Friday, July 29 

too much to say. not enough to say. nothing seems really interesting enough to bother with. people are good. good people are better. photowalking with my posse shuts off my inhibitions. sometimes i think i might be getting better with the photgraphy stuff. othertimes i wonder why i even bother.

oh, i had totally forgotten and just yesterday discovered that i have both monday and tuesday off work next week. i'm so thrilled. a whole extra day of sleeping in and naps!

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Wednesday, July 27 

lunch with nelson today. dinner/photowalk with col & jamie tomorrow. possible party at jen's friday (oh, there's a party all right, but it's only possible that i'll attend). then i'm doing NOTHING for three days. NOTHING! i'll watch more west wing (i'm six episodes into season three now) and eat my way through the giant vat of fruit salad i made the other night and sleep in and have naps and... yeah.

i'm so gloriously boring i can hardly stand myself.

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Tuesday, July 26 

01. When you look at yourself in the mirror, what's the first thing you look at? my hair
02. How much cash do you have on you? $30
03. What's a word that rhymes with "TEST"? rest
04. Favorite plant? gerbera daisies
05. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone? don't know. the battery is dead.
06. What is your main ring tone on your phone? *ring*
07. What shirt are you wearing? orange scoop neck
08. Do you "label" yourself? dear god, no.
09. Name brand of your shoes currently wearing? klondike steel toe sneakers
10. Bright or Dark Room? dark
11. What do you think about the person who took this survey? if i was ever in guam, i'd totally want to take josie for a drink.
12. Ever "spilled the beans"? once. the can opener broke.
13. What were you doing at midnight last night? snoring
14. What did your last text message you received on your cell phone say? "How was seattle?", i think.
15. Do you ever click on "Pop Ups" or Banners? dear god, no.
16. What's a saying that you say a lot? "cocksucker" or "that's funny"
17. Who told you they loved you last? my mom.
18. Last furry thing you touched? um. uh.
19. How many hours a week do you work? 40. at least that's what i write on my timesheet.
20. How many rolls of film do you need to get developed? none.
21. Favorite age you have been so far? 25
22. Your worst enemy? self-doubt
23. What is your current desk top picture? balookey! datura 1 at work and papavara at home.
24. What was the last thing you said to someone? "i'm almost there."
25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to go back in time and fix all your mistakes which would you choose? re-do, please.

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Monday, July 25 

i'm really groggy today. i woke up not knowing what day it was. the combination of saturday's hard labour washing all my beautiful hardwood floors and rushing around yesterday after a luxurious sleep-in to get stuff done before going to dinner with jason wiped me out. at least i'm back to my real job and i can ease into it a little this week.

hey! it's a long weekend coming up! i keep forgetting that.

today's photo is one i took of a bottle of jones soda with my photograph on the label. there's another shot up here.

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Friday, July 22 

so, i need to talk about my seattle experience. more specifically, my rental car experience. for my $35.99/day i got a toyota echo sedan. it was some sort of shiny-brownish-greyish colour with four doors and a cd-player. it did not have air conditioning. it did have power steering and power brakes.

like my first rental car experience in manitoba two years ago, i realized that power brakes are scary. as i'm pulling out of the budget rent-a-car lot, i put my foot on the brakes as i would in my own 13 year old vehicle and came to a screeching, jerking halt. oops. power brakes! then, as i'm driving through downtown vancouver at 9am on a sunday i looked down at the spedometer (once i could find it: who the hell at toyota thought it was a good idea to put it over on the CENTRE of the dash instead of in front of the driver?) and noticed i was doing almost 80kph in a 50 zone. the whisper quiet car combined with sitting higher off the ground totally eliminated my ability to judge how fast i was driving. i spent most of my driving time breaking every speed limit i passed by a very healthy margin.

the combination of my not being able to feel how fast i was driving and the REALLY FUCKING TOUCHY power brakes nearly got me arrested and/or killed before i'd even left the city of vancouver. i was through downtown and exiting off the oak street bridge (which turns into the road which takes you all the way to america. handy!) when i saw cops in the meridian stopping people for speeding. shit! i knew i was speeding, so when mr. police officer stepped out into the left lane and pointed, i hit the breaks. the car jerked and squealed. the cop yelled "NOT YOU! KEEP MOVING!" as he flagged down the guy zooming up behind me in the other lane. thankfully, there was no one immediately behind me in my lane or i would have gotten creamed. but, for all that is good in the world, why, oh why, was there a speed trap at NINE O'CLOCK on a sunday morning? if you can explain that to me, i'll give you a cookie.

it was a pretty great day out. the sun was shining, there was a nice breeze and i don't think i remember a single cloud in the sky. so the hot sun got to beat down on me in the car with no air conditioning for three hours. yay! i kept thinking, especially as i sat in the lineup at the border for half an hour, "gee, i wish i'd stopped to pick up some beverages... and a towel." poor kevin. i was pretty damp and frizzy by the time i picked him up at his hotel. the thing is, i thought all rental cars had a/c. c'mon! then again, my last rental was a free upgrade because they didn't have any economy cars available, so i guess i got spoiled with the a/c and cruise control (oh, man, what i would have given for cruise control on this trip).

