First classes

After a lazy Labour Day weekend, today was my first day of classes. I had a heck of a time getting to sleep last night and was pretty much in full panic mode staring at the ceiling, same tired worries and regrets circling through my head. It wasn’t until after a sleeping pill and some nose blowing (my allergies are crazy right now!) that I finally got a bit of sleep.

All my morning classes for the week begin at 8am sharp, so after persuading Hubby to drive me in the morning, he and I both woke up at 6:30am and got ready. My Tuesday morning class is Photography and there is about twenty students registered.  The instructor is a trim, 35-year-old guy with blondish, slightly spiky hair who, in addition to taking pictures, has a passion for rugby and told us about his experiences playing the sport. Then it was the students turn to state their name and talk briefly about themselves. One girl at the back mentioned that she was a psychology student, but left because it “sucked”, which made me wince since I have a degree in that program. But weirdly enough, there were a few other kids who also said that they tried psych as well and left due to lack of interest.

Anywho, when it came around to my turn, I mentioned my degree and said that I liked the program but didn’t pursue graduate studies, and gave a tiny version of my life story up to now.  Somebody had to stick up for psych and while this isn’t the first time I’ve heard it being criticized and yes, I sometimes regret my degree, I still think it’s an interesting subject. Taken as just a bachelors, it doesn’t help you solve your own and/or others craziness, but at least it gives you a bit of insight, which can be oddly comforting. Plus, as you all know, you pretty much need a BA or diploma to do anything nowadays!

After introductions, we were given our first assignment: We were given a number of steps from the classroom entrance to a spot where we would take ten photos. I was given the number 50, so I walked down the hallway, counting the number of steps while also dodging crowds of students and when I got to 50, I stopped and found myself in a starwell. Then I photographed random stuff: The floor, the sky, the flourescent light fixtures on the ceiling, some people coming up and down the stairs and worried if my pictures were good, I was putting some thought into them, but it’s tough to do anything too magnificent from a bright college starwell.  It was fun regardless though!

Then after a looong and hot walk to the bus stop, I went home and called up the Registrars Office and listened to Kenny G muzak for about twenty minutes until confirming with someone there that yes, I am enrolled in Communications online. Ironically enough, no one communicated with me that I was registered online, so I had to make sure, because I really didn’t want to go to an early morning class, come home and then hours later, have to go back to school again. But it is online and you’ll never guess what we’ll be doing-Blogging! Slightly different then this of course, but the gist is the same. Isn’t that funny?

So that’s that for today-Tomorrow-Wednesdays- will be the busiest day of the week for me, I have classes from 8am-5pm, with a lunch break at 2pm. Thursdays are my days off and then I have one morning class on Fridays. In college you spend more time doing assignments, then listening to lectures, which suits me fine! As mentioned, I love dear old Psychology and university in general, but I’m looking forward to more practical schooling!

I’m not the only one!

A few weeks ago I received an email from the “Mature Students Network” at Algonquin College inviting me to a Mature Students Network Meeting and today was the day. I assumed that the gathering would consist of at most ten people sitting around in a circle in a small and dark room, but I arrived to see a hundred people milling about a large, bright room with two large projectors on either side. After sitting down next to a friendly looking woman who is pursuing Library Studies, the coordinators of Mature Students Network talked about things like student cards, accounts, support associations, class exemptions, etc.

Networking was particularly stressed, obviously given that it’s part of their name, and they gave us five minutes to talk to someone in our immediate location. The guy in front of me turned around and we chatted a bit, he pretty much echoed everything that I’ve been feeling and when the conversation turned to going to school with 17 and 18-year-olds he groaned: “God, yes, it’s going to be tough. I mean I’m older, y’know, older!”

Curious, I asked “How old are you?”

“30″

I laughed and said “Well I’m 31!” to which he backtracked a bit and clarified: “Notice, I did say ‘older’, not old”

Well that’s good, because what’s one year older than old?

In all honesty, I’ve been trying to get past the whole “age thing”, and groups like these have been really helpful. I’m not so arrogant to think that I’m the only one over the age of 25 going back to school, but to see the sheer number of people trying to better their lives and not letting something like age get in their way, well it’s pretty frickin amazing!

After the meeting was adjourned, I took the coordinator’s advice and picked up my student card and my bus pass. All I need now is a laptop and books and I’m all set! It’s been eight years since I went to school full-time and I’m intimidated, but a little less so after the meeting today!

I’m free!!

My last day at work came and went really quickly! There were days in that job that seem to lag on and on, days when I felt like such a disappointment to myself, but once I decided to change my life, things started happening really quickly and there was a light at the end of a tunnel.

The last two weeks have been a great blur of free food and coworker friends who I’ve befriended over the years and support from unexpected people who would send me emails wishing me luck going back to school.

There was also some added extra financial help from my work, which was a HUGE relief, believe me!

Anyways, the past almost five years have had it’s ups and downs and I’m definitely glad to be leaving, but I’m still grateful to have had the opportunity to work there. The job was never meant to be long term and it was at the bottom of the admin chain, but it enabled me to support Hubby while he was in Law School, covered the cost of our car and awesome vacations and most of all let me learn, grow and mature into a more professional woman who now knows what she wants and will hopefully achieve it!

What no to do during a heatwave..

After taking two weeks off to pack, move and then unpack, I insisted to Hubby that we get out of town for a bit, so I could A)Jump in a lake and B)Go to a drive in.

Neither of which turned out exactly as planned.

The whole Ottawa area had been experiencing a heatwave, and we drove up to Murphy’s Point, one of the closest parks to the city, to cool off. Unfortunately, lots of other people had the same idea and the place was packed! The park has two beaches and we picked the smaller one, thinking there might be less people, but it was also crowded. We left not long after arriving, not so much because of the people, although that did put a slight damper, but more because the sand wasn’t quite so comfy to lie on after awhile. (Prepared, we were not) Luckily, however, Hubby’s aunt invited us to her cottage so we drove there and enjoyed the space and her beach chairs.

