everything will be alright

It was a pretty sedate long weekend for me, and not what I'd planned to do at all, but it still turned out to be an awesome one. Our plan was to stay with friends of ours at their cabin, which is about a 3.5 hour drive or so away, but that got scrapped when the forecast Saturday morning projected 30-35cm of snow there overnight with another 10cm the next day. There were supposed to be 16 of us there, and almost everyone pulled out aside from the 2 owners, who went out Friday night, and I think 3 other people. I feel bad because they're great friends of ours and it would've been a blast, but damn, that much snow is something to fear. Especially now, with snow tires having to be removed by April 30th (ours were off just before that), and given the remote location of the cabin (downhill and a few minutes' drive off the paved road = near impassable if we did get the snow) and the fact that Sara sadly didn't have today off like I did, we just couldn't do it. Most of the other people canceled too, but there's talk of going back for Labour Day weekend so I hope that works out. I really do love going out there, and have a blast every time I do, but it just wasn't meant to be this time round. The kicker is that while they did get some snow it wasn't really all that bad, haha. Oh well.

Instead we both stayed at home all day Saturday and relaxed. Having passed out at a decent hour on Friday night I was up by 9am and, once the cabin plans were off, I called my cousin. He'd offered a day in the city on Sunday after I helped him with some stuff, all expenses paid, to see a movie and grab a bite to eat, but we'd put it on hold after I told him I'd be gone this weekend. That was able to happen now, and we made plans for Sunday, with Saturday being a completely found day. I managed to get in some reading, along with a lot of Neverwinter playing (some with writteninsable and econ_cat, holla~!), and all in all it was a fantastic, relaxing day, just what I needed. On top of that, my uncle was in town from Ontario and he took us all out for supper, which was awesome, to celebrate my late grandmother's birthday. We did this the previous two years, with my mother's siblings making a concerted effort to gather for Nan's birthday on May 5th and to enjoy the time we have together after my Aunt Marilyn's unexpected passing at 54 in late 2010. Nan passed away in March so there wasn't a big, formal supper or anything, of course, but when my uncle came back this time we still rounded up everyone who was around to celebrate her memory. There were, gosh, maybe 14 of us I think? A big crowd, to be sure, and it was an awesome meal with my family, even if some of the food was mreh. The company was great, but some of the food was great and some not-so-great, and the service was pretty slow and lackluster; taking 10m to deliver drinks, when a lot of it was just plain beer and scotch on the rocks (for me :D) was odd, and forgetting glasses for those who asked, lime for one drink, etc. Things like that were common, and then the main meal was hit and miss, as my meat was fine but the side was small and not the best. Just a weird experience, but being there with family meant it didn't matter as much. After that I came home and played Neverwinter until I passed out, essentially, haha.

Sunday I got up early-ish, even after my late night of gaming, and drove to my cousin's house for 10am. He then drove us into the city from there - he lives about 15m away so I met him there, as the city is going the opposite way from us - and we spent most of the day in there. That was nice, because even just getting to chat with Terry is fun, and we haven't done that in ages. He's been sick, having had back surgery not too long ago and might have more in the near future, but he's able to at least get around more now. We hit up Chapters, where I picked up my only purchase of the day, the first book in a Neverwinter series that ties into the aforesaid MMO hehe, and then we had lunch together at Montana's. I forewent my usual steak dinner, partly because it seemed like they only had a lunch menu on and there was virtually no steak options on it as opposed to their supper menu, and partly because I wanted to try their ribs. I'd had a small portion of ribs with my supper the previous night, so I wanted to give Montana's a shot, and Terry had the same, and man. Deeeeeeeeelish, omg. That was a fabulous meal, then we hit up Best Buy and Staples so Terry could pick up some things before returning to the mall to see Star Trek: Into Darkness. No spoilers, but I liked it a lot. Maybe not quite as much as the first one, to be honest, but I'll see how I feel after seeing it a few more times. Definitely one I'll be buying once it comes out. The only bad thing about the movie experience was the renovations to the theatre, which left only one long ass line for food, and maybe they weren't expecting many people because of the long weekend (usually people go camping for May 24th but not us XD) but dang, it was slammed. So much so that even though we got there ~15-20m before the movie started, normally plenty of time for food, there was no earthly way we were getting popcorn without missing some of the movie. So we capitulated and went to the local drug store in the mall, picking up some chips, chocolate, and pop there, which was much cheaper of course but dammit, I love me some movie popcorn. Ah well. We left for home after the movie and I caught the 3rd period of the Bruins/Rangers game at Terry's place (go Bruins, woo!) before heading back home. Sara and I made an early night of it, kind of, going to bed between the 2nd and 3rd periods of the Pens/Sens game, and I stopped fighting it and quickly fell asleep after the first overtime of that one.

