Senior's Resource Fair

There was a senior's resource fair at Marlborough Mall this morning. I was scheduled to attend the show myself but was very very lucky and found out that Chris could attend with me as well. It made the day way more bearable as this meant I could go check out the mall for a bit, go to the washroom, and best of all the time went by pretty quickly since I had someone else to talk to when the groups of seniors coming thru died down. I also train this evening so today I am working from 8am to 10pm... that is a really long day!

New Grass

We got some new grass yesterday.

I think Genitta is going to be really happy because the big clumps of dirt was really bugging her.

Wes and Charlie were pretty happy watching all the guys work around them yesterday as well.

Maxx and Jaike are pretty happy as well...

Mostly because they have new grass to eat (and puke up)...

how nice :)

Visiting Doc

I've been feeling kind of crappy on and off lately so after a terrible night and waking up feeling like crap I made my way to visit my Doctor. I have two doctor's. One I have had since I was like four, he is not very socible, but is right across the street so I usually go to him when I need a quick appointment, need a drug refill, or a note... and my other doctor is for if I really feel sick and she may have to touch me.

I went to see my really sick doctor this afternoon and have to go get the usually round of blood tests, stomach tests, urine tests and the works... what can I say... oh the fun :(

Introducing Curtis and Shama Joynt

Today my friend the former Shama Doyle married Curtis Joynt and became Mrs Shama Joynt. It was a beautiful wedding and you could tell that everyone in the room was very happy for her!

It was a great time and there were tons of people from the Distress Centre who were there there as well. Simon and Susan were right behind me during the ceremony.

Jenna sat at the same table with me for the whole night, was a great smoking pal, and kept me company on the long ride back to the south as well.

Chris was at our table as well and was a great drinking friend as always :)

Richard Dickson was there and we were able to finally meet the wonderful lady he was speaking so highly of at the volunteer banquet last year. Bushra was an absolutely awesome person and the perfect girl for Richard. She was talking about a group tour to Africa and that would be terrific if that actually came to fruitation!

Shama's daughter Naz stole the show with a beutiful tribute speach to her mother and Curtis (It even brought me to tears). Naz, her sister Nadia and new stepsister Mallory looked beautiful in their gowns (and WAY to grown up)!

Curtis looked pretty funny once they finally figured out how to get his blindfold on. They tried to trick him once blind folded but he knew the hairy leg in front of him was not his wife's... All was fixed up and he was happy to finally claim his prize.... What a great wedding! I widh Shama and Curtis years and years of happiness!

The Hood

I found an satelite picture of the neighborhood so I thought I'd make a diagram to show just how close everyone is...

Credit Where Credit's Due

My cousin Ronaye got some really nice pictures of her new nephew Payten that I had to share with everyone. Check out her blog for some great pics of my godboys.

And here is the newest edition to our family our little angel Payten...

A Little Bit About Spirituality

I had a good chat about spirituality with my two co-workers Blair and Lori tonight. One of the things we were talking about is how many different religions hold similar beliefs. I chanced upon this quiz on another blog called Alcohol Was A Factor and thought it was very fitting... and kind of interesting. This is a quick snapshot of my beliefs:

Belief O' Matic Quiz:

Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matchesyour beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views areall shared by this faith, or vice versa.Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in the order of how much they havein common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list,the more closely it aligns with your thinking.


1. New Age (100%)
2. New Thought (100%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (98%)
4. Neo-Pagan (95%)
5. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (94%)
6. Liberal Quakers (93%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (90%)
8. Mahayana Buddhism (88%)
9. Scientology (85%)
10. Taoism (71%)
11. Theravada Buddhism (69%)
12. Bahá'í Faith (62%)
13. Hinduism (61%)
14. Reform Judaism (61%)
15. Secular Humanism (60%)
16. Jainism (59%)
17. Sikhism (44%)
18. Orthodox Quaker (43%)
19. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (39%)
20. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (37%)
21. Jehovah's Witness (33%)
22. Orthodox Judaism (33%)
23. Nontheist (30%)
24. Islam (23%)
25. Seventh Day Adventist (16%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (9%)
27. Roman Catholic (9%)

Very interesting... and it kind of explains why I was so frustrated in Religion class when I was in Catholic School!

Everyone Say Hello To Susan...

I want to introduce you to someone in the office... This is Susan Amirault

Susan is the "fun one" at the Distress Centre. I think she was voted as best person to get stuck in the elevator with or something like that...

This is not the first time that Susan has been "featured" on the internet either. A few months ago we did a search for her name on google and there is an article about her written up somewhere out there and there is even a video of her old grandfather (who I think may be dead now).

