Saturday, March 28, 2009

Spring is in the air...ahhhh

I always seem to get very excited when spring is here for many reasons but my biggest excitement is the sun! I was driving around today with the sun roof open, the windows down, blasting some tunes and I realized that there are way more people living in my neighbourhood then I thought. I think I got so used to seeing no one outside at all and everything looking so dark and white (snow) that I forgot that people actually live around me. People that breath, walk, talk and well live. It was weird when I thought of this and it actually feels sort of weird to be typing it but it is true. 

Where did all these people come from? No wonder the biggest problem with Canadians is vitamin D deficiencies. I guess it makes sense though in the winter who really wants to be outside. Even when it is sunny out you still have to cover up so much that you couldn't be sucking in some sun light anyways. But today I drove around and let as much vitamin D hit me as I could and believe it or not I feel like I have a lot more energy! So forget about the fact that all the snow is leaving us and therefore no more skiing, that the world right now smells like a giant cow poop, IT IS SPRING! So lets enjoy it!! 

Saturday, March 21, 2009

My love of hockey


As some of you might know, I love hockey. I am not the type of person who knows all the stats of all the players and teams in the NHL but I do know the game fairly well. I started playing hockey when I was 10 years old. A lot of people don't believe me when I tell them because of my size being as small as I am but I just remind them when I am on the ice I look the same as everyone else. 

I never got to serious into it like trying to be on a competitive team and I never thought I was going to be a superstar at anytime. I was out there for fun, I thought that was the most important thing and I think that is what make my love for the game grow even stronger. 

When I turned 14 I decided that I wanted to get more involved in hockey so I started to referee the girls league that I played in. I loved reffing! It was a totally different experience every game and I learnt a lot about solving problems and dealing with unhappy parents and coach's. After reffing for 3 years I went on to find a job that puts you on a schedule and that I could make more money in. 

I still play hockey as a spare in a woman's league in Minto arena. I took the year off because I didn't think I could commit to a practice and a game ones a week. I regret it in some ways but in others I am glad that I didn't decide to push myself into my last year in the Gloucester Cumberland Girls Hockey League. 

When I am on the ice I am in my prime, I feel like nothing in the world can hurt me and all of my worries and problems just seem to go away. The first time I felt this feeling of freedom I knew that I wanted to play hockey for as long as I can. 

Saturday, March 14, 2009

What kept me going...

I have always found school extremely hard. No matter what subject and no matter how it is taught I always have a very hard time remember what is needed to be remembered when the time comes down to doing a test. After choosing not to say in University a really great friend of mine told me to try going to college in something that everyone has told me almost all my life that I would be very good at and that is Marketing. Me being the person that I am is never happy unless I have done my all time best on everything. I decided to take Business Administration and major in Marketing. I was told that it much harder and there is a lot more work involved in this program compared to the Marketing program at Algonquin College. That wasn't going to stop me. I made it through the first year and a half till I started with Marketing and found my calling. I LOVE IT! I was told that my second last semester in the program was going to be my hardest. I prepared myself for the most work intensive semester ever. To add to the work I was encouraged by my friends at school to join the Ontario Colleges Marketing Competition. To my surprise and delight I made it onto the team! 

Through that semester I have never been so busy, stress, tired and desperate for it to just be finished. I was at school every day from 8 am in the morning till 7 or 8pm at night working as hard as I could do get the best marks possible and train for my competition. Many times through that semester I felt beyond overwhelmed, nothing was ever going to make the stress go away. I need to find an escape. Something, anything to make my every day just a little bit easier. It got to the point that I was to busy to even stress about stressing. Then one day I heard this song on the radio Stand Up 2 Cancer. For the first time in what seemed like months I actually sat in my car and cried because I had finally found the one thing that made me relax and take a minute to myself. This song told me that no matter how grumpy, sick, stressed and tired I get I have to keep up the work. 

All my life I have told myself that I am going to work hard for everyone else like my teachers, my parents and my friends to make them happy, not even thinking about myself. Once I heard this song it told me that what you are doing is for yourself, not for anyone else. You try your hardest because you know that is what makes you happy and that is all that should matter. I ended up finishing the year on the dean's list and ranking top 10 in the competition. It was truly the best time of my life. I made friends that I will have forever and experiences that I will never forget. 

As the hectics come to an end I got the very bad news that my best friends mom is very sick with cancer. I was very close to her and felt desperate to do anything to help. I knew that there was nothing I could do but to be there with her and make sure she was happy. So that is what I did. Almost every time I saw her I would go home and listen to that song for her. To help her fight. In January she left this world with love from her family and closest friends. I miss her every day and wish just that I could see her just one more time. 

Now every time I listen to my song, the one thing that kept me going through everything I think of her. She is my inspiration to never give up and fight till you have nothing left. I believe that everyone should have something that keeps them going. Something that has brought something good to your life and that you will remember forever. 

For more information about fighting Cancer and keeping strong visit:

Friday, March 13, 2009

The business card debacle!!

As school comes to a close and networking with new people starts to begin I was thinking, maybe I should make myself a really good business card. But really where to start? I have made them before like for OCMC and for just use at networking events. But this is different! These business cards need to be good, something totally out of the box, creative, innovative! I decided to start to google business cards. I found this one really good site called Premium Business Cards. It is a really good website that has a tun of designs and ideas of what your business card could look like.

