Not all those who wander are lost

Is here, beautiful almost 30 degree days and warm evenings with the sun out till 10pm. So nice,

Anyways so summer is starting out pretty damn awesome. I went to Adam's Cabin last weekend. The weather was gorgeous the whole time, no stress (not that I'm ever all that stressed) and just relaxing atmosphere the whole time. There's a little bakery and ice cream shop down the street and they have a bunch of bikes out there to mess around with.

Came back and played some baseball on Sunday which is always a ton of fun. Loving the laid back slow pich league, now I just need to learn how to hit consistently.

Linda started up ball hockey on Tuesday's which was a lot of fun last week. Hopefully it catches on and we can get some more people out with nets and goalies and such.

Work has been interesting lately. There are two reps in my department who are testing for a management position and I've been progressively taking over the duties for one of those reps. Which basically means i'm 9-5ish mon-fri which is a very nice change. I'm still adjusting to waking up in the mornings but having all my evenings free has been great. Especially since this happened last week and they "forced" me to take last weekend off allowing me to go to Adam's cabin.

This weekend I've got the half marathon coming up, and with my almost complete lack of training is probably going to kill me. Seeing as it's supposed to be 29 on Sunday I forsee a lot of walking and drinking in between the running. I'm looking forward to it though, I didn't really train last year and the 6 miles for the relay felt good. So we'll see how slightly more than double that goes.

I've also got my mom's birthday and father's day celebrations to fit into the weekend somewhere. And Cory and Conrad are off camping for the weekend so I've got the place to myself for a bit. Ooo the posibilities :)

Well this was entertaining last year so lets see if anything's changed

( 2008 )

I'm loving everything I hear about/from Obama if only both countries could get it right at the same time...

That is all.

So I voted Liberal and feel a little dirty, it probably won't matter anyways as Fletcher is deeply entrenched in my riding. Just too many old people in St. James.

Been a good week all in all, worked the last 9 days straight, got a promotion of sorts on Friday. There were two regular part time positions open in my department and I applied for one. I was supposed to get interviewed for it on Friday but my boss just pulled me into his office and told me he was looking over the applicants and is just going to give me the job. I guess 5 years at this place counts for something.

So I proceeded to celebrate on Friday, drinking for the first time since September long. It was a really fun night, had a good crew over and watched them play Quelf and I'm not a big fan of the game. Luckily Conrad and McGill also got bored half way through and we set up, played and tore down a 3 man settlers game while their game kept going on. I'm pretty sure that game never ends.

Seems I drank a bit too much that night because I get a call at 10:30 from work saying I was supposed to be in 30 minutes ago. Jump out of bed, and make it to work an hour after I was supposed to start. Good start to the new promotion, literally the next day... Also felt super hung over and Saturday and just slept/moped around all day avoiding people. Good times, oh well definitely won't be overindulging too much again anytime soon.

And now my break is over so it's back to work. Go vote, unless you're gonna vote for Fletcher... then die.

Sleep deprivation as a form of entertainment? We shall see.

I am bored, so Sunday at work, only 5 of us in, no management. I've read everything there is to read online (yes I've read the entire internet). And now I'm sitting here trying to kill time. It's gotta be bad if I'm posting (that never happens).

So this weekend's been pretty solid so far. Spent Friday night chilling in a hot tub with some good friends.

Went to the Gym yesterday, did some upper back work for the first time in a month and it felt great. Then went for dinner at my dads for my Brother's birthday. He's 23 now, time's passing far too quickly. Had a good meal and played some cards. I rarely get to play real cards anymore, I should get a card night going and play some spades or something; but it was fun.

Went over to Nicks and watched the fights after that. It was a surprisingly entertaining PPV considering I didn't care about most of the fights. Few solid knockouts, one from a kick to the stomach which is impressive, Rich Franklin's just a beast.

And I've got a baseball game tonight as long as the rain holds off.

Oh and I'm loving this whole no drinking thing so far. No temptation to do anything stupid, and I'm thinking I'm gonna be saving quite a bit of money :)

Well it's been a great summer so far. Feeling lazy lately and haven't been biking as much as I'd like but playing baseball again has been a ton of fun. If you're any good at hardball you're a fucking superstar at slow pitch (few more games left to end the season without being struck out once :)

I went to a party with a bunch of people from work yesterday which was quite a bit of fun, man I love hot tubs. I dragged Greg along since he went to school with the host and he met up with some old high school friends and seemed to enjoy himself. Got a fire going when it started getting cold out (first really cold night all month, looks like summers winding down) and that just got me itching to get out camping this weekend.

