Naïvazë

This week’s Photo Friday is “Round”.

Pretend Bonus Points to anyone who can figure out where I took the photo.

• Was reading the classifieds section in the newspaper and found the following:
  1. 28″ Black & White TV for Sale: $50
  2. Free: 8 Shop Vacuums.  Give me a working one in exchange.
     and (by the same person)
     Free: Pressure Washer… needs repairs.  Give me a working one in exchange.

  I’d like to say to the above people.  “Good Luck.”  However, if I had a working vacuum or pressure washer, I would not be exchanging it for a broken one.  Just saying.

• In case you were wondering about this little guy that we found the other day:
  

  We have officially decided on the name Levi for him.  We don’t have a middle name yet. He has learned how to lap milk now so no more syringe feedings.  He’s also fully litter trained all ready.  (And yes, we are keeping him at my parents house.) He’s grown a lot.  We figure he probably weighs a whole pound now.  Monty (my other cat that lives with my parents) is getting a bit more used to him.  He’s a bit put out at having another cat around and sorta avoids him but we think they’ll be fine together soon.  Amie (the border collie) loves the new kitten.  She is super gentle with it.  Belle… my wonderful but overly cranky cat who hates all other cats with a passion (and is the sole reason Levi will be staying at my parents house and not mine) has not yet met Levi.  She will meet him next Thursday when I “kitty sit” at my house so we’ll see what happens.

• Only a few more days until the schools go back around here.  So for those of you going back to school next Tuesday… enjoy your last week of vacation and do something fun!  (and safe!)

• I’ll be looking after a friend’s cat again all weekend (I just go to her place twice a day to feed it, etc.)

• On Tuesday I am going to Victoria for the night to help my brother move back into the university.  I suddenly realised that it’s been about 15 years since I’ve been to the island… Seeing how close it is to us really, that’s an extraordinarily long time….

Last time on 2 Truths and a Lie I asked you guys to guess which of the following facts about me was untrue:

1. I don’t like bacon. 2. My eyes are hazel. 3. I haven’t mown the lawn in over a year.

This answer is….

3. I haven’t mown the lawn in over a year.

I have a town house and the strata fee covers all the outdoor stuff so someone else comes and does it for me!  Yep… I got a lawn guy.

The other two facts:

1. I don’t like bacon. 2. My eyes are hazel.

were both true.

No one got the correct answer.

And now it’s time for Round 8!!!

Which of the following three facts are NOT true?

1. My favourite season is Autumn 2. I always wear my hair down. 3. I have one sister and one brother.

My parents found an abandoned kitten this morning. He weighs less than a pound and is used to being nursed so they have to feed him with a syringe.  He’s the cutest little thing!

They brought him to the rink for me to see him.  He looks a bit like a baby Belle though.  I’ll try to post some later if I can.

I thought about taking him in, but my cat Belle really doesn’t do well with other cats.  I do not think she would treat it well and as I work outside the home I cannot always be around to supervise.  If I didn’t have Belle my mum said that her and my dad would have paid his expenses for me and to have him neutered and everything so it’s not a money issue, just a catfight issue :p

I think they are going to end up keeping it themselves.  The other cat Monty gets along with other cats much better than Belle does.  They said they’d think about giving it to a good home if they really knew the people and how they treat animals very well but otherwise they’ll end up keeping him.

They took him to the vet and he said that they had talked to someone else this morning who had found another kitten that looked similar and was the same age somewhere else this morning, so it sounds as if someone is going around dropping of a litter of kittens in different locations.  I sure hope they get caught and have to pay a big fine!!!  What a horrible thing to do.  These kittens were still being nursed by the mother and the little one we found extremely hungry.

We haven’t come up with a name yet.  My mum mentioned maybe Juniper or Doc (because they found him in a juniper bush at the doctor’s office.) but they were just suggestions.  I’ll let you know the final result.

*Update: Other names we have been considering for him now are: Bluff, Zamboni, Maxwell or Mozart. Also, I got a couple of photos of him now.

