What's up?

[Scarygothgirl]

Sorta speechless here. I mean, it makes sense to not prolong the suffering of an animal, but the humane thing to do is to have the animal put down, not starve it. I'm sorry about your cat.

She did eventually get put down, which is nicer than fully starving to death. But the vet said she wouldn't have lasted more than a few days as her organs had started shutting down.

Thanks for your support everyone, I know a lot of people find it difficult to understand how you can be so close to an animal. I know it will be worse when I go back and she isn't there (I'm staying with Harry's family most of the time).

[Bunny Hearts]

@Scarygothgirl -- Not everyone understands getting that attached to animals but a lot of people do. For a lot of us they're like members of the family. When my last cat died I spent a week sleeping on the couch because my bed was too depressing without her there.

In less spectacularly crappy news, I managed to move to Canada without any major disasters. I was super prepared with my paperwork and my lists of personal items I was importing and their value and all my important papers and personal records, ready for my two interviews at the border... and they didn't look at anything except my passport and proof of Canadian citizenship. It took less than half an hour. I'm really happy it was so painless but I spent days making and agonizing over those lists. They could have at least looked at them!

Anyway, I'm super tired and I have a busy couple of days but I just wanted to share.

[judedeath]

So I went to one of my favorite football games that I've been to, it was military appreciation night, which is usually a pretty fun time. They started the game with two fly-overs by I think F-18s then while the game did suck for the first 3 quarters, the half-time show was really awesome, it was a military like brass band type thing, they started out playing the team fight song, but then they played Sweet Child O' Mine, Don't Stop Believing and some other slower song from out of nowhere and was awesome. Then at the end of the third quarter there was a streaker that ran down the 15 yard line right at us, and then the fourth quarter the team stepped it up and almost came back for the win, just missing the last second field goal attempt and losing by one point. It was an awesome game.

[SuzyLee123]

Worried and stressed, my boyfriend has just arrived at the caravan site that the company he's working for supposedly booked accommodation at for him and 2 other trainees and they say they have no record of him or the company! he's just had to walk 6 miles to get there since his train was delayed and he missed the last bus. The only contact details he has are for the office, who funnily enough aren't picking up at 9pm on a Saturday and the site supervisor, whose mobile went to answer machine. God this is awful, I swear this would only happen with an archaeology company!

[AngelFaith]

So today has been a comedy of errors. Last week I went to enroll in a new course (Cert IV in Youth Work) and discovered I couldn't because I have outstanding fees from about five years ago. Stephen said he would be happy to pay the fees for me so today we went in to pay off the debt so I could enroll. Turns out the moron we spoke to last week can't add and had quoted us the wrong price; it was actually about $100 more than we were anticipating and Stephen didn't have enough money on him.

So I went and checked my bank account online and woo! turns out my Government payments have started and I had enough money to pay the fees myself. So back we went to pay and ... turns out my ATM card expired two days ago. No worries, I said, I'll just go to the bank and withdraw the cash over the counter. We drive over to the mall, go to the bank ....... and every single bank in the ACT is closed today for National Bank Holiday. Seriously, by the end of it all Stephen and I went and got a coffee, had a cigarette and just laughed because there wasn't much else to do.

So tomorrow morning, half an hour before my first class, I will have to quickly go to the office, pay my fees and enroll and hopefully that will be the end of it!

Oh my God, what a day.

[Bunny Hearts]

@AngelFaith -- Yikes, that is indeed one hell of a day. Glad you two took a breather at the end there, it sounded like you both needed it. Good luck tomorrow morning!

I've been slowly acclimatizing myself to life in North Vancouver the past few days. Today I took a public bus for the first time ever, got off at the wrong stop, got on a different bus at the wrong stop which turned out to be a better stop with a super nice bus driver who helped me out a lot, made it to the party with the people from my program I was trying to get to after a 2k walk in some muggy afternoon sun, spent all day socializing with total strangers, got a ride to the major bus exchange stop from some very nice party goers and managed to get on the right bus and got home without being mauled by bears. Oh yeah, evidently it's not that weird to run into bears here, like they get into people's garbage at night. Didn't know that until I got here. Basically I'm super tired and considering buying a bear bell. But I totally rode the bus and managed not to die or get too completely lost. Now if I can figure out how to get the transit app on my phone I'll be in business.

[usagianddarien]

What happened to the chatbox?

[Funsmiley]

@usagianddarien I think it expired a few months ago.

@AngelFaith Sheesh!! that is a bash your head day!! it's good you laughed though, otherwise we would just cry through life and that ain't fun.

I have had a weird few day's, I've had a funny stomach (don't ask!) and I'm not sleeping very well at all, not that, that's new but it seems to be worse than normal right now.....meh.

[Scarygothgirl]

The plan was to stay with my parents two night then go back to Harrys. Now I'm staying here two weeks *sigh*. I was asked if I wanted to go away with the youth from church (I've started leading bible studies with them), but that would be another week away from Harry and I don't think I could cope with three weeks away from him in a row.
...does that make me pathetic?