I've got a pretty slack schedule for the rest of the week, just have to make it through 3 more shifts, one of which I'm training someone so I get to sit around and listen to them take calls for a few hours, then 3 hours of training the next day and a nice short 5 hour shift to end the week.

Greg and I are heading out to Sioux Narrows a day early on Thursday and grab our own site for a night. Man I can't wait for the weekend, gotta start getting ready with food/booze soon too.

I also need to get out for at least one game of golf this year just to prove I'm still horrible at it... I'm looking at you Paul.

What a weekend, overall had a great time, listened to some good music, met some friendly people.
( The Shenanigans )

I figure I might as well post this before it all becomes a blur. Last weekend was fucking amazing. I haven't gone camping with my bike since I was probably about 12 or 13 years old. Greg, Cory and I went out to Falcon lake on Friday for a little camping.

The sites out there aren't bad, a little reminiscent of clear lake as there is pretty much a fully stocked grocery store, bar and restaurants within walking distance of the camp ground. They do however have an amazing bike trail complete with all the hilly glory of the Whiteshell. We don't have a lot of opportunity to bike on hills in Winnipeg and it's amazing how much harder/more fun it is. Cory and I did about 26k on the trail on Saturday morning coming across some beautiful views of Falcon lake (He's got a couple of the shots posted on facebook).

I spent Saturday afternoon driving back into the city for dinner at my Aunts. My Mémé is in town from Victoria and I've been trying to see her as much as possible. My aunt and uncle from Brandon were also in town with my two cousins. It was so nice to see everyone together as everyone's pretty spread out these days and it rarely happens.

There were some vicious looking clouds passing over the city as I was driving in, apparently it hailed here. Good thing we were busy camping where the weather was great and avoided it all :)

I arrived back at the camp site around 9:30 to find out Rene had already drank enough to throw up and pass out. Saturday night was so much fun, sitting drinking around the fire. Cory and Greg have these amazing little LED headlamps that sort of make you look like some kind of weird combination of a miner and a retard. They do however work amazingly well and Cory and I were tearing up the camp site for some midnight bike riding. We went through this trail that was actually pretty difficult (which I found out when I tried to recreate the ride with some light the next day) in the middle of the night and definitely not sober. We biked down to the big beach afterwards where Cory was getting all artistic with his camera and some slow shutter speed shots.

Sunday everyone was relaxing on the little beach while I biked around some more. Came home to win a baseball game. All in all a very solid weekend full of good friends and great weather.

Oh and Cory's farts are deliciously decadent...

Well I haven't posted in ages and I'm a little intoxicated for the first time in about 3 weeks. Been a shitty February as usual, I figure I've got maybe 4 more years here before the winters drive me nuts. SO SO damn excited for the spring, gonna be 23 on Monday and I almost wanna run to work if I wouldn't be so sweaty when I get there.

I went to the dealer awards tonight, nothing like drinking on MTS and generous dealers :) It was a fun night as I expected it to be, had a few activators crash the event at the end and put a few more faces to voices. I wish I didn't work in 6 hours as I'm already running on very little sleep. I tried to change my rhythm to become a little more of a day person and that seems to have backfired horribly and now I can't get to sleep before 5am for the life of me.

It was a good night all in all, interesting test of how I feel about someone. Good ol cryptic live journal posts, oh and Ani Difranco is fucking awesome, still...

Goal #1: Learn how to snowboard -> Complete :)

Well I must say the first 25 days of 2008 have been pretty fucking good so far. The new year itself was a little fucked up, but it was mostly a misunderstanding and a couple fight happy roommates of Aaron's.
( Long post as usual )

3100.1 Kms in a car in 3 days for 6 hours on a mountain and a great little get away. Just got home, fucking tired as hell. Gonna start downloading the UFC I missed and post a more detailed account when I'm not retarded.

So New Years eve started off really nicely this year. I went to see Juno with Cory and a few others at the globe. It was actually a pretty good movie, definitely worth a watch if you get a chance.

Greg and I then proceeded to get some supplies for Kristin's pot luck. Being the gourmet chef's that we are, I brought a bottle of wine I'm not sure anyone touched and Greg proceeded to purchase his contributions from Superstore. We got there a little early and heated up Greg's meat and chilled with John and Kristin for a little while. The food there was delicious and a nice fun and relaxed way to start the evening. It was nice to be able to see some friends who weren't heading over the Pich's that evening and welcome in the new year and such.