12. You can often tell what music someone is about to skate to, just by what they are wearing.

Sasha Cohen

11. You know how to pronounce names like Sikharulidze, Volosozhar, Gimazetdinova, Woetzel and Gedevanishvili.

Elladj Balde

10. You get really excited when a figure skater walks into the Olympic Opening Ceremonies as their country’s flagbearer.

Mylene Girard & Liam Dougherty

9. A song comes on the radio and you say “Hey! ______ skated to this!”  +1 Bonus point if you mention the year they used the music.  +10 bonus points if you do this for EVERY song that comes on the radio.

Ekaterina "Katia" Gordeeva

8. The fact that Russia did not win a Gold medal at the 2010 Olympics in any of the figure skating events is so mind-boggling to you that you start to get a headache when you try to comprehend it.

Anastasia Gimazetdinova

7. You’ve choreographed an entire Stars on Ice show in your dreams.

Stacy Perfetti

6. It drives you completely insane when figure skating movies depict the Olympic Games as having spotlights and/or a 10.0 judging scale.

Elizabeth Stern

5. When you hear about a certain country in the news (or newspaper or geography class) and think “Hey! That’s where the *insert year here* World Championships were held!”

Marie-France Dubreuil & Patrice Lauzon

4. You know the significance of the years 1896 and 1924. (For my non-skating readers, 1896 was the first World Championships, and 1924 was when figure skating first became an Olympic Sport)

Qing Pang & Jian Tong

3. You know the themes from Carmen, Swan Lake & Chicago off by heart and realize that in the past 25 years every skater in the world has skated to at least one of these pieces of music.

Jamie Sale & David Pelletier

2. After reading my last point you made a quick mental list of the few skaters that have NOT skated to these songs so that you could say to me “Nunh-unh So & So didn’t!”

Marina Aganina & Dmitri Zobnin

1. You recognize every skater in the divider pictures that I posted between points (without reading the captions!)

Kurt Browning

• My parents and brother are back from their trip to Toronto It’s nice to have them around again and I went over to visit them today.

• Today I was quite tired but I knew the plants needed watering after all the hot weather we’ve been having and I’d been out all evening.  So I went out and gave them all a good drink of water despite the fact that it was nearly midnight.  Ten minutes later it suddenly started to pour rain.  Hmmph.

• I went to a friends tonight to watch a movie.  We watched an old Hayley Mills one called Summer Magic.  It’s really cute.  Have you guys seen it?

• I got called in for a couple of extra shifts at work this week, which is great for me!  Today I was off though, and I think they started painting the ice today.  Can’t wait to see how it looks tomorrow.

• I’ve very slowly started going through my stack of about 500 unlabelled VHS tapes to see what is on them.  It’ll mostly all be figure skating, but I want to get them labelled so I know the specifics.  I do believe it will take me approximately forever to complete.

• Everywhere all the roads are closed.  It’s so hard to get anywhere right now.  The construction is supposed to last until MARCH!  argh.  That goes right through the entire skating season which will be a pain because during the skating season I get also get a lot of shifts at another ice rink that is uptown.  Skating season runs from September-March.

• Last week my friend and I were drawing pictures while we had our tea.  She’s been taking some art and learning to draw so we had a go.  I’m not at all an artist so I was deligtedly surprised that my sketches turned out (more or less… The top picture was supposed to be a horse, but the legs are too short so I think it is now actually a donkey or pony.  What do you think?)

• Yesterday I pulled my knee pretty bad.  I had these shooting pains going up and down it and couldn’t stand up for about 15 minutes, but today it feels much better so I assume that’s a good sign.  It feels a bit weird but it doesn’t hurt.  So glad it wasn’t anything serious like I thought at first.

This is a sponsered post.  However, everything written in it is 100% true and the opinions are my own.

Backgammon has been one of my favourite board games for years.  It’s the perfect combination of skills and luck and doesn’t have a bunch of complicated gadgets and rules.

I remember when I was very young we had a checkers board that had backgammon on the back of it.  I asked my parents what game it was and they had no idea what it was called or how to play.  From this information I gathered that it was a very complicated adult game that would be much to hard for me.  (Hey, if my parents didn’t even know how to play it must be meant for the world’s top geniuses only… Like Einstein… right?)

