5 embarrassing things about me

1. i like reading ellie in the living section of the toronto star. so much drama, my goodness. i generally enjoy reading 'dear abby' more than 'ellie' though because sometimes ellie annoys me.

2. i have a weakness for young adult fiction. (from the luxe - which i haven't written a review on yet because i'm waiting for the last book to come in the mail so i can finally finish the series - to the mortal instruments, i'm all over it.)

3. instead of hemming my pants properly, i used to just staple them. at work of course, as to use up their staples instead of mine. bahaha, talk about professional. i've since hemmed the majority of my pants now.

4. i try to keep my room in hamilton tidy because i'm in the basement and the last thing i want is bugs and spiders all up in my stuff. unfortunately, my room at home is still a huge mess, boo.

5. i'm a chronic procrastinator who just doesn't seem to learn from my mistakes. like, for example, right now i should be working, but instead i'm blogging and typing up random stupidness, haha. everything always get done in the end though, so i feel a little bit better about this. a little.

novel withdrawal

it's been more than two months since the last time i sat down to read a novel - i know, it's so sad...and pretty nerdy that it makes me feel sad, haha. anyway, my problem is that i generally don't really have time to read and when i do, i'm either too tired or so sick of reading journal articles/OT books that i just don't feel like it anymore. gah. over my christmas break i'm going to plunk myself down, curl up in my favourite armchair, cover myself with a blanket, sip some hot chocolate, and get lost in the pages of a book. no wait, make that books.

can't wait!

p.s. it's already november, can you believe it? :O

i...

- am officially not pursuing my MTA (music therapist accreditation) anymore.
after getting an e-mail from my supervisor a couple months back, i very honestly let her know where i was at and she wrote back today saying that she completely understood and i'm completely relieved that she doesn't hate me (she still wants to meet up so this is a good sign.) :) it took at lot of thinking and rethinking and talking to multiple people (ranging from justin to family to my faculty advisor), but ultimately i think i made the right decision for myself. i'm at peace with it and i'm glad everything is working out. :)

- am starting my first placement the monday after next monday.
i'm feeling pretty nervous, but excited. looking forward to being at a hospital (yay!) and finally being able to see and experience firsthand what an OT does not only as a volunteer, but as a student.

- am i'm getting more used to hamilton now.
...but i will still continue coming back to toronto every weekend. fo shizzle.

- am making tuna casserole for dinner tomorrow.
i eat dinner with my housemates so we all only have to cook for each other once a week since there are four of us and fridays we don't eat together. so far it's been working out great! and, my goodness, i've never eaten so well at school before. or cooked such good food - it always used to be either (the same) kind of pasta or instant noodles, haha. i still have much to learn, but justin and i will reap the rewards of my living in this house and having to up my game in cooking later on, i'm sure. :P

- am still loving OT.
it's been two months since i started school, and i can honestly say that the switch from MT to OT has been the best switch for me. i don't necessarily like every single little thing, but i'm generally really enjoying occupational therapy and i feel so much happier doing what i'm doing now compared to three months ago. it makes me kind of sad because i really do feel that music therapy has a lot of offer, but it just really solidifies the fact that it just wasn't for me. if anything, a lot of my thoughts towards music therapy are more positive now that i'm no longer working in the field. i will definitely refer people to music therapy where other people can do MT sessions with them, haha.

- really need to get back to work.
later dayz. :)

today i bought a poppy

i'm not sure why, but lately i've been thinking about gord.

during my time working in long-term care as a music therapist, i must have seen maybe 100 residents during any given week, but out of everyone i don't see anymore, i miss him the most. i actually thought of dropping my hours at his home on more than one occasion, but i never did largely because him. he was my favourite resident and i couldn't bring myself to leave as long as he was there - and it was in my control to stay.

even though he passed away in april 2009, i still get sad when i think about him. i never got to tell him i would be going back to school for OT. i never got to tell him justin had proposed to me and that i was going to get married. i never got sing certain songs with him, and thanks to a stupid outbreak that lasted for a month prior to his death, i never got to say goodbye. :(

anyway, gord was a veteran having been in the army for six years in his late teens to mid-twenties and he had a tattoo of his infantry on his arm and a head full of memories and stories as a result. while i've always respected veterans and remembrance day, i was never really into buying poppies until i worked in long-term care and the donation boxes were literally right there. i'm no longer working in long-term care, but even so i picked up a poppy today and on my way home, with gord on my mind and a lump in my throat, i decided i would buy one every year from here on in. it would be my way of remembering the fallen soldiers and their sacrifice, and my way of remembering my favourite veteran who has now joined his fallen comrades, gord.

i won't forget.
and i will certainly never forget gordon.
rip gord, rip. you are missed.

happy birthday!