I headed over to Chelsea's after that, hung out for a bit and played a rousing game of settlers. I was gonna try to make it to Pich's for midnight but the game went a little long and ended up ringing in the new year over there. It was fun, I got to meet her sister and her sister's boyfriend. They seem like very nice people and I enjoyed myself there.

I headed out to Pich's after that, not really knowing what to expect. All the house parties I've gone to recently have been pretty weak. But I got there and the place was packed. It was fun, tons of people I didn't know, and a few kegs going. Found the boys playing beer pong in the basement so i hung out there for a bit. The night progressed and I was having fun, Corey ended up passed out on his ass in the basement with his head resting on a work bench. Which ended up being slightly problematic later in the evening.

Everything was going along normally until I head outside and see some guy bloody and knocked out on the front lawn. I pick him up out of the snow and try to put him in a cab so he can go sober up somewhere else. He ends up just standing in their front lawn for about and hour. I go back inside and the guy who knocked him out grabs me by the throat and my glasses get knocked off. Charlie comes up and grabs him and I get free. There's a big commotion in which Charlie got his earring ripped out and now and my glasses are somewhere on the floor. I can't get to the guy who knocked them off so I figure fuck it I'll find them when things settle down. I head into the living room and there's some guy on the ground on top of someone I know (or at least I think I know I can't see very well at this point but it might have been Pich). I jump on the guy and choke him till he lets go. I've got 4 chicks pulling me off the other guy and I go off to try to find my glasses.

At this point we're getting kicked out, Pich is asking us to leave because he knows we'll defend him and apparently this is a bad thing. I'm pissed, punch the door handle on the way out and ended up smashing the window and cut my hand up. The only damage I took is my own fault...

I'm waiting outside, the guy who got knocked out earlier is still out there with a couple buddies. I'm waiting for the rest of my friends to get out of there so we can go home. Greg was good enough to drag Corey out of the basement and get him in a car.

And now I'm hung over and my hand is cut up, Happy fucking new years indeed.

****Update****
So after talking to Pich there were 2 guys who showed up but weren't really invited. They were arguing about having to pay the $10 to get into the kegger and were just looking to cause trouble. I think that was one of the guys that was knocked out on the front lawn. I went back inside and apparently Pich was holding his roommate back from trying to go after some other guy and they fell down. So it looked like his roommate was attacking him, and this is when i chocked out one of the hosts of the party. Then Pich got up and got punched in the face by his other roommate. Just a freaking shit show...

Well it's been a while since my last post. It was probably one of the best summers I've had in a while, went by far too quickly though. It was so nice to get to enjoy most of it outside, good times with good friends.

Things have been going well lately, I took the fall off of school to try to pay down some debts I accumulated over the summer. My car decided to break down every second week with some new and fun/expensive problem. Luckily this is the busy time of year at work and since it looks like they're trying to phase out my department they don't want to hire any new staff. We are getting killed at the moment so they're offering me all the overtime I want which is helping :)

I've actually really been enjoying work recently, mostly due to the people I work with. I think I've come out of my shell a bit at work over the last year or so and I get along really well with pretty much everyone in my department. At least well enough to joke around with a good majority of them, which is keeps me sane and enjoying the work.

I finally got a bit of time off last weekend and booked it down to Minneapolis for the weekend with a friend from work. It was exactly what I needed, get away from the normal grind I've been in. We did a bit of drinking and caused some trouble Friday night, spend most of Saturday in the mall of America, me driving around trying to find the science museum before it closed (I failed by the way, looks like it will take me 3 trips to finally have a look at that place... one day, one day). We then went on a mission to find a casino so I could get my poker fix in for the weekend.

We went to this pretty crazy casino just south of Minneapolis which did not have any poker tables, but gave us $10 to gamble with (which was nice of them since as soon as we had our $10 we booked it out of there to find a card room). I found a really nice place at the Canteburry horse track, they only had limit tables but it was a nice set-up, would deliver beer/food right to the tables and had a masseuse going around (which I only found out about as we were leaving). I really wish we had anything at all like that in Winnipeg, the tables at regent are just such garbage in comparison.