Then a few years later my brother asked for a wooden chess set for Christmas.  He received one from my nana and it had all kinds of games in one.  Backgammon was included.  We immediately recognized the unique board and now we knew the name of the game from the instructions.  We played every game but.  Backgammon was far too intimidating.  That is until one day when we got bored of all the other games after playing them multiple times.  So Paul and I sat down to learn backgammon.  It wasn’t nearly as complicated as we’d expected!  It turns out that my parents didn’t know how to play simply because they’d never played before… not because it was too hard.  We even taught them!  After that it became a favourite of ours.

Years later when we received our first computer we started playing internet backgammon.  It was convenient when everyone was busy to be able to find someone online to play with.  It was the first computer game I ever got into.  But we were using the version that game with Windows and after awhile I found that most people who played on there would quit half way through the game if they were losing! It was very frusterating.

So when I saw that Play65.com has an online backgammon I joined in.  You can play for either real money or stick to “fun money” (which is not real) like I do.  It’s a lot of fun and I’ve yet to have someone leave mid-game.  Now that I live on my own it’s hard to find an offline opponent so this is perfect.  Plus the “board” is beautiful and you can adjust the speed of the game to your liking.  If you’re a backgammon fan, you should definitely check it out.

1. What is your favorite Mexican dish?
Are big platters of nachos topped with green onions, sour cream, cheddar cheese, black olives and ground beef Mexican?
If so, that’s the answer.  If not, then I don’t know my mexican food so well.

2. When you were a kid, did you get started on your homework right away after school, or did you procrastinate?
Well, I liked to do it right after school, but we had other stuff to do first usually.  My parents weren’t fans of homework so they told us the other stuff we did had to come first (like paper route, room cleaning, youth group, piano/skating lessons etc.) Once all that stuff was done we could work on it.  I always got it finished though.  I learned to get a lot of it done at lunch time so I didn’t have to worry about it later.

3. What is your favorite store for home furnishings?
I don’t have one.

4. When you were young, did you like school lunches?
The schools didn’t sell lunches until middle school (grade 8).  Elementary school you had to bring your own.  A few times a year they had “Hot Lunch” day and you could order from them a week in advance.  It was usually a hot dog, once in awhile they had stew or chili.  It was never worth the price. We ordered it in the early grades but then my mum started picking up fast food for us or taking us out on those days.  That way we got an even “specialer” treat for a better deal.

5. Is religion a crutch?
A crutch as in something that you lean on to support you?  Something you rely on?  Something that holds you up?  If that’s what you are trying to say, than yes, Jesus is mine.

6. In your region, what is the “big” (most popular in the community or state) high school sport?
Probably Track & Field.  Nothing was really big.  We had a basketball, soccer, field hockey, rugby and Curling team but mostly parents watched.

7. Do you consider yourself rich?
Not at all, please send money! :p

8. Which of these would you have the best chance for success in administering:
A) CPR
B) Heimlich Maneuver
C) Changing a flat tire

Absolutely not C.   Probably A, but I’m torn between A & B.  I’m trained in first aid, but I hope I never have to administer either.

9. Which dance would you prefer to learn & why:
A) Salsa
B) Hip Hop
C) Waltz
D) Swing

How About e) all of them!  Okay I have taken lessons in both Hip Hop and Waltz.  And we learned a bit of swing at school.  There was a lunch time drop-in swing dance club but my friends and I didn’t have partners (aka male friends that were willing to join in like all the other guys did Hmmph.) so we mostly watched.  I’ve never taken Salsa at all… of the Hip hop and Waltz that I did take I can’t decide what I enjoyed more.   I completely loved both!

10. What’s the worst news you’ve ever delivered to someone?
Fortunately I haven’t had to do any that was really bad.  Usually it’s just something like “Sorry, you’ll be just have to be cold for a couple hours while you watch your kid play hockey.  I can’t help it that you wore a mini-skirt and high-heels to the ice arena and I really can’t turn the heat on for you because the ice isn’t cold enough to freeze as it is.”  (The part about the mini-skirt and high heels I usually just think to myself :p)

Oh, maybe the worst was the “I’m sorry but you kindergarten class cannot go skating right now.  I know you are all here and expecting to skate but it’s not our fault that you showed up on the wrong day.  You don’t have the ice booked and we have a different school who showed up on the right day using the ice all ready for their broomball tournament.”    (The kids were understanding but their teacher was mad!)

