Feeling better

After four days of feeling horrible and then two days of taking it pretty easy I think I’m finally getting back to myself. 

Losing 15lbs in four days, although needed, is not ideal. Today I actually ate some food and it felt good. 

Taking the kids to dance class did wear me back out quite a bit. But I’m confident after taking it easy tonight I’ll be good tomorrow. 

The best as we can figure is that it is the antibiotics that wreaked havoc on my system. Hopefully now that I’m done with them I am at the end of it all. 

Once again I am blown away by team during all this. Not only do they all encourage me to make sure I take the time to get better but one of them had this sent to my house today for me. Thank you all!

  

Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day always reminds me of what I know everyday, I have three of the most amazing mothers in my life. 

My Mother in Law Linda. One of the most giving and selfless people I know. Always willing to do what ever she can to help out. Having her so close and everything she does with and for the kids is amazing. 

My Mother has always been there for me even though I didn’t always give her a reason to be. Even now that I’m grown she still comes  to help. Just this week she came and helped dig some new gardens and give advice on how to set it up. She is also going to help paint some rooms later this spring. 

That brings me to my wife Jen. She has taken all the good things she has learned from her mother and her grandmother and applied them to the most amazing mother to our children. Just in the last few weeks with me being next to useless she has taken on even more than she already does making sure our house and children are put first in her life. 

This morning for Mother’s Day the kids got up early and made signs and hung them wishing her a happy Mother’s Day and directed her to a gift. Then they helped her cook her own Mother’s Day breakfas. She then took them out to pick out her Mother’s Day gift. She wanted plants and flowers for the new garden. 

I’m an extremely lucky person to have these three mothers in mine and my children’s lives. One of these days when I’m feeling better I will make up for this Mother’s Day to Jen. 

Worst Weightloss Plan Ever

Although I’m sure it is highly effective, I would not recommend this weightloss technique to anyone. 

For the past three days I’ve been pretty much lying in bed feeling like garbage. Nothing I eat or drink stays with me for very long. It’s a horrible feeling. 

It’s the weekend and pretty nice weather but I don’t get to enjoy it with the rest of the family.  The last few hours though have been the best I’ve felt so I’m hoping I’m finally coming out of it.  Hopefully I can build some energy back up and enjoy tomorrow. 

Winter to Spring Time Lapse

Since February 16th I’ve had a web cam setup in my office window looking out over my backyard. It’s set to capture an image every half hour when it is light out.

The camera is not great so the quality isn’t very good but it’s still pretty cool watching the snow disappear and the grass take over. This time lapse shows the images from February 16th until May 6th 2015.

Great Grandmothers Peony

Tuesday night I finally did something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Gardening and plants are not anywhere near my specialty, nor do I even particularly enjoy it much but I planted a new plan in the flower bed I dug the other day, and I am excited about it.

It’s really the sediment behind the plant that I really like and I hope that it continues on. My mother has had a Peony growing in her garden for some time now. It originated from her Grandmothers garden, part was taken and moved to her Mothers garden, and then she took some and moved it to her garden.

Since she has moved out of the family home she wanted to dig it up and take it with her. She is renting but took part of it to plant in her yard there. Since we have finally settled down into a home of our own it made perfect sense for me to now plant it in our yard.

My only fear is that I will kill it because as I mentioned I’m not great at this stuff. Luckily if I do it doesn’t for sure mean the end of it. Mom did take some to plant in her yard and my sister took some as well to put in hers. Hopefully between the three of us we will be able to get them through the transplant and have some if it available for my kids to plant in their yard someday.

I never met my Great Grandmother but I find it very cool that I have a plant from her garden now planted in my front yard.

With a bit of luck and work later this season I’ll be able to share pictures of it growing strong.

Love my car

To me cars are a necessity. If I lived in a big city with great public transportation I would gladly give up my vehicles, buy a good bike and make my way around that way. However living in rural Nova Scotia with four kids having a car, and in our case two, is pretty much needed.

Although we have gotten by for months now on one vehicle as my poor 2002 Honda Civic was first laid up in the driveway and then at a mechanic friends for a while. On Sunday though I was able to go pick it back up.

Something has been draining the battery so especially in the winter if it sat for anytime at all the battery died and wouldn’t start without a long charge and boost. Instead I going through that hassle we let it sit.

It’s only been three years I’ve owned this car but it is by far my favourite I’ve owned. It’s funny because it was already ten years old when I bought it and I’ve owned a couple brand new cars before it.

It’s not the prettiest car and there is plenty wrong with it, but I still enjoy driving it. It runs well, and I get great gas mileage especially compared to the big SUV that is our other vehicle.

There should be things wrong with it, it’s thirteen years old now and has over 200,000 kilometres on it. There are some things that would make people crazy I’m sure, but it’s part of what I like about it.

The fact that one of the back windows won’t go down is no big deal. I don’t sit back there, my window still goes down. The air conditioning is no longer cold, but again my window goes down. Besides that I live in Nova Scotia Canada, there isn’t much of the year we really need air conditioning. The heat still works, that’s the important part around here.

Having to go in through the trunk to open the fuel door every time you put gas in it drives my wife crazy. That’s ok in my books, I don’t have to fill it up often anyway. I could just leave the door open all the time, but it looks a bit better closed.