Today I was up early again, around 9am, and it's been a pretty sedate day. I mainly watched hockey when it was on, read some more of the recent Neverwinter book I picked up, and messed around with the Goodreads app, adding a bunch of friends and a ton of books into my library there. Tomorrow or later on this week I may try and unpack a bunch of boxes I've had packed for ages, both to try and clean up a little and to get them added into my library as well. We'll see that goes, no huge hurry for that, but it'd be nice to find some of my old things again. I meant to do some writing and a bunch of other things but alas, I was lazy. It was a nice, relaxing day though so I'm grateful for that, and now it's off to bed to catch the end of the game and maybe read a bit before sleeping.

Last but certainly not least, Happy Anniversary to my amazing wife and best friend, believeitup! Love you and here's to spending many, many more together. ♥

Hope everyone had a good weekend and a good Thanksgiving, for all of my Canadian peeps anyway! :)

I had a nice weekend, doing something different in going to Burin for the weekend, which is about a 3 hour drive away, to stay with some friends. My buddy Marc lives there, with his wife Charlene and their two kids, Amy, 4, and Billy, who turns 2 this coming Saturday. They have SO MUCH ENERGY OMG. Which, well, is to be expected, but haha, what a weekend. Highlights include Amy (who remembered me from last year when I was down) loudly proclaiming on my arrival that "I'm going to sleep with Mr. Jeff!" (she refers to everyone as Miss or Mister), instead of her Mom or Dad taking her to sleep, her being very disappointed to hear I was married and she didn't believe it, and her reaction to me telling her Dad she had chocolate on her arm too while he was cleaning up her face against her will - to which she said to me "YOU STOP THINKING ABOUT ME! YOU START THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF! >:|" hahahahaaofjkdalkdmalwawdl,k just wow, adorable. XDDDD So many other things too, too many to list, and Billy was great too but he doesn't quite talk yet, hehe.

I went down after work on Friday, after being stood up for a late appointment I made and stuck around to make rather than leaving early for Burin, rarar, so it was after 5pm before I finally gave up and left anyway. So not impressed, mainly because it gets dark here around 7pm or so now and it's a long, open, barren road with crap reception and many moose, so I didn't want to drive in the dark any more than necessary. Thanks to the no show and me not being smart enough to say eff her and leaving after 15-20m, I drove the last half in the dark or so. There were no moose around, thankfully, and not too too much traffic, so it was ok. I got there after 8pm and stayed until around 4pm yesterday, getting back home close to 7:30 or so. It wasn't quite completely dark but dark enough then too, a tiny bit of light left in the distance, but better than the drive down at least.