11. Name something you learned in college that had nothing to do with classes or academics.
Oh gosh, I barely went to college.  I took 3 courses online I think and then I spent about 5 months in college taking two classes.  I can’t remember learning anything there haha (other than the course work.)

12. New variation on an old question: If there’s a song in your head that just won’t get out, what is your favorite (or most repeated) line in that song?
I don’t know.  I don’t know what it’s called and I don’t know what the lyrics are.  It was playing at the rink and it’s one of those annoyingly catchy tunes… but I hadn’t heard it before and now all I have in my head is “Na na na-na na na na-na na na na na.”  Now, there’s actual lyrics there, but I don’t know what they are.  If it sounds familiar please let me know what the song is :p

This morning I got called into work and… we started putting in the ice!  (For those of you who are confused because you thought there was all ready ice where I work… we have two sheets during the autumn and winter but take one sheet out for the summer and spring due to roller hockey & lacrosse.)  Yep, the cement floor now has a very thin veil of ice covering it that will be built up and painted over the next week or so.

This means that Autumn is coming!
Autumn is my favourite season.
In Autumn, the figure skating season starts.
In Autumn, the hockey season starts.
In Autumn, the leaves all turn pretty colours.
In Autumn, the weather is neither too hot nor too cold.
In Autumn, I get a lot of hours at work.
In Autumn, I put up and decorate my Christmas tree.
Oh yay! Christmas is coming! I love Christmas!

(Oops…  Please Stay! I hope I didn’t just scare away all my readers…)

• Cleaned my windows
• Steam-cleaned the downstairs bedroom and living room
• Got to bed at a decent hour (Go me!)
• Made some mints
• Washed the dishes
• Picked up a coffee mug to dry it
• Put my finger through the ceramic mug handle. (Apparently I am much stronger than I thought.)
• Picked at injuries to remove ceramic from them
• Bandaged up finger
• Threw out said mug
• Had sister over to watch DVD’s

• The other day I got up at 6:30 and noticed something…. the sun was still rising.  It was pretty high in the sky, but it wasn’t up yet and the sky was still orange and pink….  It was only a month ago that I walked to work at 4:30 and saw the same thing… hmmph, the shorter days are coming much too quickly if you ask me.

• On Wednesday I went with a couple of my friends to another friends surprise Baby Shower.  She just found out she’s expecting a boy (Although my mum and I said all along that it would be a boy, it’s funny how some people you just know.  Some I really don’t know, but the ones I do I have never been wrong on (and neither has my mum… she always knew what we were going be even though she never had ultrasounds.)  Anyway, this girl was one of my best friends for years, but it’s been a couple years since I’ve seen her as she married an american and moved to the USA.  (She lives on the outskirts of New York City now I believe.)  Actually, the last three times I’ve seen her have been her Bridal Shower, her Wedding and now her Baby Shower.  It was great to see her again, but we didn’t get to talk much because there were a lot of other people there too and I won’t see her again before she goes back to New York since she doesn’t have long to visit and her schedule has been packed full with family stuff.

• Don’t get me wrong, I’m super happy for my friend (the one with the baby coming), but I sure wish it’d be my turn next!  I can’t wait until I can afford to adopt kids of my own!

• My parents and brother have all flown to Toronto for a week (and a day) to visit my grandpa and a bunch of other relatives.  I really wish I was able to go with them.  I used to go all the time (at one point I had been to Toronto more than Vancouver over a period of a few years) but it’s harder now.  I have more bills to pay, I live on my own so would have to find someone to pet sit, and I can’t afford the time off of work right now.  I know they are all off enjoying their holiday, but I can’t wait for them to get home again! I miss them!