Her son’s dogs greeted us upon arrival-One is huge and LOVES the water while the other is your usual feisty but still cute, Jack Russell.

After dinner, we went to the drive in and if there is any piece of advice I can give with this post other than the importance of bringing chairs to the beach (Or at least more than three towels), it’s to never, ever go to a drive in during a heatwave! Just don’t. It may sound intuitive, but I haven’t been a drive-in since I was nine and fell asleep during “The Hunt for Red October“, so my memories of this activity were hazy.

                                                                                                                                               Lineup to the snack bar. The last remaining moments of fresh air.

The car was like a sauna and as soon as we opened the car doors to let in a smidgen of a breeze, mosquitos would infiltrate our car and eat us alive! Of course we couldn’t leave the car turned on for air conditioning either, so we were trapped. I ended up dropping ice cubes from my drink down my shirt and Hubby’s, who jumped about two feet in the air. Heheh! We watched “The Amazing Spiderman” and frankly, it wasn’t so much”amazing” as “o.k”. The kid wore too much hair gel and there were some parts that made absolutely no sense, but we only paid $10 to see it, so I can’t complain too much.

Sunday morning was brunch with my parents who were kind enough to let us sleep over at their place on Saturday night. Brunch at least turned out as expected, the food was good, but we couldn’t stay too long as we had (and still have) more unpacking to do!

But despite these complaints, it was fun and I’d like to plan more trips out to the many beautiful Ontario parks soon!

Dicks Restaurant!

Hubby and I decided to check out some of the local restaurants in our new area. We already visited the Firkin Knight months ago after looking at potential places, along with Montana’s, which is a chain and hence the same no matter what part of the city you live in. I don’t mind chains sometimes, but my absolute favorite places are independently owned and free to do whatever they want with the décor and food. Dicks is such a place and has a 60s soda shop kinda vibe:

The seats were cushy and comfortable, the lighting not too bright and the music, of course, was top 50s-60s, which is great.  I already ate dinner, so I ordered the sundae while hubby had the veggie burger. The ice cream was wonderful and I’m pretty sure, homemade. After eating in dozens of restaurants over the years and being limited to the veggie pizza and/or burger, Hubby is pretty much an expert on what makes a good one and Dicks version was really tasty. (Or at least that’s what he told me, I’ll have to go back to verify for myself)

Service was a bit slow at times, but pleasant. They had some more “adventurous” items on the menu like kangaroo burgers, which made me wonder how fresh they could possibly be coming all the way from Australia, (Unless there’s some kangaroo farm around town that I don’t know about) but tasting the quality of the food, I’m sure they are still delicious.

So if you’re in our area and looking for a place to eat, skip McD’s and Dairy Queen, and go to Dicks instead. You won’t regret it!

Our New Place..

After much packing, back and forth trips and grunting we finally moved into our new home. My father and I painted the master bedroom on Thursday, the movers brought our heavy furniture on Friday and myself, Hubby, our parents and Johnny’s wife moved the rest of our stuff on Saturday. It was hot and exhausting but also really exciting and we are really grateful for their help! As mentioned earlier we don’t have central air conditioning here, but my in-laws gave us their old window unit and installed it in the master bedroom. It’s soooo nice!

Unfortunately our first night here proved to be more difficult for our pets. Pierre hates moving and was roaming around the new place hissing and growling at everyone and everything, while Selena howled and whined in her pen in the basement starting at 3am. Pierre is finally now more relaxed and Selena…well she sleeps in between Hubby and me, but I’m hoping that at some point she will be fine with going back to her actual bed in the basement.

Like last week, I have this week off from work and will be busy unpacking and organizing, but I’m hoping to take advantage of my free time by doing some non-moving related activities as well.

Saying goodbye to our old home…

Only four more days until our official moving day and man, it has gone by fast! To try and reduce the number of back and forth trips on Saturday, Hubby and I went back and forth to our new place this past long weekend (Happy belated Canada Day btw!)  to drop off some boxes. During our first trip we took a look around our freshly painted living room and Hubby said:

“Uh, I don’t think we’ll be able to install an air conditioner on this floor”

There are no windows on the main floor, just a front door and a sliding glass door at the back. Weird how the logistical lack of air conditioning never occurred to us before, but it being July, we definitely were noticed now. On the plus side though, it’s not that hot on the main floor. I guess we’ll just have a lot of fans in the living room.

Central air conditioning is one of the luxuries that we will miss at our new place along with lower rent, a bigger finished basement and an actual backyard, as opposed to the postage stamp that backs onto a parking lot in our next place. The off-leash dog park in our old area has also been awesome, we’ve made lots of human and dog friends there and we’ll miss them too.

But despite these complaints, we like our new place, it’s much closer to work and school and the house is still pretty nice, it’s just not as nice, but that’s a tall order.  Basically we’ve been spoiled for the past while; It was over brunch almost four years ago when Hubby’s dad offered to buy a place and rent it out to us while Hubby was in school. I was going mental in our old apartment and practically jumped for joy at the offer.

We looked around and then found a great town home all the way in Orléans, close to my parents. So the five of us-Two humans and three very co-dependent balls of fur-moved in and it has been great. Unfortunately, my parents shortly after moved to the far, far west end (They assured me it wasn’t personal. Yay, right mom! LOL) and after Hubby was all done with school, we were pretty tired of the long-ass commute. Then I got accepted into school and know you’re all caught up.

So it’s goodbye to our old home and hello to our second rented home. We’ve had some great memories of our little corner in Orléans, but it’s time to move on and we’re very excited!:)