Drilling For Money

My Dad had his birthday last week; Mike, Mom, and I decide that we would split the cost of a new cordless drill for him. However, he didn't know where he was going to buy it so I couldn't get him a gift card. Since I was just giving him cash, and that is pretty boring, I decided to do a little craft project with it. I cut a piece of cardboard and using tape and folding I made a picture of a drill using the bills.

Cordless Cash

Art and Photo by Christine Sweeton

Given A Letter

This is some Facebook chain thing. I'm bored so thought I would do it. If you 'like' it on someone's status then they give you a letter and you have to do it. I didn't bother so am just going to use 'c' since it is the letter of my first name.

I 'got' the letter C
Something I like: Christmas
Something I hate: Cooking
Something I love: Candy
Something bad: Cancer

If you want to do this on your blog or Facebook, I give you the letter 's' since it is the letter of my last name.

The Mobile Era

People don't use the internet like they used to. With new smart phones people are checking the internet on their full size computers less often. I have a smart phone and I do use it to go online, though pretty much only to check weather, email, and look up the odd address. However, a lot of my friends use their phones for everything but Always Standing is not the greatest on a cell phone - until now. I recently changed a setting that uses a special template when accessed on a mobile phone. It looks like this picture, you can then click the arrows to read the whole post. Hopefully, this helps those that don't like looking things up on a big computer read Always Standing on their phones a little more easily.

Watching You

I have said it before, Google Analytics is creepy. Yesterday, I posted twice on Facebook about blogging on Always Standing for 5 years and included links. This led to a huge spike in visitors, which I had anticipated. Google Analytics tells me all about it, want to know what I know?

**Don't judge me on my low blog attendance. Not a lot of people read Always Standing. However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't. Come back and visit often!! **

Here are some interesting statistics from Google Analytics:

Last week, on Monday, June 13th, 2011
-There were 26 site visits
-From 16 unique computers
-2 visits came from Facebook

Yesterday, on Monday, June 20th, 2011
-There were 51 site visits
-From 36 unique computers
-16 visits came from Facebook

Also, people have been 'googling' my name "Christine Sweeton" and landing on my blog. This has happened 34 times in the last week and a half and they are staying on Always Standing for an average of over 4 minutes each time. I wonder who it is?

See, the creepiness goes both ways...

Five Years And Counting!!

Here's to another five years of Always Standing!!

I missed my big Always Standing anniversary! I was so excited to announce five years of blogging that I often checked back to my first post to make sure I didn't miss the day. However, I still missed the day - it was last week. I started Always Standing on June 12th, 2006. I was 22 and living in Ottawa. Now, I'm 27 and living in Toronto. So much has happened over the last 5 years and almost all of it has been documented on this blog. I've changed houses, friends, cities, schools, boyfriends, jobs, and the list goes on. This is my 1,437th post. (I am going to try to watch for my 1,500th post and catch that one in time.)

Want a trip down memory lane? Randomly click an old year or month in the Archives on the Left side of the screen, or visit some of the Tags on the Right. And as always, feel free to comment on any and all posts!!! (Bloggers live for the comments.)

Better Marks

So, last term (Fall) my marks weren't great. This term (Winter) they are slightly better. Just have my MRP (Spring/Summer) left to do and it is graduation time! Actually, I am supposed to apply to graduate online before August. Looking forward to being done grad school!

Beginning To Become

I had my 'Graduation Night' for my sailing course this week. It isn't really an official or accredited course, just an introduction. So, the certificate I got said the following:

This document certifies that
Christine Sweeton
has successfully begun the process of becoming skilled
Keelboat Sailing Crew.

GLEE!!

Kristen and I went to go and see the Glee Live Tour last night. It was absolutely awesome!!! We were giddy with excitement beforehand and just grinning with glee afterwards. I have so many thoughts about it that this could turn into a huge post, which I just don't have time to do. So, I'm going to do a list a point form notes about the experience:

-Held at the Air Canada Centre, huge venue, that I had never seen before
-Did the wave
-Sat 3rd row from the top, the climb up was hilarious, so far from the stage
-Not the greatest of food options inside the stadium and Kristen wasn't kidding when she said it would cost a small fortune
-Leaf's ice? Kristen says under the floor, I say they defrost and remake it
-Glee had an opening act, 20 minute dance number called the League of Extraordinary Dancers, very enjoyable
-Shortish show, Glee preformed for just under and hour and a half
-Mike Chang and Britney did a lot of dancing
-Bought a Glee tank top, don't want to say how much I paid
-The whole cast of kids were there, but Mr. Schuester and Sue just did some things on the TV screens like interact with the other actors and audience
-The guy were so hot! Also their songs were the best, was surprised at how great they sounded
-Favourite numbers were: Puck's Fat Bottom Girls, Kurt's I Want To Hold Your Hand, Finn's Jessie's Girl, and of course Don't Stop Believing
-Lots of costume changes
-Cast sometimes played instruments
-Songs that were jaw dropping in the show seemed to have less pop on stage
-No mashups
-Got 2 encore numbers, Kurt and girls dancing to Single Ladies and Artie dancing to Safety Dance
-Small second stage was sometimes used, bringing them closer to us
-Cast sometimes ran through the main floor crowd, lots of security holding people back
-Warblers and Blaine sang 3 numbers in the middle
-They said Toronto a bunch of times
-Was, to quote Kristen, a 'sit down' concert, thankfully since I don't really like standing
-Screamed and sang along a lot

Where It All Began

I have started to work very hard on my MRP. Research is taking forever and it seems as though the Toronto Public and UofT libraries hate me. However, I wanted to share a picture of the base of all my writing - the 1902 Baedeker travel guidebook Egypt. You have to 'visit' it in a special room at the Toronto Public Library Archives and there are tons of rules to follow in terms of handling it. (It also comes in its own protective box thing.) It is a very interesting read and I think it will be a great paper.