• I usually don’t pay much attention when my blog numbers drop a bit… but they’ve taken a huge hit this past week.  I usually get about 40-50 people per day viewing it (I know that’s not much compared to some of you) and suddenly the numbers are at about 8.  It’s been like that for three days.  So now I’m wondering if my blog feeds aren’t showing up or updating properly or if my blog isn’t loading for some of you.  It could just be a quiet spell, it seems most of my readers are American and the schools have started back up over there (see what I learn by reading all your blogs! I even know when school starts up in a country I don’t live in haha… Ours start on Sept 7th.) but if you are having trouble reading the blog or loading the page, please let me know so I can fix it!!! Thanks.

• I accidently defrosted all my chicken.  I had a huge box of chicken breasts in the freezer and I couldn’t break them apart to get just a couple pieces off.  So I ran them under hot water in the sink.  Then the phone rang and I forgot about it while I was talking on the phone and I defrosted all of them.  You’re not supposed to refreeze them, so I’ve got about 30 large chicken breasts that I have to cook up just for myself.  I guess I’ll freeze them again after they are cooked so they don’t go bad (because there’s no way I can eat that many!!! I get full after one they are so large.)  It’s too bad though because I like to marinate them before cooking them and I didn’t want to have them all done the same (but I don’t have the ingredients or time to go shopping to make them all different.)

The writers workshop theme I chose to write about this week was “Things I was oddly obsessed about as a child.”

The two obssessions that come to mind for this post though are… calenders and Russia.

*Disclaimer* I have not once stated anywhere on this blog or elsewhere that I was normal.  I feel like I’m going to be using this disclaimer a lot more often.

I’ll start with the calenders.

I always had to have a calender on my bedroom wall.  Let me rephrase that.  I always had to have at least one calender on my bedroom wall.  There were many years when I had three calenders.  Three calenders in one bedroom.  Most of them featured figure skaters.  The calenders also had to be on the correct page.  I NEVER forgot to change them on the first of the month.  In my high school years, when I was allowed to stay up later (at least on weekends, school days I actually went to bed earlier because I was skating before school), I would often change the calenders the minute it hit 12:00 midnight.  If I was unable to do this, I would change them as soon as I woke up.  I never changed them the night before, because that would be purposefully changing them to the wrong day.  A couple times I even changed them at midnight on New Years.  That’s right, other people bang pots and pans… I counted down and switched calenders.  Of course these were special ones because it was a whole new calender!  And I had no problem spending up to $60 a year on calenders, knowing that if I waited until January 2nd the same 3 calenders would come to $12 total, because I had to have them up on the first.

It wasn’t an OCD type thing (which I don’t have) but more of a weird phase I went through in which I strove to make sure everyone knew that I was on top of knowing the date.  (Hey, the post asked for ODD obsessions.)  It didn’t stop with the calenders being on the right page either.  Every day had to have something on them.  I’m not talking about “2:00 Dentist”.  I’m talking about birthdays, anniversaries, and national holidays.  I wrote to my relatives in England and asked for their national holidays and the birthdays of everyone they knew…. and their pets.  I looked up the birthdays for every figure skater I knew, and when I still couldn’t quite fill up EVERY day on the calender I resorted to anniversaries of un-important events such as: “Today marks the 3 year anniversary of the day that Jeff Gillooly met with authorities for six hours in the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding case.”  (Not kidding, that was on my calender…)

And it wasn’t just my calenders that had to be right, it was everyone I knows.  I’d change my parents calender and when I got to school I’d ask all my friends “Did you remember to change your calenders this morning?”  I asked them every month and they usually had remembered (maybe because the night before a new month I’d remind them to “change your calenders tomorrow!”.)  And if I walked into a classroom with the calender not changed on the first of the month, my hand would shoot up and I’d ask “Can I please change the calender?!”  Yeh, I’m pretty sure everyone thought I was crazy.

Second obsession: Russia.

I still do love Russia (and list it as my #1 dream vacation, or the country I’d want to move to if I HAD to leave Canada), but I am not obsessed with it like I used to be.

