Sunday adventures ..

Today was a day that was filled with many adventures! I will break them down into little stories for you guys ..I may even save a few work stories for later dates, seeing as I know you'll all be going through Cogan's story withdrawals!

Dreams& Wake Up Calls
So, this morning I was all snuggled up in my bed. I was warm and comfy and having the strangest dream. Myself and my husband, Jon Cryer (you know, the guy from Two& A Half Men who ISN'T Charlie Sheen) were in a cooking class with a world famous chef. I had married Mr. Cryer in a secret ceremony while still dating Garret (who was calling me while we were in the class) and this was his attempt to domesticate me. The chef asked a question to which, for reasons I do not know, I knew the answer! GO ME! Except the reward for getting the question right was that the chef left the class in my hands. Literally. He walked out. So, I started everyone on their meals. We were making mashed potatoes in kitchen sink water and using link fence pieces to mash it. All incredibly bizarre, correct? It gets stranger.

So, I'm walking around the room and becoming increasingly more panicked because I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing. All of sudden, Meghan and her dad were there. Being the life saver that she is, she had her laptop with her and I was suddenly able to find a recipe to guide me. I used my favorite recipe place, Skinny Taste, and suddenly I was good to go. I asked Meg to make a special recipe, which I thought of all on my own, called Orange Julius Carrot Soup.
It was MASSIVE amounts of carrots and one large Orange Julius pineapple / orange smoothie. I can well imagine it would have tasted disgusting, except that as her dad was putting it on the stove top, my father came downstairs and woke me up. I blame the fact that I was actively in REM sleep as to why I can remember that dream in such vivid detail!!

*Side note, check out Skinny Taste. Incredibly awesome and, from the few I've tried, fairly simple, delicious and nutritious!

Why, you ask, was my dad waking me up? Oh, it was 8.45AM and I had to be at work in 5 minutes. It takes longer than 5 minutes to drive there. Oops. So I scrambled out of my warm sheets and out of my comfy PJs, brushed my teeth (barely) and managed to make it to the store by 8.59AM. It was opened for business at 9.02AM. Don't say I'm not efficient. Last morning shift ever and I almost missed it ...leave it to me! Oh well, Dad got me tea& a chocolate chip muffin so really .. it was still a pretty awesome start to my day :) We also had our first ice creams of the year at Lick-A-Treat (less scandalously named sibling of the Lick-A-Chick)! I got a chocolate twist in a dish with sprinkles and really wished I had my camera because it was just SO pretty! I love my dad always, but especially when he's taking me for an ice cream!

Truck Adventures
So, then when we got home I got a mysterious text from Karli that read 'Hey whats up? Want to join me on a random drive somewhere?'. Direct quote. Being the adventurous soul that I am, I agreed no further questions asked! We were headed on a cold, long trip to Lobster Galley where Tyler and his friends had broken down on their way back home from the Cabot Trail :( Long story short .. Karli had her alpaca mittens but BONUS! She also had seal skin mittens! My hands have officially worn more types of skin& fur than any other body part. Tyler, being the sweet fella that he is, treated Karli& myself to Pizza Delight. It was delicious, thanks again Tyler! Seems like a short adventure when I type it out on my blog, but in reality it was 4hours and the end result? The truck wasn't fixed, it was still cold, the boys had to get the truck towed and Tyler was out a lot of money! So, it was not a very productive day for him but it ended on 2 positive notes:
1. The boys are getting massive amounts of pizza (with kitty cat faces on them!)
2. They got to ride in the truck which was on the tow truck (I don't know how this can be anything less than awesome)!

So, this post is becoming quite long! My day that was supposed to be ho-hum turned into something much better and more funny! So now, I am supposed to leave you with a photo of the day. Although I DID give you a photo of the day yesterday AND an entire set of puppy dog shots. I play by the rules though, and the rules state that I still owe you guys a photo for this day! So, I am going back to the lightbox. In the lightbox, you will see something very pretty. However, the photo is not yet taken ..so I will be back later this evening with the second edition of my post& a photo! So, until then, enjoy my artist selection for today.

My artist is named Keith Mullins and is Garret's brother! He is talented, owns a farm in Halifax and is generally a great guy with some really cute kids :) I tried to find a better video of him, but all I have is a video from his CD release party. I was there ..it was awesome. Hope you enjoy this video .. this song is awesome!