Last night I got to get in some beta testing for a game which I shall not name, hehe, and went to bed earlyish for me on a holiday night because I was just so tired from playing with the kids for almost 2 days. x.x Then today I didn't do much of anything, other than watching hockey and playing a bit more of the aforementioned beta, so that was nice. I popped into work briefly, but didn't do much, really couldn't bring myself to it and I may regret it tomorrow but it'll be ok. Tomorrow's a busy day, though, so off to bed as soon as I post this to read for awhile (have a book so close to being finished that I'd love to get through before I sleep) and then sleeeeeeeep. Hope everyone had a good weekend and that you're all off to a great start of this week too. :)

Another long weekend draws to a close. It's the second one in a row for me, after a three day work week in the middle too (we had last Monday off for Discovery Day and Friday past off for Canada Day). In short, this week is going to seem like an eternity, haha. XD Not that I don't have it coming or that I really can complain, but still, hehe.

It was a good long weekend, though of the two I had - Monday off versus the Friday off variety - I think I prefer the former. Friday is usually a decent office day anyway, though super busy, but Mondays are just positively dreadful. That being said, though, Friday was a good day to have off as it was the first sunny day we've had in literally weeks. Saturday (and today, apparently, though I've yet to venture outdoors) was better, but Friday was pretty nice. I went into the city to celebrate the holiday with friends, and we had a nice little house party, with a BBQ (not attended by my sister and I, who instead sought out the new wings place in town which was aaaaaaaaawesome) and drinks, then some guitar playing and singing, very fun. Curiously enough everyone went home by 12:30am. Maybe we're all getting old, I dunno, but then again the first lot of people apparently showed up around 4pm (we didn't arrive until 7pm-ish) so that makes sense too, I suppose.

Saturday was a gorgeous day, and I spent the rest of the morning after waking and part of the afternoon just relaxing with Joni and Alex in their backyard. Then, of course, I went to the mall to pick up more How I Met Your Mother and season 1 of True Blood which was cheap (I know, I know, but so many people have been bugging me to check it out, so who am I to blow against the wind? XD), then just killed time, really. My buddy Shawn was working until 2:30pm so I was going to meet him, however when I got to his place close to 3pm he was gone. So I went to my sister's to pick up the leftover wings (hmm, still have those in the fridge...) and head back home, only to get a call from Shawn saying he was home now. He'd left to go to Best Buy and such, which is what I wanted to do with him, haha. XD At any rate, I went back and we hung out for awhile, but he got a call from a mutual friend to go over for supper and, while I was invited, I was an absolute mess with no good clothes to change into so I took a pass and came home. I feel bad about that because I've not seen said mutual friend in ages but I was in no shape for it, and just wanted to get home and relax online for a few hours at least.

We did raid last night, which was pretty good but oh my god, so late. I didn't get to bed until 4:15am and it was pretty light outside when I did, which I hate. :/ We did accomplish something fairly big though, I suppose, the first take down of a boss on tier 2 that we've never done before (and only did once on tier 1 I think, hmm), which was great, but omg I was so tired. I couldn't leave though, or I wouldn't let myself anyway, because I had won a 1st age symbol (used to make an uber weapon/class item) earlier in the raid and I didn't want to just bail. It turned out ok in the end, though, but hoping to avoid ever running that late again any time soon if I can. At least in the winter it's not quite as bad because it's still dark, heh, but psychologically speaking it just messes me up trying to sleep when it's light out, do not want.

Other than that, not much else new to report. Still working on writing, and still sucking at it. XD I want to maybe try some things out today, if I can, but also may try to hit the office after supper, so we'll see. I have some letters to get out and such but nothing that's super urgent, so may just wait until tomorrow, time will tell. For now I should just run out and pick up the supper that I ordered, hehe, and see what I can do I suppose. May make another entry later, some things bouncing around in my head but gotta run right now. Hope everyone else is having a nice weekend! :)

Gosh, I haven't updated this thing in forever, oops. I've been pretty busy with work for the most part, and LOTRO when I've not been working, so you haven't been missing out on reading about anything exciting, I can promise you that. The only exciting thing really was my birthday, which mainly consisted of hanging out with one of my best friends (having lunch and supper together before he went back to the city) and getting to spend some quality time on the phone with my fiancée. ♥

Today I'm heading into the city to meet up with some friends for a party and maybe to catch a movie, though there's nothing playing that I really want to see, bah. And I really do want to sit in a nice, dark, cool theatre with some popcorn and just relax for a change, but no. Well, maybe yes, there's one or two movies that, eh, I'll go just for the experience of going to a movie, not necessarily that movie, you know? We'll see, there's a few other things I can do to relax and kill time in the city.

