Party hardy for a sibling

So last week was my middle sister's birthday. We had made plans to get together for dinner on Thursday, but after a mis-communication (or should I say lack of communication - something went funky between our cell phones and we couldn't get through to each other) we ended up postponing the dinner to Friday. I'm happy to report though that dinner was great - lots of fun.

Since several of Mel's friends also had parties around the same time, they decided to have a party at her place and then go out for a pub crawl. Apparently there's a clause in our sisterly contract that demands that the little sister be present for such events. I had only met two of the people before, so it was a bit awkward.

I ended up going to Mel's on Saturday evening and was there for the party. It's a bit odd seeing my sister get all liquored up with her friends. I don't really drink with her that often, and when I do it's usually with the rest of our family. So when I watch my sister get drunk and start directing porn pictures with her friends, you can understand how I could be weirded out.

Around 11 we ended up going out to the Heuther pub in Waterloo. It was a lot of fun - we all ordered food and alcohol. The best part of the evening though was that they messed up our bill and totally undercharged us. Rock on! For a group of 18 people, our bill only came to $115. I totally dug that.

Reading Week

I finally got a reading week! This was my first reading week since first year! (In my second year, I was working at Bruce Power, in my third year I was working at Business Objects, in my fourth year I was in Hong Kong!) It's horrible to say, but I got more work done this past week than I anticipated. (Meaning, I actually did a little work as opposed to none at all.)

The week was super relaxing. I have a switch in my brain that flips on and off whenever I go home. The moment I step into my parent's house, I start gorging on all kinds of junk food. It's ridiculous, and even maddening. When I'm in Waterloo, I live like a monk - no (well, nearly no) sweets, chips, etc. Heck, I've been carting around a box of popcorn for 3 houses now! When I was at home, I had cookies, chips, nachos, pizza, pie, ice cream, etc. Yeesh. Oh well, it was bliss. :)

I spent a lot of the week watching movies and relaxing. My mom and I also went to see the movie Music and Lyrics. It was cute. :) We also rented movies like School for Scoundrels, Mistress of Spices (terrible), and the Protector (so terrible it was hilarious). The week kind of melted all together because I was so relaxed. I just switched from shopping to watching TV to playing on my computer to eating. Fabulous.

Yesterday was also my mom's birthday. I bought her a hilarious card that mocked her techno-incompetence (turns out my oldest sister bought her the same card). I then gave her money for a new curling iron (she needed one, and I didn't know what type she used). I also bought her two sticks of deodorant. I know that seems like an odd gift, but she made such a fuss at Christmas about not getting some (it was on her wishlist - none of us daughters remembered though) that I went and bought two to compensate. :)

My crowning gift though was a bowl of random chocolates. Scattered through the chocolates were a bunch of little notes I had written, reminding her of some of our funnier moments in life. For example, I mentioned a time when I was 5 years old and gave her a gumball that I had rolled in air freshener. She did know this of course, and popped it in her mouth and of course gagged. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but it has become a favourite family story. I also mentioned when we went to the flea market near my hometown. She had been bugging me and bugging me to go (it had been years since we last went) and she finally took me there without my permission. The flea market was SO scummy! Everything in there was from the 70s and ridiculously expensive. She was so disappointed in the place, which allowed me to mock her endlessly as a result. :) The stories went on and on, but you get the idea.

Melanie also drove up to visit my mom for her birthday, so we all ended up going out for dinner and flaking out that night. This morning we went to my parents' favourite breakfast place and relaxing for the morning. Mel ended up driving me back to Waterloo. We had an absolutely wonderful ride and had a lot of fun in the car. :)

I know I had some other funny stories to tell, but I'm getting tired and apparently can't remember what they were. Now, it's time for more reading! (Darn, I was about to type "it's time to go to bed" but it's only 9:30pm! I have to do some more reading! Doh!)

Birthday Dinner

First of all, I must share with you a hilarious conversation that went on in my Canadian Government class today. :) We were discussing the pros and cons of the new Liberal leader. My class is 260 people, so the prof and student were having to yell over like 20 rows of chairs.

Prof: What are some of the pros and cons of Dion as a leader?
Student: He's a Frenchy!
Prof: You must be from Saskatchewan.
Student: No...
Prof: Oh, it sounded like you had a Saskatchewan accent.
Student: Actually I have a retainer.

We all burst out laughing and you could tell the prof was flabbergasted. It was hilarious. The girl actually got applause from the class for her quick reply. LOL

Anyways, it seems as though I may have killed my laptop's LCD monitor. Last night about one fifth of the screen decided to go slightly dim and nothing I've tried has rectified the situation. I'll try calling HP tomorrow and troubleshooting it with their IT support, but I've been asking for help on the HP forums and so far it seems as though the only solution is to send it in for servicing. Doh! I think this is a sign I shouldn't be playing games on it and should be studying instead. My parents will be pleased.

