James has been taking showers and putting the foot into salt water soaks. He is trying to get the acid from the surgery washed off. He is making progress with that. The toe seems to be healing but the cleaning progress is slow.
We made a flying visit to Brighton. The weather was glorious. The 401 has a number of slowdowns. One we noted from line painting. Others were undetermined. Good to see my parents!
James made it through the surgery where they cut off large parts of ingrown toenail. As him for gross photos. He is bandaged up and resting today but has hockey tomorrow. I'm calling him "hobbles".
His income tax assessment came back and all was ok, he didn't need to pay anything.
I was off work today but still had some emails to do for work and otherwise did some cleaning.
Today was working on wrapping up everything from last week. I'm still really behind on my email.
Tomorrow is James' toe surgery!
We ordered pizza for dinner with enough extra for the next few days instead of getting a chef plate box.
Last week when I mowed the long grass in the front, it took 3 batteries full to get through. Today I used 1 battery and I did the front again and about 1/2 of the back. The back is very long. A bunny ran across the back lawn when I was mowing and so I didn't really want to do that part if the lawn keeps the bunny happy.
The board spend a day at Camp Iawah doing some prayer and planning. It was good except in the morning I wanted to go to the water and there was no path so my shoes got soaked with dew and were wet all day. Next time- boots. We saw some deer as we were driving in. They were pretty chill with the cars.
James had a rest day yesterday. I was up early and hung laundry for the first time this year. Had some meetings with my summer students and worked on finalizing grades. Had a special pizza dinner for James. Then I had small group at Sarah's. So a full day for me!
My bite isn't quite right since the tooth surgery so I may need to go back to the dentist.
James has his appointment with the foot doctor tomorrow. Interestingly in preparation for the appointment that he has waiting 2 months for, the toe infected. So I guess he'll get his moneys worth!
I went into work today to get ahead on marks as tomorrow I have a symposium to attend
In the middle of the night I woke up with my teeth stuck together and in my groggy state I opened my jaw as quickly as possible. I wondered if there was damage but in the middle of the night I couldn't find any so I went back to sleep. But when I woke up I noticed there was a rough spot on my lower tooth.
My dentist got me in quickly before work today and said yes she would need to take action to fill it. She laughed at my description of the event. That my teeth had had a collision in the night. I asked if I would need to be frozen and the helper said yes. But the dentist sensed my dislike of the freezing and she said that it was shallow enough that they could try without freezing. And they did. And there was no pain. So all fixed up now.
The new backpack also seems to be pretty water resistant, so that is also good.
My backpack was showing some wear after about 5 years. I looked at in person backpacks in stores but nothing struck my eye and they were all very expensive. So I found one on Amazon. It is slightly larger than my old backpack and has a thermal pocket for my "lunch". I was worried that it wouldn't be comfortable but it is as comfortable as my old Obusforme backpack so it seems to be a win!
I also finished my taxes!
Mon- Wed I was running nonstop at showcases. Very rewarding but tiring! Here is a post from the Museum of Healthcare that we worked with for one project:
https://twitter.com/MuseumofHealth/status/1783497005370614047
I biked to work because I was expecting an amazon delivery when noone would be home and thought I could bike back during my lunch hour. But it turned out to be delivered by Amazon and not intelcom and that meant for some reason I didn't get any email notifications. The package was on the porch when I biked home at the end of the day. I was pretty tired after biking so I took a short nap. But that means that it is now almost 3am and I am still up.
I got a good chunk of taxing things done and am making good progress but still probably have another evening to finish up.
James drove to Montreal for the last Canadiens game and drove back arriving at 2am.
Had a long day at work, then came home and had some leftovers, then spent hours working on taxes. I think I have all the papers and am just working on getting everything in before starting the calculations.
The eclipse was pretty neat, a great experience.
I painted the basement this week.
I didn't get as much done on Saturday as I planned as I hadn't slept well the night before.
Today I worked on getting all the tax documents ready and working on Rustle finance documents needed for the audit.
James and I went to Ottawa yesterday. James watched a Senators gave. I visited with Julie. We walked around a mall and had some food. James did not have food, he just enjoyed the game.
