.be happy for this moment.this moment is your life.

So, I'm moving back to Calgary on Friday, likely never to return to "The City of Champions" (???)...a.k.a. Edmonoton/Edmonchuck/Deadmonton, and over the past, well probably 2 weeks have gotten pretty sad about the whole situation.

I moved here almost 4 years ago, a scared...well, little girl, and now I am leaving pretty much all grown up. I don't really think I would trade any of my experiences for anything, because they shaped me into the person I have become. I look back at my 1st year university self, and am just in awe of how far I have come. I remember my very first week in Lister Hall...crying alone in my dorm room because for the first time in my life I was genuinely homesick. This was a shock to me for sure, having gone to overnight camps every summer for as long as I could remember. I didn't have the social skills that I have since developed to go out and meet people, let alone strike up a conversation. and even with all the events planned before classes started, that was probably the hardest week (4 days??) of my life. I also don't really think that being an engineering student for the first term helped my social life either...holed up in my room all the time trying to make sense of physics and moments (*shudder*).

I'm not even sure what the turning point was, when I became friends with those girls who I think I will stay friends with forever. We suffered together through the worst FC in history, aramark food, our first uni midterm week from hell, and I would like to say our first night of drunken rowdyness, but I don't really think we shared that moment, or even experienced it...which looking back is really ok with me.

Anyway...the following are some of the roses and thorns of the past 4 years in no particular order, other than the order I thought of them in...

Things I will ACTUALLY miss about Edmonton:
-the people
-Sonic 102.9 (mainly garner andrews)
-corbett hall
-the local music scene
-west ed
-whyte ave
-having my own place
-the river valley
-"free" use of the pool/gym
-going to uni volleyball games
-having full control over what i watch on TV

Things I am happy to leave behind:
-the people
-the crazy oilers fans
-corbett hall
-exams/papers/textbooks/crazy profs/TAs
-Lister/FCs (i.e. Lisa)/Residence/Aramark food
-communal laundry
-fire alarms at any given moment
-taking the bus everywhere
-the weather
-walking for groceries
-lack of a dishwasher

Those are actually pretty balanced lists, so as much as I/people in general complain about edmonton...it wasn't really that bad.

I'll be seeing you.

So, I made my first, of I'm now sure to be many, trips to MAC earlier this week with Andrea. It was a complete success, though an expensive one. The girl that helped us was amazing, full of knowledge and fun ideas. But I would just like to share one of our conversations...

...."Our grad is actually this weekend."

"Oh really, what school do you go to?"

"The U of A."

"You're in university?!?!"

"Yeah."

"Four years?"

"Yeah..."

"Oh, I totally though you guys were like 18...how old are you?"

"21"

"Oh, ok...I'm 22"

"Nice."

"What are you taking?"

"Occupational Therapy"

...blank stare...

So there you have it. Apparently both Andrea and I look 18, and yet we are going to be professional occupational therapists in about 2 months.

This is something to think about ladies:

Have you ever noticed gals who sit their purses on public restroom floors beside the toilet - and then go directly to their dining tables? Happens a lot! It's not always the 'restaurant food' that causes stomach distress. Sometimes "what you don't know 'will' hurt you"! Read on...

Mom got so upset when a guest came in the door and plopped their purses down on the counter where she was cooking or setting up the buffet. She always said that purses are really dirty, because of where they have been. Smart Momma!!!

It's something just about every woman carries with them. While we may know what's inside our purses, do you have any idea what's on the outside? Shauna Lake put purses to the test - for bacteria - with surprising results. You may think twice about where you put your purse. Women carry purses everywhere; from the office to public restrooms to the floor of the car. Most women won't be caught without their purses, but did you ever stop to think about where your purse goes during the day? "I drive a school bus, so my purse has been on the floor of the bus alot," says one woman. "On the floor of my car, probably in restrooms." "I put my purse in grocery shopping carts, on the floor of bathroom stalls while changing a diaper," says another woman and of course in my home which should be clean."

We decided to find out if purses harbor a lot of bacteria. We learned how to test them at Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake, then we set out to test the average woman's purse. Most women told us they didn't stop to think about what was on the bottom of their purse. Most said they usually set their purses on top of kitchen tables and counters where food is prepared. Most of the ladies we talked to told us they wouldn't be surprised if their purses were at least a little bit dirty. It turns out purses are so surprisingly dirty, even the microbiologist who tested them was shocked. Microbiologist Amy Karren of Nelson Labs says nearly all of the purses tested were not only high in bacteria, but high in harmful kinds of bacteria. Pseudomonas can cause eye infections, staphylococcus aurous can cause serious skin infections, and salmonella and e-coli found on the purses could make people very sick. In one sampling, four of five purses tested positive for salmonella, and that's not the worst of it. "There is fecal contamination on the purses," says Amy.

Leather or vinyl purses tended to be cleaner than cloth purses, and lifestyle seemed to play a role. People with kids tended to have dirtier purses than those without, with one exception. The purse of one single woman who frequented nightclubs had one of the worst contaminations of all. "Some type of feces, or even possibly vomit or something like that," says Amy.

So the moral of this story - your purse won't kill you, but it has the potential to make you very sick if you keep it on places where you eat. Use hooks to hang your purse at home and in restrooms, and don't put it on your desk, a restaurant table, or on your kitchen countertop. Experts say you should think of your purse the same way you would a pair of shoes. "If you think about putting a pair of shoes onto your countertops, that's the same thing you're doing when you put your purse on the countertops"

Your purse has gone where every individual before you has spat, coughed, urinated, emptied bowels, etc! Do you really want to bring that home with you? The microbiologists at Nelson also said cleaning a purse will help. Wash cloth purses and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather purses.


And now I am going to wash my purse...

We all remember the trudge to elementary school in the snow in our Sorels (or was it only me?). Dragging our heels all the way across the field felt like it took days. And now we wear shoes all year. Lots of people don’t even own boots, and if they do the boots are “fashionable” (uggs?) not the clodhopper Sorels of the past. Are the kids still trudging to school in their Sorel-like boots? Or is that a thing of the past? It seems like rite of passage to me, once you have done it for 6 years, you are all of a sudden no longer required to wear them everyday. You hit junior high and the Sorels only come out for snowdays or tobogganing. And as you continue to get older you wear them less and less. Maybe because you no longer toboggan, and snowdays are an excuse to sleep in, not play outside. No wonder people are so stressed out - road rage, the fight to the top etc. - we all just need to go out and play in the snow; make some snow angels and go tobogganing. Then come inside for hot chocolate and a cookie. Its just like we should all stop for an afternoon nap, and wake up to have milk and cookies.

and on a COMPLETELY unrelated note: check out these spiders on drugs