Baedeker's Egypt, 4th Edition, travel guidebook from 1902
Photo by Christine Sweeton

Found It, Again

Item Lost: House keys
Time Lost: A week or two ago
Last Place I Remember: In my purse
Place Found: In the pocket of my new orange zip-up sweater

I have lost, re-lost, cut, and re-cut my house keys numerous times over the last couple of weeks. I keep losing them and then finding them. The cool thing is that one of the times that I got them cut I did it at the mall and was able to get 'pretty keys' which I have been wanting for a while! I gave one to Kristen. Rrunuv Bayit keys are a set out two: the door to the building and the door to our apartment. Since I was only getting one set cut at the mall I split the 'pretty keys' in half and Kristen and I each have one plain silver key and one colourful key. She has one that is white with green clovers, since she loves Ireland. I have a pinkish one with cherries, which I had before in Ottawa, for Die Höhle I think. At least some good came out of all of my losing of keys.

I Won!!

I went out (sailboat) racing this evening. I had the greatest time. After showing up at the last minute I was still able to be put on a boat and that boat ended up winning! We got first in our fleet; though on Tuesdays there are at least 7 fleets racing. Our fleet only had about 4 boats in it, but hey, we still got first! Everyone was so nice too; it was a long race, almost two hours, but we chatted and sailed and had a grand old time!!

How We Think

----from an email forward

HER STORY:

He was in an odd mood when I got to the bar, I thought it might have been because I was a bit late but he didn’t say anything much about it. The conversation was quite slow going so I thought we should go off somewhere more intimate so we could talk more privately. So we went to this restaurant and he’s STILL acting a bit funny and I’m trying to cheer him up and start to wonder whether it’s me or something else.

I ask him, and he says no. But you know I’m not really sure. So anyway, in the cab back to his house, I say that I love him and he just puts his arm around me. I don’t know what the hell this means because you know he doesn’t say it back or anything. We finally get back to his place and I’m wondering if he’s going to dump me!

So I try to ask him about it but he just switches on the TV. Reluctantly, I say I’m going to go to sleep. Then, after about 10 minutes, he joins me and we have sex. But, he still seemed really distracted, so afterwards I just wanted to leave. I dunno, I just don’t know, what he thinks anymore. I mean, do you think he’s met someone else?

HIS STORY:

Lousy day at work. Tired. Got laid though.

Snuck It In

I have so little time for personal reading, since I should be reading for research and writing my MRP. However, Teri got me Bossypants by Tina Fey for my birthday and I read the entire thing yesterday. It was a good call as a gift; I had been meaning to buy it myself actually but then discovered that I didn't even have enough money for rent and had to seriously rebudget my summer, leaving nothing left to spend at Chapters. Ter just figured it out too, I hadn't told her I wanted it. I'm not normally a memoir type person but have always admired Tina and like her SNL stuff, 30 Rock, and Mean Girls. The book was quite enjoyable and spending the day just reading something for fun was amazing. I can't wait until this MRP is done and I get to do it all the time.

The States Baby!

Here are some brief point-form notes from my road trip with JennB, this does not really totally explain the trip nor describe all the experiences but it will give you a rough idea.
So in no particular order...

Location: The road, from Toronto to Baton Rouge.
Dates: May 13th to 18th, 2011

-the end result was to go to Louisiana and pick up JennB's boyfriend, who she met on the New Orleans trip, and drive him back to Canada for the summer; we decided that the journey would be a great excuse to travel together again
-we drove through and/or visited 8 states: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana
-I flew back early so as to not miss too many sailing classes and JennB and her boyfriend continued the road trip
-JennB braved her fears and took me on a tour through Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, they were amazing
-we made a game of counting religious signs and sex shops, I think in the end there were more religious signs
-JennB and I split a steak dinner and still had issue finishing it
-saw a concert at the Grand Ole Opry, an American icon, which was an unbelievable amount of fun
-JennB's boyfriend's university has a live tiger
-We went to a lot of state welcome centres, all of which were awesome
-Breakfasts are a big deal and all the hotels included one
-I travelled with a dog for the first time since JennB's boyfriend was bringing his small terrier-mix to Canada
-We had the best burgers imaginable at Steak and Shakes even though we had gone in looking for steak
-Food was incredibly cheap
-There is a building in Nashville that looks like batman
-I caved and napped once in the car even though I believe it is the passengers job to stay awake and amuse the driver
-Saw some frighteningly high water in Baton Rouge
-JennB let me do the 'Sweeton Way' one night and use a coupon book from the state tourist centre then drive up and book a hotel for the night on the spot
-Went to a Honky-Tonk bar in Nashville and made requests to the band, all of which were rejected
-Visited a beautiful state capital building in Louisiana which confirmed my love for Art Deco Architecture
-Rediscovered that Mountain Dew in USA has caffine in it and had JennB big me back two cases of it in the car
-Got drunk and giggly on strawberry margaritas
-Ate a lot of fried food especially in Louisiana where I had fried shrimp with every meal
-Really liked Detroit airport
-Just in general had a great trip which reminded me of how great a travel partner JennB is and just how much I love having her as a friend!!