2003-04-06 - 1:47 p.m.

You can buy me!!! It hasn't even been a week since I started trading in BlogShares, but my little blog is already listed and up to $0.04 a share!!! That may not seem like a lot, but I'm very excited about it!

If you want to have a little fun, check out Blog Shares. You'll get $500 play money to buy and sell shares of blog, including this one!

Thanks to june girl for being the first one to buy my shares!!!

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2003-04-06 - 1:30 p.m.

It snowed all weekend.... I like Montreal, I love winter, but give me a break! We've spring-cleaned the lawn already, we're getting quotes to fence in the yard... It can't snow anymore!!!!

I bit the bullet this morning and went to see the downstairs tenant at the store today, to discuss her impending closure and our taking over of the space. I don't know why I was so worried about speaking to her. She was quite nice. Obviously, it sucks for her that she has to close, but she's not mad at me, it's not my fault. I did find out that the landlord led her to believe she had til the end of May, where as he told me the end of April, so we'll have to figure this out next week, because it makes a big difference!

I was quite saddened to hear of the passing of NBC's David Bloom this morning. I'm a news junky, and he's been on my tv my whole adult life, starting with the OJ trial. I liked David Bloom, somehow, I always trusted what he said. Plus I once watched him try to make cotton candy on Weekend Today... it was a total disaster, and absolutely hilarious! I'm gonna miss him during whatever next news crisis hits the air.

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On a personal note, it was a very quiet weekend. The TLC weekend line-up is so good, I find it hard to get off the couch. I really enjoyed this week's "Faking It" (drag racer to drag queen), and was glad that the "victim" on "What not to Wear" fought back and took a shot at Wayne's hair!!!

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2003-04-04 - 1:59 p.m.

Sometimes, you loose touch with people that were so important to you, you wonder, how can these people no longer be part of my life.

Here are people that were so key in my life at a point in time, and now, I have no clue where they are.

C.G./ I went to primary and secondary school with CG. There were only a handful of kids from my grade school that went on to my high school, so we were pretty tight. But she changed in HS, dyed her hair a different colour every week, went out with fake ID (I was way too geeky for that). Anyway, we went to different colleges, I haven't spoken to her since we graduated High School....

Peter Peter was my boyfriend during my student exchange year in Austria.... He wanted me to move back there and got to Univeristy, and for about a year after I came home, we wrote once a week and I really thought I would go back there one day, though not to marry him and live like Heidi on the Mountain.... Then the letters became irregular, and eventually we just stopped writing altogether. I tried finding him with theinternet a few years back, but no luck.

Mina Mina was one of my closest friends in University. We met in the first class on the first day, and spent the next 3 years doing everything together. Actually, that's not quite true. By the 3rd year, she was distancing herself, I was dating someone and had less time to see her, and after we graduated, we didn't stay in touch. She did call a few years after graduation, to apologize for being so distant in our 3rd year, for saying things beind my back, etc. I didn't think anything of it, but someone else told me she might have been making ammends in a 12 step program, which would have explained a lot. I wonder where she is now....

L.P. LP was a friend both in College and University, and we stayed friends for a few years after, even though she moved to DC. I didn't have much money to go visit as often as other people, but I did go a couple of times, and we always got together when she came back home. Then she got a really important job and a much older man in her life and stopped coming home to visit. At first, I tried very hard to stay in touch with her via email, but then she stopped replying regularly. And I was afraid I was truning into one of those people that tries to stay friends when the other person isn't interested, so I stopped writing. I did get in touch with her about 3 years ago and found out she was about a week away from getting married, in England, after working in Asia for a while. I was going to be in Amsterdam that week and thought I could jump over the Channel for the wedding, but she let me know even her mother wasn't invited, so I figured it was better if I didn't just invite myself. I never heard from her again.

Why do we do that? Loose touch with people? These were not just aquaintances, they were close friends, roomates (for that matter, I don't know how to get in touch with any of my college roommates.....)

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2003-04-04 - 1:05 p.m.

I went to youth court yesterday. I was dropping off our application for international adoption, but boy, that is one weird building.

