April panties

On Saturday, I got new panties in the mail. I love my subscription!

Here's the front:

The fabric is comfortable. I like the lace. It doesn't feel itchy wearing them.

The back looks like the following:

I'm not sure why there are so many pieces to it. Perhaps getting a larger piece of fabric is more expensive than stitching two smaller pieces together to form most of the back? Who knows.

I do like it. It's functional with a bit of lace. I'm happy!

Happy Spring!

Happy Spring! It was a whopping 15°C on Saturday, which was lovely. It made the day so cheerful, complemented by the sunshine.

I spent this evening scheduling COVID-19 vaccine shots for my parents. My dad has his two appointments set up. His first shot is this Thursday. I have pre-registered my mom. She's six years younger than my dad, so she has to wait for a bit.

I hope that you are having a great weekend so far.

A compliment over purple corduroy leggings

A compliment goes a long way, especially when it is unexpected.

On Saturday, I had to stop by a store. Due to the pandemic, only three customers are allowed inside the store. I was waiting outside with roughly five other people.

I managed to get inside the store at long last. I was waiting for my order to be fetched. The man behind me started a conversation with a compliment.

"I love your purple pants," he said.

I had purple corduroy leggings on. I thanked him and said that they screamed my name when I saw them. He said that he wouldn't mind wearing a pair because they are purple and he loves corduroy. He saw them on me and thought that they were cool. I loved his fashion sense. He even said that he would wear them with white sneakers. Yes, a pop of colour goes a long way.

What is cool about these leggings is that they have full front pockets. You don't normally get that with leggings. You often don't get pockets. Sometimes, if they are jeggings, you get a small front pocket and two back pockets. 

He brightened my day. I'm glad that I was able to brighten his with my purple corduroy leggings.

Somebody, Feed Phil makes me happy

I haven't been using Netflix as often as I should be during this pandemic. It has taken a show that I truly love for me to get back into using my Netflix account.

I love Somebody, Feed Phil. Phil Rosenthal loves food. I enjoy how delighted he is eating new foods and travelling around the world. He's a nice person who genuinely appreciates eating yummy food.

It's nice to enjoy such a cheerful series in light of what's happening in the world.

Road trip to meet with good, supportive friends

On Saturday, I hung out with a couple of friends. I did a road trip out to a city where one of them lives. It's also where my ex-guy lives.

The interesting thing is that I didn't think about him while I was there. It was simply fun catching up with cool people over a late lunch and dessert. They made me happy.

I like being surrounded by positive, nice people. I feel good.

August staycation and pay

It's August. Summer seems to be breezing by fast!

The long weekend is coming up. I am doing a mini staycation. I am looking forward to it.

I have a few things to pack. I have travelled a fair amount in July that pretty much everything I need is still in that one piece of luggage.

I like August. I get paid three times, which makes me feel rich for a brief period. It's good.

My barista and Stronger

I have a cheerful story to share. It happened to me on Monday evening. I will back up a bit.

On Saturday, I visited my local cafe. I went through the drive-thru and chatted with one barista who has always been kind to me. I asked whether he had the weekend off. He did, except that he was representing this cafe in a barista competition. Wow! He is the best in this city. I was impressed!

I wished him good luck. He suggested that I follow this cafe on Instagram. I did.

I found out late on Sunday night that this barista won the entire competition! I was so happy and proud of him.

On Monday evening, I went through the drive-thru of this cafe to pick up my beverage and he was there.

"Congratulations!" I exclaimed, which made him happy.
"Thank you so much!" he said, humbly.
"Hey, she found out pretty fast," said his colleague.

We had a decent chat about his experience. I am so happy that he got such a well-deserved award. I am glad that I deal with the best.

As for me, Monday was a crazy day at work, which led to my forgetting to attend a dinner. I thought that it was on Tuesday. Oops! Instead, I got a hot dog from Costco and a chocolate sundae from McDonald's.

I am more upbeat today, thanks to listening to Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger." I will elaborate more on what has happened over the past week shortly.

Pay raise - yay!

Good news! I got a raise. It's a miracle, considering how things are going at work.

My raise is 3% of my base salary, which is higher than the norm without our department. I am grateful. I haven't got a raise for the last two years.

I am looking forward to having some extra money. Naturally, it will go towards my debt.

Concert and achiness

On Monday night, I went to see a concert in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was amazing. I was on my feet for nearly three hours, dancing, cheering, and singing.

I tend to park several blocks away from the concert venue. Let's just say that I got a pretty good workout that night.

The band was amazing. The music was great, as expected. I had a great time.

Naturally, with all that dancing and walking, my legs were achy. Yep, I'm getting old.

It was well worth the pain to go see this band play live.

Ring the bell... ring my bell

After work on Friday, I went to my local post office to pick up a couple of parcels. I walked up to the counter and saw this sign:

Naturally, after ringing the bell, I had "Ring My Bell" playing in my head. I smiled lugging my parcels out the door.