after a few frightening too-hard brakings on I-5, i finally started to get accustomed to the car. i was still speeding, but so was everyone else, so i didn't worry too much about it. i did wonder what all those washingtonians thought of the brownish-greyish toyota echo with canadian plates and a big BUDGET sticker on the bumper thought as i zoomed past them, though. probably something along the lines of "fucking tourist".

i really, really liked not being embarrassed to have passengers in the vehicle with me. i liked the cd player a LOT (i'd totally get one for my car, but it's so not worth it now). i didn't much like all the blinky nag lights on the dash cajoling me when i took my seatbelt off to reach for something at the stoplight. oh, you know that dumb commercial where the echo is parked in a "large vehicles only" parking spot (yeah, like they have those) and the tow-truck driver gets in, looks around and you hear the voice-over say something dorky like "it's only small on the outside"? it's totally true. the echo is freaking HUGE inside. and tall. i couldn't get over how much headroom there was. if i had fifteen grand in the bank, i'd totally go buy one. but not the sedan. it totally weirded me out to know that there was a bit of car sticking out past the rear window that i could not see. no thanks. it's all hatchbacks for me.

huh. when did this turn into a car review? ohwell. i'm going to go buy a burrito for lunch now.

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Wednesday, July 20 

as part of being sean this week, i get to injure myself on the job. yesterday, i forgot how heavy the big boxes on the pallet jack were and yanked them something fierce, causing myself a mild form of whiplash. today, i lifted some heavy things and i'm pretty sure i didn't use just my legs to do it. we'll see if my lower back is as tender tomorrow as my upper back is today. gee, it's a good thing they're paying me that extra $1.93/hour, huh?

i'm on the cusp of a serious hermit phase. i'm not answering emails, i'm avoidng the phone, i'm *this* close to cancelling any plans i have with people. i'm not really bloo, i just suddenly want to avoid the world. it started before the bad news i got yesterday morning, but that email certainly did nothing to encourage me to slap it down and keep on truckin'. before you go asking, it's not tragic news. my plans for sunday fell through due to scheduling issues and i'm upset about it.

i was really looking forward to seeing rick again (which does not come anywhere near close to doing justice to the actual feeling involved). it was probably going to be the last time i would get to see him, what with him living in arkansas and all. if it wasn't for all the 5-htp in my system, i probably would have cried a lot more than the few tears which rolled down my cheeks at 6:23 yesterday morning as i read the news. i suppose that's a good thing, lest people harangue me for being overly-emotional about something so trivial in the larger scheme of things.

there are things i want to write about, but don't know if i ever will. i've been thinking too hard about how to write well and when i do that it doesn't come out at all. it's a strange mix of writer's block and stage fright. this post was an exercise in just letting it flow. how'd i do?

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Monday, July 18 

after a beer-laden friday night out and a completely wasted saturday, i had a twelve-and-a-half hour adventure tour of seattle (well, it was six hours of driving and six hours of touring) with kevin and his boss/friend greg. i don't have time right now to do the visit justice, but suffice it to say that mkh is just as wonderful, sweet, funny and intelligent in person as he is on his website. oh, and he gives fantastic hugs!

in other, less pleasant news, i'm sean at work this week so posts will probably be of the evening variety. don't let anyone say i don't keep you updated! *cough*jeremy*cough*

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Friday, July 15 

well, i'm not sure if my headache is from fun. it's probably more from the beer and the inappropriate nap which kept me up and talking to jeremy on skype until very late last night. now it's friday, i've the worst hair ever, i have to wait two whole days until i go to seattle...

aw, fuck it. if you have nothing good to say, you should just shut up.

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Thursday, July 14 

i was going to bore you all with a list of the 87 dvds i've watched since joining the canadian netflix clone vhq online, whom i love more than words can say.

87 dvds. 55 weeks. $19.95 per month. 1.58 dvds per week. $2.75 per dvd.

not bad, huh? click for the list.

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Thursday, July 14 

i totally wasted all my good material on wade, so you guys are stuck with photos instead of interesting stories about toilet seats and rice in a can. i'm sorry. it's all wade's fault.

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Wednesday, July 13 

i'm so EXCITED! this coming sunday, i'm driving a rental car down to seattle to meet mr. hall of hidden city. he's there for some conferency thing and since it's not like i'm ever going to florida, i decided to drive the couple of hours down to meet up and let him buy me a belated birthday meal.

but, that's not all! the sunday after this, i'm driving another rental car back down to seattle to spend the afternoon with my very favourite rick who is also in town for a conferency thing (man, i never get to go to conferency things!).

luckily, my passport is good until the end of the month, so i don't have to find my birth certificate. OHMYGOD! i'm so thrilled. travel! adventure! strange american men! yippee!