I feel kind of stalled at the moment though, until I get into red river I'm not really making any progress getting where I wanna be in 5 years. Looks like some of the hard lessons I've learned have changed my outlook and goals. But I'll bang out a degree next year just so I have something to show for all my time in school and join the large segment of people who have degree's they don't use. Almost makes me wish I was a philosophy major =P

I should really get some sleep now, somehow Greg convinced me to drive back to Grand Forks at 5 in the morning so he could pick up a copy of rock band and I haven't really slept today... I'm gonna be on a first name basis with the border guards if this keeps up.

What an odd day, I was fucking angry as fuck at work, which is weird cause I'm usually in a fairly good mood there. Though I've been moody lately which normally would be odd but seems to be the norm these days. I used to be so level all the time, it took a lot to get me riled up. These days I'm all over the place.

I wish I could stop obsessing about chicks so much, I think it might be better if I had someone to pursue at the moment as that would give me some kind of focus instead of all the random thoughts that keep occupying my mind. I Wonder if I've actually learned anything in the past little while.

and now for something completely different (I wonder if anyone even gets Monty Python references these days)

I went to Shannon's after work with a buddy of mine from work. It was a really good time, got to check out this bluegrass/folk artist who had an amazing voice, i was really impressed, in fact I'm listening to her CD right now.

It's been an entertaining little while. Half way through my final vacation of the summer. I got to go out to Sioux Narrows last weekend which was a ton of fun. There were storms pretty much every night which is a shame since there was never a big drinking night. The storm on Saturday put on a really nice light show though. Cory has some pictures of it on facebook and there's definitely some impressive lightning in the album. You didn't even need a flashlight that night, you just had to wait half a second and you could see your way from the lighting.

We broke tradition this year and everyone who swam out to the island made it back and we didn't have to send a rescue mission. It's a nice little swim out there, made me realize how pathetically slow I swim, but my knee was acting up a bit and I couldn't kick much. It seems I mostly swim with my arms anyways though so it wasn't so bad.

We went out to rushing river on Saturday but unfortunately i didn't get to go hiking. We got a bunch of other people who wanted to come out to swim there. The swimming there is pretty pathetic though, it's kinda fun to mess around in the rapids but the river was so high this year you couldn't go in them without getting swept away. So I got to sit around and watch everyone mess around in the ice cold water for a bit instead of going hiking :( Aw, well, there's always next year I suppose, or August if I can make it out.

I went for a little bike ride down to the forks today and my god did that feel good. I don't realize how much I need to get my heart pumping and see the sun. It didn't seem to bug the knee at all which is great. I think it'll be at least a month until I try running on it again though, that had me limping for a week last time I tried it. I have to test out the roller blades too and see how I fair. I don't think they'll be that bad since there's not much impact. It also made me realize how quickly my cardio has regressed since the injury. I got a lot of work to do to get where I was a month ago.

It also looks like I won't get to go anywhere big for my vacation, mostly due to lack of funds. Nick has access to his cabin though so hopefully I can get out there for a couple days this week, then be back in time for folk fest. So it should be a pretty good vacation anyways. The Osborne street festival starts up tomorrow too. I'm gonna head out there and hit up some beer tents tomorrow, we'll see if I'm lucky enough to catch Samantha dancing with fire too.

However it is three in the morning and I'm gonna catch a little rest for tomorrow's festivities.

So the half marathon is next weekend. My knee is finally strong enough to start exercising a bit again. I biked to work and it doesn't feel too bad right now. It's no longer painful to move just a little stiff so I'm hoping that means it'll be completely healed by next week. It's also a lot more expensive to register then I thought, $85 for the half. I think it's cheaper if you register earlier, guess I'll know for next year.

I'm also really hoping to head out to BC at the end of June. I've got 2 weeks vacation coming up that starts on the 22nd when we head out to Sioux Narrows. I’m really hoping I can convince someone to take a few weeks off and head out with me; as I haven’t had a chance to get out of Manitoba in any significant manner in years. I also really miss the mountains and I bet my cousins are getting huge. I’ll have to pay them a visit and see if I even recognize them. It’ll be amazing to drive through the mountains again too. If I don’t come back I’ve gone off to become a mountain man, fighting bears in the wild.

So I biked out to birds hill today, took me a little under 2 hours to get out there against the wind and an hour and half with the wind to get back. Holy crap am I tired, we'll see how sore I am tomorrow. I've never actually had a chance to look around birds hill before, it's a pretty nice park. It's a shame I was so tired when I got there or I woulda looked around a bit more but the daunting task of biking all the way back made me save most of my energy for that.