A compliment on my nail colour goes a long way

As crazy as work is these days, I find that the new folks that I have welcomed and trained recently bring a smile to my face when I least expect it.

I was in our regular team meeting on Thursday. I don't normally bring my laptop into these meetings because I don't like being distracted. However, I had another meeting after this one that required my pulling up information that I had prepared on my laptop.

My manager posed a question to me that he should have known the answer to. He had booked the meeting, for heaven's sake! So, I answered it and continued to listen to him.

A new writer (NW), whom I interviewed and helped train with one of my co-op students a few weeks ago, shot me an instant message. As of late, our corporate instant messaging systems causes me stress when folks pick my brains.

I enjoyed this brief exchange:

NW: Hi, Cutiebootie. I love your nail colour!
Me: Thanks, NW! I thought that I needed a bright colour to liven up our workplace. =)
NW: I agree

All it takes is a small compliment to make someone's day. I have a cheerful berry colour polish on my nails. She made this meeting far more bearable!

T is for talk and tease

I am a fairly chatty person. I am not sure how that came about.

Ever since I can remember, I was often dubbed as being shy. I disliked this label, because I like being with people. People don't frighten me. I simply happen to be a quiet person by nature.

Being quiet does have its perks. I tend to be a better listener than those who enjoy talking all the time.

My role has changed this year at work. Instead of actually doing the grunt work of writing information from scratch, I am reviewing those pieces that other writers produce on the team. It is a lot of work, but I do enjoy it.

The role that I have also involves talking to each writer briefly when I am in the office. There is one writer who is an only child. I am, too. Yet, we are so different.

She is both shy and quiet. I have to ask probing questions and pry information from her. As for me, I am more of a free communicator. I share information and what I am doing. People don't have to guess what I am thinking or working on.

My guy is equally as chatty as I am. He has told me a number of times that I am a great conversationalist and that everything I talk about is interesting to him. I have never seen his eyes glaze over when I talk about a topic, so he isn't buttering me up!

It's one of many reason why we are compatible. We can talk for hours and never get bored of each other.

We both like to tease each other. When he was trying to cheer me up the other week, I teased him that he could record each positive phrase one some recorder and just press a button to play back an encouraging phrase.

"You can tell me that everything will work out fine, record that sentence, and save it as button 1. You can then press it when you think that I need cheering up," I teased.
"Do you think that I don't mean it?" he asked, knowing that I was pulling his leg.
"I know that you like to optimize your time. So, you could record a speech on how things will always improve over time, press the button, walk away, and fix yourself lunch," I joked.
"Oh, really?" he asked, with a tone to his voice that hinted that he was smiling.
"Sure. You just play it and I listen to it. I continue to feel better as I listen to what you have to say. You then walk over to the couch and take a nap. You wake up from your nap and your recording is still going," I giggled.
"I can't wait to see you soon. You are so going to get it."

It's fun teasing him. Of course, there's a price for doing it. I will have a sore backside the next time we're together. I don't mind it one bit.

Travel, epost, and a spanking threat

I am getting back into the swing of things. I haven't written much lately. It's partly because it's difficult to write about anything when my guy hasn't been his cheerful self. Being depressed does that to anyone. He is improving, which is encouraging.

We both have been travelling these days. Yesterday, he returned from a two-week business trip in India. I took a few days off from work and went to Atlantic City. My guy can't handle the spices in various East Indian dishes. I will write about those episodes in another post.

He called me on Skype a couple of times on Sunday. I decided to sleep in, eventually waking up at 10:00. It's weird, but I must have known somehow that he had wanted to contact me.

I eventually got out of bed and walked into the den. I was logged on to Skype overnight. He said hi through a text at 10:00. He then tried again a minute before I got to my phone, wondering whether I had decided to hit a bakery early Sunday morning. It makes my day when he says hi like that. I texted him back. Moments later, we were on Skype chatting away.

His mood is a lot brighter these days. He isn't completely out of the dark, though. He told me that he wanted to delete his porn collection. I have never objected to his collection. Frankly, we often watch them together. He used to get off watching them. Being depressed, he simply doesn't care much for them and felt that deleting everything would be good.

It's kind of sad in that he first shared various videos with me when we were first dating. However, I still have fond memories of us watching them. Instead, when we are together in the same city, we watch regular movies while we cuddle together. It's not all that bad!

He asked me a work-related question just before we ended our conversation. I told him that I had forwarded an e-mail about how to get your pay stubs to automatically go to your epost account months ago. I said in an exasperated voice that I had to do more work for him and that he was too lazy to check his e-mail.

"How about I take you to lunch tomorrow, after I land at the airport and get to the office?" he asked me.
"But, you're always nice to treat me to lunch," I replied.
"How about I give you a big kiss?" he asked, upping the ante.
"Okay. But, what if I say no?"
"You can't say no. I'd have to punish you."
"We'll see. I'm safe for now."

I like when he threatens to spank me. It makes my entire day.