Julie and I dropped James off at the gas station outside of the arena and though we were so smart as we could pick him up there after the game. However, many people had the same idea and there were a lot of cars there but Julie did a fantastic job of picking him up and squeezing into traffic to get us back to our car.
The drive home was in the dark and James had to swerve around a racoon but we made it home safely.
Tomorrow is the big day for the eclipse. There are road closures planned because of the volume of people expected.
Half of the couch arrived yesterday. How it made it over the border, I don't know. Where the other half is, I don't know. James wrestled the half that we have down the stairs, hurting his back in the process. It is feeling better today.
Monday the students submitted their final project so there was a lot of things to coordinate yesterday and trainings to run.
One of the bridges into Kingston also has closed due to an element failing so there is one less entry point to the city.
I noticed that there were some roof tiles on the ground on the south side of the house. It is a bit difficult to see the roof at the south side. They looked like they matched my tile colour but the roof on the north,west and east looked fine. I had to walk out to the sidewalk to see the south side and it did look rough. I asked Al and he said that the south side always goes first, this is not unusual. So will need to be getting a new roof soon.
Rustle was good. Full house for Easter and Baptisms.
We haven't been getting Chef's plate boxes as much as the recipes haven't been of much interest but this week we had a success.
On Wednesday I woke up about 5am feeling fine, had breakfast but around 8am I didn't feel so good. My stomach was upset and it felt like a cold coming on. So for dinner I chose the meal that I thought would be least irritating- lemony turkey meatballs in a soup with pearl couscous. It was a good choice as my stomach was happy with this.
On Thursday I made English Cottage Pie, which was a lot like Shepherds Pie. It had beef and sometimes that doesn't agree with me so I made sure to dab as much of the grease as I could and this was a success as well.
Yesterday I made pasta with bacon and sauce recipe. We had a similar recipe previously that didn't sit well with me I think maybe because the veggies cooked in the bacon fat. So this time I used very little of the bacon fat. This time the recipe also had a garlic spread that was part of the sauce and normally if they send real garlic I don't use it but I thought garlic sauce might be tamer and it did work out, the meal was also a success with lots of spinach and peas.
Today I picked up a large garden salad at Loblaws. Since I discovered that for $12 I get about 5 meals out of it, I have started to pick up 1 per week, so that is a meal win as well.
During the week, Bell called and texted a number of times during the week to confirm.
Today the technician arrived and put in the modem but wouldn't set it up because that "wasn't included". So I ended up having to call them to sort it out, but it is now up and running. The Cogeco is still running until tomorrow. I did not know that they could both be active at the same time, but apparently they can. The things that you learn!
Darlene passed away a few days ago. She lived about 400x longer than expected!
Today I went to Food Basics then Rustle. Watched Elevation and vacuumed and cleaned.
Lots of training tomorrow!
I went to pay the credit card bill yesterday and saw that from James' credit card there was a charge for Spotify. He does have a spotify account but it is paid from a different credit card. Since we have previously had a fraudulent Spotify charge on the account I checked with him and he had not created a new spotify account. The charge was very recent (Feb 28) so I called the credit card company right away and cancelled his card. So he is without a card until the new one arrives. It is very odd that they try such small amounts as Spotify is only about $10 a month. I wonder if there is some weakness in spotify that allows bots to try different credit card combinations until one sticks and then when they find that one actually makes an account they would try for larger purchases later. Or is there someone out there who needs a lot of spotify accounts? It is very odd.
Last summer I followed all the instructions to activate James as a student on my insurance but apparently it didn't work as I tried to pick up some medicine for his toe and the system did not have him. So I had to call them and get that sorted out. Today, now that it is processed I need to contact them to get some retroactive things done.
And it has been a few years since we started with cogeco and their "deal" that I started with that they promised would never go up, has gone up quite a bit. So Bell came by and offered a better deal so I need to call cogeco to break up with them. This always causes some anxiety in the house as we have to change the passwords for everything and get new things set up but the overall savings should pay off in the end. In order to get the Bell deal we had to sign up for a home phone. Not sure what to do with that but apparently we'll have another phone soon!
On Tuesday I had a dentist appointment and they froze part of my face. I asked how long it would last and they said a few hours. It was actually 8 hours. I worked the whole day with a frozen face!
