The Plot Thickens.....

Well, now, here we are planning for the house, getting ready for the big crop to start, and guess what happens this morning?!?  Mikey gets a lay-off notice; yup, that's right, a lay-off.  Curses!!!

Why a lay-off?  Well, my job is, and has been for almost 3 years, teaching adult vocational courses.  99% of the students that I have gotten have been through the WSIB (Worker Safety Insurance Board) LMR (Labour Market Reentry) program.  This program is meant to take workers that have been injured in a job, and that are unable to continue their line of work, retrain them for a new career path, and then assist them in getting starting on that path; usually through a job placement program.  This program has been managed by third party companies that run different social work programs (eg. March of Dimes).  About a year and a half ago, WSIB decided that this was not working and they were going to take direct control over the program and it's daily running.  So, after that decision, can anybody guess how many students WSIB has released in that time frame?  Anybody?  Yes, you guess right, none!  NONE!!

Well, as you can guess, as the students have trickled down to nothing, many of the centres have started closing down.  And finally, the day came that I got the ol' lay-off notice.  Well, luckily, I had been expecting something of the sort (although it happened a lot sooner than I thought it would).  I have been putting my resume out for a couple of weeks to any jobs that I am even remotely qualified for (sure, I could a CNC lathe, why not??).

Unfortunately, as one might imagine, Orillia is not the best of cities to go and find a lucrative job in, and that has been very evident in my search over the past month or two.  Most jobs that are available I am overqualified for, and of course, never hear from them.  I talked to an employment counselor a while ago, and do you know what her advice was about my resume?  "Take your university degree off.  It's too intimidating to many of the employers in the city."  What??  Take off the degree?  Yup, that's right, take it off.  The wife of one of Thamara's colleagues at the university moved down to be with her husband, and has been looking for a job for over a month, and she has had zero call-backs.  She was a higher-up in the Lakehead Thunder Bay campus, and she can't find a single job right now.  Argh!!!

But, as luck would have it, I have been interviewed and offered a job.  It is only a part-time position, and is a very entry-level position, but it is a job.  Oh, and it's back in retail.  Oh, and it's at the Future Shop.  Alright, well, it's little bit cool because of all the fun merchandise, and yes, I do get an employee discount.  So, regardless, I have a job again.  It means it is back to working on the weekends, but at least I have something

Yay, retail!!

House, Part Deux

Another busy week planning out things with/for the house, and dealing with all the of financial/realty world.  How (cough, cough), exciting.....  It's a necessary evil, of course.

The one thing that we have done is plan out the expected renovations.  And, wow, are we getting excited to get things going!  Here is the layout for the house right now (click on the pictures to make them bigger):

So, as you can see, a large bedroom, big open kitchen/living room.  And, then in the middle is the "bedroom", but with no window, it's not a "bedroom," so it's the office.  And off to the side is the nice big garage that will become the rest of the living space.

So, now, here is the renovations that we are planning (and hoping the bank likes too!).  We are adding a nice, large bathroom with a great corner shower.  Then we are adding a nice size bedroom, and a bit smaller bedroom (but, still quite comfortable!).  As well, we are putting in a front entrance closet, a storage closet, and a linen closet off of the bathroom. Then the next big plan is to rip out the wall separating the kitchen from the extra room, and put in a kitchen island.  That extra room would then become our dining room.  Oh, and we are going to put an entry from the kitchen into the hallway.  It's going to be great!  And both of us are looking forward to going and picking out all the furnishings!  (insert quote from "Old School" here about the Home Depot and big day planned for tomorrow....)

Now, it's just more of the waiting game and negotiating with the banks over everything!  This will be a long two months to wait!!

Plants: Day 42

Okay, so now the bigger of the tomato seedlings have a nice, new home, and we've got some empty space on the shelf.  Well, what would we do about that, except plant more!!

The next batch is made up of a couple of different veggies; no more just boring tomatoes, here!  We started cucumbers, zucchini, green onions, and basil.  We are about 4 weeks out from the outdoors-planting date, so that is the time frame to get all of these going.  As well, you can see in the picture below, we have switched back to using the toliet paper rolls, but with a slight change; we cut them in half and use them that way.  They are a lot easier to manage, and they don't have any mildew/mould/dampness problem that was happening with the bigger tubes.  As well, we found them a lot easier to transplant than the full tube.

So, everything seemed to be going fine, until Thamara opened up the zucchini package, "What is this?  These aren't zucchini seeds?  They're way to big; they're more like pumpkin seeds!!"  And, as time will tell, it looks like we are not going to be growing any zucchini, but rather a couple of pumpkins.....hmmm....