Fate does an audit on Jillian and finds her owing

Last week it was Friday the 13th. I had a pretty good day that day. I think Fate took notice of that though and decided it was time for me to pay up. Starting yesterday around 5:30 PM I have not been having the best of luck.

• Pinched finger in my Truck Club. Ow. Purple!
• Found out that the Red Shoe House website I have been working on getting launched with a new look may be going back to the drawing board in 18 months so that all the Red Shoe House sites across Canada will look the same.
• Got charged 30 cents for taking an extra syrup for my waffles in the Good Wooden Leg cafeteria. I figure that works out to about a penny per millilitre.
• Found out that a "loose ends" project I had finally wrapped up this week for my old job needs to be redone (by yours truly) because of someone's typo (not mine!)

I woke up this morning and noticed the house seemed cold. I checked the thermostat and realized it thought it was Saturday and therefore did not need to kick the furnace on until 9 am. This has happened before so I decided maybe a battery change was in order. Took thermostat off the wall, replaced batteries, replaced thermostat, went to work.

Come home this afternoon to a cold house. Check the thermostat--11.8 degrees! Yikes! Realized that I did not properly replace the thermostat. Smack the little box to the wall. Pinched another finger. Gah. Fixed.

Go to the kitchen to start work on my super duper awesome birthday cake for my special man friend. Notice that the recipe (pulled from Cooks.com) looked a little weird. The instructions say "In a mixing bowl, beat together egg yolks, whole eggs, and sugar to produce a mixture that is pale yellow and thick." The recipe only calls for 4 eggs, what's this about egg yolks and whole eggs? Weird.

Finish mixing up cake. Notice that the batter is really really thick. Odd. Perhaps this means the cake will turn out really really good. Cannot pour batter into pans, instead must spatula it into the round reservoirs and attempt to spread it around so it reaches the edges. Throw it into the oven and hope for the best. Re-read recipe and laughed at the note: "This is my very favorite cake recipe and I do not give it out to anyone but family".

Pull cakes out early and laugh because I cannot cry. They look like chocolate Frisbees. Head downstairs and pull a Betty Crocker off the shelf. Back to the drawing board. Oye.

A Keeper

Tyler just left a few minutes ago. First thing I did was pull out Mac and turn on my music. When I tell Tyler this later he will probably laugh and tell me that when he got home he put on some screamo band music and contemplated again the idea of growing a beard.

We spent the whole long weekend together. I wasn't entirely sure how it would go. Would we get bored? Tired of each other? Cranky? I don't know why I always worry about these things.

From Valentine's

On Wednesday Tyler had pink roses sent to me at work. I had never been so pleasantly surprised. The card read:

Dear Jillian,

Just a little "early" Valentine treat for you. This should help decorate the new cube a little as well as make some of your co-workers jealous. Looking forward to our Valentine's this weekend.

On Friday I requested that he pick me up from work so that I could safely transport the flowers home. We split up and then reunited later to head to Rob's place.

Rob was celebrating his birthday that night at the King's Head pub, a fun little place in the Exchange District downtown. I picked Tyler up. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before on here how stressed out I get about parking, especially parallel parking downtown. Tyler learned this fun little fact about me as we drove circles around the joint trying to find an easy spot for me to pull into. We ended up parking on a deserted street about three blocks away from the pub, which, in mid-February Winnipeg temps, is not exactly pleasant. Lucky for me, Tyler still finds these quirky (annoying) things about me endearing. I am realizing that it's probably best I reveal as much as possible about myself now, while we are in this "I love everything about you" stage.

On Saturday I busied myself with last minute V-day preparations. I was making Ty Imperial cookies--his favourite and had this vision in my head of decorating them with V-day themed words. As it often turns out, my vision and the actual product did not entirely match.

Here's a picture of the best of the bunch:

From Valentine's

Incidentally, Tyler made me cupcakes. He was so excited about them that he dropped one off on his way to work on Friday morning. This is how his creation turned out:

From Valentine's

Tyler and I planned to eat in on Saturday night but I still wanted to dress up in something fun and girly. I had found a steal of a deal pair of shoes at Le Chateau the weekend before and built the outfit around them.

From Valentine's

After dinner we exchanged gifts. I'll just say that I am a lucky, lucky girl. He thought of everything.

From Valentine's

On Sunday morning we went out for breakfast. I picked a warm, sunny booth to sit in. Not long after we sat down, a pair of middle-aged lovers sat at the booth beside us. I can't even tell you the story of these two nuts, but it was hilarious to be a part of their world for a morning. After a while I couldn't even keep my composure and I just cracked into a fit of laughter.

"Tell me something awful," I begged him. "Tell me something terrible about bunnies dying or something." I wanted him to distract me from the comedy routine that was going on beside us so I could finish my breakfast, but nothing would work. I couldn't even look at Tyler because I would just start laughing all over knowing he was cracking up (on the inside) too. I thank my lucky stars that I had someone else to share that memory with. It was something priceless.

For the rest of the weekend, we mostly just hung out. We did crossword puzzles (who knew they could be so much fun?) had Sunday dinner with my parents, went to a movie (Taken is definitely a renter, at best) and ate a lot.