Susan is an American and her sister thinks that she should be on survivor so that she could watch her on Thusday night... I think she should be on Big Brother 6 (and YES there is going to be a Big Brother 6!!!).

Can't think of anything else to say about dear Susan right now but I will be sure to update you all as I think of more...

and Susan I hope you like your "dedicated post" :)

Rats in Calgary

I've got a bit of a stomache ache today... I went to bed at about 2am last night and it was feeling a little bit woozy but I figured that it would pass if I went to bed... but when I woke up this morning it felt a little bit worse. I took an extra hour this morning and lounged around on the couch and once I felt a little bit better headed into work where I am now.

My schedule is getting quite a bit busier than it has been and I am finding that I have more time to update my post at work than I do at home... but I like doing it at home since I cannot really upload pictures at work (I cannot download Hello!).

So today I learned that it is illegal to own a rat in Alberta... under the Alberta Agricultural Pest Act, it is illegal to possess a rat unless it is dead and frozen. It is illegal to breed rats, with fines running as high as $5,000 or 60 days in jail.

To top that off I guess it is an important law to have as well... and someone here in Calgary in the neighborhood of Acadia broke this law, had a rat, and freed the rat in the neighborhood.

The story goes that Warren Cucheran discovered the first rodent as it scurried across his front porch a week ago Sunday. The next night, Cucheran and neighbours found a nest of 24 rats in a lilac bush in one of their yards. Cucheran along with his friends clobbered the rodents with a broom, spade and whatever other tools they had on hand. I guess a pair of Norway rats could produce 15,000 offspring in a year so I am pretty glad that they found the rodents and "exterminated" them.

My cats would have been happy, but I sure don't want any huge Norweigan rats running across my back yard!

First day at the University

This morning I had to get up bright and early to go to my first class at the UofC. I am taking a Facilitating Adult Learning course that I think is going to be great. I walked into the class and the first person I saw was my old Commanding Officer from when I was a cadet and thought oh boy there is a face from the past... and then my sister's friend Shelley that I met at Telus also walked in so there was a couple of friendly faces. The class was great, there was a lot of small group discussions and a couple of activities.

I came home and talked to Susan from work and we decided to go out for the night. We started at Morgan's and I met Susan and her boyfriend Simon, Chris from work met us a little later and we headed to this other pub on MacLeod Trail (I can't remember the name) where they were playing some great ol' celtic music. It was good to out and it was a great time as well. Pretty good day today :)

Payten Benjamin Shandler

Rob and Becky had a beautiful baby boy this morning. Both Mom and Baby are doing fine and I'm sure that Becky is pretty excited to get out of the hospital (sadly Payten will be in the hospital fro about a month). Congratulations to Rob and Becky! It is great to have a new family member.

Sims 2

It is FINALLY here... I have it installed... and I am playing...

The Fam Dam

For Iris...

I saw some comments a few days ago from a very special visitor to my blog who requested a few more pictures of my Uncle Jan.

That special visitor is my cousin Iris in Amsterdam, who is probably my closest cousin in Holland and a super cool person. Her father, my Uncle Jan, moved to Canada a few years ago to get married and Iris has been to Canada a few times to visit her Dad and the rest of the Canadian Koomen's. My Uncle is now seperated, living with my parents (his brother), and planning on moving back to Holland. I think he is having a blast living at my parents, I know my Dad is having a great time having him there! My mom gets a good laugh watching them prepare new gourmet meals in the kitchen and then tromping downstairs for their evening cigarettes.

Uncle Jan will definitely be missed when he goes home but I know that I have a few relatives that have been missing him in Holland and will be happy to have him back as well... and while I think he had quite the adventure in Canada... I think that he will be happy at home where he is comfortable and around tons of family as well.

Thank you for the comments Iris, it was great to hear from you and cool to see that you were reading the updates. I took a peak around and only had a few pics of your Dad to share with you but I will be sure to take some more the next time I see him and post them for you to see :)

Koomen Boys Celebrating

...

It is the first training night for a new group of volunteers. I have all of their material copied and am ready to go and set up the training room but there are people in there doing some kind of training so I guess I am shit out of luck right now... hense why I am writing my blog...

I think Genitta and Tavis are driving back from Whistler today so their cats should be happy to see them home... nothing else exciting is happening today... I think I'm gonna go and smoke...

Up Up and Away...

It was an EARLY wake up call this morning. I had to be at Mewata Armories at 6:30 so I was up and getting ready at 5:30 this morning. I was very tired driving over and it felt like it was the middle of the night.

