really.

Then the fun part of the day started, Jo and I went off to our foal watch orientation. For those of you who don't know foal watch is a group of volunteers who work 24/7 in the neo-natal intensive care unit in Guelph's large animal clinic. Anyways, usually this is a fairly boring routine thing. So we all arrive, Jo, my friend Brittany, and I were the only three in the orientation of about 9 who had experience doing foal watch. While were were reviewing/learning about naso-gastric tubes and how to feed a foal using one one of the girls standing right in front of me passed out! She completely collapsed to the side fell down and hit her head sickeningly hard on the corner of the cinder block wall! It was absolutely terrifying. There was a moment when she was crumpled on the floor that we were all sort of standing there thinking should we touch her? when she rolled over the "leader" of the orientation went over to her and asked if she was ok etc. She had the complete look of "who are you...who am I?...what's going on?" and wasn't answereing anyquestions and already had a gigantic purple lump on her head. The leader was trying to get her to talk, and then all of a suddden she decided she was going to get up, the leader was very nice and was saying "oooohhh, i don't think you should be getting up, maybe you should sit down" I was like ... wait a second here I have first aid training! so I walked up to she looked her in the eye and told her to sit down. VOILA! she sat! (boy can I command a group) anyways so, i started going through protocol; medic-alert bracelet? nope. Has this happened before? she couldn't tell me. Do you know where you are? can't tell me. do you want water? yes. ok got a fresh bottle of water from one of the girls. The bump was about the size of a ping pong ball now, so I told the leader to keep her down and keep talking to her. Brittany and I went to get ice...(luckily we were in a sorta hospital :P) Came back with the ice, she wasn't doing much better. So, Jo and I went and phoned First Response the on campus first aid team. Jo waited for them at the front desk and I stayed on the phone with emergency services, to keep them updated on her condition. the "first wave" of people came and I went to wait for the next batch. They came and took over the situation. Now what to do with the rest of the people, we felt really bad because everyone was just standing around watching. So, Brittany, Jo, and I lead the rest of the orientation! and we did a better job than the real leader if i say so myself! Hooray for us! First Response called a cab and sent her and her friend off to the hospital. Personally if you ask non doctor me I think she's gonna have a good concussion.

I also thought I would share some photos I took on a walk down to the speed river. It was so pretty the day I went, and there definitely wasn't as much snow as there is now.

What else would you expect to find on the banks of a river? duh! Coconuts!

quick photo post

Well, not a long post today. I'm sick as a dog, in bed, trying to study some econ for my mid term on Saturday. Unfortunately that's not going so well, I can barely breathe let alone study. So I thought I would post some photos from the Royal on Saturday. It was a blast, we ran into our friend Katie who was showing red angus cows and our friend Sara who was grooming for her sister, who was competing in the large pony championships.

I am a pumpkin god!

Hey all!

Halloween was a lot of fun. My friends and I went out to participate in "trick or eat" which is a campaign for the Guelph food bank. It's basically trick or treating BUT we collect non perishable food items for the food bank.....and some times we pick up some candy for ourselves.

Our apartment also got decorated. I spent the better part of an afternoon carving some beautiful pumpkins for our apartment.

the first one was a copy of Van Gough's "starry night"



The second was the lovely Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.



Clearly i am a pumpkin carving god....not to toot my own horn or anything :P

Tomorrow Johanna and I are off the the Royal (the royal agricultural winter show) it is in Toronto at the exhibition place. The have horse shows and cow shows and wheat exhibitions and chickens and all that wonderful stuff. They also have way more food than you could ever possibly eat...ever! and so many exhibitions and shops.

I've really enjoyed the commercial for the royal this year.

It's worth a peek if you have a minute to spare.

that's all i have for now, but i'm sure i'll have some lovely photo's for you from the royal soon!!

WOAH i fell behind.

Sorry about the super long time no updates.

School got a little out of hand and sl that needed to be taken care of. My first set of midterms are over and done with. Now the second round is winding up.

Since the last post life has been busy. Thanks giving was lots of fun, I got to go down to Montreal and hang out with family It was so much fun! My aunt and I went for a lovely walk and I got to take some wonderful photos.

This is one of my favorites I have. My camera has this lovely filter setting where you can choose which colour you want to show. Everything else gets washed out to black and white. very clever.

The next weekend I got to go to my very first NFL game. Boston vs San Diego. ... The one where the power went out. It was an incredible experience, so much fun. Plus I got to drive a Ford F150 home seeing as I was the D.D.

We tailgated before the game and got ate more than i ever thought was humanly possible.