I love him. He's a perfect fit, and I'm not sorry if that makes for boring blogging.

Moving right along

It didn't hit me until last night around five o'clock that the day I had been waiting for had finally come (and gone). Yesterday was Amara's last day at work, which meant it was also my last day as Communication Specialist, Promotion and Market Conduct. Not that the day went by without recognition. Kat, George, New Girl and Head Two did wish me well with a "congratulations on your new home" card and a huge Tolberone bar. It just hit me today that this really means I'm not part of that wonderful team anymore. Through all the ups and downs, they were always good for sharing a laugh or even a Kleenex. I think it just took a while to sink in that even though I'd be going to the same place on Monday morning, this was really the end of something, and that called for some kind of dancing.

Tyler has been busy with work all week. Valentine's day actually presents a portal to hell for him every year, being employed in the flower industry and all. However, by some odd miracle he was able to get off of work early yesterday and spend a few hours hanging out with me. I had first suggested that we go for a walk on the river trail and then maybe grab a coffee afterward, but later informed him I wanted to nix the boring coffee and celebrate my day with opening up a bottle of wine.

Sitting at my table with wine glasses in hand, we toasted me and more happy days ahead. I told him about the tradition I have of taking my family out for dinner whenever I get a new job, and that I wanted to do that again and have him there too.

"When was the last time you talked to your mom and dad?" he asked me.

It took me a minute to remember. "Tuesday." We had switched vehicles that day so my mom could take my truck in for an oil change during the day (I know, so very spoiled).

"You haven't talked to them since Tuesday?! I thought you talked to them every day! Phone them right now."

So I did.

"Ohh, it's our long lost daughter!" My mom said. "Dad wants to know if Tyler is holding you ransom for cabbage rolls." I repeated this to Tyler and he laughed.

Mom asked me if Tyler and I had gone for a walk because she had read his horoscope and it said something about getting out and being with nature. She really only knew that because Ty has the same sign as my dad. But wow, she really seems to like him, and that makes me happy.

"I'm celebrating tonight," I told her, and reminded her it was my last day on the old job. I then told her about the meeting I had on Thursday with my new boss.

"He told me to let him know if there's anything I really want to try this year and get more experience with. He really wants me to get the most out of this opportunity. I've been missing having a mentor for so long and I'm just so excited about working with him."

This week I will start my new job (and try not to think about those few loose ends I still have to tie up before Head One gets back from her three week vacation), Tyler will be able to stay out past 9:00 again, I will prepare for our Valentine's day weekend together, and next weekend Tyler will join me and my family at my parents' place for Sunday dinner. And look! I'm blogging again! Okay, not my best work still, but maybe it's coming back. All the pieces are coming together.

I'm happy.

I am so MAD!

Not at you. (You weren't worried were you?)

I wanted to make peanut butter cookies today. So first I phoned my mom for our favourite recipe. Probably the first time I ever made cookies by myself I made this recipe. She could not find that recipe but she found another one that she assured me was from a reliable source. So I copied it down and went to town.

Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes, it says. With about 2 minutes to spare I decided to peek at them. OH MY GOD! THEY ARE FLAT AS PAPER AND BROWN AS (um, thinking of a metaphor here, thinking...) BROWN AS BROWN PAPER! (That was not my best.) These are nothing like the cookies I or Mom used to make!

Mom phoned me back later with the old standby recipe, and it was exactly the same except doubled, so I don't know what went wrong, but I am mad. I sampled one cookie. I sampled another (this time with a glass of cold milk). Well okay, they are still tasty, but probably only if you eat them right out of the oven. If I come back here later complaining about a grande tummy ache, you know what I did.

Tag?

I'm super behind on my blog reading, never mind my blog writing. So I just got to Kasia's post about getting tagged, where she also tagged me. According to Kasia, this means:

Rules of the tag: List 5 Obsessions/Addictions that you have, and tag back to the person(s) that gave you the award. Post the rules and tag an additional 5 people.

Okay! I like lists! I like the number five! This should be fun. I am going to try to not list the obvious (shoes) here. And I'm not tagging five others. Mostly because I don't know five others.

1. I am obsessed with the radio. I changes stations like mad to find the right song to listen to while driving/getting dressed/dancing around the house, and every night before I go to bed I turn the radio on and will not turn it off until I have heard one good song. I also have a not-so-secret obsession with listening to the Delilah radio show.

2. I am obsessed with cookbooks and I am forever looking for new ones to add to my collection. They must have pictures. The next one I am eyeing is the Company's Coming Slow Cooker Recipes book. Did you know you can make cake in your slow cooker? Oh, I am also a fanatical reader of cooking blogs such as Baking Bites.

3. I am crazy for scents. Favourites include my now out of production lemon meringue lotion, coconut scented sunscreen, my Betsey Johnson perfume and the Abercrombie store (I have a sweater from there that I don't wear because I don't want to have to wash the scent away).

4. Blackberries--as in the actual fruit. I am especially fond of them with some good vanilla yogurt. Oh, and I'm obsessed with pizza. And cookies. And nachos with guacamole.

5. Driving Tyler crazy. I am super good at it too.