We got out to Netook Gliding Centre out near Olds by 8am and were soon of the ground flying. We used the winch launch so we were able to get the kids up pretty quickly. It started pouring on us right at the end of the day so we headed back to the city and were home by 3pm. It was a pretty good day altogether.

9-11

September 11th 2004... three years ago the world watched televisions in shock and we all cried as the two towers fell. It was unreal and yet so real at the same time. This year I learned about a few of the heroes we lost on this earth that day. Through other posts I learned about and met Joe Hunter who is famous for walking into the towers and into the dangers that awaited... he never walked out. It is an important day... I remember the tragedy of that day, rememeber walking into AADAC to work and watching the tv in the meeting room all day to see the news. I remember my co-worker Allison coming into the office and saying that she was downtown, looked up, and was sure she was seeing a plane flying into one of our tall buildings downtown, that is when she decided that it wasn't healthy for her to watch anymore. I also remember the unbelieveable kindness over the next days and month. People came out of every corner offering whatever they could to help. It was a crazy day... but an important day... I am glad I am here to remember.

???

Work is going to get crazy!

I got back from holidays this week and it looks like all hell is going to break loose. Our clinical supervisor resigned to go back to school, the person under her also resigned to move to Vancouver, our midnight crisis centre staff resigned to go back to school, and the person on my team with THE WORST job also resigned since she got a job in her field of study!

It is going to go insane and everyone is already getting quite cranky (including me) in preparation for the burn out!

I know we will get through it and **hopefully** find new people to fill these position so life can get back to normal but for now I see chaos and hard long days in the future...

United Way Skate

Today was the kickoff of the United Way fundraiser. There was a public skate at the saddledome and someone had donated tons of pairs of skates and helmets for the kids. The boys and girls club and a bunch of other organizations brought down a bunch of their kids and I volunteered to help kids put on skates. For a bit I put on a pair of skates myself and helped this little boy who had never skated before go around the rink. Jess (my officemate) helped me, we both took a hand and he basically glided between us. I was pretty happy Jess showed up because before that I behind him crouched with both hands under his arms to keep him up. He was pretty cute, only about five or six years old and his first time ever on skates. His sister was a sweety as well, she actually picked up the skating really quick. The goal for this years campaign is 34 million... Hope all the Calgarians out there dig deep!

Sicko

I have been feeling a little bit under the weather today. I just woke up exhausted and have been exhasted all day. I have been really cold, and then sweating on and off all day, and I also got a migrane headache last night which I get occasionally but really not that often. Someone at work told me that they saw chinook clouds in the morning and thinks that it might be the weather. I am putting my hope into that being what it is since there were at least three other people at work today that claimed to be as tired as I was. I just got back from holidays and cannot really afford a sick day off so I am really hoping that it passes...

Cadet Night

Tonight was the first night that the cadets were back. There is an NCO course going on right now and gliding at 6:30AM! on Sunday morning. It is also 604's 50th anniversary this year so there should be alot of trip and activities planned. It should be an interesting year!

Long Time No Blog!

Long time no Blog... It is true but I do have a good reason. My computer totally died on me again. This is what I stared at for three days while I tried to fix the computer. I am still not sure what I did wrong but the system was taking up 99% of the CPU poer and leaving NOTHING for anything else... hense nothing would load. It took exactly 17 minutes for the start menu to respond so I could even look at the program list. It really really sucked. The lucky thing was I was able to goto future shop and get a new burner. I loaded Win 98SE and was able to burn my pictures off of the computer before I reformated the hard drive. I lost almost everything but I am grateful to now have the computer up and running again.

Ronaye, Craig and the boys have everything moved into their new house. I was over there tonight and the last thing to be moved in was the cats. They were a little freaked out but settling in when I left. Genitta painted the boys rooms with colors they picked out themselves and they were getting comfy in their new rooms. Ave has a dusty blue...

Jordan picked out a lighter blue that also looks really nice in his room. Avery is in the basement and Jordie got the room upstairs next to his mom :)

My mom came over to check out the new house as well. She had a really nice visit and was nice enough to pose for a picture with her new tatoo. It is a symbol that means "wise one" I think.

Before I left I went with Ronaye to check out the "office". The color is very nice... but I don't think it was supposed to extend past the wall and onto the rug!!!

Oh well...

Me and The Boys

The boys are hanging with me for my last three days of holiday. So far today we watched the Princess Bride and then this is what we have done since. Avery is glued to the computer and Jordan is content since this means that it leaves the gameboy free for him.

I went outside for a cigarette and spotted Jaike stalking a couple of poor birds in the tree.

Maxx caught onto the excitement and with the two cats and all the commotion the birds flew away. It made me laugh :)