This weekend I drove out to Burlington to pick up a budgie for Johanna's Brother and then we brought it to Chatham. The reason we did this is because Jo's brother had a budgie previously it was an untrained pet store variety that they picked up for 30 bucks or so. It unfortunately figured out how to weasel it's way out of it's cage and Johanna's cat killed it. All very sad. So Jo felt obliged to get her brother a new bird, except this time it was a hand raised budgie from a breeder it only cost 5 dollars more and is as sweet as can be. He'll sit on your hand and let you scratch him and everything.

So that's all that's really happened lately. now i'm getting ready for my second psych paper.

Guess who's 20?

A beautiful sunset outside my window.

I am!

Anyways so since the last post I have been very busy, the animal welfare forum was so good. It was a full day event. In the morning we had 3 speakers come in. The first spoke about the welfare of animals in the organic food industry. The lady who came in and spoke was from whole foods, which is an exclusively organic grocery chain. Basically the bottom line of the talk was that the welfare of organic animals in north america is lacking, but it's not quite the death pit most people make it out to be. Another speaker was from proctor and gamble's pet division. He spoke about the importance of different types of fiber in in dogs diets. The last speaker was a 3rd year veterinary student who had done work with vets without in Thailand. She spoke about the welfare of elephants in Thailand and how it differs so drastically from welfare here because of religion and culture. In the afternoon there were two more lectures. The first was comon surgeries, and what can be done to help prevent your pet needing it/ what the symptoms are. The other was how to better communicate with your dog.

Since the last post school has taken a hold, I had four tests in econ and 2 summaries and a paper in psych . Fortunately they were all the tests were online and not timed so i could use my notes and take as long as i needed. So it was more like 4 homework assignments.

Johanna and I have joined the rock climbing gym at school and we're having a blast with it. I'm not a huge fan of he walls but i really love bouldering.

On Saturday Jo and I headed out to XS cargo, which is a discout overflow/overstock store and we picked our selves up a DVD player for the apartment and a lovely roomba vaccuum. It's so nice to turn it on when you leave the house and come home to nicely vaccuumed floors. We've named ours Percival. We're strange like that. we name everything. Our plant in our kitchen is named Agador both of our computers have names. We're just strange like that :)

As always here are some lovely photos.

My birthday drink
2-3 oz pink lemonaid blended with ice
1 0z vanilla or regular vodka

Johanna and I bouldering around in the rock gym

Toast lazing around on my bed.

Getting into the swing of things

So, school has finally gotten into full swing. Econ is proving to be one of the nastiest courses I've taken. Fortunately as psychotic as my teacher might be, she is still excellent. She uses great examples and explains everything clearly. She is also very enthusiastic about everything she teaches so, I'm actually kind of excited to go to her classes.

Psych is good as well, the teacher is good not superb but still good. She basically reiterates everything we just read from the text but in different terms. So, If you didn't get what the text was trying to get across then the lectures are very helpful, if not then it's just a great way to emphasis everything again, or catch up on other work.

In other news our apartment is great, except for the fact that the people who had our phone number previously have a debt to settle with capital one, who keep calling at 8 every morning even though we were told we had been removed from their calling list, gah! So it's my job tomorrow to phone them..again.

I met with my CSD councilor the other day and she is really excited about me switching programs and said that my plan to take some of the base courses before I switched was a good idea. She said as long as I have a 70% average overall I will have no problem switching programs. Yay for me cause I have a 75!!!

I have a full weekend ahead of me. Johanna and I are off to ikea after classes tomorrow to get some curtains for our apartment. On Saturday I am at the farmers market bright and early and then at an animal welfare forum the rest of the day at the veterinary college. Sunday will be my workday full of nothing but econ and psych.

I have had some time to go out and take photos too, I had to make time because my apartment is right next to the OVC (Ontario veterinary school) fields, which means lots of horses and cows and sheep for me to photograph!

Three horse at Equine Guelph. The gray is for sure new since last year.

The one and only paint.

Took me a while to get this shot because the bee kept buzzing away but he finally sat still long enough for me to get a clear shot.


Our campus was busier than usual on Wednesday because the cast and crew of "the best years" were on campus. They film the whole show here so we are frequently overrun with cameras and yelling directors. But I thought it would be fun to snap a pic of them.

So, why the blog?

So, basically this blog is going to be a way of keeping family and friends up to date on what is going on in my life. I have a Heck of a lot of people who want me to keep in touch with them. Instead of sending e-mails to everyone I decided to just make a blog. I'll update on a semi regular basis, when exciting things happen. You can also "subscribe" to my blog so that it will send you a message when I update, that way you don't have to keep checking all the time. I'll also share some of my photo's with you to spice up this place.