St. Jacobs-Extravaganza

I had a great visit with an old bud last week.  I had to go to a meeting at the airport and ran into this adorable dude:

I sorta, accidentally mentioned to everyone while we were passing him that he is kinda the cutest plane ever.  They were all, “Duh!”

I mentioned in my last post that I surprised Mike with a trip to St. Jacobs for his birthday earlier this week.  I knew, as usual, that I was totally going to miss my kitties.  It appears three out of four of them wanted to join me:

I asked Boo why she didn’t want to go (as she never climbed in my suitcase) and this was her response:

Anyway, Mike and I both took Friday off and headed “out West” around 9:30 Friday morning. We actually planned on leaving at 9:00 but my little Pinky decided to be sick in my linen closet – all over everything – at about 8:58.  I had to text Mike and tell him to “stand at ease” while I cleaned up the mess. Fortunately, it didn’t take too long and we were on our way to our destination (plus a stop at Tim Hortons two minutes into the trip).  The drive was only about an hour and a half, which was quite tolerable an a very sunny and fairly warm day.

We toured around the town of St. Jacobs on Friday, stopping at the Stone Crock restaurant for dinner.  We were kinda excited to be in this room:

My youngest sphynx kitty Abby often has her name shortened to EB, thus the perfect room name at the restaurant.

After dinner, we headed to our hotel which was right near the market.  It was a really nice hotel, so I don’t want to put it down at all.  However, there was one minor issue.  What’s wrong with this picture:

If you were any shorter than me, you would literally have to be standing in the shower to turn it on.  Yeah, that’s fun during the first minute while the water is warming up.  Ugh!  Not sure who was the designer of such a disfunctional shower.  On a bright note, they did put the floor numbers at eye height for my mother, if she were to ever stay there:

We spent a few hours on Saturday at the market.  It’s going to be much better once the new vendor barn is open.  The old one burned down last year.  Overall, a great trip!

Back home, Pinky greeted me with this lovely pose.  If she could talk, she would clearly say “rub it!”

Today’s symptoms: After an awesome but busier than normal weekend, I was pretty spent today.  Very drained, especially after not sleeping much last night.  Still dealing with insomnia.  When I don’t sleep well, my MS symptoms always seem to be worse, such as more aches and pains and headaches.  Totally worth it though!

Elizaklutz

Had a little incident the other day that’s making it a tad hard to type this post.  I was reaching under my kitchen sink to grab a bag for garbage.  The bottom of the counter is particle board.  I had my hand too close to it and ended up scraping my fingers along the bottom of the counter.  Two big splinters sliced under my middle fingernail.  They went about half way down my nail.  I quickly pulled them out but the tips broke off of both and are still under my nail.  The pain was intense – I honestly couldn’t believe how bad it was.  No wonder a torture technique used to be wedging wood under people’s nails.  I’m really glad I’m on a low dose daily antibiotic, so that’s a little comforting with regards to is getting infected.  However, the pain into the night and all of yesterday (this happened two days ago) was incredible.  It was throbbing down my finger, into my hand down to my wrist.  My little mother looked up some ways to fix this issue and said to try soaking my finger in epsom salts.  Did that for about two hours last night and I must admit the pain is a bit better today.  The swelling is down a bit too.  Yup, I’m a klutz.

On a bright note, did have a pretty good day yesterday.  It was Mike’s birthday and I’ve been looking forward to giving him his present for weeks now.  I’m taking him to St. Jacob’s this Friday and we’re staying over until Saturday.  We’ll do the town on Friday, then to the Stone Crock Restaurant for suppies.  Then the market on Saturday.  In addition to this joyous trip I’ve blessed him with, I gave him these charming pillows:

Almost as cute as my hairless cats, I would like to share with you a pic of Mike’s new niece.  Piper MacKenzie born on March 15th:

Can’t wait to meet the new little goober.  Speaker of goobers, Boo joined Mike and I last night while we were watching a movie.  I think she was trying out her Statue of Liberty impression:

Ok, the finger is a-throbbin’ so I’m going to keep this one short.

Today’s symptoms: Felt kinda yucky.  Going through another stint of insomnia, and the lack of sleep is doing a number.  quite weak today and feeling general yucky MS symptoms such as aches and pains and a headache. 

Rick Mercer

Had another great weekend.  Mike and I both had Friday off and we spent it in Toronto.  We headed north just after lunch:

We checked in at the Hyatt in downtown Toronto.  Really nice hotel and a great view:

We decided when we booked the hotel that we would hit the Wayne Gretzky restaurant, which was just a block away:

Mike was trusting enough to let me order for him.  I figured I would play it safe and order him his favourite meal, a big honkin burger:

I got a steak – really great food there and I would certainly recommend them.