PS -Don't forget to enter my blog contest! It's super easy ..just click here and leave a comment! Prizes are awesome ...relatively speaking (consider your other option: not winning ANY prizes) ;)

3,041+

YES! Thank you absolutely everyone who viewed my blog. I have gotten 240 page views today .. exceeded my 3,000 goal by 41 (last time I checked) and there's still lots of time until the day is over! You guys rock :)

So I heard that a great way to increase traffic to your website is to start something called a Blog Contest. This is where you offer a prize for people to win if they decide to enter the contest. I think I'll hold my very first blog contest right now, because you all have been so great to get me to my goal for the day!

So, my tasks for the day have just gone from lazing around to setting up a blog contest! Who knew .. this is a big moment. Let me start with an outline:

What is the prize?!
It is magnificent. You will LOVE it. I will update this shortly with a photo of your prize ..if you should be so lucky to win! Until then, you will wait on the edge of your seat for the big announcement.

Rules& Regulations
So, in order to win my magnificent prize, you have to do at least ONE of the following:
1. Comment on this post
2. Tweet this post
3. Facebook this post
4. Link this post to your own blog

Now if you happen to really, really, really want to win this prize, you can do all four of the above mentioned things to have a grand total of FOUR entries into the draw! Don't say I'm not awesome.

The contest will run for SEVEN days (1 week). It will start the minute I post this blog and will continue until April 1st. I know, that's April Fool's Day, but I promise a winner WILL be selected and really will get a prize in my first official blog contest! No jokes being played on you!
If you are selected as the winner, I require one thing; contact me ASAP with your contact info. Imagine if someone wins this who isn't my mother, Garret or one of my girlfriends!

PS Mom, Garret, girls - if you win, I don't need your contact info ;)

Winning
How very Charlie Sheen of me, no? Except I actually mean winning the contest, not twitter.
How will I select who wins? It will be 100% arbitrary. I'll use a random number generator to select a number. Everyone who enters will be given one .. and then bam! If you're lucky enough for that generator to pick your number, you're going to be the very first official blog contest winner for HalfPastWonderful :D

Now, if you DO win .. there are 2 things I'd love to do. The first is a Blog Interview with you, because hell, if I'm going to succumb to all things cliche about blogs I may as do the interview thing. BUT more importantly .. I would LOVE a photo of your prize proudly displayed in your home.

*Please note, neither of these things are required. They would simply be the icing on the cake.


Alrighty, so now we've got that whole contest thing taken care of. Best of luck to everyone who enters. Which you may as well do if you're reading this ..I mean, you're already here. All you have to do is comment (which, by the way, you don't have to register for ANYTHING). Approximately 23 seconds of your life, from start to finish!

So, I enlisted my friend Kelly to help me decide on a prize. Her suggestion was good but involved me being there personally, which started us talking about my international visitors (hi, guys! You all rock) and lead to this gem:

Kelly says (2:53 PM):
fascinating..
And one from the arctic
I should probably count as Russia hahahahahhahahahaa

Oh, Kelly! You make Sarah Palin proud :)
Alright, I hope people play along with me and enter into my First Official HalfPastWonderful Blog Contest! It will be fun if you help me make it be :D

PS check back for updates, including my photo of the day& a hint at the prize!

Another day ..

I totally thought Mom vs. Sheen would have gotten more comments. I should tweet Charlie Sheen, I wonder if he would find it as hilarious as we all did? Probably not. Oh well. This post is going to be nearly as entertaining as my last one! Sorry about that.

Today I went to foodborne lab. I ended up being late because I'm slow and spent too long lazing in bed thinking about how cold and miserable my day was going to be once I decided to get up and start it. So, I rushed off to my lab only to get stuck in traffic and come screeching to a halt for about 5 minutes. Time to double the rest of the highway! I made it to lab, only to realize I forgot both my lab manual AND my lab project, which was tucked inside my manual. Why? To ensure it wouldn't be forgotten. Some days just aren't your day. After surviving my lab, where e. Coli was spilled over my things (yay.) and I had to re-do some tubes (no fault of my own), I headed to the cafeteria with some better news: Air Quality lab was CANCELED and I just had to survive his midterm and could head away from CBU! I spread the word to not attend lab .. sat down with Karli, Marg and Patricia to learn some things about the atmospheric layers of the earth. It was truly thrilling. Then I went off to write it. I proceeded to get perfect scores on the math section (um. I think the world is ending. Dead serious.). Hopefully I'll find out my final mark tomorrow ..don't let me down, Bill! Please have them corrected?!

