March 15 (Saturday)
Ken took me to the airport at 7am for my 9am flight to my parents place. All I’ll say it that it was a really long day, followed by some drama and errands. Ended up ok though with some nice real info for once.
March 16 (Sunday) to March 21 (Friday)
We took Mom and Gary to the airport pretty early for their trip to Reno and spent the rest of the week running errands and letting Dad rest from his eye surgery. He really played out the eye-patch pirate thing though :p I had to play him some Pirate themed Metal that my friend, Nick, sent me. He loved it.
I love my puppies but being woken up at 8am every morning after only going to sleep around 2 or 3am is really tiring. Dad and I worked out a schedule for his eye-drops, 2am, 8am, 2pm, 8pm. The puppies get fed at 8am as well and Vashti got her morning medicines, then we tried to get Vashti to finish her food at 8pm and gave her the night medicines. She seems to be doing ok with her cancer. She got really loopy some nights though, I think it was her medicine. We also tried several things to get her to eat her pills easier. She’s very picky. She used to gobble them down with just bread, but the first night I tried it with bread and she didn’t want it. So I put some butter on it, it took forever to get her to eat it. Then we tried mixing alpo canned dog food into her food to get her to eat that, so I dipped the bread in the gravy and she loved it. But it was messy and the bread fell apart sometimes. Then we tried some beef ravioli thinking that at least the pills would stay tucked in. But she really didn’t want it. She chewed it and spit it out when I dipped it in the alpo gravy, and broke open one of the pills which spilled all over the floor. Mookie and Wolfie are vultures and tried to eat whatever she dropped so I had to kick them away and yell for my dad to let them out while I cleaned it up. I did not need those two getting loopy, they’re a handful enough! Finally we got Vashti to reliably eat her pills by stuffing them into bits of hot dogs.
March 22 (Saturday)
Dad spent all day trying to rearrange flights for Mom and Gary because she’d gotten food poisoning and Gary had to take her to the hospital. I just played with the puppies and cleaned the kitchen, wiping down the cabinets, walls and appliances. They get really muddy at doggie height.
March 23 (Sunday)
Happy Easter! Mom and Gary were supposed to be home just after midnight that morning but Mom got food poisoning and was throwing up too much to travel. Dad had rebooked their flight for midnight that night but she still wasn’t feeling well enough so they had to change it again. Dad and I however went to King Street Blues restaurant and both had their new brisket sandwich. I don’t usually go for that kind of thing but it was pretty good, but I had to pick through the brisket pieces and take out the fatty sections. I hate that.
March 24 (Monday)
Mom and Gary finally made it back to D.C. Their flight came in just after midnight but it took FOREVER for them to get to the baggage area and another FOREVER for their bags to come through.
March 25 (Tuesday)
I had to be at the airport by 11:30am.. had no trouble through security. Grabbed a BLT bagel because my tummy was growling and read my book. The silly flight attendant made me put my purse up in the bin, which I’ve never ever had to do before and really pissed me off. It was an hour flight and I didn’t want to bother the woman sitting in the aisle seat to get up and get my book and headphones for the 30 minutes that the seat-belt sign is turned off. So I just slept. Had a long walk through the terminal to customs and baggage but no problems there either. Got a cart for my bags, **note** I really hate this brown suitcase I always end up using because it’s got a hard shell and is wide enough for all my jewelry making tools that I like to bring on longer trips to my parents place. It has no wheels and it cumbersome to carry through customs. I don’t have to carry it on the way home though, as the baggage drop off at Dulles is right next to the ticketing counter, but I do have to shuffle it through the sometimes long line in Toronto when I’m leaving. I really need a new hard shell suitcase.
I called Ken once I got outside and told him which pillar I was standing by. It was snowing pretty hard and I had only brought my light windbreaker. I was freezing cold and Ken accidentally missed me and had to drive all the way around again. We stopped at Lonestar on Dixon to warm up and have lunch but the snow didn’t stop. Ken told me that it had pretty much started as my plane left D.C. and it hadn’t snowed at all while I’d been gone. Lovely! It was kinda pretty though, the gigantic snowflakes looked like the cheap soapy bubbles they sometimes use in stage plays.
March 26 (Wednesday) to March 27 (Thursday)
Spent these two days catching up on my shows on the pvr.. it was at 88% and afterwards was at like 25% :p
March 28 (Friday) to March 30 (Sunday)
Mailed off Melar’s daughter, Alana’s birthday bracelets. I made her 2 so she could share one with her best friend if she wanted, as girls often do. Then I went to pick up Ken’s cousin, Michelle, from Kitchener which is about an hours drive away with no traffic. We hit a little traffic on the way home and arrived around 5pm. Ken was still working so she and I took a walk down Yonge Street to the Sassy Bead store I go to sometimes. I’ve mentioned before but it bears repeating, I hate shelves and shelves of beads in tiny tiny jars.. We spent a good long while there and we both picked up a few things. I got some curved silver tubes, a silver leaf pendant and a circle pendant. She got some matte grey beads. I also picked up a neat little tool that’s supposed to help you put on bracelets by yourself. It has a clip one one end that holds the clasp open and a ring at the top to grip with your fingers, then you use your other hand to hook the other side of the clasp on. I think it would be great for Ken’s grandma. 
When Ken finally finished his work we went down to Papa’s Grill and both Michelle and I had to bring home doggie bags. I had a village salad and humous .. My favorite. She had a beef souvlaki dinner and Ken had lamb souvlaki dinner.
