Tonight is the time where we go out and stuff ourselves on Latin American food. I’ve written about visiting El Rancho before. It’s a small local restaurant that, I’m told, serves authentic El Salvadorean dishes. Having never been further south than Mexico I’ll have to take other’s word for the authenticity of the food. All I know is that it’s pretty good and always very busy.

Drew is not a fan of one of the spices they put in all their dishes so I only go there when he’s out of town. Tonight I’ll be joined by J & A. A will also be inviting R & R. Let’s hope they can make it on such short notice. It’ll be like a mini-reunion of the gang that I went to the restaurant when Drew was in Montreal.

Apparently I can talk about food on my blog as long as I limit it to food Drew doesn’t like 🙂 So now would be a good time to also mention the “goodbye” lunch I had with Big Momma R on Friday. For ages we’d been collecting recyclables to pay for a meal. WD40 returned the bottles last week and on Friday we headed to Mikado for fabulous sushi and sashimi. Ummm.

They do serve cooked food as well so perhaps Drew would be interested in visiting the restaurant some day. He’s usually willing to snack on a Bento box or order up some warm teriyaki dishes. Me, just keep loading the sashimi on my plate and I’ll be happy.

In non-food related news:

I’m very excited about some upcoming concerts coming to the city. Leonard Cohen is coming to town on April 25th! I’ve been a huge fan of his for decades now and am hoping the tickets for hisshow won’t be too expensive. Ticketmaster doesn’t have tickets for sale yet so we have no idea what the cost will to go see him. It turns out R & R may come with me if we can ever figure out when and where to buy tickets to the show. The timing is great for musical reminiscing. He’ll be in town a few weeks after the Gordon Lightfoot show.

Speaking of Lightfoot, Drew won’t be home to go to the show with me. Guess that’s what I get for buying the tickets before we knew Drew would be leaving. I’m bringing L with me instead. He’s a fan and has always been an awesome to neighbour to us. Taking him song with me to the show seems like the least I can do.

I’m working on my application package for a few positions that will be open next week. And I definitely need to call EI to find out if I will still qualify if I return to school full-time next year. I keep reminding myself that I have only one year left to finish my degree if I go full-time. The answer will make a difference in what I chose to do when the layoff becomes effective.

Now, back to a bit of reading for classes. Homework never seems to end.

…but I just submitted it on Friday night…

*gasp* *sputter* *swoon*

I got paper #1 in my Experimental Psych class back this morning. As you can imagine this speedy return was completely unexpected since I’m used to a 2 week turnaround (at minimum) on grades/feedback at RMC. Then again, I’m taking this class elsewhere since RMC isn’t offering it, so they may have different norms surrounding marking that I’m not aware of. Whatever the case may be I certainly wasn’t expecting to log into my course site this morning and find a graded paper. The sun didn’t shine on my parade very long.  Not only wasn’t I expecting the paper back this soon, I also wasn’t expecting a B. Yep. Loxley can return to her days of heckling me and peppering my desk with B shaped objects. I have finally managed to slide lower than an A- on a course.

Actually, I think I’d received a B on my first paper history paper a few semesters ago.  It ended relatively well since I did manage to squeak through with an A- as a final grade in that course.  I’ll have to go digging in my records to check.  Someday.

There is hope.  The first paper is only worth 10% so if I pay attention to the feedback I’m sure I can improve the grade over the next few papers.  Or so I’m going to keep telling myself.

Friday night at Karaoke was interesting.  We had both dare rounds and pick a song from a hat rounds.  People put songs they would normally sing into a hat and others had to sing them. I didn’t fare too badly – Alanis Morrisette’s Head Over Feet was my hat song. Loxley ended up with Alabama’s I’m in a Hurry (And Don’t Know Why) while L sang Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.  Highlight of the singing was L’s interpretation of the ending. In Denial. In Denial. Etc. Etc. I guess you had to be there. The dare round was, as always, evil.  Loxley submitted Iron Maiden’s Butterfly’s In A Gadda Da Vida for me to sing. After that I had no guilt about having thrown her name into the hat to sing Nena’s 99 Red Balloons.  I did go easy on her though and chose the English version. ‘Twas an interesting night.

Last night we went out to celebrate Boo’s “Big Night Out/Not Birthday Party”. Her friend C made her two amazing cheese cakes that tasted like mini slices of heaven. We learned that her friend A lives just up the street from me and seems to know everyone who works on Whyte Ave.

Now Sunday is here it’s time to finish off yet another assignment for MilPsych and modify a course site for work. So much for hibernating for the day and recovering.  Drew should be calling tonight which will make my day complete.

UPPERDATE: School work is taking longer than expected so I’ve decided NOT to work OT to finish up the work related work this afternoon. 8am Monday morning is soon enough!

Have to get this out of the way before I get so swamped with homework this weekend and forget.  Dr. D is wonderful.  Sick as a dog with a nasty migraine and he still made it into work to provide feedback on my research proposal. Great feedback all – even if he did make me try to define variables aloud despite knowing it would just result in my rambling on like a maniac and beginning to question everything I thought I knew.

So, while I try to dig myself out of the homework hole I find myself in, I hope Dr. D is beginning to feel better and has a wonderful weekend.

