ahh victoria


it’s great to be in victoria again, at least for last night, today, and tomorrow until afternoon. i did not hang out with colin and jill in the last couple days, but they are some of my friends who i did recently hang out with in victoria.
i just watched my first episode of american idol tonight. it was definitely entertaining, but more so because I was hanging out with two experienced musicians, chrissie and rich. the best of the worst is on thursday night. i do not think i can miss this.
anyway i am planning on playing tennis tomorrow morning with nathan. that should be good. it has just been awesome. i have a few rad pictures from when we played last week.. plus a whole bunch of others. i will probably post these tomorrow afternoon!

the return

well it’s a gorgeous day once again and i am headed to mill bay for the duration of it. then i’m coming back up to nanaimo and then going to victoria at about 6:30!$#*(%!)*$^)(#)$(~@!#%asdfasdfsdjkvasdnvsd$~$*!@(%@#~(*$!@)(#!@
@!#*(%)(*%)~($)!(#!~)#@~!@~!@#~!#~!@$^$(#)@&#(%!@#
i am in town until wednesday evening. anyone wanna do anything!?

half eaten banana

with a half eaten banana, staring out the window, yet typing at the same time.
i’ve spent the last hour listening to coldplay and surfing blogs. it’s just gorgeous out but it’s also really cold. i really really hate not being mobile on days like these. i would have gone to the beach, i would have walked somewhere scenic.
tonight a bunch of us are going to go out and distract ourselves from what we miss. don’t get me wrong, we have lots of fun together.. i figure that .. as soon as i figured out how on earth you can take a left on bowen to go north on the island highway, no matter what end of bowen you are at, nanaimo lost a bit of it’s mystique. haha, nanaimo .. mystique. . really. i said those two words in the same sentence.
though there is some still. i haven’t yet been to ‘the abyss’ here. i have been told about it and the view from on top, and i really want to check it out. i think on a day like today, it would probably be spectacular.
strange thing about writing .. it’s hard for me to start and then when i get going it’s easy as pie. mind you, i had a bunch of distractions here in the office, but they’ve all gone home now.
and i should too. i was off about an hour and ten minutes ago. i am kind of in the mood for a nap but I will probably not nap.

beacon


photo by chrissie

of course, those lyrics below are from Coldplay’s “Clocks.” One of my favourite songs from the last half year.
it’s time to check the email. i haven’t checked my email in a very long time and i’m scared to see how much i have. aaaaaack!
i am trying to figure out whether or not i like this sort of captioning style. so far, i think no. it’s a bit too obese. maybe i’ll just drop the grey background. hmmzor. opinions?

clocks

lights go out and i can’t be saved
tides that i tried to swim against
you’ve put me down upon my knees
oh i beg, i beg and plead
come out of things unsaid,
shoot an apple off my head
trouble that can’t be named,
tigers waiting to be tamed
you are, you are
confusion never stops,
closing walls and ticking clocks
come back and take you home,
i could not stop, that you now know
come out upon my seas,
curse missed opportunities
am i a part of the cure,
or am i part of the disease?

to atlin and back


myself and anastasia (as seen above) left nanaimo airport on tuesday morning and arrived in vancouver just in time for lunch. actually we had 3 hours there, so we wandered around the mall errr airport a bit and were harassed by visa salespeople. this picture was taken inside of their milestones where i acquainted myself with the habanaro sauce. mmmm crazyhot greenstuff.
after brunch, we spent an hour looking for travelchess in any one of the giftstores and eventually found it. we never ended up playing chess, but at least i have travelchess now!
we met up with john, randy, paul and helen in vancouver, whom with we would be working.

the gang flew out of vancouver on a boeing 737 and cruised at 25,000 feet for 2.5 hours, arriving in whitehorse at about 3pm. we were greeted in whitehorse by dreary weather and mild temperatures. we drove two hours south on the alaska highway and another road to atlin. we unloaded our stuff after having dinner and then set up our presentation material at the town hall which was located in the local recreation centre. we stayed in quite the lovely bed and breakfast!

wednesday.
the scenery was immense. this is only proof that i was there. the next picture will show you some scale.

that’s anastasia on one of the docks on atlin lake. the lake is frozen about a foot deep. deep enough to stand on but i didn’t really feel like taking a chance in that area. warm springs spot the lake and could thin the ice in any area.
time went by really quick on wednesday, the presentation day.

guess what this does!

after tearing our presentation setup down at the end of wednesday night we went curling. i had never done it before and was amazed at how difficult it was to throw the rock properly. it takes some skill! we were pretty tired and had a long day of travelling ahead of us.

i woke up before anyone else and went for a walk. this was just outside of the bed and breakfast we were staying at.. just a pickup truck driving by. we were on the road soon after breakfast and in whitehorse for 10 am.

hello whitehorse.

we flew back to vancouver in this rad ultraquiet quadruple turbofan engined british aerospace plane. so cool.

the rocky mountains.
wow.

we flew along the coast until we found this place again and landed.

flying back into nanaimo we saw the slow version of a trip to the island. i like this picture a lot.

thursday at 4:35 .. we’re back!