Pretty in pink

Oh yeah! I finally went for a pedicure on Tue (still trying to use up that spa cert!). It was nice!

Here's how my spa appointment went:

• soothing foot bath with cleansers, moisturisers, and a scented oil
  
• cuticle oils and foot moisturisers
  
• filing! to remove any callouses and rough skin on my feet
  
• more moisturisers, a foot massage, and cuticle care
  
• paraffin treatment (hot wax - supposed to be good for the skin)
  
• nail polish: base coat, 2 coats of colour, and top coat

And now my feet are all soft and have pretty pink toenails! :D

A relaxing hour and a half, and my feet really do feel great. :) I'd like to go back every once in a while, but at $57+tax a pop, don't know how often that'll be!

"Sick ... as a dog."

Ugh. :(

Spring forward, fall back. Yes, it's that time of year again. Daylight Saving Time is coming to an end, and on Oct 26, we reset our clocks back to Pacific Standard Time to resume wasting daylight.

In the other hemisphere, though, Australia will be heading into summer soon, and last year, some people were opposed to DST.

Ah, blooey. Our refrigerator broke down again.

No more frozen Skor bars. :(

I got introduced to 2 cool shows on the Discovery Channel : Monster Garage and Great Biker Build-Off.

Monster Garage is hosted by well-known chopper (customised motorcycle) builder Jesse James. Each episode, they're assigned 2 things: a regular car (say, PT Cruiser) and a functional purpose (a wheat harvester). Their task is to combine the 2 so it looks (more or less) like the regular car but works like the functional one - 7 days, with $2,000. Today, it's a 1982 DeLorean that they have to make into a hovercraft.

The Great Biker Build-Off is a build-off between 2 known chopper builders. They have 30 days to build a new motorcycle (their own design). They ride their final product halfway across the country to a Bike Week event somewhere (different places each time) to show off their work, and there's a vote to determine a winner.

Guess a bit of that geek in me is shining through. :P

Mom and I were looking to buy a new sewing machine. After checking out numerous expensive machines (including a Pfaff Hobby 1042 for $450 - Mom negotiated another $50 off the sale price ($699 -> $499 -> $450) and  no GST!) on a rainy rainy Saturday, we came home to find a Brother LS-1520 for $170 in the Superstore flyer. Just like that, all my shopping around and research went out the window! Mom picked up the Brother machine a couple of days later.

I finally got around to trying the machine out, though. It sucks. And when it advertises "14 stitch functions," it includes a basic straight stitch in 6 different stitch lengths, and a zigzag in 4 different widths/lengths.

We're returning the Brother and getting a Pfaff 1042! :D

Water, water, everywhere

Jeepers, it is P!SSING rain outside!!

My former company A has posted a Technical Support Engineer position at the Vancouver office. It's the same job from which I was let go in May. The successful candidate spends the first month in Melbourne, Australia! I've been dying to go down ever since I started - made a ton of friends in the Melbourne office - but the trip never came through.

Pros and cons? Well, the obvious pros are a job (decent income without having to report your life to the EI department) and the trip to Melbourne. The cons? It's the same job I was stuck at for 2.5 years. Why would I think, with the reduced headcount and increased complexity in the product, that the job would be any better? And, of course, there's being stuck at the office for 50 hours a week.

What to do, what to do. :(

I took Biological Sciences 100 this summer, and because my Master's program wouldn't let me register in the summer, my professor agreed to defer my grade until the fall term. I spent the entire second week of classes trying to get manually registered for the class so that my grade could be assigned, and they finally told me that I was in.

Last week my professor e-mailed me that the current BISC 100 prof couldn't find me on the classlist! Growl! So now I have to hunt people down again to get registered properly, or I'll lose my A+. :(

I have an access card, I have a key. But really, I am an idiot in the lab. I come in here under the pretence of doing preliminary work for my project, but I check my e-mail, surf the Net, and use the free telephone. I sit nearest the lab phone, so I answer with my courteous "Communication Networks Lab". Sometimes it'll be the typical "Is So-and-so there?", but on those unlucky occasions, I'll hear the reply "Who is this?" Yes, the professor that runs this lab is a little blunt. It doesn't help that I don't know all the people in this lab, yet, and so I don't always know the person for whom she's asking.

Today, she asked for a James. The others around me rushed to my aid and fed me all sorts of info to tell the professor. I think I thoroughly confused her with what was going on and who was telling me what, and then I topped it off by abruptly handing the phone over to James who walked in at that moment (and was pointed out by my peer).

I gotta get a login for a machine a little further ....

After rereading the first 4 books, I finally got around to Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix (Book V). It's a somewhat dark and depressing book, overall. My friend and I spent the 5-minute break during class griping about how out of place things seemed (characters not acting like their usual selves), how some events were unformidable, .... I hope J.K. Rowling comes out with Book VI soon!

In the meantime, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is next on my reading list. :)

Been feeling rather aimless in life lately. I feel like a slug. I need to move out. :(