Which, yes, means getting away from the computer for a change and actually doing things, zomg. So off I go, and I hope everyone has a nice weekend. :)

It's been a busy week or so, phew.

The last half of the week I was out of the office, leaving after lunch (actually eating lunch in the car while driving, technically) on Wednesday afternoon for some meetings outside of the office, then driving to St. John's after supper that night to head in for a full day of settlement conferences in St. John's on Thursday, and finally a full day trial on Friday. I also managed to squeeze in an eye appointment with my friend who's an optometrist on Thursday afternoon between conferences, which was awesome, since I also got to have a quick lunch with her. I hadn't seen her since October so it was great to see her and catch up.

I stayed home Friday night and made an early-ish night out of it, then got up early on Saturday and headed into the city to meet up with a friend and to prepare for another friend's housewarming party that night, which we did. Then we were at said party from 5pm to about 12:30am, yikes. It was a pot luck so there was lots of food and lots of people, it was nice to get out and socialize for a change. Then I crashed at another friend's place, spoke to Sara on the phone for the better part of an hour, then slept.

Today I got up late and went to two matinees at the theatre, first seeing I Love You, Man which was awesome because Paul Rudd and Jason Segel rock, and because there was so much Rush in it, omfg. Then I saw Adventureland which was also really good, and more dramatic than I thought it'd be, but still really good just the same. In between I did a little shopping, and picked up a book at Chapters after both movies before heading back home.

Now here I am, unwinding for the rest of the night as I have another busy week coming up with two trials. They won't be very bad though, both are set for just 1/2 a day each, and not until later in the week. Then we get Friday and Monday off, so I have a super duper long weekend coming up, the first of the year, I cannot waaaaaaait. It'll be the last break before my big trip in May too so hopefully it'll help me get prepared for that as well.

Alright, now I'm off for some of that aforementioned unwinding. Hope everyone had a nice weekend! :)

For eight days you have to post something that made you happy that day. Tag eight people to do the same.

Is it sad that I can't think of anything that's made me happy yet today? Lately I've been swinging back and forth from upbeat, happy moods to bummed out, depressed ones, and I'm right in the middle of a down stroke at the moment.

Professionally, I guess I'm happy that the trial I was supposed to have this afternoon in St. John's, which turned into an Application to have it postponed, further transmogrified into the Crown withdrawing all of the charges against my client, so there's that. I get to bill out and close one file, though there are many, many left to look at of course. Personally... no, wait, I did have an e-mail from believeitup waiting for me when I got to work today, so that counts. Other than that, it's slim pickings, sadly.

I just want to go home and crash, or just lounge around, or something, anything than be here at the office. I'll probably end up getting home and getting on LOTRO to find my fiancée and stay there until it's way too late and time to sleep. Ugh, I need to do my Christmas cards too, some of them may arrive late now even if I miraculously get them done tonight and mail them tomorrow. I remember a not too distant time when I used to love doing cards, I'd send out 60-70+, and would sit down at the end of November doing them up, writing personal messages to all my friends and thinking back on memories of them all. Now I can't even get out the maybe dozen cards for people I have addresses for, the ones that responded to me asking for addys. What the hell happened in that span of time? I have no idea.

Oh, right, tags, hmm. Most of my flist has already been named, but I'll try to find some more. How about... avalonmissy, lethendy, _chibiko_, happy_melody, ms_firecracker, scifispice80, shinyandnat, and thoughtthestars. Apologies if you've already done it / been tagged, but I'm at work and/or too lazy to check, heh.

[eta] Ugh, sorry for getting emo all over your LJs, guys and gals. I'm better now, promise. And to make up for it, I'll add a few more things that've made me happy today.

