Three years ago this month I bought a brand new Mazda. I had a car to trade in and a bit of money saved up but I still had to get a sizable loan to cover the remaining costs. Back then I was working at a job that paid me well when I had to drive my own car and I made the odd extra payment when I had some saved up. Today I called to check up on how that 5 year loan was progressing and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I was only 1 and a half payments away from having that car paid off so I authorized a final lump sum to be done with it!
What a lovely feeling.
I really like my car and I think it was a realitively wise decision to buy it considering my situation at the time. But I hated making payments, even though they were reasonable, each month and I think in the future I will try if possible to keep my car debt very low or non existant. Especially since two years after I bought that car I quit my job and went on an adventure. Being bogged down with payments seriuosly hampers one's ability to do that.
Aside from paying off my car 2 years early, I have been learning to cook. It's never been something that I was good at or enjoyed. And my tastes in food aren't sophisticated enough that I had the motivation, but recently something has changed. It started out with muffins from scratch. One day I just felt like having muffins that weren't a ready made just-add-water and eggs mix. It progressed to making a few dinners requiring more than one step and 10 minutes. Then I tried to make my favourite things to eat (like chili) that I'd never actually attempted before. I began throwing in the odd dessert and even tried my hand at bread and buiscuits (both sad attempts but I'll get better). It's gotten to the point where I'm usually making something substantial about twice a week. It's been great. Some days I still don't feel like going through the effort (like today - although I still managed to throw together some enchiladas) - those are days I'm thankful if I have leftovers - but I kind of like feeling like I can prepare food for people that they might actually enjoy. So far my biggest success is Indian naan bread. Trust me, if I invite you over for it, don't turn me down. Unless you can't have gluten or hate Indian food.
So that's my latest journey. The world of cooking. It's kind of a scary place but armed with a couple of good cookbooks and a mom only a phone call away I hope to do a lot more exploring.
The next thing on my list is to make a Jamaician Jerk roast. Probably not till next week though. This week was a lemon/cranberry loaf and enchiladas. I'm busy so I think it will be a couple nights of spaghetti and Ceasar salad. Maybe I'll try making my own crutons! So yummy!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Hiking the Olympic Peninsula
When I was younger I was on a long day hike with my dad in Waterton. We saw a girl and two guys with big packs finishing a multi-day backpacking trip. I knew then that I'd love it if I ever got the opportunity to go on one myself. I've done a few now and I'm so hooked. If anyone wants to go hiking, just let me know.
Toward the end of July I went on a super cool backpacking trip in Olympic National Park in Washington state! Just took me a bit of time to post it. But here you go!
I chose to go to Seattle during the hottest week they've ever had. That's right, I was there on the day they had the hottest temperature "ever recorded." At least that's what all the Seattle-ites told me. But after boarding the ferry for the Peninsula we could literally feel the temperature falling. 
All packed and ready to go.
Once crossing this bridge, we were officially off on our hike!
Oh crap. My shoulders are sore already. But who cares!
Not him. He's super excited about our adventure. Can you tell?
The first three miles of the hike were on this boardwalk. It was the fastest three miles we hiked the entire time. We had gotten a late start so by the time we hit the beach it was already getting dark. So no pictures from that first evening. We were lucky enough (or blessed enough) to run into a guy on the beach who could direct us to the camp sites. I don't know that we would have found them in the dark on our own.
Here was that first campsite south of Sand Point. It was back in the trees a bit and very beautiful.
Here's the type of beach we hiked on for the first while of our second day. This might have been Yellow Banks, or shortly after Yellow Banks. We didn't really follow our map much that day. Which, by the way, was a mistake. In several places we had to be concious of the tide height and could only cross when it was below a certain level.
This shows a little bit how much the tide goes in and out. I'd say this is at mid-tide.
This beach was a ways before the Norwegian Memorial and was even rockier but we found a fantastic lunch spot. It is soooo nice to take a break from the hiking boots.
These rocky beaches were a hard hike. We had two 3 mile sections and I would say they were the hardest sections.
To get a break from the rocks we walked across driftwood for a couple of miles. At first I was scared but it ended up being super fun. He loved it of course. He's got great balance, even with a 50 pound pack on his back. I did okay, but only if I relied heavily on my hiking poles.
We loved camping at Cedar Creek. We were on a site raised up from the beach and we had our first camp fire. It was lovely.
Seals! We also saw otters while we were filtering our water one evening. They hung out with us for like 20 minutes and chilled out on the same log we were sitting on. They were cool.
