Flippy Floppys

There wasn't a dress code at the last BIA I worked in, however, my boss didn't really like open toed shoes/sandals so we agreed that we wouldn't wear them to work. I don't really think that flip flops are work appropriate, but it is a casual day today, with no meetings. Also, these ones are so much nicer than the usual $5 Old Navy style. I got them for Taylor's wedding, they are getting pretty worn out but I still love them.

Also, my awesome red pedicure is from Ottawa. We went out to get pedicures the day after Canada Day - such sore feet after waiting in lines, dealing with mud, and walking all over downtown. I didn't choose the colour to be patriotic, but lets pretend I did!

Four Things

Erin AH filled this out on her Facebook and I thought I would transplant it over the the blog, also I am heading to Ottawa tomorrow to visit her so that is exciting and fitting:

Four places I've lived: 
1. Cambridge, ON (1984-1985)
2. Paris, ON (1985-2003)
3. Ottawa, ON (2003-2010)
4. Toronto, ON (2010-now)

Four things I love to watch on TV or Netflix: 
1. The Daily Show
2. Orange Is The New Black
3. Archer
4. Property Brothers

Four names I go by:
1. Chris
2. Christine
3. Aunt Chris
4. Tita Chris

Four places I have visited: 
1. San Diego, CA
2. Yekaterinburg, Russia
3. Tangier, Morocco
4. Corner Brook, NL

Four things I love to eat: 
1. Bread
2. Watermelon
3. Pasta
4. Spaghetti Squash

Four favorite drinks:
1. Chocolate Milk
2. Pink Lemonade
3. Coke Zero
4. Gin and Tonic

Four people I would like to see respond:
1. Mom, maybe even on her blog
2. Steph
3. The T's (Taylor and Teri)
4. People who don't usually leave comments

Copy and paste this into the comments for this post and fill in your responses. Have some fun!

Moved By Dad

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down - A Sunday post about my Dad, named after a song that he loved.

Jason and I moved into Casa Verde last weekend. I was very thankful for the friends and family who helped out - I had never moved a whole house before. It was always just 'a room' in Ottawa when I was a student moving to a new place every couple of years. Here is a bit of a comparison:

All previous moves (in Ottawa):
- Parents brought the trailer (first the brown painted wood one, then the upgraded metal one)
- Dad wore his 'I'm moving things' back brace and sometimes socks with sandals
- Extra long twin bed separated easily into four pieces
- Had to unscrew the mirror from my dresser
- Wrapped the glass top of my desk in sheets
- Only had about 5 items of furniture, 4 boxes of stuff, and 2 suitcases of clothes
- Multiple loads driven around the block or down the street
- Took 2 to 4 hours of work
- Spent the weekend hanging out with my parents in Ottawa

This move:
- Full house of furnature and stuff
- Rented a U-haul truck
- No Dad

Closing It Up

Turning on/off alarm systems is nothing new to me. We had them at both Subways (Paris and Ottawa), Taco Bell, Second Cup, and many other places that I worked when I was younger. However, since I have moved into non-food-service type jobs, they have diminished - or my need to use them has. Government offices in Ottawa have Commissionaires, other office buildings have large security systems run automatically or by management companies, etc.

Well, tonight I closed down the Forrec office. We have about 120 employees but by 9:00pm on a Friday I was the last one working. There are some basic closing down tasks, lights, checking doors, and then setting the security system. It brought me back to my early food service days.

I could have easily stayed past 9:00pm too! I was enjoying what I was working on and definitely felt like there was more I would have liked to get done. However, my work week is 37.5 to 44 hours long and going over 44 requires approval, so I kicked myself out to avoid that. The adjustment to salary has been strange, closing down an office was even stranger.