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Tuesday, July 12 

geez, people. it wasn't THAT kind of weekend o' love. it was three of my favourite people making me feel special and appreciated in honour of my birthday.

friday night, m&m and i went to the pub, sat at the bar, drank beer, played ntn texas hold'em, ate food, laughed, talked, and had a damn fine time. saturday, karen took me out for the biggest, most decadent lunch, a movie, megashopping and then we came back to my place to watch a dvd. sunday, colene took me to the tomahawk for a giant brunch and then we had a lovely walk'n'talk along the north van side of the harbour.

THAT'S the kind of love it was. dirty, dirty people. *tsk*

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Monday, July 11 

holy moly i'm popular lately! unfortunately, i'm so swamped i can't even tell you about it. maybe tonight. yes, tonight. i'll do my best to sit down and tell you some of the good stuff i have to tell from my weekend o' love.

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Friday, July 08 

last night saw me out and about false creek with the vandigicam group for the first time last night. thankfully, i had jamie there to break me in softly. strangers are scary, you know. luckily, most of those strangers weren't too scary. i might just even go out with them again. i took a bunch of pictures, seventy-five percent of which were crap. ohwell. one day i'll learn to cull the crap to save disk space. really!

i think i like my hair now. although, it's still not short enough (i can't believe i just typed that). i guess that means i'm going back to bossy persian lady next week and say "don't change it, just make it shorter! thank you."

there's a busy weekend ahead. last night out, tonight there's tentative dinner with m&m, saturday i'm going to food and a movie with keb and sunday it's brunch with colene. i'm totally milking this birthday thing for all it's worth! go me.

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Thursday, July 07 

while washing my hands earlier (which really has no bearing at all), i was thinking that i'd really like to have some sex this weekend.

then i was thinking that it'd be great if you could just call up that guy/girl you know who's really hot and say "hey, let's have some sex this weekend". s/he'd come over, you'd have some great sex and then you'd get up on monday morning and go about your life just like you'd seen a great movie or gone to a great show, chatting at the water cooler about your weekend: how you did laundry, got nailed on the kitchen counter and then found your favourite shampoo on sale at london drugs.

yeah, that'd be great, wouldn't it?

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Wednesday, July 06 

back to the grind. work will kick my ass this week, especially if i continue to wake up with headaches. why do i wake up with headaches? you'd think that getting almost a foot of hair chopped off would make my head feel lighter, freer, less achy.

yes, virginia, i finally got my hair cut. what? it's only been 17 months since my last haircut. i had a horrendously horrendous hair weekend, and that put me over the edge. i headed straight for magicuts on my way home last night and sat there until the slightly overbearing persian woman told me to come sit in her chair. it's not quite what i wanted (or asked for) but at least it's healthier and, hey, it'll always grow back. right?

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Monday, July 04 

oh dear god... i'm 33! i'm officially in my thirties now. there's really no saying otherwise at this point. i could pull out the ol' 29 with four year's experience, but that kind of thing mostly annoys me.

the last year brought me lots of stuff: a new apartment, a new job, a new camera, a new bed, a new computer. i had a short affair which left me cold. i had a near-breakdown which left me philosophic. i dated! i made new friends and lost old ones. i discovered pho and salmon sashimi. i finally met my jeremy after knowing him for over eight years. i also met long-time blog friends jim, jodi, julie and andrea in person; spent time with my favourite aussie, Adrian; and, i can't forget meeting the (in)famous dooce. i asked for help and didn't die from shame. i discovered flickr. i became a part-time camwhore.

i'm on my third full-time job, my second apartment, my fifth computer, my first car (still), my third edmonton-boy crush, my second desk, and my first kickass officemate. i still don't know what i want to be when i grow up, but i think i might be getting closer. i'm on the financial mend (even with that annoying mastercard hiccough). i'm still too hard on myself, but i'm getting better. i've learned that if i don't open up i'll never have anyone know the real me and if that doesn't happen then i only have myself to blame for ending up lonely.

this year i'm dedicating to self-improvement: better nutrition, better physical condition, more me time, more creative expressions, more friends, more adventure, more honesty, more spontaneity, more love (even for myself), better hair, less tv, more music, more books, more outside, less futon, exfoliating, moisturizing, flossing, trying new foods, talking to strangers, taking more photos, using my words, thinking of others first, living in the now and not for the weekend, more "thank you"s.

it's a tall order, but i've three hundred-some days to try it all on for size. i may not be perfect, but i'm a pretty good person with pretty good intentions most of the time. i could do a lot worse, but i could be doing a lot better, too.

happy thirty-three to me! i'm going to work on enjoying the process this year. i hope you're all along for the ride, because it's sure to be an adventure!

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Friday, July 01 

happy canada day!

yesterday, my new friend jamie took me out for a fabulous lunch and an entertaining photowalk around queen elizabeth park (where i stalked highschool grads and found the next scarlett o'hara). after my amazing afternoon, daddy came to my rescue and returned light to my kitchen. by ten o'clock, i was knackered and ready for bed.

today, i've been cleaning, baking cookies, playing with lucy and talking to wade. really, that's pretty much all i've done. who knew i could do so little in twelve hours?

tomorrow i head over to the island to see my rellies and eat ice cream cake for my belly button day on sunday.

i hope everyone has a great weekend, long or not, and i'll be back on tuesday. *smooch*

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