I can’t remember how old I was when this one came up, but I do remember I was in Elementary school.  I would sign out every book about Russia that I could.  I learned their alphabet and a few Russian words (The first two things I learned to say in Russian were Grandmother and Cabbage)… I’m not to sure how far you’d get with those, but I still know the words for them.  Every creative writing story I wrote featured characters with names like Viktor, Natalia, Dmitry and Elena.  When I finished my spelling tests, I’d re-write all the words with Russian letters underneath.  (In french class my teacher gave me bonus marks for doing this!)  I’d go to the public library and sign out cassette tapes (for any children reading this, they were these things we had before cd’s came out.  For any really young children, cd’s were the things before iPods and mp3′s) in which someone was speaking Russian and I’d play them with my walkman (again, children, these were portable devices for playing such tapes…) as I went to sleep.  I’d sign out Russian books and try to translate them word for word.

And I told everyone I knew that I was going to walk across Russia when I was 22.  (As a child I thought 22 was very old and I could do whatever I wanted then, when I reached my mid-teens and realised that, it wasn’t I changed the goal to just “someday”.)  Length-wise.  I begged my friends to come with me.  One of them (a friend from grade 8 or so named Khee-lar) finally agreed but she ended up moving away.  I had another friend that I had been friends with since Kindergarten and after Khee-lar moved away he finally agreed to come with me but there was “no way” he was walking that far.  He was going to drive along slowly beside me just to keep me company and so that I wouldn’t have to carry my bags.

Each year we had something at our school called “Young Authors Day” where everyone wrote stories and read them allowed to the rest of the kids and their parents  (We were in groups based on our last names (so that siblings would always be together and parents could hear both children’s stories) and the groups were made of kids from Kindergarten- Grade 7 with about 30 kids per group.) and we could write about any theme but had to keep our stories a certain length (because it took a long time to read them all.)  I still have my submission from when I was about 10 or 11 years old.  (Note: I just said I was 10 or 11 and this was a fictional story, don’t come down on me if some of the “facts” are untrue!!  Oh, and we are NOT related to Ekaterina the Great that I know of… nor have I ever been to Russia or ridden in a polka dotted airplane.)

The plane shook as it landed in Siberia near the Baikal Blue Sea. From there, we were to take the Baikal Amur Mainline railroad to the Volga river, located in the ‘Yugo-Zapadnaya’ (Russian for southwestern) area, where we were going to visit the steel foundry in Togliatti.

The trip started when we, (my sister Nicki, my brother Paul, mum, dad, & I) discovered that Ekaterina the Great (Russian for Catherine), Empress of Russia, was one of our ancestors. We were to be accompanied on the trip by Boris Yeltsin, who had held leadership during the Russian coup. Boris was to take us on a tour right through Russia, and we were to visit the graves of Ekaterina, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev and read up on their 40 day mourning services. We were also going to visit Mikhail Gorbachev, president of Russia, in Moscow, and were going to ride on the underground railway ‘Metro’. It has 132 stations which are decorated like palaces with marble walls and floors, bronze statues, wall mosaics and chandeliers. We were going to stay for two months during the summer.

One June 31 we reached the Vancouver airport, the weather was hot and humid, very unusual for Vancouver. The smell of hot dogs floated through the air, and we could feel the wind blowing in our faces. We had to shout to be heard, because the wind blew our voices away. “Plane #26 has now arrived,” we heard the loudspeaker say.

“Come one, that’s our plane.” yelled my mum as she picked up our baggage. We climbed into the plane and sat in our seats. The inside of the plane was decorated in red polka dots; enough to make you dizzy.

“What movie is playing? asked Nicki, I looked in the brochure and replied, “Grease.”

“All right!” cheered Nicki. Grease is her favourite movie. After the movie, we read books on Russia, I learned that Russia was the biggest country in the world and that in 1143 Moscow replaced Novagrod as the capital city.

As the plane finally landed and we stepped out we could feel the sun beating on our faces. It was probably about 35 degrees celcius. From the Volga river we rode the Metro past the Onion dome, Ivan bell tower, Orthodox chuch and the St. Basil’s cathedral, the Kremlin and Boris pointed out the winter castle to us. We got off finally in St. Petersburg.