Steph's Many Hats

Steph got to be on TV the other day - she (or her hat) got caught on camera while she was on location as both as a participant in an awesome engineering project and as a journalistic photographer.In Ottawa on Friday, they started tearing down the South Side of Lansdowne Stadium. The company that Steph works for, as an environmental engineer, is involved with the project. One of the senior principals of the company requested that she come on-site to take some photos for them. CTV was part of the media who were also covering the event. So during the news for a split second you can see a white hard hat behind Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson (see red circle) and that is Steph! She was too short to get seen. However, I am very excited for her professionally - both as an engineer involved in this interesting endeavor and as a professional photographer attending a media event. Congrats Steph!!

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.)

Missing My Riding

I miss my old riding! ('Riding' is slang for Canadian Electoral Distract, I have learned on wikipedia.) I used to live in Ottawa Centre, the shape of which adorably kind of looks like a maple leaf. Ottawa Centre is a predominately liberal riding, this is probably helped by the fact that it includes two universities: Carlton and Saint Paul's. It hasn't had a Conservative Member of Parliament since the late 70s and even then it was only for a short period of time. It has been represented by the New Democratic Party since 2004 when it was originally Ed Broadbent's riding, the old NDP leader before Jack Layton. Paul Dewer has been the MP for the last five years. I loved being represented by NDP and was so proud of the political leaning of my little district, even with the Glebe which I find a little too yuppie-hippie-leftist.

I follow Paul Dewer on Facebook and recently he linked to a video made by a high school student somewhere in Ottawa. It is a bit of a strange video in places but it is so nice to see the desire and drive to vote that feels missing from a lot of Canadian youth. I have always loved to and believed strongly in voting. On May 2nd - GET OUT AND VOTE!

A Real Neighbourhood

Kristen and I gave out Halloween candy this year! Every Halloween in Ottawa my roommates and I would buy candy and try/plan to give it away to kids. However, often none would show up or very few. Old Ottawa South was a pretty family orientated neighbourhood but it still didn't feel like the type of Halloween frolicking that I had in Paris growing up. I'm sad that I only get to see my friends costumes this year over Facebook and I do miss the awesome parties we used to have in Ottawa. This year was awesome though. Kristen and I sat on our little front porch for half an hour. We lit a couple of candles from IKEA and had a bag of candy. The street was filled with families going trick-or-treating!! Kids of all ages came by and it was a lot of fun. It felt like what I remember Halloween being.

My Poetic Friends

By JennB
To convocate is quite a feat,
Six years in the making for Chris.
She started as an engineer
But finished in worded bliss.

English is by far the better degree,
And to what we owe this poem.
But she made good friends on the other side
Like Steph and Dave and that guy from Rome

She’s lived all over the Glebe Lite,
In Le Manoir and Die Hohle.
Brought trusty Binx along with her,
And in his room her boyfriend had a pole.

Hummus will never be the same for us
And you so don't live downtown.
The K in Karleton stands for Kwality
I can see your labia through your gown.

This afternoon was about academic success
We hope you had a super day.
We also hope you've waxed your legs
Cause we're going to Mooney's Bay!

By Kate
There once was a girl named Christine
Who's culinary skills were obscene!
When faced with the oven
She did not feel the lovin'
And she'd default to a can of green beans.

(Note: Everything said in these poems is true, they know me so well.)

Smells Like Burning

JennB came back inside from walking the dogs this morning and said that it seemed like something was on fire outside, that the air smelt smoky and looked foggy. When we both left to catch the bus I noticed that this was indeed the case and assumed it was from one of the many houses with fireplaces or perhaps someone with a big backyard burning leaves (I think one of our neighbours does this on occasion.) It smelt very nice, like a camp fire. I would think that a house fire wouldn't smell very good. Once we got downtown, it was still there!! Checking with a few co-workers and it was smoky near their houses too, all over Ottawa! The current guess is that it is from the huge forest fires in central and northern Quebec. More than 50 forest fires are burning right now in Quebec, including eight that remain out of control.