In other news, Saturday was mine, Agnes', and Rana's birthday bash. (Pictures can be found here.) It wasn't really much of a bash - all of Agnes' and my friends ended up bailing, so it was mainly Rana's friends. :) Oh well, we still had fun. We were supposed to go to Mongolian Grill for dinner, but there was a 40 minute wait, so we went to East Side Mario's instead. Afterwards we ventured over to Symposium for a couple of pre-clubbing drinks. I think I'm still partially blinded by all the photos that were taken! We ended up going to Revolution for dancing... That was my first time in Rev. I found it fun, but I wasn't too keen on most of the music. Overall I would describe the night as a success.

Papers = done!

Woot! I just finished the last of my papers! It was technically due this morning at 10:30 in class, but the prof hangs around the school until 10pm, so that's the real deadline. I should probably mention this paper was a book review... And that I finished the book this morning at 8:30am. And that I wrote the entire paper today.

It was harder writing about this book in comparison to my last one. This book was about global modern slavery whereas my last one was about genocide. My biggest problem with this current book is that it inspired no passion in me. I didn't have the sudden urge to get up and fight for the rights of slaves. The book I read on genocide though - that one actually made me cry and feel angry, etc. etc.

Anyways... Now I have to cram down a bunch of readings for my history seminar on Wednesday (err, the one that I'm leading), then I'll be finished for the term! YAY!

On to other news... I'm a HAG! I turned 23 years old on Friday! LOL. I actually don't care about my age - heck, I didn't even realize that I was going to be 23 until my mom mentioned it. I mean, I knew it was my birthday, but I never really associated myself with a new age.

To celebrate my birthday, my parents came down to Waterloo (actually they came down because my dad had an optometrist appointment, but I'm sure they would have come down on the weekend anyways). We had lunch and then I dragged my father off to a public seminar on Canada-Taiwan relations. The seminar wasn't what I was expecting - it was mainly a lot of statistics, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Afterwards, we met up with my mother and sibling. Melanie managed to tear something in her knee so that she has to wear a brace and hobble around on crutches. I accused her of trying to steal my birthday thunder. Tee hee.

Anyways, after a short argument, and an attempt by myself to strangle my mother with my scarf, we all went to Cameron's Seafood Restaurant in Kitchener. SO FREAKING DELICIOUS! They had REAL Hong Kong style BBQ Pork!!! I honestly nearly wept with happiness. It was so delicious! Mel, dad, and I shared a variety of dishes while mom kept to her bland-Canadian-style Chinese food. So sad. Amusingly, Mel badgered me into ordering a veggie dish... But to her dismay, it came with deep-fried tofu that I absolutely adore... But she did not. However, I also experienced some dismay in that the dish also came with chinese mushrooms and various other fungi. I'm not too into mold thanks very much.

The rest of my weekend passed relatively quietly. I spent all of Saturday doing laundry and procrastinating on my paper, and the procrastination continued on Sunday as well.

Anyways, I'm starving and am going to go die now. Bye!

Prepare for liftoff!

It's the weekend! Yay! I have been oddly excited about this upcoming weekend for some reason. I suspect it's because of the stress of the last week. Let me divulge the story of my life since you last visited...

Last weekend I ventured home for the night. My family and I decided to have a night out and went to see the Davinci Code. It was a good movie - surprisingly faithful to the book, although the ending was quite different...

Upon returning to my house, I was pleased to find out that the DVDs I had mailed to myself from Hong Kong had finally arrived. My parents were amused to see how movies are sold in China. I ended up tossing Serenity into the DVD player and watching it. Luckily it worked (mostly) and my dad and I watched it together.

The next day my mom and I ventured out to do some shopping and buy my dad a father's day gift. I had decided I wanted to buy him some headphones. My dad likes to listen to music quite often, but his current headphones are so disgustingly greasy and old that I can't bear to look at them. I bought him some freakin' expensive ones (supposedly they drown out outside noise) but he later determined they weren't comfortable enough. (He blames it on his
baldness...) So the plan for this weekend is to return his old ones and buy him a new set.

We ended up ordering pizza and watching another movie and then my parents drove me home. Why did I return home after only one day? Because on Sunday I had planned to go to Wonderland!

Everything went according to plan. I got up at 6am so that I could wait for Cory outside. Cory's a co-op student also working at Bruce Power. I had met him twice before and that was about it. Well, if I had known what his TRUE colours were, I would have told him to shove his offer of a ride up his wazoo! I was TERRIFIED on the drive to Toronto. He was driving 120 to 140km/h on the backroads, and when we finally hit highway 400, he managed to get up to 175km/h!!! Needless to say, there were times where I wanted to claw at the windows.