[Funsmiley]

I did it!! I don't know how but I did it........I ate a whole tub of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, it was hard but I did it......now I feel like barf.

[Eric]

@Funsmiley

Oh, yeah? Well, I touched the ceiling with my feet yesterday. Beat that!

[Funsmiley]

@Eric Woah oh oh!!! Mr fancy pants! I think I can beat that......I got in a lightsaber duel with Darth Vader and kicked his ass to kingdom come, beat that smart guy!!! :P

[Eric]

@Funsmiley

I've concluded you and I are the cutest members on this forum. The other members wish they were us.

[usagianddarien]

hey guys if you have twitter following this account my scavenger hunt team needs 200 followers in a few days thanks so much :https://twitter.com/jplqs_alarm

[Funsmiley]

@usagianddarien I don't use twitter but I do have an account so I am now following.

[Scarygothgirl]

The plan was to stay with my parents two night then go back to Harrys. Now I'm staying here two weeks *sigh*. I was asked if I wanted to go away with the youth from church (I've started leading bible studies with them), but that would be another week away from Harry and I don't think I could cope with three weeks away from him in a row.

Turns out I do have to spend three weeks away from him anyway... But thankfully it wasn't too late to book me onto the retreat that the youth group are going on so I can help out with that, which will keep me busy. I'm worried that they won't respect me as a leader- or worse they'll see me only as a leader and no-one will actually talk to me all week. And it's going to be cold (we're camping) and loud (there will be thousands of kids from youth groups all over the country). But I'm getting quite excited about the packing. I love packing. And I decided to make a hot water bottle cosy from scratch to take with me, I think it worked quite well. So hopefully I won't get too cold at night.

[Funsmiley]

@Scarygothgirl Well horrible not seeing Harry pain aside, camping and stuff sounds like a lot of fun!!! and it will make things go much quicker and you'll be back with Harry before you know it.

You like packing? I wish I did, I'm so unorganized when it comes to packing to go anywhere on my end I either leave it till the last minute, or just have no clue where to start.

[usagianddarien]

Ugh I was packing all weekend @Scarygothgirl wish i enjoyed it, we are moving into a new house this coming weekend.

[Bunny Hearts]

I spend way too much time in here whining so here's some nice stuff first: Vancouver is really lovely, I really like it here, I'm getting the hang of the bus system, I'm slowly figuring out my smart phone, people generally are really nice and helpful and patient (sorry for perpetuating a stereotype but seriously, Canada, your people are nice), the weather has been really gorgeous and in general things have been going really well.

The suck: I seem to fall between some very crucial cracks in terms of meeting requirements for a really important set of criteria. Because I have dual citizenship I'm not really considered an immigrant so all the programs set up to help people new to Canada don't apply to me even though I haven't lived here before now and I don't have a lot of my basic identification yet. I have my proof of Canadian citizenship which was a totally viable piece of primary identification... until 2012 when they changed the format from a photo ID card to a shiny piece of paper with your name on it. Because of this, the licensing department won't accept it as primary ID, only as secondary ID but in order to get my health care, my BC care card and my BC ID I need one piece of primary ID. Currently it looks like my only option for this is to get a Canadian passport which is a) very expensive and b) takes some time to get to me. One of the stipulations of attending my university is that Canadian health care enrollment is mandatory-- if I don't have it, I can't attend and my classes start on September 3rd. I think there's a way to get private insurance through the school at a negotiated rate but I need to find out if this is only for international students (which I am not) or if there could possibly be a way I could squeeze in there due to my particular circumstances.

Another problem with getting my Canadian passport (on top of the issue that I already have a US passport and it just feels excessive) is that one of the requirements in getting one is me having to have someone who can vouch for my identity. I have to know a Canadian passport holder who has known me for at least two years who can legally sign a statement that I am who I say I am and I think they have to sign one of my passport photos. Since I don't know anyone who meets that criteria I'm probably going to have to pay some sort of notary to make a statement and sign stuff so that I can send in my application for the passport so that I can then use it to apply for health insurance so that I can then attend the school that I've already been accepted to. Which is do-able but every office I go into or call tells me different things because they don't know each other's requirements so I keep going in circles for days before I actually get to the information I need and by this point I may be out of time. I dunno, I'm going to talk to the school tomorrow and see what they tell me, I'm going to fax in my health care application now anyway just to get that in the works and then try and tackle this whole passport thing because it seems the most complicated.

But yeah, it's incredibly frustrating to legally have citizenship and therefore be legally entitled to Canadian healthcare but not be able to apply for it because the legal document the Canadian government issued me proving my citizenship is somehow inadequate as identification to apply for said health care and general identification. If I weren't a citizen this would be easier and people would have answers for me.

Edit: In completely unrelated but very good news, my brother got a job at Xbox, evidently! I don't think he even owns an Xbox but still, yay for employment!

[Funsmiley]

@Bunny Hearts They are just a couple of reasons I couldn't move to another country I would find all that too daunting to cope with, I know things like that don't always happen but I would just never go there in case of problems like that.

Congrats about your brothers job! I will ask for his hand in marriage, lol any guy that works at Xbox should be my husband lol