But being the person that I am, I am never satified with just one find so I continued my search to find out there there are a lot more types of business cards then I thought. I always thought to myself, in this day and age everything is going electronic so why shouldn't a business card have that option as well. What a way to stand out from the crowd! That is when I came across a website called Business Card By Text. How honestly how cool would that be?! You would be forever remembered as the first person to send a busines card through your phone! I am sure there are some downsides to that but now we know that it is in the making!

Right underneith that website was a nother website for plastic business cards. I thought that was kind of interesting but once I saw the price it was horrendus! I also into recycling and that we really need to help out our environment. Making a green friendly business card with totally out run a plastic one in my mind any day!

So the search for the best business card for me continues. I might just need to sit down and commit to something sooner then later.

But what should it look like?

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Mini Blue


Meet Mini Blue. Mini Blue is my Acer One laptop. If you don't really know me very well you might be asking yourself why is she calling her laptop Mini Blue but if you know me you totally would understand for a couple of reasons. 1) I tend to name inanimate objects a lot for no real reason at all. 2) my laptop is only 8 inches big or small... which ever way you would like to describe it.

My laptop is the best toy that I have received in a very long time. It is perfect for the type of person I am. It is so great to be able to just put your laptop in your purse and off you go to wherever you need to go. Since I seem to be always on the move it makes only sense to have such a convenient sized laptop.

There are some pros to this type of laptop.
1) it's size, obviously it is great to have a small laptop but if you have big fingers then you might have a problem.
2) it weighs about 2 pounds, so really when it is in your school bag you don't really feel the difference between it and a text book.
3) Everyone that sees it goes "wow that's a small laptop!"
4) it has a big enough hard drive in it that it can hold everything I ever wanted.
5) It has enough ram that it is not slow but not speedy fast either.

Some cons about this type of laptop.
1) because it has such a small screen it is sometimes hard to work on.
2) there is no video card in it so I just recently found out it cannot run all microsoft programs.
3) if you have fat fingers, please give up now...

More and more of these tiny laptops are coming to the market now so the next time you are looking to buy a laptop, give it a chance. You never know what your missing unless you take a look!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Being allergic to alcohol

This is my story about being allergic to alcohol. It started when I was 19 strangely enough. I drank when I was 18 and was like everyone else but I am a real light weight. The side effects back then were nothing out of the ordinary to anyone else that drank just I didn't need to drink as much to feel the effects. I was never a fan of drinking no matter how much I thought those really cool drinks with the umbrellas in them were absolutely amazing. I was never the type of drinker to get drunk. One night I was at a party and I had just finished off one cooler and I felt that the rings on my hands were abnormally tight and that my tough felt a lot bigger in my mouth. At the time I didn't think much of it so I had a couple more. That night, after drinking a total of 3 coolers and about 5 glasses of water I was very sick. My hands and face did not go back to normal till much later the next day. I realized then that there was something wrong. So, what is the first thing you do when an allergic reaction like that happens? You start thinking about anything different and out of your normal diet that you had that night and the only thing that I could think of was my coolers. 

I never was a fan of beer because of the smell and the taste of skunk. Everyone that I tell this to always asks, "well what about beer? There isn't as much alcohol in that." It is kinda to bad that I hate the taste so much. 

I decided then that I would research what happened to me and what could have caused it. After a long time of researching I came across many sites explaining that everyone reacts to alcohol in different ways. Some people that I read about broke out in hives, others got violently ill after just one sip of alcohol. Everything seemed to be so much worse then what I had experienced. I knew it was not life threatening so I continued to drink casually for a while. 

By the time of my 20th birthday I could not drink at all. My lips, tongue, throat and hands would swell to the point that they would hurt every time that I decided to have a drink. Therefore, I cut it out of my life completely. As I have gotten older the sensitivity to alcohol of any kind has gotten worse. I can no longer use hand sanitiser or rubber alcohol. 

It has gotten to the point that I need to use special shampoos and soaps because of the perfume that is put in most products. If I use the wrong product the skin on my hands blisters and cracks and the skin on the rest of my body goes so dry that it cracks and bleeds. 

In a way I sort of am happy that this has happened to me for many reasons. 1) No matter who finds out about the problem they are always seem so interested but yet sad for me. 2) I get to buy soap that is way better for your skin and therefore my skin always looks very clean smooth. 3) I save A LOT of money because I don't buy anything at bars or need to go to The Beer Store or the LCBO. 4) Whenever you are out with a bunch of people you see and experience way more then you are sober then when you have a couple drinks in you. It is still fun, believe me!

Monday, March 9, 2009

The world of blogging

A wise woman (i.e. my professor) once told me that blogging is one of the best things you can do. At first I did not believe her one little bit. I was very against blogging and the even thought of it gave me quite the headache. I never really liked going around and putting my thoughts online for the world to read. It made me nervous to know that this is just one more way that some stalker people to come and find you! But then my good friend Sarah Ormon went to an interview and low and behold one of the questions was "do you blog?" Can you believe it?! I was floored! Sarah had the very same opinion as me on this hold blogging thing. She was never that into it but when she was asked about it in that interview everything changed. I thought why not try it myself, what is the worst that could happen right? I have another Facebook experience and be on the blog all the time and type about the most random stuff in the world. Very addictive and very useless.

I still do not see the true asset to blogging and I do not see how it will help you in life. I broke down and asked my parents about it and one didn't even know what blogging was and the other was all confused on what you could actually talk about. I said that I am in the same boat but I am going to give it a chance and figure it all out. So I started writing on Sarah's blog and found out that it really isn't as bad as it seems when you have an extra couple of minutes to blow.

So tell me... what do you think?