Preparing for the presentation

 Tiny Kicks from Poems of Parenting

This week will be preparing for the final presentations. We had a good service at Rustle.  Monday I have a lot of email to get through!

The melt and the agitator

 

Before Rustle

After Rustle- note that the laundry line twisted at some point so the icicles on it are now pointing up instead of down

Currently all the ice on the laundry line has fallen but the trees are still ice covered.

In pulling the laundry out of the tub, I have found that one of the agitator fins has broken off so I have ordered a new one from Amazon.

Tomorrow is our last training session as next week is the last week of classes!

How it is going

 

Mid storm

 I could hear the rain/ice/sleet coming down during the night but there was not much accumulation in the morning. The bushes were bent and there is currently lots of crackling. The next wave should be arriving soon. This is what is looks like now but it doesn't do it justice:

Batten down the hatches

 We'll see how the weather tracks overnight.

We had a great time with the students doing testing with dry ice today. One week left!

Spring storm

 There is apparently a spring storm approaching. The week has gone ok so far. Next week is the last week of term! Today I have to try to catch up on email and in the afternoon we are doing some project testing. I think I woke at 3am so it will be a long day!

Amazon is having a spring sale until mar 31, so I did pick up some deals.

The strike is not going well as apparently Queen's can't understand the response to their Mar 9 offer was the strike. They say that the union has not responded but it looks like they have pretty clearly responded. There seems to have been a lot of backlash to Queen's statement so hopefully that will cause them to start talking soon. It is causing a lot of frustration for everyone.

Tea and Crackers

Today I have taken it easy sustained on tea and crackers. So far, everything seems ok.

Tomorrow, a chief window installer is coming by to measure the kitchen window as it has been having issues for years and needs to be replaced. 

Stomach bug

 Last night I woke up at 1:25am with a bad stomach bug. I had no idea that so much was available to be expunged from my body. I was sick on an off until 4am. Now it is 10am, things seem to have stabilized. I cleaned the bathroom and am making some tea to see if that will be ok.

Washing the winter away

 I was worried that they had locked my building down today and Malik needed to get in for 3D printing so I walked to work in the rain. It was only light rain, not too bad. Made sure Malik and my supervisor were all good and then I walked to Rustle in the rain. Because I was arriving later than planned due to my work trip, Esther did up all the slides for me so everything was mostly ready to go when I arrived. 

Because of renovations, the AV set up is much lower and I can't actually see what is going on the stage so I run it all by sound instead of sight which is interesting.

I needed to finish up the timetabling and the training for the sessions tomorrow, then I watched the Elevation sermon. I missed a bit of it but it was talking about the scripture with Mary and Martha. I relate to the Martha and always thought that Jesus was just telling her to take a break, not be so busy. Which is a good thing. But the sermon talked about what Jesus's  concern was not that she was too busy but that she was running her own agenda and her agenda was not God's agenda. I hadn't seen it like that before.

Tomorrow we have training (except Paul is sick and so he asked me to run them) and I have more interviews.

Ratification or not

 We had our contract ratification meeting yesterday and it is possible that we'll be on strike tomorrow. We will find out later today how the vote went. The general thought seemed to be that Queen's has created a toxic work environment with the cutbacks and then gave managers so created a lot of unhappiness.

Today I need to try to finish up the timetabling plus I have 8 hours of interviews for SWEP positions that if we're on strike I can't complete the hiring for. A good 12 hours of work today at least!

some grass showing

 Despite the weather being negative. There seems to be green grass poking out in the backyard which is promising. The robins are also singing around. I worked 11 hours on both the course and timetabling. I somehow need to get the timetabling done tomorrow as Friday is interview day. Hopefully, I am very efficient because I spent most of today on one course.

melt

 It is nice that the ice banks are melting. Because of the time change it was lighter coming home as well. Our sleep schedules are all a bit wonky.

The receiver still is not working. 

Fixing a receiver

 James' TV has not been working for a while. I tried using the Bell Virtual fix, which did not work so I had to wait on hold for a human. The hold took 1 hour. But the human wanted to restart the modem again and so I did but it had difficulty in the restart so it took a long time and the human disconnected because it took too long. Then support closes at midnight. So after a few hours, I am no further ahead except for knowing that restarting the modem doesn't really help anything.