Two days later we were having a swim in Lake Lagoda when Boris suggested he take us to Lake Onega in Yerisa, four hours a way. Paul spent the day in a Russian preschool where he made a new friend named Danies Ivon. As the month wore on we visited Lake Baikal, Lena, Vladivstok and Kolyma. In Moscow we went to a museum and saw one of Ekaterina the Great’s servant’s swords. After that we went to a ballet and to the Scraibin music school where we met the composer Dimitri Kabylaski. Then we just relaxed for the rest of the trip. THE END.

Last time on 2 Truths and a Lie I asked you guys to guess which of the following facts about me was untrue:

1.  My favourite vegetable is eggplant.
2. My birthday is in September
3. My favourite books of the bible are Deuteronomy & Ruth

This answer is….

2. My birthday is in September.

Congrats to Rose Molley & Izzy who got the correct answer.

My birthday is actually in January.

The other two are true.  My favourite vegetable is eggplant and my favourite books of the bible are Deuteronomy & Ruth.

And now it’s time for Round 7!!!

Which of the following three facts are NOT true?

1. I don’t like bacon.
2. My eyes are hazel.
3. I haven’t mown the lawn in over a year.

Feel free to steal these, I stole them from a questionnaire site myself.

Do you have any pets?
Yes. Belle Arina is the cat that lives with me, and then I have a cat (Monty Bear) and dog (Amie Shania) that live elsewhere.

What color shirt are you wearing?
Blue.

Name three things that are physically close to you:
The computer (obviously), A mug of tea, and a fan (because it is way too hot out.)

What is the last book you read?
I just finished the book of Romans last night.

Are you or were you a good student?
Yes… not a straight-A student, but usually B average.

What’s your favorite sport?
Figure Skating

Do you enjoy sleeping late?
Not really. I love being ABLE to sleep late, and knowing I don’t have to get up…. but come morning I hate staying in bed.

What’s the weather like right now?
Not particularly. It is way too hot out.

Who tells the best jokes?
I don’t know. Most jokes are pretty corny…

What was the last thing you dreamed about?
I just woke up from a dream, but I forgot to write it down and can barely remember now. I do remember there were some kids walking up the street in it, but that’s it.

Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?
Yes. No.

Do you believe in karma?
No.

Do you believe in luck?
Not overall, but with some things (like a lucky dice roll when playing Monopoly) or something, then yes. But not with life situations.

Do you like your eggs scrambled or sunny side up?
Sunny side up. I LOVE eggs, but the yolk and whites have to be seperate.

Do you collect anything? If so, what?
Books mostly. I don’t spend money on them though.

Are you proud of yourself?
I’m proud to say that God calls me his child.

Are you reliable?
Yes.

Have you ever given money to a homeless person?
Yes.

What’s your favorite food?
Veggie Sandwiches and Cream Cheese.

Have you ever had a secret admirer?
If by “secret” you mean that I don’t know they existed at all, then possibly. I’ve never had anyone give me notes or anything and sign it “Your Secret Admirer” though.

Do you like the smell of gasoline?
Not at all.

Do like to draw?
Yes I do. But I do not have the patience required to create anything beautiful.

What’s your favorite invention?
Indoor Plumbing.

Is your room messy?
No, but it does need to be dusted and have the floor washed sometime today.

What do you like better: oranges or apples?
Apples.

Do you give in easily?
No. I’m actually really stubborn.

Are you a good guesser?
Yep.

Can you read other people’s expressions?
Yes. I’m quite good at that.

Are you a bully?
Not at all.

Do you have a job?
Yes and I love it!

What time did you wake up this morning?
7:30ish.

What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
I don’t eat breakfast.

When was the last time you showered?
Last night.

What do you plan on doing tomorrow?
I have no plans tomorrow, nothing scheduled whatsoever. Weird.

What’s your favorite day of the week and why?
Wednesday. Because I like the looks of the word “Wednesday” written on paper. *Disclaimer* I have never once said I was normal.

Do you have any nicknames?
Yes. My brother calls me “Tzar” (or sometimes Zarkle) and my coworkers call me “T.D.O.” I

Have you ever been scuba diving?
No. I don’t think I’d want to. I’m not overly fond of fish.

