Things to Look Forward to

I have such a growing list of things that I'm excited for and that should be arriving here soon and I am super pumped!
-Bad Veins CD should be in soon to the store I ordered it from. Really rad band from the US. I love their beats and their lyrics are magical. (Totally love Dan Black right now as well.)
-My Contract for Nannying in Holland should be here on the Asap, that means it's as offical as it's eva gonna get!
-Tribal Earrings from Etsy I ordered today. Mad loveee. Makes your ears look stretched and they're made from scanvenged water buffulo horn so no animals were harmed in the making. Yippie!
-I'm getting a new battery for my laptop because this one is shot.
-I'm expecting a letter from my lovely Jessica in Montreal. (I remember when I lived in Quebec City and her letters would take one day to get to me!)
-Sarah from Calgs said she's sending some love my way so I'm pumped for that.
-And I may or may not get approved to get my first credit card!
So Chea, gots the goods to watch out for.
Je suis tres excitie pour tout dans ma vie. <3

Vegan Cake.

So this weekend was the 10th year birthday of the grocery store I work at. In celebration we had 10% off everything, and gave every customer free Vegan chocolate cake and coffee. For the duration of the day I ran around like a crazy person, cashiered on 3 tills, did price checks, answered phones, bagged for people, slipped on water and almost died, and I also informed customers of the days events and gave out cake. It was later on in the evening when I was all alone when the haters truly came out. Now let me put in a little footnote how I was working over time, and instead of the usual 8 hour shift, I worked for 12. On hour 11 a woman came into the store and I exclaimed, "Just so you know everything is 10% off, and we have free cake and coffee because it's our birthday!" She scowled at me said "What? I can't hear you." She came closer and I repeated myself. She told me she'd really love to know how it was possible to make vegan icing and said that she doubted it would be good but said she would try it and even give me her 'verdict.' I served her a piece and she gingerly nibbled on the icing and went, "Oh that's disgusting. I don't like it." and spat it in the garbage. Then she said, "Let's try the cake." Her eyes fluttered to the ceiling and she chewed the cake a bit and said, "Well, the cake is alright I guess." I nodded and said in a light hearted, casual, slightly joking manner, "Oh, well I'm glad it's up to your standard." She looked at me, grabbed a napkin, spat the remainder of her mouthful into it, threw it into the garbage with a flourish and yelled with her eyes widened dramatically, "YOU DID NOT HAVE TO SAY THAT! ARE YOU AN EMPLOYEE HERE? GET ME YOUR MANAGER." I nodded and told her one second and ran off to find my manager. I pounded on her office door seriously scared at this point and told my manager in one breath the exchange that had just occur ed. She went out to find the woman but couldn't. After a few minutes when my breathing returned to normal I ventured back to my cake post, more ready than ever to be sweeter to the customers than the cake I was serving because apparently my humour was strongly not appreciated. I was waiting for the next customer to come in when I saw crazy lady head towards me for ROUND TWO! I saw my manager and ran around the front to tell her but she moved away as I got closer to put baskets away so basically me and my manager and the crazy woman were playing ring around the rosy. I eventually grabbed my manager and pointed the woman out. During their heated conversation I saw the woman's eyes slip over to me often as I packed bags trying to be helpful and keep myself busy. After when the woman left my manager came to me and said not to worry. The woman had been rude to her as well and accused both her and I of being young people and that she didn't want to shop in a store run by them, and that were were incapeable of giving good customer service.
So I learnt a few things from this.
Firstly, people can find a problem with everything, including free cake.
That working for 12 hours without running into an angry person is impossible.
And that you can never make everyone happy, (make a vegan, organic, celiac, diabetic friendly cake.)
I also learnt that my manager has my back, that I don't have to let crazy people ruin my night, and that in the end it's just one small event I shouldn't worry about.
But oh my... some people needs to get a hobby ova hereeeee! (I mean besides harrasing young sample girls giving away free food. That is not a hobby for anyone who was wondering.)

Insecurities

When I was little, I contemplated intensely what I should be when I grew up. When 5 years old I was very, very sure that I'd be a firefighter. Yellow was my favourite colour and as we all know, sporting the sunny colour is all a firefighter is required to do in a hard days work.

Once I realized that real fire was involved and that I'd have to face my fear of heights via climbing numerous ladder, that dream flew out the window.
Next came the obsession of dinosaurs which this day lingers in my heart. My first email ever in grade 3 was dinobones@ hotmail. I emailed anyone dinosaur related and for my birthday all I wanted was to go to the Royal Alberta Museum to look at the two dinosaurs they had year round.

Once I realized how much science and math one would have to take in order to become a paleontologist, that dream quickly fled as well.
Being an author had also struck me on occasion,

but the insecurity of it left me uncomfortable. Since flying for the first time that I could remember since immigrating to Canada it struck me that I would absolutely love to be a flight attendant.

Right now I'm trying to figure out my life, and by going to Holland this has bought me sometime, but I can't avoid real life forever. So many questions are up in the air and butterflies flit about in my stomach as I contemplate all the options I have, uni, college, straight into a career, travel, money, family, and everything inbetween. Why is life so scary? Why do they expect 18 year olds to know what to spend their entire lives doing. Breathe in and Out.. thank goodness I have a least a little bit of time to think things over.

