Sindie's Blog

Monday, April 23, 2007

Wow, so... where do I start?

I've really been neglecting this blog. It's four years old, and honestly, I've kind of forgotten its existence. Anyway, 2007 has been a good year so far. I can't believe it's already the end of April!

I went to Italy for two weeks back in March. That was really an experience. I'd been to France in 1998 in high school, but this was different. I never imagined I'd be going back to Europe any time soon, but an opportunity came up at work. There was an international cancer symposium in Florence, but then we stayed a second week and saw Venice, Rome, and Sorrento (near Pompeii). The ancient Roman ruins and Pompeii are especially cool.

I'm looking forward to spring and summer. The weather was pretty cold for a couple of weeks in April, after having mild weather in March. I'd like to plant a vegetable garden and start trying to do more gardening in general. Spending time outside and enjoying the weather is important and something I'd like to do more often.

Eating healthy (not that I'm that horrible at it right now) and exercising more regularly (I'm sometimes erratic) are also goals I'd like to keep in mind and actually do this year.

My writing has been suffering a lot recently, but I guess it's because I have too many interests. I've been reading a lot and scrapbooking... cooking... baking... gardening... taking walks... and on and on.

Work is also keeping me occupied. I recently got promoted, which means I need to take on more responsibility. I'm reading up on learning immunology better (my research area).

We're hoping to start a family before the year is out, but that's in God's hands now.

Also, this July is gonna be AWESOME!! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book of the series, comes out on July 21!! Movie five comes out on July 13!! Amy and I are attending the midnight showings for both of these. :) There's a Harry Potter convention in Tornoto called Prophecy 2007. I don't know if I'll go or not, but like I told Erik, if there's one to attend, this would be the one. We'll see...

posted by Sindie 2:03 PM

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Yes, finally... I bring you a real update.

So, this past weekend was the most amazing experience ever for me. I went on a retreat through church called the Emmaus Walk. Talk about spiritually uplifting and feeling loved! It was a group of 35 women, from different churches, most of whom didn't know each other before. There were about 25 women who were table leaders, speakers, helpers, etc. That's about 60 women.

Anyway, I was at the Table of Mary. There were 7 ladies at my table, including me. You would swear we had known each other before. By the end of the first day, we were hugging and crying on each others' shoulders. I have never felt so moved in all my years of going to church. This was truly a blessing from above.

Now, the downside... I got a bad cold. I started coming down with it on Sunday, but felt okay and survived the rest of the weekend. By that night, I was a mess. I couldn't sleep because my nose was so plugged up, and the pressure in my ears was unbearable. Nothing helped. On Monday, I started home from work, feeling absolutely miserable. On top of the sinus issues, I felt achy, fatigued, had the shivers, and a slight fever. I may have the flu. I'm not sure. I thankfully felt improved yesterday, but not well enough to return to work. By this morning, I thought I would be okay for returning to work. Think again. I managed three and a half hours and then came back home. I kept blowing my nose every five minutes and have starting coughing. I pray this is nearing the end. Yuck.

Well, all in all, the good obviously out weighs the bad. If anything, this past weekend has really made me rethink how I treat others. I know we never reach the goal of the people we want to be, but we need to keep striving. There's always room for improvement.

posted by Sindie 3:55 PM

Monday, October 09, 2006

Yes, since I haven't updated this in a while, here's an update:

So, I accomplished a lot over the weekend, but it wasn't fun stuff. I cleaned out the garage, including knocking down spider webs and sweeping it out. I want to throw away a bunch of stuff tonight (garbage day is tomorrow). I took out the screens and cleaned the windows, preparing for winter, although the weather was gorgeous. It was in the 70s and sunny both days. Good weather equals work outside. I cut back the plants for the winter.The nice weather is going to be leaving really soon, though. By Thursday, I think it's supposed to be a high of 46 and a low of 35! Brrr! Yuck!

The leaves are changing and will probably peak by this weekend. I really love the fall, but once the leaves are down, I look forward to snow and Christmas. I love snow for the holidays, but come January, it needs to go bye-bye.

