2025 - Week 2

The Weekly Happenings

I did not feel ready for Monday to be here this week. I wanted to go back to bed and hide from winter with a book. Alas, there are bills to pay. I also had a dentist appointment and sorely needed food I could eat that didn't make me itchy. 

I designed a vest pattern for a future knit project once the table runner is done. I'm looking forward to it being finished someday. It's nice to get some long running projects completed. I also designed a pattern for a PWHL Ottawa scarf. I plan to start the vest next.

Early in the week, I got notice that there would be another condo inspection. This one is strangely for the whole unit again, but under the guise of fire alarm inspection. In the past, they only checked that our smoke detectors were functional. At any rate, this made cleaning the rest of the condo a bigger priority for me this week. 

I'm not shocked about Trudeau's resignation. There have been a number of the minority women in his cabinet saying they weren't able to advance the causes they were involved in and they felt like they were supposed to be just there for optics. And there has been a lot of in-fighting. The country is divided on a lot of things. Hopefully a new party leader will help, but I fear there isn't enough time for this all before the election on or before October 20th. Personally, I refuse to freak out about any of it because I know that won't help me deal with whatever comes down the line. Also, if I freaked out everytime something happened in politics, I wouldn't be enjoying life much.

I finished writing my first assignment for my bard studies. The first 5 are basically just on how to do academic papers and it's a good refresher since university was 15 years ago.

I haven't done a lot of physical work on my novel in the past week, but I figured out most of the remaining changes and how to execute them. Every problem area has a plan now and I just need to do some research in a specific area to know some of the nitty-gritty details. I'm so excited about all of this!

I quit the learner curling league. It's rare for me to give up on something. Here are my reasons for doing so:

- Not hitting the ice until 9PM on a Tuesday night after work was exhausting.

- The ice shed is poorly insulated, so it's colder than normal.

- Those two things had me getting injured nearly every time I went.

- I feel like I'm worse than I was the first season I curled with no training. I could almost always hit whatever target was given. Now, I'm lucky if I can even get a rock across the line.

- My curling confidence has been obliterated.

- It constantly made me tired for the rest of the week, which I don't feel has been helpful to my performance at work.

- They still aren't even doing full length games.

- I've had such a bad time, it was making me hate an activity I loved without accomplishing the goals I had for it!

So what's next for me? Well, I'm going to take some time to recover. If Rainbow has clinics or open play nights, I'll go to those. Otherwise, I'll be getting back to tap dance and learning tai chi. I'll also do some fun things with friends like ice skating and batting cages. I'll miss some of the people, but I'll probably run into some next season. I won't miss the cold, late nights or not being able to watch the women in the PWHL kick butt. Both tap dance and tai chi are closer to home, so I'll save some on gas too. I'll spend time recovering and getting ready for softball season, which I love so much more. I can also use the time for my volunteer position, writing, hobbies, and social things.

Montreal took on Toronto this week in PWHL. Poulin scored from her knees! Later, she got an empty net goal as well. Honestly, it's really not a smart thing to pull a goalie when Poulin is on the ice. She's one of the best hockey players in the world. Here are the highlights on that game. Unfortunately, they lost to Minnesota on Sunday. Ottawa lost this week too. Sad hockey days.

I couldn't visit my hairstylist before the holidays, so I finally got there this week. I have been growing it towards a specific style, but my hair is quite fine, so we had to take a step back to reduce the ratio of my undercut. Otherwise I'd have a pretty pathetic pony tail by the summer instead of a decent one. In the interim, she trimmed the rest to give me somewhat of a style while I wait for the shorter bits to catch up. It's toque season now and hopefully it'll be good by the time softball returns!

My volunteer meeting was postponed by a day. I was tired, so it worked out better for me too. The meeting went really well and I'm looking forward to helping out.

I had to cancel all my plans for Friday through Sunday due to strep throat. I think it never fully went away because of the short antibiotic treatment. I don't think it's the best method for anyone with an autoimmune condition because it takes longer to heal on average, so maybe we need the medication for longer to eradicate the thing. At least I had extra strength Strepsils at home to take while waiting to see the doctor early next week. This also meant postponing some fillings. I wasn't upset about that. It sucks missing things with friends so much though.

My goals have taken a hit this week because of it, but I'll crush them when I'm feeling better. They also took a hit because of the condo inspection coming on the 13th. This one is for the fire alarms, but given that the last one was at the end of November and December is a month where I spent most of it at events or preparing for Christmas, it's like a fake month, so it's like we didn't get much time between inspections. Hopefully they are done until the end of the year after this. I have an entrance reno I want to do and a lot of other things I'd rather be doing.

Saturday would've been 61 years of marriage for my parents. January was never a month I loved, but it's now my least favourite. I was the kid who always forgot their anniversary. I thought about calling dad, but the anniversary of her death is on the 17th, so I'll wait until then. Yeah, we had Christmas, they celebrated 58 years, and then we lost her suddenly to a ruptured brain aneurysm.

Goal Setting & Tracking

Arts & Crafts: Fairy Cross-Stitch, Knit Table Runner ✅

Decluttering & Minimalism: Clean the Condo ✅

Education & Spirituality: Japanese ✅, French✅, Bard - How to Lesson 1✅

Gaming & Videos: N/A

General & Miscelaneous: Volunteer Position ✅

Health & Fitness: Abs ❎, Upper❎, Lower❎, Walking ✅

Music & Songwriting: Ukulele❎, Singing✅

Reading & Writing: Gideon the Ninth - Chapter 35✅, Sparker - Chapter 11❎, Cyberpunk 3000❎

For more details, please visit my Trello here.