The day that started out so awful was starting to look up. I headed to Garrets, where I picked up my wallet (YAY. Money!) and boyfriend and off we went to buy some 2x4s, Orange Julius and onion rings from A&W! Also we watched Dr. Phil, went to his dentist so he could pick up some paperwork and then basically lazed around until I decided I should go home and start studying for Occupational Hygiene. Man. I'm so burnt out .. I need the weekend to do NOTHING. Except, run the Louisbourg Slush Run. I am DOOMED. Meg is running amazing times and I haven't even been to the gym in 2 days. Tomorrow I'm going 100% for sure and going to pound out a good run. Then I'm going to Garret's house to sleep until it is time to wake up and go to that run. Hoping Garret will come with and take some photos! Should be really funny and cold and long and painful. I already can't wait until I can go to sleep afterward.

Speaking of photos, I know I'm SUPER behind on my 365. I promise to get all my photos uploaded, photoshopped and added to my blog soon. Either tomorrow before I go to Garret's house or on Saturday after work. It really depends on how busy I am, although once finishing this midterm tomorrow I should be good to go!
My brother gets home tonight, in fact I think he& Mom just walked in, so that will be an adventure all on it's own, really. Perk to this? Mom made chocolate fudge cupcakes and I had TWO! They were so delicious that I don't even feel badly about being such a bad eater this evening. Tomorrow I will eat good and I definitely will at work.

So, along with lack of photos of the day, you may have also noticed a lack of Insanity updates? Yeah. Going to Halifax with the girls killed that game plan and I was incredibly busy and tired this week (I must be getting sick. Being tired is really odd for me), so it just ended. I'm going to restart it on Monday from the very beginning. Including the fit test. I think somewhere in this blog I wrote down what I was able to do my very first day. I'm going to compare to see if I have improved even a tiny bit.

Alright, now it is time for me to study more for Occupational Hygiene. Wish me luck! Enjoy your Thursday evening ladies and gents .. you're all awesome :) Sorry this post wasn't nearly as entertaining as my last. Or as visually striking. I should use pie charts more often.

Edited to ask: Would it be wrong of me to reactivate my facebook in order to bring more attention to my blog? I love being facebook free but so many people who would visit my blog don't even know about it! Also, welcome to my 15th follower!! First new follower in a long time ..nice to know I'm still being read and considered decent enough to subscribe to :)

Sheen vs. Hodder

That's right, ladies and gents. My mother has made the claim that Charlie Sheen is leading a less crazy life than herself. She is jealous, outraged and perhaps even a little bitter about the attention, fame and fortune Sheen is receiving for his antics while she slaves away with little rewards. In an effort to help Mom feel vindicated, I am going to attempt, for the first time ever, some investigative journalism. I started out by googling Charlie Sheen (for the record, all information about him is coming to you straight from Wikipedia. Sue them if anything is wrong.) and thinking about my mother (I tried to find her Wikipedia page. Strangely absent. She may be onto something here, folks!). If nothing else, they both like to hit the bottle!

*Click on photo to make it larger. 

*Click on photo to make it larger. 

*Click on photo to make it larger. 

So, you will note, the main differences between my mother and Mr. Sheen?
1. Amount of time spent on a social network of some sort.
2. Amount of time spent inebriated.
3. Mr. Sheen is oftentimes dramatic while my mother is oftentimes productive.
4. My mother is funnier.
5. Mr. Sheen is famous and rich. My mom just has a blog.

Good effort though, Mom. I still love you :)

Happy March!

I meant to post last night .. and then I had to watch Easy A (ps, everyone should also watch this. So brilliantly funny and relevant ahahaha) with Mom. After that, I had to make myself supper and shower in order to get to the boyfriend's house to eat treats and watch people lose weight (Heavy) and get over addictions (Intervention). It was delightful .. but it left me forgetting to update the world on my life!! I know, the disappointment was almost unbearable. The drive over was sooo long ..I hate, hate, hate SNOW. Bright side?!

