Spring is not my favourite season.  Don’t get me wrong – I like that the snow and cold tend to disappear once spring has rolled around.  Autumn is a far better season.  Slowly cooling down.  Light shows in the night sky.  Camping and firepits.  Spring just can’t compete with a robust and multi-talented season sucha s Autumn.

What did spring do to earn my ire?  Constant temperature fluxuations.  +20C one week. -10C and multiple feet of snow the week after. What  5 minutes and the ground is soggy from all of the rain.  +15 on Sunday and -4 on Monday.  I’m sure you get the picture.   Spring is just fickle.  No consistency.  No attempt to establish a nice seasonal standard and stick with it.

I tend to start experiencing sinus troubles (or worse) during the spring.  Today, my nose feels like someone is pounding on the side of it.  Headaches.  Sneezing my brains out.  Watery eyes.  Confused nasal cavity that doesn’t know when to be stuffed or runny and so tries to do both at the same time.  Typical allergy type suffering.  Except…

I’ve never really been known to have allergies – excluding peanuts and the dogs – to spring before. 

Traditionally, at this time of year, I just catch some awful cold or flu due to the continual changes in temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure.  This year I think I’ll manage to avoid the cold *knock wood* but suspect I’ll spend just as much time whining about how horrible it is to be sick.

Which just plain sucks because it’s Robin’s escape from Dell party tonight.  She’s now officially laid off as of the end of her shift today.  She begins a new term position on Monday.  It’s a 6 month temp position filling in for someone on leave so there’s no guarantee her contract will be extended.  We’re not worried.  Yet.  Lots of companies are interested in her skills.  And, as we do enjoy teasing her, if she can’t find a job she likes, she can always fall back on teaching.  Robin is a former science teacher and from what I heard, she was a great one.

But I digress.  To sum up:

• Spring is bad
• Sinus colds are a pain
• Tonight we party like it’s 1999
• My next round of classes start Monday, May 5th
• Robin starts her new job the same day – no sitting around for a month blogging for her…
• I’m anxiously awaiting my final grades in my Winter 08 courses.  Likely a need to wait few more weeks before I know anything.

I’m an insomniac. I thought I’d managed to break free of the evil grip of no sleep. I have experienced hours days weeks of decent sleep since I quit my past job in spring of 2007 and started working at the college.   Lately I’ve noticed that I’m starting to have difficulty sleeping once again.

I used to think that my inability to sleep was related to stress.  Perhaps it is.  But, exams aside, I don’t really feel stressed these days.  At least not due to work.  My jobs being reclassified (ergo, promotion) and my contact is being renewed.  I’ve had an opportunity to work on papers and with some amazing minds.  I’m learning something new most days. 

That said, I just can’t seem to turn my brain off at night. I spend time thinking about work, school, the hubby’s upcoming trip, etc. Thoughts roll around in my head.  Future plans.  Reminder notices to self.  Occassional conversations with myself.  I often wonder how people’s brains work. I wonder if I’m the only one who can’t turn it all off and go to sleep – no matter how desperately I want to do so. I think that’s why I decided to study psychology instead of sociology when I returned to university.

For now, I’ll settle for a good night’s sleep.

I gave up and went to bed at 11pm last night still not having managed to file our taxes.  As soon as I arrived home from work today I visited the CRA site and managed to get the files loaded into the system.  We managed to beat the deadline by a few hours and it was a horrifically stressful experience filing taxes this year.  Next year I hope we’ll have all our paperwork in time to go back to filing in February.  Much better to get it all out of the way earlier.

On top of getting the tax files off today I also moved all my old blog posts from my 2003 trip to India over to WordPress.  I haven’t selected a new photogallery software yet, so for now none of the associated photos have been uploaded.  Someday I’ll take a few hours and re-read the story of the trip.  There’s so much I’ve forgotten over the years.

Last but not least the hubby got his confirmation back today that he does not need to report for jury selection.  Apparently military members are excluded from sitting on juries.  As officers of the government it’s a potential grounds for appeal if he were to serve on a jury.  This is the second time a summons has appeared at our house.  I was scheduled to be in India during the trial dates when the first summons arrived and was excused as well.  It’s a good thing we vote or I’d think we’d have little opportunity to complete some of our base civic duties…

I’m attempting to file my taxes and the gov’t netfile web site is SLOW! It feels like I’m back on a 3600 dial up connection (circa 92). I know, we’re really late. Normally we file in February. My fault. I quit my job mid-way through the year. Remember that? I certainly did. Especially since I had to wait on a bunch of silly tax documents from the old job so I could file this year. I think it’s my lot in life to be sitting around waiting due to taxes. At least this year. I waited for documents to arrive. I waited while Vista decided to throw a fit when installing Quicktax. Don’t get me started on Vista. Stupid piece of poo OS. Can’t wait until I get my new Mac. Now, what was I ranting about? Oh yes. Taxes. And Waiting. I’ve been waiting for the stupid netfile site to load for 25 minutes and I’m quickly going mad. Drew claims his work systems are even slower than CRA’s and that I’d go out of my mind waiting for files to transfer across his network. Not a surprise really. He does work for the government.

And the netfile site STILL HASN’T FINISHED loading yet!

Have I mentioned that I owe $$ this year? Can’t say I didn’t know that was coming. Should get a nice refund next year when I can start claiming boatloads of tuition fees. But this year the gov’t is sucking blood from a stone.

ARGGGGHHH!

Yup, still waiting…

Did I mention I have to file before midnight tomorrow to avoid any penalties? Cause, somehow despite tuition fees, charitable donations, RRSP deductions I still managed to OWE $$ to the governement. I’m sure I’m fighting with a few hundred thousand other folks who also waited until the last minute – for whatever reason – for access to a Web site that’s seen better days.

Perhaps I should go watch NCIS and come back to check the status during the commercial breaks?

Update: 3 hours later and I’m still trying to access to site to file my taxes.  I don’t plan on spending all night at my keyboard desperately trying to load the files and I’m at work tomorrow, so I’m starting to get worried.  I’m sure the server load tomorrow will be much worse and I’ll have a much smaller chance of accessing the site if I can’t get it through tonight.  *sigh*

As for NCIS (see comments) – I’m not sure I can tolerate the neat freak.  She’s irritating, thoughtless, and self-involved.  The show already has someone to fit that bill – Tony.  Not that I don’t adore Tony.   It’s just that a show can only have one Tony type character.  Giving a second one boobs doesn’t immediately make her worth a larger story arc…

Got my fingers and toes crossed that it will stay that way.  In the meantime I’m gracing everyone with my shiny new “green” theme.  If all does not go well on the weather front here this might be the only lush and verdant sight my poor eyes do see for many moons.

I’m a little annoyed with my hosting company today.  My site was down for over 8 hours and everytime I checked for an update there was no new information.  At noon they were promising it would be fixed within 30 to 60 minutes and 4 hours later I was still without the means to share my new theme or check my email *sigh*

I shouldn’t complain.  On the whole they’re pretty reliable.  *knock wood*