Speaking the French!

I was at the grocery till buying my breakfast, (you should really try ginger scones they sound strange but taste great,) and one of the grocery supervisors and my manager come up to me and ask me "How good is your French?" In my humble opinion, I think not too great but it has improved from the zero amount of French I knew before Katimavik.
They pointed out a woman to me who needed help finding a product. Her question could probably not have been more complicated. In French she asked me if we had this certain brand of baby food and if it was possible that we carried it in flavours that were not mixed with other fruits or vegetables. I really had to use all the French I knew because she did't know any English besides, "my english bad" and once I figured out her question I walked her back to the front of the store and told her how I lived in Quebec City for 3 months and that I know how hard it is to learn a language. It felt so great though that they came to me and asked me to help when it came to speaking French and ironic because in Quebec they would come to me to help speak English. I really love French and am so glad my abilities of grown. A small part of me wishes that I was doing Aupair in a French country so that I could work on my French but I'm 1/2 way there with Dutch and it will be useful to me and I can pick up French again when I return to Canada. (:

Drama..?

The other night, I headed over to Whyte Ave to celebrate the birthday of a friend of mine. On the way there, I ran into a couple of guys from highschool. We went through the usual friendly polite chat when they confronted me about some gossip they had heard about me. I found it quite ludicrous regardless of whether or not it was true.
I was curious where they had heard this useless information from and supplied a name. The funniest part of the entire situation is I did not even know the name of the person they mentioned. I found this quite hard to accept, because this meant that young men from highschool who I don't even know, found the time in their busy young adult lives to gossip about a girl who didn't even know them personally!! It really shows me how low my generation, or perhaps too broad, my highschool graduation class has stooped. Although I'm honoured and flattered and dumbstruck that I've become an over night celebrity in E-town and that my personal life is worthy of being gossiped over by adolescent boys sipping stale beer in someones basement, I really would prefer if my highschool grad class which I do not care about particularly would keep their noses OUT OF MY LIFE. I don't really understand at all the gain or value of scrutinizing the unstable truths or untruths of someones life. Especially if they have no connection or relationship to you. It's just a waste of time. But oh well, as my good friend JT told me, 'All publicity is good publicity' you losers can talk all you want. And when you confront me for the truth, what makes you think you're gonna get it? ;)

Thanks for wasting your time gossiping about me and scrutinizing my personal life, but last time I checked I look nothing like Lindsay Lohan.

Spring Fling!

The broski and his wife were able to make it over for the easter weekend which was fabulous because everyone was together for the first time in 2 years! We had great food, large amounts of cheese, played the game of life and enjoyed eachother's company. Before the big weekend I made little name place tags/markers in the Spring spirit to FORGET them on the day everyone was all together. The Monday I had to work so I left them behind so that the family that would come over for lunch could at least look at them for a couple of hours. But they were pretty easy to make and came out pretty cute!


The boys got bugs, the girls got butterflies or dragonflies. (: It goes to show it's pretty easy to make something cute and less expensive too. Goes the same for cards, you don't always gotta go the hallmark route!
Hope your easter was swell!

Boycotted!

So a few weeks ago the sister made a venture to the local 7-11 to buy a couple of snacks and what not. I gave her a $10 and my list was what I was sure 5 bucks. She was gone for a bit but returned with not 5 dollars as planned but a measly 25 cents. Clearly being shortchanged by the same amount the purchase was worth Kyra got mad and we returned back to this horrid 7-11. I went in and claimed the exact same purchases from the shelf and asked her to ring it through for me and tell me the price. She said 5 something so I asked her why she charged my sister 10 dollars for the exact same purchase. After a confusing conversation and the cashier playing the 'I don't speak English' card, I finally spoke to the manager who adamently did not believe we were short changed. I strongly encouraged him to watch his security cameras to see what billage my sister gave their beloved cashier. He offered us drinks while we waited but at this point I wasn't having it, besides, he'd probably turn around and charge us for them or accuse us for stealing them right after. When a 15 minute wait was over he finally returned and agreed that after watching the footage that we were shortchanged. He said that the very good reason for this was that the cashier put the bill in the 5 dollar slot by accident. I'm a cashier and if I put a 10 ten in the 5 dollar slot, its going to dawn on me pretty quick because two of my slots will suddenly look the same. I don't know, I was just not very happy regardless but he gave my $5 back! I am not a stingy person, normally I don't care too much, but when you short change me the amount the entire purchase costs its kinda sorta really extremely notciable. The sister and I decided that if we ever wanted to fufill our snacking urges we would NOT return there. It's not worth it, fighting with the manager and trying to convince him to monitor his sketchy employees more carefully.
We returned home and took a few victory photos.


Just count your change before you tear open that bag of chips or down that pop. ;)

No, thank you!

If you have been checking here to see the lovely words I write everyday I THANK YOU so much, you are super sweet. Life has been busy with drama, boycotting local convienient stores, connecting with random Katimavikers, yield team calls, voting and... life.
I will post something, lots of somethings in the very near future.
Thanks again, you guys ownnnn....