...to my hubby to be. :)

wedding website/blog

justin and i have a wedding website/blog that we started earlier this month, but kept hidden away as we've slowly added content and made it look presentable. now - with just under 10 months to go - we're finally ready to uncover it and share our site with you guys...and the rest of the world (as is the case with the internet). anyway, it's there for you to poke around. enjoy!

find our site at: jusandsharon.wordpress.com
don't forget to sign the guestbook! :)

a productive day of doing no work

this past week has been crazy so today i gave myself the day off after my evaluated interview in the morning. (i'm not sure if i'll come to regret my decision to do almost no work today, but i'll deal with that later i guess. :P) since i decided not to do any work, but still wanted to do something productive, i ended up taking a little trip to the textile district here in hamilton in search of fabric for my bridesmaids dresses. (random fact of the day: apparently this area of hamilton is the home of the original tim horton's store.)

the area itself seemed a little sketchy, but the people in the stores were all super friendly and helpful. i went in empty-handed and left the area with little snippets of fabric samples, stapled to business cards. surprisingly, finding certain fabric in specific colours is pretty difficult (in retrospect though, i'm actually not sure why i thought it would be easy, haha. wishful thinking i guess.), but i'm glad i was able to find potentials.

next step: show justin and see what he thinks. :)

...and the wedding planning continues.

swamped, but almost out of the murkiness. kind of.

oh man, this past week and a half have been nothing short of crazy - i forgot how stressful being a student can be! i thought undergrad was stressful at times, but so far grad school has proved to be much worse. o_O

anyway, even though it's only tuesday, this week has been hectic. i had a big assignment due yesterday, another big assignment due today, and a presentation this morning in addition to all the other work i've had to do for classes and tutorials which, to some degree, has kind of gotten lost in the cracks. aghhhhh.

thankfully the craziness is slowly coming to a close. tomorrow we have our evaluated interviews where someone from the community comes in and we do initial interviews in front of groups of 6-7 (ahh!) and after that the big things will be out of the way for this month. although i still have something due next week. oh wait no, make that two things.

good grief, it just never ends. o_O

good thing i'm sentimental...

...and don't delete anything. even off computers i don't use anymore, haha.

so, as all of you already know, i was super sad when my hard drive died and i lost all my pictures since nothing was unrecoverable. :( anyway, i woke up this morning wondering if i had left my pictures on my previous laptop which is now my parents'. i didn't really have high hopes as i thought that i had transferred all my pictures onto my usb to put on my mac and deleted all those pictures as to not take up disk space on my parents' computer.

i guess i chickened out from deleting them off their hard drive because when i clicked "my pictures" what came up but all my pictures from when i got my first digital camera to 2007 when i got my new computer! :D yesssssssssssssss. i'm still missing pictures (obviously) but at least the gap isn't so big anymore, yay! :)

next step: transfer pictures onto macbook and back up, back up, back up!

my last 'single' thanksgiving

so i had thanksgiving dinner with justin's family this past monday night and it was a great meal full of lots of good food. highlights included justin somehow knowing what i would and wouldn't like (yes he knows me that well) and doing a little quick switch on the plates to make it look like i ate what i really didn't. not sure if we pulled it off well, but no one said anything so maybe we did, haha.

after dinner i was stuffed of turkey and ready to crawl into bed or sit at the table for another hour or two trying to digest everything. unfortunately, i couldn't stick around for long once i had finished eating because i had to drive back to hamilton so i really couldn't choose either of those options. anyway, while i was getting ready to head out the door, one of justin's aunts reminded me that by the same time next year, i'll be a mrs.

:O

...and i suppose justin will be a mr. but since he already is one, that just doesn't have the same effect, haha.