So, yeah... I haven't worked on my original story nearly as much as I would have like. I've written down preliminary stuff and am organizing my notes. I ordered a program through Amazon two weeks ago the help with organizing a story, but it hasn't even shipped yet, so I don't know what's up with that.

What else? Ummm, I need to clean up the one bedroom upstairs. We got our new bed on Saturday (a really comfy king!), and I moved a bunch of my art/writing stuff out of the room. I need to go through it and put it somewhere else. Oh, the highlight of the weekend was going out on Saturday night. Erik and I went out with his friend Jeremy and Jeremy girlfriend, Jen. We went to the haunted house, but it wasn't that scary. I laughed more than screamed. LOL! The one guy dressed up as a monster or whatever growled at me, and I said, "Hey, how ya doin'?" He then proceeded to hiss at me. I guess he didn't like being talked to! LOL! After that, we went out for a deer (pumpkin spice flavored...mmm!).

Well, ttfn!

posted by Sindie 2:08 PM

Monday, March 20, 2006

Today started off rough, but got better as the day went on (for the most part). I woke up, exercised, got dressed, made my lunch, and was just about to leave when my car decided not to start. I stuck the key in the ignition and turned it, but the car wouldn't kick in to fully starting. Erik parked my car in the garage last night and had turned the steeling wheel, which goofed up my ability to start it properly. Needless to say, I freaked out, called work to say I'd be late (and the reason why) and then called Erik. He was sweet and came all the way home from his work. He got it to work by giving the car a little gas (pressing the gas pedal, duh).

Got to work fine, but then it was a pain finding a parking space. There was a guy driving a jeep like a maniac up and down the aisles. I thought he was going to hit someone or something. Idiot. Then, he didn't hold the door open for me when I was walking in, and I was only ten feet or so behind him. The sheer rudeness of people really annoys me.

Anyway, work was fine. I wasn't busy at all, which was nice. Amy and Soumika (two of my coworkers who were out due to medical reasons for the past several weeks) were back, and the lab is going out for lunch tomorrow to celebrate their returns. I'm glad they're doing better.

When I got home, I got my passport (Yay!) and two letters: one from Hailey, Erik's younger cousin, who is a huge Harry Potter fan, and one from Ophelie, the girl who was my French exchange student in high school. I hadn't heard from her in about six years, and I had written to her a few months ago and was very pleased to see she had written back! I now have her email address and can write to her that way.

Other good news is that Mousie (my one cat) hasn't pee-ed on the carpet in the computer room for three days. We were having the hardest time trying to get her to stop. On Saturday morning, I scrubbed the whole room really well and deodorized it with several different things. So far, so good.

Some annoying stuff happening regarding my online life. The fanfic I'm working on right now was submitted to a new site, which is really, really picky about grammar, punctuation, etc. Now, I know I have good grammar, etc. I had made a couple of minor errors, and they had emailed me about it, but I never got their emails because they went to the trash folder of my email! I tried telling them this, and they were kind of rude about it. I finally fixed the errors, three of which were spelling errors/made up words.

I have a tendency of making up words without even realizing it. I had one written "defeatedly." Apparently, that's not a word! Sounds like it should be! "Implorably" and "squalored" are not words, either. If you can "implore," but can't something be "implorable?" If there's "squalor," why not "squalored?" It's "squalid." :p Blah. Whatever. Sometimes the English language confuses me. And this error: "Most importantly, though, she..." They said it should be "Most importantly though, she..." I always thought "though" was to be off-set by commas!

Well, enough for today. I'm tired.

posted by Sindie 8:53 PM

Monday, March 13, 2006

Argh.

How annoying!

Yesterday, I occasionally had muscle twitches near the inner part of my left knee, on the thigh. It's continued intermittently today, and my knee feels tingly and stiff. I went to the doctor and was told it's fairly common for people who work out for this to happen, but the muscle twitches aren't as common as the knee problem.