Agreement

 Apparently, before I wrote the last post, there was an email that we had reached a tentative agreement but I didn't see it as it was in my junk mail. But there is no strike, work as usual tomorrow!

Negotiations

 Our union is currently in negotiations and I thought waking up I would know if we were on strike or not but based on the issue tracker it looks like they are still negotiating with only about 4 issues outstanding.

I wonder when they started the negotiations? Are they sleeping? It doesn't seem healthy to need to negotiate for so many hours. Maybe they have shifts.

Elevation

 

Yesterday Julie and I trekked to Toronto to see Elevation Nights which was an amazing experience. We then stayed at an AirBnb inWhitby and went to Whitby elevation in the morning

Then Julie and I had lunch at my parents and she headed back to Ottawa while I stayed to be picked up by James. We are running a test on Tuesday and apparently some people who knew about conflicts for a long amount of time have only let me know now. Sigh. Lots to manage tomorrow!

Storm walking

 The walk to Rustle this morning was ok except for when the wind was whipping spiky snow in my face but the sidewalks were ok. Ebe was speaking and he made reference to me a few times, which was funny. Walking home the wind wasn't so bad but the plows had been by and the sidewalks had disappeared because they pushed all the snow from the road onto the sidewalk so I had to pick my route carefully- I picked quiet streets to I could walk on the street until I got to Princess St, where there was some sidewalk cleared. I did a little bit of shoveling but there were no plows on our street until about 11:30pm so now there is a giant mound of snow at the end of the driveway.

coyote part 2

 Apparently the coyote is back. It seems to by quite attached to the block it is in.

The police are not able to do anything as it (so far) is not interacting with humans.

As it is relatively mobile, I assume also quite difficult to catch.

coyote

 Apparently there was a large injured coyote spotted a block away from my house. Animal control would not touch it but they called Sandy Pines. Interestingly we are working with their coyote group for our project course. Apparently Police were keeping an eye on it. Hopefully it is getting care somewhere.

James was in Uxbridge today so I managed to clean the bathroom, get heaps of laundry done and many piles of dishes. 

Yesterday had a chef's plate - Coconut curry beef noodles. It was pretty easy and very good!

I am watching the storm approach as google maps looks orange as road conditions deteriorate.

My commute a few days ago

Today is the first day I think I won't need cough medicine before I go to work! My voice is still not quite normal but getting closer.

Halara made some changes to their website and now instead of going to the main Halara site I am redirected to Halara Canada. Which is all fine, if they had kept my profile the same but everything wiped, I can't see my past orders anymore and all my points are gone. So they have a chat line that said "ask us anything"- I asked and they had no idea what to do. Eventually they escalated me. But this just resulted in an email this morning asking if everything worked now. Which it didn't. So you can ask but there may not be an answer. We'll see if they solve it.

Today I am judging an Engineering Outreach event and we have more presentations.
 

Medication

 

I woke up at 3am and when I was lying still everything was ok, but as soon as I got up and started moving around I was not so good. I found an old pot of cough medicine (only expired 6 months ago) and it was a game changer for the day. I am much better now than I was 24 hours ago!

Uncertain

 I thought if I took it easy for 2 days, I would be ok for Monday. Now I am uncertain. We'll see how things look in the morning. Haven't heard anything about the strike, I hope that they come to a solution before tomorrow.

Nat's birthday

 Nat's birthday was yesterday. Hopefully he had a better day than me as I felt pretty lousy! My nose is running a lot today. My cloth handkerchief supply cannot keep up with the running of my nose. I am trying to take it easy. We ordered pizza for dinner as I wasn't really functional enough to cook.

Someone told me about a pet equivalent to Chef's plate in the States. They get pet food through fancy boxes!

Shieleen's birthday

 Yesterday was Shieleen's birthday so I picked up cupcakes to celebrate.

We had our first split e-group last night. There were a few technical glitches so I was able to help out.

I saw Diana and Sheila downtown today and they gave me big hugs. It is so nice to see them getting out. They are going to part of my in person group that is starting next Thursday at Sarah's house.

Corduroy skirt

 

I wore the new Halara Corduroy skirt today with thermal tights. Very comfortable.

A much better day today after yesterday's ridiculousness. 

James is currently in Lindsay due back sometime in the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday I have Abuse prevention training at Rustle and have some work to complete.