I Made A Bowl

This took me FOREVER. I painted it at The Mud Over over something like 6 separate trips and a total of over 20 hours of sketching and painting. I'm happy with how it turned out and now use it to keep my pill bottles in beside my bed.

Change Of Season

Spring means...
Rain and sun and warm breezes
People out walking or playing in the streets
Sidewalks in The Glebe are even more packed on weekends
Subway gets extremely busy
Essays are due and exams are close by
Neighbours in their yards gardening and clearing out the leaves
Steph and Anna's birthdays
The temperature stays between 5 and 10 degrees
Lots of garbage shows up through the melting ice
A new drive to get in shape and lots of runners on the canal
Soon evenings will be spent sitting on patios

Mayfair Closing

It is really sad but the movie theatre that is just down the street is closing at the end of this month. I have been to it a bunch of times, even once for Rocky Horror Picture Show. It always shows double features and is independently owned, which is nice. I love the Mayfair Theatre, it is a beautiful old movie house. Supposedly the city granted the theatre a heritage building classification, but it is still closing as of November 30th.

Made My Month

I found out last night that my local corner store sells cat litter. This is extremely exciting because the store is so close and open fairly late. It is even $2 cheaper then buying it in the grocery store. I will never again have an excuse for Binx's litter to not be full, fresh and perfect!!

Terrible Bike Ride

There is nothing like showing up for a Government Office Job covered in blood and bike chain grease. As usual the chain came off my bike. I'm getting The 18 Year Old Co-Worker to fix it at Subway tomorrow, I'm sick of cutting up my fingers every morning putting the chain back on. The gears are also messed up so hopefully he can adjust all that. To make the bike ride worse, the streets I take in the morning are a disaster. Pot holes! Uneven Asphalt! Sand! Man Holes! Huge Cracks! I don't understand why because I bike though a wealthy area, but they have the worst roads I have seen in Ottawa. Thank goodness for my helmet because one of these days I'm going to wipe out.

Construction and Trades

It is summer in Canada, and that it means home owners and municipalities will be frantically trying to get construction in before the winter. My neighbourhood is filled with construction and renovation. New telephone poles are being put up everywhere, though it seems weird since the old ones are fine. Roads are getting fixed, houses are being renovated and landscapers are working on the gardens. I think the sheer amount of it all is beyond the usual summer construction boom, it maybe because I live in a more wealthy area. A corner house on my bike to work is putting in a side patio and fencing it in. I think the fencing material they are using must be ceder because when ever I ride past it smells so amazing, and the two guys working on it are pretty hot too.

Warm and Sunny

It is days like today that make me want to be at my cottage so bad it hurts. A light breeze, bright blue sky with little white clouds, deliriously warm. I need to be on sand, or lying in one of the hammocks snoozing, maybe swimming or sailing. I want my skin to darken and my hair to turn copper. I need to be outside by the water, warm and relaxed by the waves. Instead I have to either watch lectures on the TV or type up notes on the computer. Everything right now is inside, even working out, I do Yoga in air conditioning, stretching and connecting to the earth through the carpet. I work under florescent lights, the only task that allows me to feel the sun on my face is taking out the garbage or cleaning the front tables. I know it doesn't have to be like that (well it does for the studying) and that Ottawa offers warmth, sun, and beauty outside. I'm going to have to spend sometime at one of the city beach's, bike along the canal, suntan on the roof, or hang out on my green lawn and look at all my flowers that are now blooming. Still it isn't the same as Long Point.

Dollar Store

A new dollar store is opening up near me. I'm very excited, because I'm broke and cheap. I love dollar stores and use them for everything: housewares, school stuff, presents for friends (I admit it), sometimes even food. Big Buds downtown, which was never really all the cheap closed down and is going to be a "Dollar It" and that is also what is opening near me. I don't know how good it will be, but I hope everything is a dollar, instead of one, two, or three dollars. It will never be as good as Dollarama which is amazing, but at least it will be super close, no buses needed.