What’s your least favorite color?
I don’t think I have a least favourite. MAYBE purple. But it depends what it’s for.

Is there someone you have been constantly thinking about? If yes, who?
Yes, three. Jesus Christ, and the two children I wish to adopt someday (whom I’ll call Lazarus Jacob and Tristanie Julie)

Would you ever go skydiving?
No, but I think it would be really fun!

What toothpaste do you use?
Currently Crest. I just look for good deals when I shop.

Do you enjoy challenges?
Some of them… that really depends on the challenge.

What’s the worst injury you have had?
When I was 7 I fell off a bike that was way too big for me and had no pedals and broke two of my adult teeth in half.

What’s the last movie you saw?
I think Prince Caspian. I rewatched it last week and I don’t recall watching anything since.

What do you want to know about the future?
Well, I’d like to know WHEN I’ll be able to afford to adopt kids… but if someone could tell me that, I’d still refuse the information.

What does your last text message say?
I don’t have a cellphone, and therefore, cannot receive text messages. Once, many months ago, I borrowed my brothers phone to learn how to send texts and I sent a few to his girlfriend. She did respond to me on his phone, but I can’t remember what she said.

Who was the last person you spoke over the phone to?
My mum called to say that their flight had arrived in Toronto.

What’s your favorite school subject?
When I was in school, it was a toss up between Dance, French, Geography & History.

What’s your least favorite school subject?
Science. I enjoy science, but in the schools they taught a lot of things that I don’t believe in, such as evolution etc. I did enjoy Chemistry, but I was allergic to the Chemistry Lab and couldn’t take it.

Would you rather have money or love?
I would like to have enough money that I could adopt children and love them.

What is your dream vacation?
Russia! I would LOVE to go to Russia, and if I could go during the Sochi Olympics that would be even better. (It’ll never happen.)

What is your favorite animal?
Tigers! I love them. I once got to hold a baby white tiger, but the orange ones are my favourites.

Do you miss anyone right now?
My parents and brother who are away for the next week.

What’s the last sporting event you watched?
Well, the last event I paid to attend was a figure skating show, if you want competition it was the Olympics (Speed Skating), if you mean on tv, it’d be old tapes of figure skating (or on live tv it would be the Stanley Cup finals) or if you count non-professional sports I see kids and adults playing pick-up hockey at the rink where I work every day.

Do you need to do laundry?
Yes, I should do a load.

Do you listen to the radio?
I listen to the Christian station when I’m in the car. I rarely listen to the radio at home.

Where were you when 9/11 happened?
In bed, it was at like 5:00 in the morning my time.

What do you do when vending machines steal your money?
Nothing.

Have you ever caught a butterfly?
Yes, I think when I was a kid I caught a few.

What color are your bed sheets?
Right now they are yellow and green flowered.

What’s your ringtone?
I just have a home phone, and I have different ring tones for different people who call.

Who was the last person to make you laugh?
A coworker most likely.

Do you have any obsessions right now?
No.

Do you like things that glow in the dark?
As long as they aren’t in my bedroom when I’m trying to sleep!

What’s your favorite fruity scent?
Grapefruit!

Do you watch cartoons?
No, but I do watch animated movies like “The Little Mermaid” or “Anastasia”.

Have you ever sat on a roof?
Yes, actually, one year in a snowstorm my friends and I were tobagganing off her roof into a snowbank down below.

Have you ever been to a different country?
Yes, I have been to the USA, England and Wales. And Scotland, but they didn’t let me off the plane.

Name three things in the world you dislike:
Taxes, Cigarette Smoke, and Bacon.

Name three people in the world you dislike:
I can’t think of a single one.

Has a rumor even been spread about you?
Most likely, people talk about others all the time. But I don’t know when, where or what.

Do you like sushi?
I love it. Especially California and Dynamite Rolls. Yum!

Do you believe in magic?
Yes, but unless it’s a miracle from God I say steer clear.

Do you hold grudges?
No, not at all.

Earlier in the week I posted that I had gone hiking on Monday with my family and posted a couple of photos.  Now I thought I would share the rest of them.  Click on the thumbnails to view the full image.