Now, back to typing like a mad woman and muttering gibberish and threats under my breath…

Talked to Drew tonight and he sounds super tired. His shift has changed at work so he’s now working longer hours, 7 days a week. Lots of yawning and quiet inside voices tonight.

He says he’s doing well and doesn’t need anything other than letters for the moment. His bunk and office are stocked with snacks and he’s shared out quite a bit with his co-workers. He’s got a good selection of books to read and those too will join the Canada House “library” for others to enjoy at some point.

Apparently I didn’t do something correctly in the home video recording/transfer process as the CD I sent didn’t seem to have anything on it. Or so Drew claims. I know I tested it to make sure the videos woud play so we suspect that I mailed a blank CD instead of the one I burned. I’ll have to check the CDs in the office to see if that’s the case. I know they all play in Windows Media Player and he has that installed so that doesn’t appear to be the problem. If I can’t find the original CD I made here I’ll create a new one and send it off soon.

Still no firm idea when he’s coming home. Definitely before the trip to San Diego. More than that isn’t know at this time.

I was supposed to spend the weekend doing school work. I haven’t accomplished as much in that arena as I should have. I did get my weekly assignment (due Mondays) in on Saturday afternoon and got some bits of cleaning done around the house. However, there’s a tonne of reading I need to have completed by the end of the week that I was hoping to finish early that was never touched. I guess I know what I’ll be doing each evening after work next week.

Instead of studying, I spent the afternoon at Costco and Safeway grocery shopping with my neighbour J. When we got home with our goodies L helped cart it al inside. Comes in handy does our L. Especially when I need to get 50 lb boxes of cat litter from the truck into the basement. I know it seems a bit ridiculous to buy such huge amounts of cat litter when I’m out at Costco but, getting it into the house aside, it is far more convenient. The humongous box lasts just over a month what with two cats in the house. The smaller bags/boxes at grocery stores and Zellers don’t last half as long and cost significantly more.

I’ll need his help soon with dog and cat food. As with the cat litter, The monster bags of food are pretty heavy. Getting them into the truck isn’t too hard since they have stock people at the vet supply place who are always willing to help. The challenge, as always, is getting it out of the truck and into the basement when I arrive home. I think I’ve got about a month left in the current stock Drew picked up before he left for KAF. I knew I should have asked him to pick up more than two bags of each.

Nothing much else to report on the home front. Drew mentioned the change back to my black and grey blog theme so I know he’s still popping by to read and check in with “local” news. I thought it might be nice if I opened up the comments for messages intended for Drew to read. He’ll see them the next time he has access to the Internet an drops by the blog. So, get commenting :). If we’re lucky, perhaps we’ll see a few replied from him as well.

Whatever was wrong with my thumbs and hands appears to have gone back into the hole it crawled out from. I am able to write again and am much relieved. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again anytime soon.

Drew called this evening shortly after I spoke to my mother and seems to be in far better spirits than last week. He still has a cold that hes been fighting since he arrived in country. They all seem to be fighting it off.

He confirmed that I can write about eating sushi or el salvadorean (from El Rancho specifically) any day since he’s not find of either types of food. Well. He doesn’t like sushi at all but he does normally like Mexican and South/Latin American foods. He just doesn’t like the spice used in every dish at El Rancho.

A few minutes of listening to Drew on the phone does wonders for lightening my mood. He tells me he rides the short bus to work with his helmet on. Cracks about licking the windows *nom nom nom* are true Drew style.

I told him about a conversation I’d had with a co-worker last night. M had asked if I’d heard from Drew recently and when I’d responded in the negative he asked how I manage. I think my reply shocked him a little. I’d said that I don’t think about it. You just get on with life per normal. You get used to not knowing what’s going on and relying on faith that everything is ok. If you dwell on the absence I don’t think it would be possible to function. I’d probably never leave the house. Drew agrees.

I like to think that we’ve developed this safety mechanism through years of being apart for months on end. For most of my time in the States, and all of my time in India and the Phillipines, were separated by large physical distances (oceans too) and often went days without being able to communicate with each other. Then, there’s all the times Drew has been out in the field, away on course, in the US or Bosnia… we’ve had lots of practice leading up to this tour. We’ve done this before. We can survive it this time and in the future.

It is nice to get a chance to talk about nothing at all. Most of today’s conversation centered on what renovations to the house (new insulation, new furnace and a/c unit, and siding the garage) that we’ll do when Drew comes home. These have been plans in the works for months before he left. Talking about them just continues a pre-established pattern.

Then there are vacation plans.

We can’t really afford to do the battlefield tour of France we’ve been looking forward to yet so we’ll keep dreaming and planning a big European tour to take place a few years down the road. I’ll need a lot more vacation time accrued before we can go.

Aside from visiting Europe, Drew has lots of family to reconnect with or meet in Enland and Scotland. We have lots of saving to do to manage the trip in the style we’d like to become accustomed to. Flights, hotels, train passes and car rentals. Oh, and meals. Drew’s not cheap to feed. Yep. Lots of saving to do. In the meantime we’re going to try and vacation a bit closer to home this year.

We’ve been wanting attend San Diego’s ComicCon for ages and this summer we’re going to make every effort to go. I’m in charge of getting tickets, arranging hotels and flights. Hopefully my organizational skills are up to the challenge.

Until then I wait for the next call. Hope to hear Drew joking and working to making me laugh again soon.