Natural-born killers

The boy and I volunteer as a "Big Couple" for Big Brothers Big Sisters (fun! You should volunteer too!) A couple of weeks ago, we went to play paintball. Turns out I am a natural born killer... I LOVED it. I mean, really really loved it. A little too much. And I was good at it! I never got shot, and I killed several others. At one point, I could have killed the referees, I was so well hidden. They were actually LOOKING right at me in the forest, and they couldn't see me. The referees repeatedly warned us NOT to take off our face shields while in the field, and what does Mr. Referee do when he's looking for me? Lifts up his face shield. I coulda had him. I COULDA BROUGHT THAT SUCKER DOWN! Yeah, baby! But I restrained myself.

I thought I was going to have a heart attack at one point, there was so much adrenaline coursing through me! Can't be good for my blood pressure.

The two other over-40 woman who came with their little sisters both refused to play when they learned the true nature of paintball (i.e. you might get shot. Or marked. Or dirty. Or whatever.) Sissy girls! Girlie girls! Wimps! I was proud of myself for representing over-40 womanhood in the sport of paintball. I am WOMAN! Hear me shoot!

Of course, in family-friendly paintball, they don't use terms like "kill" and "gun" and "bullet". Ahem. But some of us just got a liiiiiittle too intense. Ahem. I'm sure I don't know who that would be. Certainly this little nature-lovin' pacifist. Oooh no. Not me.

Ya know, I could be one of those soldiers who go into the jungle and never come out again...

PS There were lots of coveralls there with the name "Trevor" on them. Gordon and I were both "Trevors" in the photo above. I wonder who Trevor is? I had a little teddy bear named Trevor once.

Wanna buy a house?

The sucker went on the market today. I am so relieved! We cleaned it and organized it and staged it to the hilt, so I hope it gets snapped up quickly...

http://www.randydyck.com/

Choose:

"View Randy's Listings"

Then:
"Show Me Properties"

Then choose:
"HOUSE"

then scroll down to us, the new listing on Armstrong.

Buy me! Buy me!!

Canada's Next Top Model

You get an entry today because the dog got me up really early and I don't feel like going out and trimming the hedges yet. We hope to have the house listed by Monday!

Anyway, a couple of weeks back I got bored after putting on a face mask our friends brought me back from Fiji. I think you can plainly see who will be Canada's Next Top Model!

Incidentally, that pink headband was knit or crocheted by my Mum at least 30 years ago. Acrylic lasts forever! I will never part with it. :)

Not dead yet!

You'll be happy to know I'm not dead. At least, I HOPE you're happy to know that. We are drowning in "get the house ready to sell" work. It's gonna kill me. I am almost finished regrouting the white-tiled kitchen counters. We figured that brownish, stained grout with pristine white tiles wasn't exactly a selling point. So now the grout is new and white and no one (read: Gordon) is allowed to use the counters until we've sold the house. And just in case, I'm damn well covering it all with chopping boards and wax paper and whatever else will spare the grout from the wrath of he-who-knows-not-how-to-wipe-a-counter.

The grouting was strangely satisfying, even if all that chiselling-out of old grout did reactivate my recurring shoulder injury. And I hurt my lower back on Wednesday when I had a coughing fit whilst bending over. This particular place on my lower back is my "Achilles heel" and if I am going to injure any part of my body, this will likely be the spot. I feel fricking old.

At any rate, I was mobile enough to finish my grouting, despite starting today bent in half. Last night I spent four hours on the couch, wishing Gordon weren't away on business because I needed someone to feed me grapes and rub my feet.

On a brighter note, my trampoline-loving neighbours just sold their house in a WEEK for $100,000 odd more than they bought it for less than a year ago. The real estate market in this town is INSANE. I am secretly hopeful (well, no secret, really) that we are going to make a killing on our own house. We shall see.

I am going to walk the neglected dog, then accomplish something from our list of "5,821 things to do before we list the house", aka Chore-o-rama.

Can't forget Zoe!

Yep, Zoe got out of the crate once in a while too. She likes sleeping inside my sweatshirt. Here she is peeping out!

Moving back east

Back in December 2003, we packed three cats, an English Setter and a gecko into our Mazda Protege 5 and drove all the way from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. Now we're going almost all the way back. Because we're NUTS.

Dirty car in northern Ontario!

Standing up and lookin' around.

Julius gets a little freedom while Mashka tries to ignore him.

Self-portrait of girl and well-behaved dog.

Some of the Mazda prisoners. There is a gecko in the box under Mashka!

Swift Current Comfort Inn. We never washed the mud off the car. It just got rained off at some point! This was the nicest Comfort Inn of all the ones we patronized. The one in Thunder Bay was revolting.

Someplace in Saskatchewan.

Mashka the free-range cat lords it over prisoners Zoe and Julius.

Gordon walks Tara somewhere up in the BC Rockies (Roger's Pass, I think!)

I'm getting just a teeeensy bit sick of being in this car!

I think I've told most people now that we are moving back east, but only as far as Gatineau, Quebec this time. I have been cleaning out a bunch of stuff in the house, and I just found my mileage record from our move here in December 2003. It's in kilometres. For you Americans, there are 0.62 km in a mile.

On Saturday, December 13th, we left Prospect Village, NS (and I cried until we crossed the border to New Brunswick.)

Our odometer read 31, 362 km when we started.

Sunday, Dec 14, it read 32,097 in Edmunston, NB
Monday, Dec 15, it read 32,828 in Ottawa, ON.
Tuesday, Dec 16, it read 33,611 in Sault Ste. Marie, ON.

That day there was a blizzard, so after driving almost 100 km, we turned around retraced the 100 km back to Sault Ste. Marie and took the rest of the day off.

Wednesday, Dec 17, the odometer read 33,806 when we left Sault Ste. Marie again.
Thursday, Dec 18, it read 34,503 when we left Thunder Bay, ON.
Friday, Dec 19 it read 35,275 when we left Winnipeg, MN.
Saturday, Dec 20, it read 36,069 when we left Swift Current, SK.
Sunday, Dec 21, it read 36,849 when we left Golden, BC.

And that day, we arrived at the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver, where the final reading on our odometer was 37, 580 km. We drove 6,218 kilometres (3,864 miles), including the redundant 200 km in Sault Ste. Marie, and it took us nine days to cross the country from NS to BC!

If you subtract a day for the blizzard, and the redundant 200 km, we averaged about 750 km a day. And now we're doing it all again. Don't tell the pets!