· Getting to Court in St. John's and seeing the judge there today wasn't the normal #2 judge but the regular one from the Provincial Court out here, Judge Flynn, who is awesome and amazing. And he called my matter first, even though a prominent (and much more senior) criminal defense lawyer was present, heh. Annnnd in front of the audience and all the other lawyers I had all charges against my client dropped with the Crown backpeddling about how it had no case. Yeah, that's right, I'm that good. Spread the word, y'all.
· Since mom was in the city all day, she had no supper ready and asked me to pick up take out, which I'm eating as I type. Yeah, not healthy, I know, but it makes mah tummeh happeh.
· Listening to the awesome Vampire Weekend cd like 5 times (it's only ~30 mins. long) while driving in, around, and out of St. John's. Much, much love for this band.
· Last but not least (never, ever least), after writing this sucktastic entry and being left alone in the office and feeling like crap, I called my lovely fiancée and she, as usual, cheered me up immensely. Thank you, hon. ♥

Speaking of believeitup, she made her 2,500th entry today, so you should all go and congratulate her and tell her how awesome she is! :D

Brrr, it's cold here today. Which is to be expected this time of the year, of course, but still. I can't find my usual UNB Law hoodie so I've decided to bundle up in my Harvard one, which is nice and warm but a little snug at the moment. I think it might have shrunk, but there's an at least equally as likely possibility that I have grown. >.>

This weekend's been pretty good, I must say. Most of it was spent playing LOTRO, which was totally expected given the launch of the new Mines of Moria expansion from last Tuesday, and it's a lot of fun. You get two new classes to play, along with another 10 levels to gain on your higher characters and a huuuuuuuuge new set of areas in which to play, new skills, legendary weapons to work on, etc. So yeah, a lot there to do, though oddly enough I spent most of this weekend doing none of that. I mainly helped out girlyduck on Friday night with one of my mid-level toons and then hopped on my main guy to help run her new character through some tougher stuff. Then believeitup got home and we hung out but didn't actually do anything as we were both tired, so we just chatted over voice and then called it a night. Saturday was pretty much the same... I leveled up another midlevel character on the one shared account believeitup and I have so that we could use special cosmetic items for all of our characters there, and at the tailend of that girlyduck helped me out and then I returned the favour on my main again. believeitup got home then and all three of us played until girlyduck had to leave, so then the two of us spent the rest of the night on our secondary characters, getting them ready to head into Moria, which was nice.

Today I've just been laaaaazy, which is a recurring theme for Sundays. My best friend Shawn is home today and is staying home over night, so I'm going to hang out with him this evening for a little bit, and I should pop into the office for an hour or so before that. I meant to this afternoon when I got up, but of course even after my lovely fiancée went to bed at a decent hour I stayed up and just bummed around, downloaded some new music (including this Vampire Weekend stuff which I dig so far!), sent her an e-mail, then read for awhile before going to sleep. I think it was even starting to get light out then, and it's been awhile since that's happened with me. And then when I got up today, much later because of staying up too late, I've been checking e-mail, surfing, browsing forums, etc. until now and then I find out mom's on her way home from the city and she's picking up supper so I can't go to the office now. It'll have to wait until after supper, and then I have to see Shawn, and then I want to get home at a decent hour so I can spend a little more time with my girl before going to sleep and facing Monday morning once more.

Also, randomly, I got a new keyboard last week and I'm still trying to get used to it. I thought my old one was giving out, and it kind of was because I took it apart to clean it and some keys would stick and whatnot. This one still presents some problems though since I'm not used to the spacing and location of some of the keys, since it's got some slightly different setups on it (the delete key is two blocks tall instead of the one I'm used to and that moves the home and end keys, for instance, and insert is way way off tot he upper right XD) and it has some programmable buttons too (I made one for my Yahoo mail and one for LOTRO), which are nice. Overall it's a nice upgrade, and it effectively cost me $20 less since the boss gave us all a $20 gift card for Wal-Mart for Hallowe'en so I used it on this, so it's all good.