I GOT TO PLOW THIS MORNING! We got in the Jeep and really, Garret did most of the driving. I, however, moved the plow up and down via the switch! It was really fun .. and then we got tea. And also went to my house to pick up my gym clothes so that I could go to the gym with Margy after my lab. The lab consisted of going to the Pit to check VOC (volatile organic compound) levels .. wearing some PPE (personal protective equipment) .. and checking out what PPE is needed when working with certain chemicals. It was actually kind of fun. Except the part where my head was too tiny to fit any of the masks. We got to spray this delicious tasting mist into our faces to see if we could taste it .. if we could, it meant ill fitting equipment. We could. It was delicious though so we didn't really mind. Had it of been disgusting, I would have been a sadder / grosser experience.

At the gym, I pounded out 4 miles and did an ab workout. After surviving that, I headed to Orange Julius with Marg. They made my smoothie wrong AND I forgot my wallet so I had to scrounge money from Marg. Sorry, promise to pay you back tomorrow when I find my wallet! You're a real doll :) At home, I enjoyed some corn, sweet& sour chicken &mashed potatoes. Delicious. Then a chocolate chip cookie .. some Ritz with cheese .. and a milk and now water. Yum. I may have to break out the popcorn in a little bit, I'm craving snacks!

Basically, today nothing overly exciting has happened and mostly I'm exhausted and still have to pound out QPM and foodborne assignments. Wah wah wah. I am truly wishing I could nap and magically have them done when I wake up. Dream big. I'm currently watching Big Bang and being giddy because some people have randomly picked up my blog and started posting it on their pages (I can now be found in some tumblr sites .. LinkedIn .. etc etc). Thanks for finding me funny / relevant / entertaining / whatever. My boyfriend is floating around on random sites with a dinosaur ahahaha

Now, some topics of choice:
1. Joel Plaskett - let's be real. This guy rocks and has been a staple in my music for many many years. I've seen him in concert SO many times ..sheer genius. He is my favorite cruising music :) When you get to the end of my post, I may just have included a favorite song for you to listen to!

2. Charlie Sheen - Just because Mom mentioned his life isn't nearly as crazy as hers is. I'd like to do a comparison list but 2 problems: 1. I don't know anything about Sheen. 2. I don't know how to make a chart on here :( Perhaps I'll google him and photoshop one up!

3. Winter - we're getting ANOTHER storm on Thursday. This is quickly getting old. Seriously. IT IS MARCH. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ALMOST SUMMER. Why lord, why? Snow? Where are you global warming? We should all joins forces with my mom and spray some hairspray in an effort to hurry it up and make us warm!! So, on the other hand they say March either comes in like a lion and out like a lamb or the opposite. So I guess that means we can look forward to a spectacular ending .. along with a beautiful April?!

4. Horses - I miss them SO much. If anyone reading this has a horse they want to lend me, please. Let me know?! Once the spring really arrives, I will desperately require some equine interaction back into my life. Weekly, at least. Preferably? Daily. Or, puppies. If anyone has a puppy I can love, I will be glad to take on the role of crazy dog lady. Has a better ring to it than crazy cat lady anyway!

Alright, so now that we've caught up on my relatively boring past 2 days, I have a photo of the day from yesterday ..I need to take today's still :( Just thinking of everything I still have to do is making me tired. That is never a good sign.
Yesterdays photo was the sky. With some clouds in it. I have no idea what day I'm on .. I'm too tired to count. Numbers make me nauseous. I want to do a good photo some day soon, it requires some nice weather though so I can get outside and do something more than same old, same old! I also need to keep working with my light box.
Here are my clouds :)

C'est fantastique, non? Also, I'm STILL looking for people who want to play model for me. Garret is either going to get sick of me trying to take his photo, or you people are going to think I'm obsessed with posting photos of him!! I have refrained from more photos of him, but need portraits. I can do closeups and landscapes are out until it's nice! So, don't be shy. Just tell me how badly you wish you could be a model. I have photoshop and will only post gorgeous / handsome photos of you! LOL. Oh well.. doesn't hurt to beg a little.

Now, to make good on my promise for a video. I present you, Joel Plaskett. He's great!

PS Joel, when are you coming back to Cape Breton?! Let a girl know. Promise to purchase tickets and hit that up! The island misses you :)