Leak boots

 I have moved on from Cleat boots to my leak boots. These boots don't do well in slush as they are a bit leaky but they do very well in cold weather. And they don't hurt my feet due to the lack of structure.

Yesterday I wore the new Halara themal leggings. So warm and so comfortable. I have a pair of thermal leggings from Fabletics as well and I would say the both tackle negative temperatures equally well and are equally comfortable.

Today I tried the thermal pants for work. They are wide leg which is ok for inside but as they are so loose outside the wind goes through them. They weren't too bad but they were not as awesome as the leggings. I just can't wear the leggings to work.

At work there are some very odd decisions being made. I am having some difficulty following the logic.

cleat boots

 The sidewalks on my street were sheets of ice so I wore my cleat boots to work. They fit my left foot no problem but my right foot is left battered and bleeding. I don't understand how the boots prefer one foot over the other. At lunchtime I walked downtown and there was no ice on the sidewalks so the cleat boots were not necessary. However, walking home it was snowing and if the sidewalks were ice or not was no longer discernable so I was glad to have the cleat boots.

My Halara order arrived today and I'm pretty pleased with it. There was a summer dress that was a touch too long, but very nice fabric. Thermal pants but they are much less stretchy than their other pants and a fabric that looks like it will attract fluff but they definitely will do their job in keeping me warm. Themal leggings in their regular stretch, very warm, a good winter addition. There was also a pair of pants that I already have in black that I wanted in another colour- it had an odd name so I thought it might be greenish but it is very blue and I love them! Also a stretchy brown corduroy skirt that was on a super cheap sale but very good quality. I got a free waist bag and scrunchie!

App order

 I put in an order for some more Winter pants from Halara. The second Sunday of the month last year they gave you an extra free item. So everyone who put in their order that day had an extra reward. They have changed it this year so that everyone puts their name into a form for 10 days and then at the end 5000 people will receive the special product. An interesting change as they have to then send 5000 separate packages rather than combining with another package.

Back to the order, after I put my bag together I previously had ordered on the computer but on the APP I earn points which can't be used on the computer. I tried the order on the computer and there was a discount code of $12. When I tried on the app, there was a special coupon to use the app and there was a discount of $30 plus I could use $9 of points so it was a better deal!

In the evening I had a finance committee meeting. It went much later that I expected!

Lighter later

 When I left work at 5pm there was still some light out. That made me feel good, that more light was on the way.

Yesterday I made turkish eggs, that were really quite good. The meat that had arrived was frozen solid which is why I picked the eggs for the first meal. The other 2 meals seem to be almost identical with pork and chow mein noodles. Tonight was crispy ground pork with sweet and savory noodles.

Tomorrow up at 5:30am at James is coaching at 6am!

Exception

 With Canada Post back in business I ordered an Amazon order to the post office. Mainly because they aren't giving delivery notifications otherwise. It arrived in Kingston a day ago and was out for delivery (to the post office) and then I got a notification that there was a delay due to the strike and it wouldn't arrive for 4 more days. Then a few hours later it arrived at the post office. So I'm not sure what kind of delay it experienced but it apparently overcame it pretty easily. There are still many bills that I am waiting for to arrive so the post is clearly still backed up due to the strike.

In the holidays I wore my free Halara leggings quite a bit and they were very comfortable. I own a lot of leggings and these are one of my favorites. Not my very very favorite- that one is a Fabletics one. But it is in the top 3 for sure.

Today I'm wearing a new Halara outfit- red gray pants (the colour seems to border on green but they are called red grey and can pass for grey) and a dark blue sweater. James is off to Ajax in a few minutes for a game!

From Spiky balls of snow to full blizzard in 30 minutes

 Back at the office today at one point things were super sunny outside, then it clouded over, then when I was walking it started dropping spiky snow balls. By the time I arrived home it was a full blizzard. Conditions deteriorated quickly.

I didn't sleep well last night but was functional at work. A lot of balls in the air as Fall term wraps up and Winter term starts. 

Hello 2025!

 

Nothing was open today so I didn't go anywhere, but James went lots of places. He did some skating at Relm and went to the Fronts game.

I did lots of laundry and cleaning as well as working on grades. Tomorrow is back to the office to finish grades, prepare the Winter term courses, finish enrollment and try to tackle all my email!