Today rooms at the hotel I wanted to stay at while in Montreal in December went on sale on the Travelocity.ca website, so I went ahead and booked one! Yay!

I was going to carve my pumpkin tonight, but got an invite to a little dinner. So I gladly accepted the invite, means I don’t have to cook! And I’ll carve the pumpkin… Hmmm… Don’t know when!

Tomorrow I’m quite busy… At work, meetings from 10h30 to 12h, then at 12h leave to go to St-Paul’s, afternoon there, back here, eat quick, at school for a meeting from 18h30 to 21h.

Can’t wait for the weekend.

In between taking care of my usual stuff (two big files, one program for 0-4 years old with three animators and the other Healthy Schools), I have meetings, I have to prepare all the articles for the establishment’s newspaper (edit and translate) and I have to carry out a little fund raising event for the Alzheimer’s Society tomorrow morning.

So yea, busy busy. The good thing is that this way time goes by quickly. The bad thing is that I have so much more I want to do to work on my two big files and don’t have enough time. It’s rewarding though, as I get nice compliments from my coworkers about my work.

A sadish song on the iPod. It’s on shuffle. Which one will come on next. Will it make me happier? 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… And cheerful piano starts and the drums embark and a dancing beat is created! I’m happy!

My choice for Montreal I can’t decide: Neat hotel and less $$ to spend or hostel/aparthotel and more money to spend?

I’m busy making a lot of craft/sewing for the craft fair at the end of November. Last night for example I made a iPod carrying case. It’s really cute and I want to keep/use it!!! But yet again, most of the stuff I make I want to keep, so I wouldn’t have anything to sell.

Browsing through my digital pic collection, the 3 first randoms I choose…

#1:

#2:

#3:

I’m a bit sick of sewing my Halloween costume… It’s just never done… I finished something and then thought of something to make it better, did that, and it’s not better. So now I have to unsew that part and resew it differently. And now after all that work I don’t even feel like wearing it anymore.

Have to wait a little while though… I’ll be going from December 1st to the 7th. I just bought my plane ticket (1385.36$, talk about expensive!).

I’ve got stuff booked already in my agenda, for example the YULBlog on the Wednesday and a hockey game on the Thursday.

I’m excited!! Yay!

I’m thinking I want to adopt a new puppy. At first I thought it wouldn’t be too practical because training a puppy to be clean in freezing cold weather isn’t fun. But I miss having a presence at home so much and the Winter is going to be really long otherwise!

So… Yep. Don’t know. Thinking about it.

Work today wasn’t very much fun. And kinda glad it’s over.

Trying to watch ANTM but channel 38 keeps going ugly and turning black. Grrr! I’ll have to get that epi somewhere else…

Started work on my Halloween costume. Haven’t worn one in years. But I have 2 events where I will need one. On the 30th I will visit one of the 3 parent/child workshop sites I coordinate and everyone will have a costume. Also today I received an invite to a gathering on the 31st.

Finally changed the message on my home phone’s answering machine. It was still saying I was away in Spain, 3 weeks after my return.

A little while ago I found a neat apple cake recipe, where you make a nice white cake and stick apples on top of it before putting it in the oven. I made it, twisting it a bit by adding partridge berries and some bran. It was deliciouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus!

Tomorrow my colleagues and I are gathering at our boss’ house for a potluck evening/Supper. When came time for me to choose what to bring, a lot of people had chosen already… Appetizers and mains were pretty much covered. PERFECT! I love making desserts the most anyways!

So I just made the cake again. The whole house now smells incredibly delicious! The cake is nice and warm, right out of the oven. And I can’t have any until tomorrow!! It’s almost killing me. Now I have to think of something to make for supper tonight…

Saturday and Sunday are over, time to go back to work. And this week at work it’s team-meeting time! All of my co-workers from the Coast are joining the team in Blanc-Sablon and we’ve got 2.5 days together. But what happened on Saturday and Sunday…

I did mostly indoors stuff. Cleaning and laundry. Watching tele (the cable’s back). Preparing craft for the fair end of November (greeting cards and jewelry boxes with sea glass top). Taking a walk on the beach with cold wind blowing and freezing my forehead (after a while I improvised a tuque with my long scarf). Made chocolate chip cookies (which almost burned because I was watching tele and waiting for an ad to go and take them out).

And finally made a bonhomme de paille (cut the straw near my house/road and used my old clothing). Tied him up nicely on the chair and tied the chair to the balcony, because with the strong winds we have here (today it’s 40 km/h with gusts to 60) he’d quickly disappear otherwise!

Chocolate chip or raisin cookies? Yummy or healthy? Which ones should I bake…

I’ve taken a lot of pics of the area over the time and now people want to buy my pics… I’ve sold some in frames, it seems easier to price when there’s a frame. But someone wants just pics on their own… In different sizes…

So, how much should I charge for a 4×6, 5×7 or 8×10 print of my pics? Don’t want it to be too expensive, but not too cheap either!!!

I’m sewing curtains for mom’s new house. Mom was living in housing from work, like me. But she’s planning for her retirement and since she wants to stay in Blanc-Sablon, she bought a house! It’s a long process to make these huge long curtains, 6 panels altogether! Especially since I didn’t have enough of the fabric we bought at the local store, the choice/quantity being limited. But I think I’m doing a good job. I have one panel to finish as well as the final touch of adding the loops for the rod at the back.

In my current electoral riding, the Bloc Québécois has been reigning for years. Manicouagan encompasses a huuuuuuuge territory with very different populations. For example, the Lower North Shore, where my village is, is mostly anglo while the big cities like Sept-Îles and Baie Comeau are French. However, the Liberal party has a local Lower North Shore candidate, M. Randy Jones (mayor of Gros Mecatina).

Lower North Shore approximate population, excluding the Innu communities: 4800.
Number of votes M. Jones got at the election yesterday: 4678.

I could assume it’s almost all of the Lower North Shore that voted for M.Jones! But he never stands a chance which is sad. And though Liberal isn’t my party of predilection, he could bring so much to our region if he was our member of Parliament!

I guess we have to go with the 15214 people who choose the Bloc Québécois dude.

A coworker asked me to dogsit on Sunday evening. I gladly accepted to take in her HUGE dog for the night! His name is Pollo. It was funny to see how big he was, that he could just sit by the window to look outside… To watch outside Happy had to put her two front paws on the ledge to stand up!

Well, the long process is over! I helped a bit, but it was mostly a lot of work for J.&M.! But they are used to it so…! They do it each year!

First it was Saturday morning time to prepare the fillets. M. sliced the fish and J. prepared the brine tubs.

At the end of the day J. & I took the last bones out with old tweezers… A job where you have to be very meticulous!

Then M. attached the fish to wood boards to be hung in the smoking cabin.

The next morning J. & M. put the fish to smoke. I came by during the day. The smoking cabin was cute, covered with a blanket (to protect from the wind).

Inside the fish was being smoked to a delicious taste!

The final step was to package the fillets! I asked that my salmon be packaged in tiny pieces, to be able to take it out slowly, not huge pieces at a time!

I am happy! Next year I’ll have to catch more than one salmon to have smoked!