On one side, you see lots of happy looking people, either dropping off the same paperwork that I was, or finishing their adoption process, with their beautiful baby in their arms. Quite inspiring. On the other side of the building, lots and lots of security guards. A woman with no teeth was screaming that she shouldn't be here, she had fed the kids. Lots of teenage boys with their pants below their butts and jackets big enough for 3 people were being "escorted" in and out, some in handcuffs... A few girls, not as many though, but their outfits were enough to make me want to cover them with blankets....

It's weird that in the same building, some families are so filled with hope and love, and on the other side, it's sadness and dispair... I have no point, it just left a strong impression on me.

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2003-04-03 - 10:41 a.m.

I got married last year. We tried very hard to have a nice, classy wedding reception. Actually, we made it more like a fancy party than a wedding, wanting to avoid cheesy wedding pitfalls that people sometimes fall into.... Now my best friend is getting married at the end of the year and she is very busy planning her wedding. She also falls under the stylings of "less is more" and is planning a very classic new years eve reception. So imagine my surprise when she emailed me a weblink for a Mashed Potato Martini Bar.

At first, I had to figure out that these were not mash-potato flavored martinis, but rather, buffet-style mash-potatoes served in martini glasses....

Then, I had to assertain whether she was *actually* considering this, but was relieved to find out this was just something she came across during her many hours of research and thought I woul get a kick out of.

Finally, I had to try to figure out what type of people would actually want this at their reception???? Maybe, maybe, I can kind of picture it at some sort of corporate event, but a wedding? Is this my big-city jaded and biased opinion, or are others finding this just a little cheesy?

And if that's not enough, check out their Themed tables... I'm especially fond of the Survivor Africa one myself.....

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2003-04-02 - 10:29 a.m.

When I have things on my mind, I become an insomniac. Back in my corporate days, this was a very frequent occurance (2/3 days a week). Then I got out of the rat race and started sleeping like a normal person.

Except around the time I was converting to judaism. And while getting ready to go into business. And the months before my wedding. But all in all, I haven't has so many sleepless nights.

Monday night, I fell asleep, no problems. But the dog's stomach was acting up again, and after coming back from walking him, I started thinking. That's a very bad thing to do after midnight.

Last night, just before bed, my dear hubby and I had a "discussion". I tried to go to sleep, to no avail. Didn't close my eyes til 4 am.

On the up side, I got to watch shows that I had missed, shows I would never watch, and do my nails. All things I wouldn't normally have time for.

On the down side, two topics are currently on my mind: moving the store, and my husband's family.

Our little funky gift store is doing pretty well after a year and a half. We would do better in a bigger space, 'cause we'd have room for more variety. Well, we mentioned this to the landlord a few months back, and yesterday, he confirmed it: we are moving downstairs to a much larger space, and he is taking our store and the travel agency next door, merging them into one space and putting a Subway franchise. This is very exciting, Subway will bring lots of young people with disposable income. But I'm worried about the logistics of moving, the amount of work involved in redecorating the store downstairs, the fact that we will be in a half-basement, therefor much less visibility, and to a certain extent, I feel bad for the current downstairs tenant: she hasn't had much luck, and now she has to be out by the end of the month....

As for my husband's family, well... Having never celebrated American Thanksgiving, I've only heard of how nutty families can get around that time. I guess this is kind of the same. Passover is 2 weeks away. I wasn't born jewish, but I am now. A practicing jew, whatever that means nowadays. I don't work on Saturdays, I eat only Kosher food, I go to synaguoge on a fairly regular basis (at least once a month, usually more). I was going to write down the details of our strife, but they really don't matter. The point is, right now, we are both miserable with choices we are making regarding accepting/declining holiday invitations. There is no way to make us both happy. Well, that's not quite true. The past 3 years, we had worked out a way that made us each have one night to our liking. But it's changing this year. I was a very big person and gave up my night. Except it's causing so much aggravation, that it's not even having the intended effect: making him happy. There are obviously other family issues attached to this problem, but right now, you would not want to come visit my house.... there is so much tension, even the dog is hiding from us.

