Things come and go

So, a couple of days, this happened to the small brush that I keep in my purse...

But today, we got in the mail, the replacement part that we ordered for our Dyson handheld vacuum cleaner...

We still don't know what happened to the original part, but I'm sure it will turn up somewhere someday.

Simple Instructions

Hubby bought an external hard drive for his PlayStation today. The instruction booklet was very short, to the point, and simple to follow...

Hit and Run

Coming back from grocery shopping, stopped at the light to turn left, and someone rear-ended us. Not hard. But enough to cause a bit of damage to the bumper of hubby's car. The worst part of it -- the guy took off. Hit and Run. And we didn't get a license plate.
Sometimes I wonder about people...

Twins

At the Safeway parking lot yesterday, two Equinoxes were parked side by side.

This sometimes happens, but not usually with an "un-common" make and model such as an Equinox, and such an "uncommon" colour like this dark green. I joked that "The Twins" were going grocery shopping together.

Finger Hug Fridays

Fridays are Finger Hug Fridays. Don't know what a Finger Hug is? It's a picture of two fingers that have faces and arms drawn on them, so it looks like they are hugging. This is the first one that my husband sent me...

He finds them on the internet, and then sends them to me in an email near the end of the day on a Friday. We call them Finger Hug Fridays. I don't get them all the time, just once in a while. But, they always make me smile. Here is the one I got today...

And here a couple of my favourites from over the months/years...

 So cute!

Did you remember?

End of summer

My budgets are done. The summer weather has cooled off. The malls are full of teenagers and back to school specials. The pool is back to below 70 degrees again. And the forecast calls for more rain this week. Fall is officially about a month away, but it feels like it’s just around the corner. Meanwhile, I'll be in the backyard eeking out the last of my summer, freezing my butt off in my pool, and trying to use up the mint by making mojito after mojito.

Not sure what happens that day

This is a picture of my calendar at work...

I'm not sure what's going to happen at the end of the month. It seems that May 30th doesn't exist.

Tax Time

It's that time of year again - Tax Time!
As an accountant, you would think I love this time of year. But I don't. I usually put it off and put it off, and then file my taxes at the very last minute. Although, with TurboTax, and CRA Netfile, it makes things so much easier, and so much quicker, than it used to be. So today, I buckled down and filed our taxes. This is a lot earlier than I usually do, so I'm proud of myself!

The January Blues

Monday, January 15th has been dubbed the Saddest Day of the Year.
As people come down off of the highs of Christmas and New Year's, as kids go back to school, and people settle back into a routine, often with 2 weeks of New Year's resolution wins and/or failures under their belt... well, it seems that this Monday has been awarded the distinction of being the saddest (or most depressing) day of the year.
It's not a surprise in our house. The Christmas decorations are down, and the house is slowly going back to normal. Hubby quit smoking on New Year's Day, and I am (as always) trying to eat healthier. So neither of us are in the best of moods. Everyone at work is either sick with the flu, or in a similar bad mood. So, yup -- the most depressing and/or saddest day of the year, it is!

Power glitch

Did your lights flicker or go out for a few seconds on Sunday night?
Ours did. So did my brother's. Power went out for a second, then came back on. TV and all the electronics shut off. Then it surged again a few seconds later.
Turns out, it was from a car that hit a large transmission line at Brooke and Nordel Way in Delta. What made this noteable, is that we weren't the only ones affected. People across the lower mainland saw it too. All the way to North Vancouver and the Island. It was a main feed line, and the outage was the system crashing, then switching over to another circuit. Twitter showed comments from all over the lower mainland and the Island of people who had the same thing. It was kind of weird.

The first day of vacation

I'm officially on vacation for 2 weeks!
But, what do I do for my first day off? I spend almost 4 hours getting my passport and Driver's License renewed. I had to get them both done, so I packed up a thermos of tea, my kobo e-reader, and off I went. I decided no matter how long it took, I would simply sit and read, and pretend I was at home instead.

It actually didn't take as long as I thought it would. The 4 hours I was gone included driving to/from each place. And the chairs at the passport office, despite being metal, were surprisingly comfortable!

Things you didn't know you needed (or wanted)

In the category of things I didn't know I needed, I give you this... meet Moxie:

Yup. She's a shower head with a Bluetooth speaker in it. Apparently we needed one, and it is now installed in our main bathroom. Although, I'm not exactly sure why, with the exception that it was free (hubby won it at a golf tourney on Friday). I mean really? Who needs a Bluetooth speaker in their showerhead?
Well it turns out that it's not such a bad idea. I put some soft spa like music on, got out the rosemary mint shower gel from Spa Utopia, and had a shower. It was kinda nice. The shower head was even strong enough to rinse the shampoo from my hair. And it's not bad looking.
The only issue? You have to remember to turn it off, and un-sync it from your device. And you occasionally have to charge the thing. Luckily, the middle speaker just pops out of the main shower head, for easy charging. But really? Charging a shower head? Nice or not, I still think we could live without it.