Saturday Ken took Michelle to the Farmer’s Market at St. Lawrence Market. They were there till around 2:30, and Karen stopped by at 7pm to chat. I hadn’t seen her since Ken was away in Sausalito. At 8pm Ken flipped off our breakers to turn off everything for Earth Hour. We lit a few beeswax and non-toxic candles. Michelle knitted while I read them questions from Trivial Pursuit: Canada Edition. It was 9:30pm by the time we realized Earth Hour was over. No harm in that, we had fun, but we use Bullfrog Power anyway.
We decided to stay in for dinner so we ordered Chinese from C’est Bon. They have a really good barbeque pork and crispy sesame beef dishes. While we ate we watched the Stargate movie The Ark of Truth (second time for Ken and I). Then played some Rock Band till sleep-time.
Sunday we all got up kinda late. Played some more Rock Band and I was pretty hungry by 4 and wanted Hero’s hot dogs. They don’t deliver till 6 and Michelle needed to get home to pick up Daisy so we ended up driving to Hero’s on the way to bring her home. I had hoped to stay home and get some chores done because I’ve decided it’s time to Spring Clean. Still, I don’t have a time limit or anything so it’s ok I guess. I just need to get motivated again. Ken and I hit the grocery store on the way home for fresh stuff for salads and bread, got home around 10pm.
Spent the rest of the night playing Guild Wars with Melar, cheering up Reina on the phone and Ken finished Assassin’s Creed.
March 31 (Monday)
Having stayed up playing Guild Wars with Melar till 2am and then continuing on by myself till around 4:30am, I’m surprised I woke up at 11′ish. Chris was over working with Ken and I did some straightening up. The boys went out to lunch at 2 and Andrea arrived at 2:30pm. I hadn’t seen her in 3 weeks, once because I was passed out sleeping, and the other 2 from my trip to Virginia. So she was very happy to update me on everything she’s been up to and I showed her all the bracelets I made for birthday presents. I waited until Ken got home and let him present hers. Hopefully, we want to treat her and her husband (whom we still haven’t met yet!) to dinner this weekend or next at Pier 4.
Chris stayed pretty late working with Ken. I was dying to play some more Guild Wars because I hadn’t been able to play while I was away. Stupid laptop wouldn’t partition for Boot Camp. So after he left, I jumped on with Melar and we blew through the Gates of Kryta mission and attempted the D’Alessio Seaboard mission but failed twice. Sadly our henchmen available there are only level 10 so we’ll either have to wait until my friend, Luvene, can join us, or we’ll have to grab some random players /shudder
Melar went off to watch a tv show at 10pm and I kicked around some more, picking up quests and exploring the North Kryta Province and Nebo Terrace. Then I got through episodes 7-10 of Law & Order: SVU season 1. I’d seen some of them but I like rewatching Law & Orders.
April 01 (Tuesday)
April Fools! I got a cute little card from my friend, Miuu. He knows my fear of spiders is immense but I have lots of <3 for Hoops and Yoyo the Hallmark card characters. The card started with Hoops telling me that I had to save Yoyo from the spiders that they were going to release from a big glass jar. My cursor controlled a big mallet with which to whack them. So I click the button to release the spiders and they start chasing Yoyo.. I dutifully try to whack them but the mallet is frozen in place. At first I thought I had a plug-in error or something... Hoops was chastising me and calling me heartless and such.. They they laughed and said they were just kidding and it was an April Fool's joke then they displayed the message from my friend. It was a good card!
I spent most of the day spa'ing myself. Well as much as I can in our tiny bathroom.. Bubble bath while reading a magazine, deep conditioning my hair... etc.. I really need a pedicure though. I've been trying to wait till I'm ready for a manicure at the same time though. My nails all broke off in the last few weeks and are just starting to come back. Didn't know I was so girly sometimes did you? :p
Ken's cousin, Joel, came over for a dinner date around 8:15pm. We haven't seen him in quite awhile. Ken and I debated all day on where to suggest for dinner. Duffs would have been a great choice but Tuesdays are 1/2 price wings night so the line-up is insane. We also thought Mongolian Grill, Hernando’s Hideaway or La Mexicana would be good choices and Joel chose Mongolian. The first bowl I made contained, beef, bean sprouts, scallop onions, white onions, pineapple, red pepper and their Korean sauce with extra garlic, sesame seeds and a dash of liquid sugar. Sooo good. I really liked how it turned out.
The second bowl contained, beef, bean sprouts, scallop onions, white onions, pineapple, and their mongolian sauce with extra garlic, sesame seeds and a dash of liquid sugar. The beef wasn’t as good, it was the last call so they hadn’t replaced it with fresh stuff. I’m not sure if that’s why the second bowl didn’t turn out as well or if my mixture was off, I’ve done that combination before, but it really was no where near as good as bowl 1.
After dinner Joel played a bit of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. He’s quite good at the shooting parts and I teased him about always trying to solve the games puzzles with his gun first. He left around 11pm to go get ready for work.
I jumped online to play some Guild Wars with Melar before she went to sleep around 12:30am. We did some quests in Nebo Terrace and explored the Cursed Lands. A little ways into The Black Curtain we came upon a rather nasty boss mob who was level 28 and had friends. We’re only both level 17 and our poor henchmen are level 12 if we get them from the Bergen Hot Springs and run from there. I managed to survive and get away but only barely. That’s when she decided to call it a night.
April 02 (Wednesday)
I can’t sleep, so I’m up at 3:30am writing this and playing Guild Wars. I have a bit of a sinus headache, my neck is sore and my ear is bleeding. I have a dentist appointment at 12:45 so I’ll probably just stay up.