The trunk release no longer works either but it was causing the latch to get stuck closed so that once the trunk was open you couldn’t get it to close again. A cold winter morning dropping the kids off at school and I took the cable off so I could get it closed. Now I just need to use the key to open the trunk, that’s not a big deal.

There are scratches and minor dents, there are hub caps missing, there are warning lights on the dash that don’t go away, there are some rubber seals and trim coming off, but who cares. It’s thirteen years old! It’s not a beauty contest and it still drives pretty darn nice.

Having it gone for so long really made me realize how much I like it. Not just because of all the extra gas we were burning because we had to take the big SUV everywhere even if there was only one of us going. Jumping in, rolling my window down and taking off in my little standard five speed is fun. Just a different feeling than the big SUV that’s an automatic.

This last thing is causing me a little bit of despair though, but I’m still working on fixing it. To stop the battery from draining it was narrowed down to a fuse. Unfortunately it controls things like my remote door locks, power outlet, some other things, but most importantly the radio. So now I can’t listen to music or the CBC when cruising around. I’m still working to see if I can narrow down exactly what is causing the drain so I can at least get some of these things back.

It’s been so good to me though that I can live with all that’s wrong with it. If it died tomorrow and just refused to go on I’d be sad. But in all reality I’ve gotten more than my money worth out of this car and I really see me driving it for a few years yet.

More thoughts on relationship building

I’ve been thinking more about my post the other day building relationships and how I can apply it to my work.

When I wrote that post and was thinking about it I was coming more from the personal side. Building relationships with people I meet  or interact with. Why not look at it from a work perspective?

At work my primary role is talking with WordPress.com users. What an opportunity! It’s obvious different than spending time with the same people many times, but taking a step back these people might contact support multiple times. It might not always be me they deal with but the are dealing the company in general.

This means through every interaction I should be looking at it as an opportunity to build a relationship. It might take a while and they might only contact us the one time. But as I’ve seen in my personal life building relationships has proven to be good for me in the long run.  Therefore if I try to build relationships with our users it will be good for the company in the long run. If it’s good for the company than in turn its good for me as well.

The great part about this is it’s a no lose situation because even if the user never contacts again, by taking this approach it will make my conversation with our users a pleasant and good experience for them.

I’m still not sure how this will change my day to day work exactly, but for now I’m going to try and make things a little more personal and just look at things in a bit of a different way than I have.

Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada

Another gorgeous day out today. I took advantage and spent a while working outside at my favourite cafe in town TAN Coffee. Fresh air and good coffee make the work day even better! Kentville might not be as exotic as some of my co-workers “offices” at https://officetoday.wordpress.com but it still felt great today!

Sandy McFadden's avatarOffice Today

Kentville, Nova Scotia

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First zoo visit of the year

This weekend has been a birthday weekend for Jen and the kids. On Saturday they went to two different parties and yesterday we had another one to attend.

The party was at Roo’s Playland. It had been a few years since we had taken the kids there, but they used to love it. It is a giant indoor playground with all kinds of different things to do. Noah didn’t remember being there in the past at all, but he didn’t want to leave when it was time.

After the party we headed to our local zoo. Everyone else had been there once already this year, but it was last weekend so I had missed out. It was a beautiful day so it was a perfect way to spend a bit of time outside. We managed to arrive right at feeding time which always amazes me. Especially the lions. Gail one of the zoo owners will go right into the lions area and hand feed the them.

She used to get audience participation when it came to feeding a black bear they had at the zoo but, he was old and passed away. They have a younger black bear now but I don’t think they do the same with him. They didn’t today at least.

The zoo started out as a farm with some exotic animals and grew into a really cool zoo. The owners still live onsite and really consider the animals part of their family. Their Facebook page has all kinds of great pictures. I really enjoy the pictures of the lions the most. The old ones where they have some real cool interactions and the new ones documenting the growth of the new pride.

After the zoo we stopped for a quick ice cream snack on the way home too. The proper way to take advantage of one of our first t-shirt weather days this year.

Spring day and not so naked gardening

It felt like spring yesterday! It was about 12 degrees Celsius and sunny. Seeing as I procrastinated for way to long doing our taxes again this year I didn’t get to enjoy nearly as much of the day as I would of liked. 

For the morning and part of the afternoon I spent my day sorting through a years worth of paper work and calculating numbers out on the computer screen. It eventually came together and was able to get them submitted. 

It was supposed to be my last Saturday’s job but that would have been hard to do from a hospital bed. Luckily there was some mistake made in some notice that went out from the Canada Revenue Agency so there was an extension on the filing deadline. So it turns out I didn’t get them in late. 

Once that was all done I was able to spend some time outside in the yard. Managed to get some of the lawn raked and the rocks back in the driveway. Still more to do there but got a good start.

As it was apparently World Naked Gardening Day we did some gardening as well. Cleaned out the beds from last year and dug a new one in the front yard. Don’t worry though, my neighbours were safe as I did it all fully clothed. 

I’m not opposed to doing things naked, in private that is. However even if was completely secluded and warm enough outside I don’t think gardening is one of those things. All I can picture is dirt in bad places and rose bushes or other prickly plants causing pain.