Jury Duty

So, last Thursday, I got a Summons to appear for Jury Duty. On July 10th.
Ugh!
Not only is that the day before my hubby's birthday, it's also in the middle of budget season! So, I talked to a few people at work, and decided that I would like to go, but really couldn't. Not this time around.
Sunday, I logged online and set out to make my excuse. I had a letter basically typed out already, so I really had 2 excuses. One -- budget season. I can't be the Finance Manager, in charge of budgets, and be away for a long period of time. Two -- my migraines. What happens if I get a migraine one morning, and am in bed and can't move without throwing up? Am I able to phone in sick?
The website did not let you have 2 excuses, so I chose the migraine one -- "Temporary Illness". My excuse was eloquent and respectful albeit blunt and to the point.
Today, I got an email back (That was quick!).
I'm excused!!
I'm so grateful. It's one less thing I have to worry about right now.

Tax time

I filed our taxes today. Every year I say I'm not going to wait until the last week to file our taxes, and every year I wait until the last week.

Franke stuff

One of the perks of working in the plumbing industry, is that hubby often comes home with cheap and/or free stuff. Things that we wouldn't normally buy. Like this drying rack for example:

Although, now that I've tried it out, I love it! But, I especially love the instruction booklet...

No words. Just pictures. Love the simplicity of it!

Daylight Savings Time

Yesterday we set our clocks ahead an hour.

The older I get, the more that hour affects me. I'm so tired today!! I wonder if I will ever see the abolishment of Daylight Savings Time in my lifetime? I really hope so. I think it's a concept that is far outdated now and never really saw the benefit to it.

September 1st

Today, I went around and changed all the calendars in my office. It was then that I realized two things:
1) I have too many calendars in my office (all for different things - one for month end, one for forecasts, one for budgets, and one just because it's pretty) 4 is way too many
2) 3 out of the 4 were still set on July
I think I missed August.

Speaking of which, I haven't blogged since Aug 1st. So, I'm going to go and post a bunch of posts, backdated into August, so be sure to read back a ways to get caught up.

Having a bad morning

Have you ever had one of "those" days...
Today, I woke up to sirens and traffic helicopters buzzing above the house. An accident on the bridge had me working from home for a couple of hours, instead of spending 2 hours in traffic. Ugh.
I finally left at 9:00am.
While I was approaching the bridge, I realized that I had forgotten to stop and get gas. A quick calculation, and I realized that I wouldn't have enough to actually get to work, and I would have to stop on the way there. Ugh.
Then I heard that there was a stalled semi about 10 minutes away. Ugh. So, I had to re-think exactly which gas station I could stop at. I decided to detour just off the bridge, stop at the gas station in the industrial area, and then take the back roads out of the industrial area to by-pass the stalled semi.
Feeling all proud of myself and smug, I pulled into the gas station. I put my credit card in, only to realize the sign on the pump that said "no credit cards". Ugh. So, I got back into the car and drove around the station to the other side (where the pumps do take credit cards). I got out of the car, only to realize I hit the trunk release and not the gas cap release.
I finally got my gas, and was on my way, through the back roads. Only a few minutes in, and I got stopped by a train. It was moving quite slow, and then stopped all together. Ugh. About 5 minutes later, I decided to turn around and wait out the traffic on the freeway... it would likely be faster. In hindsight, it probably wasn't.
While waiting in traffic, I decided that having that 2nd cup of tea at home just before I left, probably wasn't a great idea. I needed to use a bathroom bad. Ugh. Realizing that I would not make it to work, I decided to stop at the Starbuck's at about the 1/2 way mark to work.
Stopping at Starbuck's, I headed to the bathroom. Sitting there, I realized one big mistake I made. I had forgotten to check for toilet paper before committing myself, and to my horror, there was none on the wall. Ugh. Fortunately, I had some kleenex in my purse!
The rest of the drive was full of traffic jams and construction. I finally made it to work about 10:30. It was not a fun morning, and I'm hoping the rest of the day is a lot better.

#Census2016

The Census forms are back. Census 2016 forms are done online, and everyone is talking about it...

I completed ours today, and it was nice to have an online form. But, the website did not crash, and we got the short form, so it was somewhat anti-climatic.