How can it be March already?
Yesterday Steve was sick so I didn't need to stay late for safety training, that was rescheduled to Wednesday.
This morning I had a filling so my mouth is frozen. Luckily the outside world appears to be unfrozen and quite delightful to walk in.
Today we have more safety training as well as grader training so I'll be at work until 9pm.
It has been a busy February preparing for build project. More than we have ever had before! Tomorrow we have training sessions and safety training session so I will be working until 9pm.
I need to take the car in at 8am as the splash guard is scraping on the road.
When I went to Food Basics today, they had ripped out 5 cash desks to put in self-checkouts. This meant that there were only 3 operational cashes for the day. I went early in the morning so it was not a problem for me but I foresee long line ups at busy times!
I did my hip exercises for the first time in a week as I can only fight one battle at a time. The hip had much improved. It doesn't have the same flexibility as the good hip but it is getting close.
This week was not a pretty one. Mon and Tues there was some congestion in my nose. Wed the nose was running. Thurs the neck was stiff and painful. Today was better, still a bit stiff but less painful.
Last weekend I bought a "large" salad from Loblaws for $12. Thought it would make a couple of meals for me. Note that it was "large" not "family sized" which was the next size up. This large salad made me 5 large meals. It was huge! I really quite enjoyed it. It was the only salad that did not have onions (yuk). So it was mainly greens with shredded carrots and cheese on top with a sprinkling of peppers, tomatoes and cucumber, just what I liked.
Today was expecting a chef's plate delivery and apparently they lost the box. So no dinner. Instead I made gingerbread. Not exactly the same.
This morning when I did my hip exercises I was frustrated because there did not seem to be improvement. But when I did the exercises in the evening there was significant improvement in the flexibility so that was encouraging.
There was a lot of freezing rain so James' college team pulled out of the games they were supposed to play in London tomorrow. In fact, the college closed at 1:30pm, which annoyed him as he had an 8:30am class! Queen's remained open.
Last night the snowbank sucker machine went through the neighbourhood. This may be why I woke up at 5am but I am not sure. I did my hip exercises and it seemed better than last night. Washed dishes, got ready, sent James off to class. Went to work. At lunch I took in the Rustle deposit and picked up a rice bowl from freshii for lunch. After I walked home I did the hip exercises again and while I thought things would be better as I had just walked and things should be warmed up, this was not the case, things seemed much tighter. Will try again tomorrow morning!
Sarah saw me limping because of the pain in my butt and thought it was a knot and so she applied pressure to it for about 30 seconds and apparently de-knotted it and then I was free from that pain! But the hip is still sore so I found some exercises online to do to hopefully improve that situation.
Went to Rustle in the morning and the Bishop was there and spoke about how it is important to do faith life in community (James 5)
Picked up some ground beef at Metro for tacos. Watched Elevation. Made pasta for dinner #2.
Read "How to work with (almost) anyone" by Stanier. He talks about "dysfunction, disappointment and frustration are part and parcel of human relationships" and conversations to try to improve the relationships.
"Hard change involves saying no to some of what has worked so far for Present You"
Thanks to the snow shoveling I seem to have pulled a muscle in my glute which I think is causing me to wake in the night as if I move in the wrong way it can give some jarring pain. It seems to be a bit better today, we'll see how the night goes.
James was in Brockville today playing for St. Lawrence.
Went to the dry cleaners a block away to bring in James' pants, brought James breakfast, cleared the new ridge left by the snowplow, dropped off a book to a girl and then went to work. Worked 8 hours, ran 2 training sessions. No lunch or break but made it through a lot of emails. Walked home in the dark, made dinner and will leave soon for a meeting at sarah's. Looking forward to more sleep tonight!
This past week was all about getting grades out and getting reading for this upcoming week. We aren't quite ready yet so I'll need to go into work today. Hosting at Rustle first, then off to work.
James has to leave at noon for the invista so I'll shovel a bit before I go and then see how he does.
I actually had a good sleep last night. Not woken by fireworks. Got up in time to see the sunrise. Did some cleaning in the morning. Loaded grades in the afternoon. James is not happy as he seems to have a cold and wasn't feeling well. Tomorrow the real work begins!