The rocks were kind of cool. Some led to some interesting beach nicknames. My dad had heard about one of them and knew this was it when he saw the picture.
This was Cape Johnson. I loved these rocks. They were flat and super easy to walk on. Plus there were all sorts of tide pools with cool seaweed and starfish and sea urchins and all kinds of neat stuff. This was our third day and we had to get across this headland before the tide hit 4 feet. It meant an early wake up and quick camp exit but we made it!
Cool rocks that we had to walk through. That calls for a picture!
This is Hole-In-The-Wall. One of our funniest moments occurred about 1.5 minutes following the taking of this picture. There are no pictures taken for about 8 hours following the taking of this picture. Here's the story:
We had to do a really easy bit of rock climbing to get around the other side. There were tons of people (without packs I will point out) doing it with no problem. This was close enough to La Push that tourists could easily do a short day hike here and back without having to carry a pack and tent and stuff. Anyway, I knew I could do it, but I was nervous about doing it with my pack. I don't have the best of balance on a good day. So I asked my boyfriend to put my camera into the waterproof dry sack I had along so if I fell into the ocean my camera wouldn't get wet. He lovlingly agreed (although I wouldn't be surprised if he rolled his eyes behind my back) and somehow as he was stuffing it in the dry sack, it slipped out and fell directly into the water (oh the irony). Oops! He jumped down with his pack on and grabbed it out of the water in about 10 seconds. The water was just started to soak through the nylon case and we weren't sure how wet it had gotten so we put it away in the dry sack and buried it in my pack and didn't take it out for a couple of hours. That's why there's no pictures of Rialto beach or La Push or our hitch hiking adventure to get around the river (too big to swim) to the Third Beach trailhead.
Then, being lazy and not shortening them, I got him to fasten my hiking poles to my pack so I'd have my hands free. Except they got stuck on an overhang and popped off my pack and they took a swim in the ocean. Back into the water he went to rescue my hiking poles. I seriously owe the guy for saving all my stuff that day.
What should have taken us 2 minutes had now taken twenty so finally I took off my pack, crossed the section, held onto his pack while he went back for mine. The people that later ended up giving us a ride while we were hitching had passed us while this whole drama was going on. So embarrassing.
We did make it to the Third Beach trailhead though.
Look at the roots on that baby.
We hiked the 1.5 miles from the trailhead to Third Beach. It was packed and for the first time we slept right on the beach with everyone else. He was super excited to make a big camp fire again.
On our fourth day we covered 14 miles. It was our longest day. This was early on at Strawberry Point. Someday I'd like to go back and stretch our 4th day into 3 days because of how pretty it was and how much exploring we could have done. Apparently there are sea caves out there to explore. This was the closest to them that we got though.
We saw an eagle at Toleak Point!!! See it on top of this rock? We wondered from quite a way off whether it was a rock or an eagle. But it was definitely an eagle.
See. Here's the proof.
Some beaches were nicer than others. This was beautiful but there was a lot of seaweed all over the beach and there were these bugs that lived in it. And they were cool in that they ran away from us instead of toward us (unlike any bug I've ever met here in Saskatchewan) but they are still bugs and I wouldn't want to sleep on this beach!
Anytime the headland was too dangerous to cross (regardless of tide level) there were overland trails to take. Most of the overland trails were quite steep. If you look real close, you can see me climbing the ladder.
If you didn't look real closely, here's another shot.
Filtering water was a thrice daily chore. We tried to plan to hit major streams when we wanted to take a break anyway. This was about half way on the overland trail past Toleak Point beach. We were planning quite a long day for ourselves and we should have had lunch while we filtered water here. However, I was being stubborn and wanted our major break to be on the beach.
Would have been great except that we got lost trying to follow the instructions of some hikers we'd met earlier in the day. They told us to take the "barely visible path to the left once we could hear the ocean" to avoid a landslide. Probelm: There were A LOT of barely visible paths to the left once we could hear the ocean. After we had been lost long enough for me to start to break down (there may have been a misting of the eyes) He saved the day, found the CORRECT "barely visible path to the left" and we went down some more ladders to a beautiful beautiful beach and had a nice long lunch break. We were on the north end of the Mosquite Creek beach.
The beach by Mosquito Creek. No mosquitos that we could see. Just 2.2 miles of moody-weathered beauty. I would have liked to spend a day here. I really think I will try to do that someday.
A quick diversion to scare all the birds just before we had to leave the beach.
We had to watch for these markers which designated the overland trails. Sometimes they were super hard to find and we would both be squinting in the distance while we walked worried we'd missed the trailhead. But we always found it eventually.