Apparently, my knee cap isn't completely in line, either. I do hope this goes away soon. He recommended certain exercises to do, to increase the strength of the knee, which I've done. I hope I don't have to go to a physical therapist. I'll see if it goes away in the next few days. Blah.

posted by Sindie 8:04 PM

Monday, December 19, 2005

Today was a good day. :)

I don't imagine work will be busy this week, plus it will be short, since I'm not working on Friday. Then I'll be off until Jan. 3! Definitely something to look forward to.The weekend was good, too. We had Erik's dad, his dad's girlfriend, and my sister-in-law (Beth) over on Friday evening for cake for Erik's dad's birthday. Saturday was spent lounging around and doing a lot of reading since I was still nursing a cold. We went to a Christmas party at a house of one of the couples at our church that evening. It's nice to have established our own sense of belonging to a church this past year. We had a nice time. Sunday was more reading and then going to see the late matinee of Narnia.

Good movie. The girl who played Lucy was cute. Visually very stunning, and the Ice Queen (Jadis) gave me the shivers. She looked truly evil. It was so obvious to be the parallels to the Bible, what with Aslan's sacrifice on the Stone Table and all. I've read the entire series, but it's hard to remember everything. It makes me want to go back and read them again. Lewis was a genius, just like Tolkien and Rowling in the way that he created a world world.

I felt much better as Sunday progressed and am pretty much back to normal today. Work was light, and my boss gave me two books for Christmas: Moby Dick and Ivanhoe. I've read the first couple pages of each and love the way they are written. The quality of writing in a book has become just as important to be this past year as the plot and characters. Reading Jane Eyre has given me a really high standard by which I judge writing. That book is the best book I have ever read and the most beautifully-written. How something can be so incredibly poetic and full of uncommonly used words and yet flow so naturally is beyond me. Not much the writing-style itself, but the characters, Jane and Mr. Rochester, are absolutely amazingly real to me. A truly romantic story if I've ever read one!

Speaking of reading, wow, have I outdid myself this year in the department! I can't even begin to count the number of books that I've picked up this past year. I plan to continue to do that next year and so on and so forth.

We got seven Christmas cards in the mail today, which made me very pleased! I'm anxiously awaiting that wondrous day of Christ's birth. Alleluia! Amen!

posted by Sindie 7:43 PM

Monday, December 12, 2005

It's been a while since I really sat down and wrote anything worthwhile in here. I've been pretty busy lately. :)

I have been working on getting my poetry anthology together for this year, as I like to give them out as gifts. I have also done a lot of scrapbooking while watching old Christmas home videos. The oldest one is from 1989, and I can't believe that was 16 years ago! I was just a little girl of 10 and was quite childish in them, but it's neat to see those old memories played out before my eyes. What is especially endearing is seeing my grandma opening presents with us on Christmas morning. It has been eleven years since she spent Christmas with us. My dear grandma passed away in April 1995, but her memory lives on. Also, every Christmas morning, I would hold my kitty, Cally, and would open her presents with her. As many of you know, she died this past July. I got teary-eyed while watching both my grandma and Cally, as I know they will not be there this Christmas, but I do believe that pets, like people, go to heaven. Christmas would not be Christmas if we didn't stop to reflect on the past and even feel a little sad over those loved ones we have lost.

I am reading Cornelia Funke's newest book, Inkspell, right now, which is the sequel to Inkheart and part of a trilogy. It's quite good. I would highly recommend anything by Funke to others. She's German, so only a few of her books are translated into English.

I desperately need to write more for my Harry Potter story, as it's been nearly a month since I updated. Busy, busy, busy with other stuff, though!

This weekend Erik and I went to a Cav's game (basketball) on Friday night, to my brother's for dinner and then to a Christmas production at a church on Saturday night, and out to lunch with another couple from church after service on Sunday. I had two hours of choir practice on Saturday morning, as the choir was singing our "celebration" for the season both services on Sunday, which meant getting to church at 7:45 on Sunday morning! It was a lot of fun, though. I really love singing, and I have improved my range since starting choir. I can reach the high A above the staff now.

Well, today was back to work, though. :p I have a busy day. Our lab is going out for lunch tomorrow, and the departmental party is Wednesday, so that means less time to work and more to do today. I'm definitely looking forward to being off in a week and a half. I'm taking off from Dec. 23-Jan. 2.It's been snowing a lot here, which I love. In fact, it's snowing right now. I just love Christmas so much! I wish I felt this good the rest of the year! Merry Christmas!

posted by Sindie 8:38 PM