Another example of his stupidity was on a backroad near a small town. We were driving uphill and coming to a stop sign. Well, on the road were those strange marks that cause your tires to make weird sounds that warn you a stop sign is coming. Well, suddenly Cory swings into the wrong lane and finishes his drive up to the top of the hill in the wrong lane!!! That was the first time I felt like freaking out. I was NOT impressed.

Wonderland itself was great. (Photos are here!) I didn't actually get to go into the park until nearly 11am because one of the cars that was picking up a friend of mine was late. (We were supposed to meet at 9:45am.) Overall though I had a fun day. My friends Stacy (my old housemate) and Minnie (a friend I met while in Hong Kong) showed up to spend the day with me. I was so happy to see the both of them. We ended up hanging out the entire time I was there (Stacy's friend Max also came, and he was fun too).

I think I've gotten past the stage in my life where I need to go on rides at Wonderland. I only went on about 6 rides while I was there. The rest of our time was spent chilling out and eating. (Err, eating and rides... Not a good combo - I was more worried about getting sick than about the ride itself.) We ended up leaving the park around 4:30 and getting dinner in Orangeville. The ride back home was much saner and had good music. (Note to self: Steal Ana's CDs!)

The next few days were uneventful. Our landlady had been around for them. She was working around the house - painting it in order to get ready for her daughters to move in. She had seemed a bit stressed out and not too friendly, but I couldn't blame her for that - she'd been working non-stop. Well, on Wednesday she left the house with her daughters. Tao brought some of his friends over and left them in the dining room alone while he made some phone calls. I was in the kitchen for awhile (right beside them) and then left to go to another part of the house. I heard the landlady come back and nothing else. When I went back out to the kitchen, she asked me, "Maureen, who are those strangers sitting at my dining room table???" I mentioned they were Tao's friends, but that I'd send them to our common area. Nothing more was said.

The next morning when I woke up, there was a three page essay by our landlady attached to our bathroom mirror. It seems as though someone had stolen $400 from her purse that had been sitting on the dining room floor behind the table. She wrote that she was not happy and proceeded to write out some "new rules." These rules included having to eat and be out of the kitchen by 7pm, have our showers by 9pm, etc. I understand that she was upset by the money being gone. She thinks it was one of Tao's friends who took it. Personally I think it was her own daughter or her daughter's friend. (Her daughter's 12 and smokes and hangs out with a "bad crowd.")

The only problem I have is that now we're being told to stay in our little common area (which is very tiny) and stay out of the rest of the house. I'm paying too much damned money to be restricted to a small house and be treated like a child. There were a lot of other problems too - it took forever to get things fixed, they had dogs even though they said they were getting rid of them, etc... Therefore on Thursday, after discussing it with my parents, I decided to tell the landlady I was moving out. I was totally prepared to have an all-out fight with her. I approached her and said, "Michelle, I'm not happy with the living situation here. I've decided that I'll be moving out by the end of June." Her response? "OK." That was it. I was totally thrown off balance by such quick acceptance. When you're expecting a huge fight, that's not the response you would expect...

I was very relieved to hear that, but for the rest of that night, and Friday when I saw her, and even today when I returned home, she hasn't said a word to me. And I have done nothing but been pleasant. I greet her, but she ignores me. It's nice to see one of us can be mature about this.

Luckily for me, my pal Henry at work said his landlord had some empty rooms available. By the next day, I had signed my lease (for 2 months) and given my deposit. I'm going to move in on Thursday. Lauda and Tao are sad to see me go, but I just can't handle the friction in the house anymore. (Oh, and I should mention that Lauda told me that the landlady was very friendly and helped Lauda carry stuff into the house this evening... The same evening she ignored me.)

The rest of the weekend was just as relaxing as I had hoped. Now I know that the anticipation I felt for the weekend was due to the stress of living in this apartment. I'm already looking forward to next week when I move into the new apartment.

Tonight I was transferring all my photos from Hong Kong (currently on CD) to my harddrive so that I can burn them to DVD next weekend. I ended up glancing through most of the photos - I got all nostalgic and sad seeing them. I miss my friends from there. I miss the comraderie and sense of family between us. I did laugh though seeing some of the photos... I was sad though to realize I've forgotten some of the names of the people in my photos though. I need to go through them and add descriptions before the memories fade completely.

That's all for now - I have work tomorrow, so I should be off to bed soon...

P.S.
Tao had his 25th birthday two weeks ago! Here are the photos!