Anyway, I'm tempted to hop back on LOTRO before supper to try and get some of my new characters up a little, which I know is a dangerous proposition since once I'm in there it's hard to get out, especially if a certain someone also gets on before I leave, hehe. We shall see!

Ugh, can it be Friday yet? I ended up having a half lunch and coming back to work after supper until after 10:30pm (missing the start of Heroes which I didn't watch yet because of it, but as it's been eh lately I'm not too, too brokenhearted), and the rest of the week will be super busy too. I think once I put in a few more evenings I'll be caught up, or as caught up as one can be, so it'll be ok in time, it's just a pain in the butt now.

The weekend was good, I got to see a lot of people I haven't seen in months thanks to one of my friend's 30th birthday party and an early Hallowe'en party too. Which reminds me, speaking of friends and good times, I finally posted the few pictures I took from the NYC / Philly trip on my Facebook pictures for those of you who would like to see them. :)

Ok, I started this awhile ago but it's after 1am now and I'm too tired to keep typing, so I'm just going to say good night and leave it at this for now. More tomorrow maybe! XD

Just thought I'd post a quick update here from the office. It's almost 1pm and I normally head home for lunch at this point but I've got a telephone conference to make today, sadly. It'll be ok though, I don't anticipate it being a long one, and after that I'll take my normal lunch break anyway.

Things have been busy with work, super busy, but that's all part of getting ready to leave for a trip really. Speaking of which, only three more sleeps until I can have more believeitup time omg I cannot wait. The last week or two has been especially hard so I am almost down to counting the hours until Saturday afternoon, hehe.

On that front, we also won tickets to the Letterman show for Monday's taping, woo! Though sadly, by we I just mean me and Alex. Christine, who's also going on the trip, put in a submission for her and Joni, and then Alex and I, since you can only request 2 at a time, and at that point we were the only 4 going for sure. So now there's just the two tickets, and they asked for my name and address and such and ditto for Alex, so it's going to be just us two that can get in, d'oh. We may just skip it altogether since it'd leave the three ladies on their own, and I don't really mind. We'll see what happens anyway.

Oops, gotta run, it's almost 1pm. Hope everyone's doing well! :)

So, today was pretty busy. I got up earlier than I liked to head into the city, meeting my friends just outside of the city in the woods where we all met to find some Christmas trees. We were there for a few hours and got all the ones we needed, even stopping for hot chocolate for a bit, but almost all of us had heart attacks trying to lug the trees out. Next time we will have to either pick trees closer to the road or take a snowmobile with us, hehe.

After that we stopped into KFC and picked up a crapload of chicken for supper. Then Alex and I made a quick run to the liquor store (where Dan Aykroyd was signing things to promote his new wine haha) and returned to have a few drinks and open our Secret Santa gifts. The person who had me got me this add-on for the Wii that lets you connect your remote and nunchuk up like a crossbow, for shooting games and whatnot, which comes with this Link's crossbow training minigame. My secret Santa loved the Flight of the Conchords DVD that I gave her which made me happy and everyone got a good laugh from my Onion cards, hehe.

After that we watched some hockey and played some Wii, and before I knew it people were leaving around 12:30am. Most of us were tired from the afternoon's work I think, and we didn't get a chance to setup the 360 that I packed and brought in, d'oh. I also neglected to bring in any books or anything since I thought we'd be drinking / playing games until really late, oops. Oh well, it was still fun.

Tomorrow I need to finish my shopping for my sister's gift and for the folks, then that's it. I could catch a movie too but honestly there's nothing playing that I want to see. I Am Legend might be ok but eh, it's not really something I'm dying to see or anything. I'll probably just sleep in, brave the mall to get those last few things and then head home. At least then I'll have a full day to lounge around the house and do nothing which will be nice.