They say couples fight about money, sex and family.... For us, family is enough to make us forget about the other two

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2003-04-01 - 11:57 a.m.

Terrifying thought of the day:

I was looking at my stats, to see how people are finding this blog, and someone found me by searching for cathater on MSN... that is truly terrifying..... Not the search, I'm sure they had a good reason for searching, but that they would follow that link.... If you are that person, email me, I've got to know why.... and I won't even mention the fact that it should have been spelled catheter, and I was just too lazy to correct it in the first place

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2003-04-01 - 11:15 a.m.

I'm suffering from a bad case of procrastination-itis these days. I've got a ton of accounting to do for the store, I need to fill out some legal documents for our adoption file, I really should do a new display window to try to entice customers... yet I spend my time reading blogs and trying to reach level 12 on Cubix.... The funny thing is, when I worked in the corporate world, I had a million things to do at once and everything always got done on time. Now that my list of responsabilities fits on a post-it note, I never get around to doing any of it until the last possible minute.

I have two theories on why this is happening:

a) dear hubby J is rubbing off on me. He is the worst procrastinator.

b) I work better when I have more things to do. Don't get me wrong, I love being my own boss, I absolutely adore the store, but until the warm summer days come, it's not exactely the Macy's 4th of July sale in here....

I miss having co-workers. I should specify that I never particularly got along with co-workers, but that's the part I miss. Sitting in my office wondering how on earth such incompetents had gotten a job! I miss having stories to tell about things that happen at work. Would this captivate anyone at a cocktail party: "This woman came in. She needed a birthday card. She checkout the front rack, walked over to the back rack, found one that made her smile and paid cash."

OK, who are we kidding. It's not like we go to any cocktail parties.... because, again, we have no co-workers to mingle with. I live with my husband (duh!), I work with him (though never at the same time), we have mostly the same friends (fixing up my best friend with his buddy seemed like a good idea at the time), so the amount of people I speek to on a regular basis is getting smaller and smaller. I actually looked forward to the many visits to the in-vitro clinic, at least there were lots of other people there in the waiting room!!!!

I didn't watch tv last night (except for CSI Miami), so somehow, I totally missed the "news" about Corey being booted from American Idol. Imagine my surprise when I was going through my daily blog reads and found out about it on Cootihog's blog.

I'm guessing the people who do background checks for AI will all be fired today, seeing as this is now the 3rd person to have some sort of brush with the law. I think they should give Corey's spot to Frenchie . At least she didn't break any laws....

Most of my favorite bloggers didn't update yesterday, so I went looking for a little distraction and found it in the form of one of the funniest recaps ever on TWoP. I love TWoP, their recappers are the best on the web.

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2003-03-31 - 2:55 p.m.

Quiet Monday... It snowed most of the day yesterday, but it was just a tad too warm for it to accumulate. When we went to bed, the yard was all pretty with a blanket of fresh white stuff, and this morning, most of it was gone.

I do have one funny story from the weekend. My dear husband J likes to pretend that he doesn't like most of the shows that I watch on tv, but he always finds himself wandering into the living room when, say, Survivor, is on. So on Sunday night, we came back from dinner with friends and I put on Alias (on my Bell ExpressVue PVR, the Canadian, slightly suckier version of TIVO). J was on the computer, but he walks in to the room during the last scene and says "Evil Francie!". Now, either I talk in my sleep, or he has indeed been paying attention....

I went through my favorite blogs list, along with a long list of bookmarks that I haven't posted on my site, but hardly anyone has posted yet today. I look so forward to reading eveyone's posts, it bums me out when there's nothing to read yet!!!!

Alex hasn't posted yet either, but she was very busy this weekend with a pair of mittens, a camera and Quicktime... Check it out, it's too cute!

So I discovered Blogshares on Friday. My portfolio is already up from the initial 500$ to $580, thanks to Hormonal Bitch, Big Pink Cookie and Drama Queen... i still have a couple of hundred I can invest, so if anyone is reading anything interesting, please let me know and I'll see if they are listed.

Obviously, I hope to one day see this little blog make it to the penny stocks, but we are a long ways a way, what with my one regular reader and all... (hey Shana!!!)

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