After dinner, we headed over to the CBC studio to see The Rick Mercer Report.  Very nice, small studio so every seat was great.  We were there for about an hour and a half.  As usual, Rick was great – so funny.  Between a couple segments, he was talking to the crowd.  I yelled out to him and said that I offered him a flight over the Falls (on Facebook).  I mentioned that I offered it to Jann Arden too but she wussed out.  He said he may take me up on my offer.  I would love to see if he would do a segment on MS and go for a flight with me.

After the awesome show, we headed back to the room:

Everything was great about the stay except for the 3:30 am wake up call.  The fire alarm went off.  We got ready to head out when someone came over the loud speaker saying to stay put and they were investigating the alarm on the 14th floor.  We were on the 15th:

We never had to leave, so that was a bit of a relief.  I had a hard time getting back to sleep though.  We were planning on going to the Ripley’s Aquarium the next day, but I was feeling so nauseous.  That seems to happen a lot when I get a really bad sinus headache plus not a good night’s sleep.  Oh well, we’ll go back in the Spring.

A couple months ago, we watched an episode of Marketplace and learned about a type of tourist tax.  I had never heard of it before but apparently many touristy-type cities put it on your bill (around 3%).  The interesting thing is that it’s a voluntary fee – you can simply say you want it removed from your bill and they have to take it off.  I checked the hotel bill and there it was.  I asked to have it removed and was told it’s mandatory.  I argued that it wasn’t and even brought up articles through CBC and the Toronto Star.  Eventually, it was removed.  I kinda did it out of principle, as it seems like a rather sneaky charge.  No fault of the hotel, as it’s brought down through the Ministry of Tourism on restaurants, museums, hotels, etc.  Check your bills for DMF (Destination Marketing Fee) or TIFF (Tourism Infrastructure Funding Fee) and if you don’t want to pay it, ask for it to be removed.  Don’t let them try to convince you that it’s mandatory because it’s not.

Back home, I was met by a pile of kittahs (minus a Pinky, who was in the bedroom):

Did you miss me, Abby?

Ok, not really.

Today’s symptoms: Felt much better today than yesterday, as I was experiencing quite a bit of pain and constant spasms/clenching in my calves.  Ouch!  It seems to have subsided a bit today.  Tomorrow it will be even better – right?  Right!

Frozen Falls

Went to yet another awesome Jann Arden concert last week – my fourth.  Mike got us tickets to see her at Brock U.  She was amazing and funny.  Unfortunately, my pics of her didn’t turn out too well. Bummer:

Guess I should have checked the settings on my camera.

The weekend prior to seeing her, Mike and I went to Niagara Falls to visit my Army buddy from Hamilton.  He and his girlfriend came down for the weekend to hit a show at the casino plus do a little gambling.  We met up for breakfast at iHop then put in about an hour at the casino.  We were both almost through the $20 we put in our machines when it finally paid out:

Yea!  Came out with $150.  That covered our breakfast, the $40 we spent in the machines, then the rest went toward aviation fuel for our flight the following weekend.  We ended up flying to Brantford for breakfast on a perfect weather day.

Yummy!

On the way back, I flew us over to Long Point (where we go camping twice a year) to see the ice fishermen.  I fly over them each year and this was Mike’s first time.

We flew along the Lake Erie shoreline on the way back.  The lake was pretty much totally frozen and looked amazing:

Before heading back to St. Catharines, we flew over the rather chilly looking Niagara Falls:

Perfect flight!  On the way home, we stopped at Timmies for some more coffee.  Mike wanted a sour cream glazed donut, but the only had sour cream unglazed.  The nice dude said he would go glaze one for him.  How awesome is that?  Quite a nice little treat for when we got home:

All the little goobers were just thrilled to have us back home, especially smiley little Peanut:

He still has a little scrape on his schnoz from when he jumped into the screen on top of the cage, face first.  Not too swift.  He was a little less destructive while perched on Abby’s head:

It’s been a fun and interesting couple weeks.   I have been having a bit of an issue with crushing pain in my hands and arms over the last few weeks.  Doesn’t seem to be getting much better.  I guess it’s just a normal MS thing.  Hopefully it doesn’t last too much longer.

Today’s symptoms: Lots of pain and very fatigued due to lack of sleep last night.  I just feel generally blah today.  Tomorrow will be better.