A week or two of things that did and didn't happen

While I'm in this long-overdue 'post' mode, I thought I'd also do a quick summary of other recent events - good, bad and painful - in hope that I can finally get a little more caught up on this blog.

Did: Resign and leave the Big Brother environment of a certain downtown architecture, engineering, interior design company, after just under two years. I'm surprised it even took that long really - considering there were many occasions during the masses of never-ending overtime there last year, that I came oh-so-very close. I'll spare the gory details but, apart from having a pretty decent direct boss and quite enjoying the company of my marketing co-workers (even though personal pleasantries and conversations were limited and often felt frowned upon), it was an excessive and thankless task - but hey, I learned a lot!  And in resigning, I also learned to enjoy the sense of empowerment that goes with choosing to leave because I simply can't support their gun-ho strategy of sleeping with the oil sands enemy across Alberta - while triumphantly touting themselves as 'sustainable'. Greedily wringing your hands with $$S signs in your eyes & saying you're designing 'LEED-based' buildings for the massive worker's camps/towns at these environmentally disasterous facilities, does not a truly 'sustainable' company make. In fact such claims are what's more commonly known as green-washing.

Anyway, it came as no great surprise that I didn't get a single word of thanks from any of the principals (ie Directors/shareholders) for whom I repeatedly slogged myself ragged at work, making sure the hundreds of proposals, for projects they claimed to want, looked great and were sufficiently researched and well-written to meet the endless stream of hard and intense deadlines. Of course it also didn't help that the wide-eyed puppy in HR waited till the day before I left to actually send out a company-wide email which was so vague that it actually made it sound like I'd got fired. Cheers!

Anyway, who cares? - I'm just pleased to have escaped from that particular workhouse where fun, personality and warmth were to be checked at the door upon entry.

Didn't: Get to enjoy my first ever simulated sky-diving adventure courtesy of Vancouver's FlyZone on my birthday. Lorne's so good at booking surprises and, being the luv that he is, had secretly booked us both at Fly Zone, but when the confirmation came with accompanying Rules and Regulations, he knew he had to let me in on the surprise.... First thing on the "Cannot participate if..." list? If the participant has ever had a shoulder dislocation. Nooooo!!!!  Since I had 7 dislocations and eventually surgery on my left shoulder and my right shoulder is loose and unpredictable at best, there really was no way we could ignore this one. Bummer! I would LOVE to do this skydiving - simulated or for real. I could not believe my bad luck and calling them just to double-check didn't tell me anything different. Un-bloody-believable! I would have just gone for it anyway except that I have been getting odd twinges of instability in both shoulders. Potentially dislocating both at once on my birthday just didn't sound like such a fun idea after all. :-(

Still, in its place, Lorne's going to take me zip-lining in Victoria - something else I've always wanted to do. He did it with some friends last year and had a blast, so I can't wait!

I did unfortunately encounter my first ever bout of strep throat. Wow, it's nasty and I hope we never meet again!!! I've never had such a painful and incredibly swollen throat and glands - my neck was starting to look more like a mountain range. Of course it kicked in full-force the night I finished one job and was hoping to enjoy 4 days off, including my birthday, before starting the new one. Timing, eh? That said, praise be to penicillin, my new superhero - I was thankfully feeling much better within 4-5 days.

Anyhow, despite the strep throat saga, I did nevertheless have a lovely birthday - Lorne completely pampered me with the most amazing breakfast in bed; big fat croissants, pastries/tarts, fruit, bread & yummy cheese. Had I felt better, I would have happily supped a bucks-fizz too, but I wasn't quite up to it at the time. Such a lovely brekky, it was very reminiscent of the outstanding spread that they put on at the delightful B&B "Casa D'Obidos" where we stayed in Obidos, Portugal 5 years ago. We've reminisced often about the wonderous breakfast-fairies who seemed to sneak in overnight and decorate the enormous dining-table with an endless array of tantalizing treats and heavenly goodies.

And on the birthday theme I did receive a surprise ticket to see Ray LaMontagne with Vicky on Sept. 2nd. Wohooo. What better excuse to continue my birthday in another 4 months? I've seen him perform a couple of times before, and really enjoyed it. We're going to make a night of it - go for dinner, see the concert & stay at a hotel downtown just for the hell of it. Can't wait - thanks Vicky, Mark, Bronwyn and River xxx. Thanks to Mum too, for the delicate little silver locket, which thankfully didn't get kicked around or smushed in the post. xxx

I did also start back at running - for the first time since last Summer when I was suffering severe and ongoing muscle spasms/stress in my bum cheek (of all places) and finally had to give up altogether. Albeit I've only done 3 short  runs so far and they have felt like hard work plus I'm presently running a few minutes slower than last year and still a long ways off from the 90-100mins I had worked up to previously, but so far so good.

So now that I'm in week 2 of the new job, the weather's finally picked up, I had a lovely birthday, barring the strep throat which is thankfully now history, and I'm heading into a few days off AND a long weekend to visit San Francisco for the first time - I'm feeling pretty darn good!  :-)  Plus I just had a few days home alone while Lorne's been off touring bourbon distilleries in Kentucky with a couple of friends. It sounds like he's had a fun trip and I look forward to more details - and ideally some Duty Free - when he gets home tonight.

Et voila.