We started on this trail after already having hiked our longest day of the trip. It was 3.5 miles long and we had no idea what to expect. We'd heard differing reports on it's difficulty. A friend of mine from work who'd hiked it in the past said it would take 2.5 hours. A ranger that we talked to when picking up our permits said it took him 4 hours. This worried us greatly and was the reason we decided to tack it on to our 4th day instead of saving it for the 5th day. There was a section the next day that we could only cross between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning because of the tide. Some days, the tide doesn't even go low enough to cross but we knew it would that day. If we missed it, we would have to wait until the following morning and be set back an entire day.
Since we had no way of knowing how long the overland trail would take us (I mean if it took a ranger 4 hours, it could take us 6!) we would have had to get up at 3 in the morning and hike it in the dark to make sure we'd get to Jefferson Cove by 7:30 at the latest. So, we decide to hike the trail that night. Thankfully, because it had been a "warm, dry" year, we managed it in around 3 hours. Maybe a bit less.
We arrived on the beach before Jefferson Cove around 9pm. The tide was almost at its height and the entire sandy part of the beach was covered with water. We couldn't set up any sleeping arrangments and had to perch ourselves up on some driftwood until the tide started to go down at around 12:30am. My wonderful wonderful guy made us a driftwood table so we could spread out a blanket and unpack our bags to get our food and warm clothes.
This is his beautiful driftwood table. I think eating dinner on that in the dark and the mist was one of my favourite meals. We'd accomoplished so much in the past four days and even though we were uncomfortable, cold, wet and tired, we were so content.
The point you see in the distance is the headland of Jefferson Cover that we had to hike around before the tide rose above 2 feet in the morning or risk being stuck for a day. Not that that seemed like such a bad when the beach looks like this... Problem is that pesky tide would rise again and we'd be back on our driftwood table in a couple of hours.
Headland completed! That was the final edge of it and you can see that the water is already starting to creep up.
A last picture of the gorgeous beach before we had to head inland for a half hour walk to the car.
Always glad to see my little blue car! We were very thankful that it had not been vandalised in the several days it sat waiting. Guess we didn't need to hide anything in the spare tire cubby after all.
Here is a final picture of the beautiful Washington coast.
Next summer is the West Coast Trail! My dad's even agreed to come along. How exciting!
Toward the end of July I went on a super cool backpacking trip in Olympic National Park in Washington state! Just took me a bit of time to post it. But here you go!
I chose to go to Seattle during the hottest week they've ever had. That's right, I was there on the day they had the hottest temperature "ever recorded." At least that's what all the Seattle-ites told me. But after boarding the ferry for the Peninsula we could literally feel the temperature falling. My boyfriend's mom agreed to drive us from her place where we were staying, to the end of our hike to drop my car, to the beginning of the hike to start.
We left my car at the trailhead near Oil City. We were a bit nervous to leave it for so long so we tried to be sneaky. The front of the car looked completely empty. We'd put everything in the trunk (and even hid our most valuable possessions in the spare tire cubby in case someone broke in) and left a couple of empty pop cans in the back and a subway wrapper on the floor so it didn't "look" like we'd cleaned out the entire car. We thought we were clever.
We were driven to the Ozette trailhead and dropped off to begin our adventure. A five day 40 mile hike along the Olympic Peninsula Coast. Ooooo. I was so excited.
All packed and ready to go.
Once crossing this bridge, we were officially off on our hike!
Oh crap. My shoulders are sore already. But who cares!
Not him. He's super excited about our adventure. Can you tell?The first three miles of the hike were on this boardwalk. It was the fastest three miles we hiked the entire time. We had gotten a late start so by the time we hit the beach it was already getting dark. So no pictures from that first evening. We were lucky enough (or blessed enough) to run into a guy on the beach who could direct us to the camp sites. I don't know that we would have found them in the dark on our own.
Here was that first campsite south of Sand Point. It was back in the trees a bit and very beautiful.
Here's the type of beach we hiked on for the first while of our second day. This might have been Yellow Banks, or shortly after Yellow Banks. We didn't really follow our map much that day. Which, by the way, was a mistake. In several places we had to be concious of the tide height and could only cross when it was below a certain level.
This shows a little bit how much the tide goes in and out. I'd say this is at mid-tide.
This beach was a ways before the Norwegian Memorial and was even rockier but we found a fantastic lunch spot. It is soooo nice to take a break from the hiking boots.
These rocky beaches were a hard hike. We had two 3 mile sections and I would say they were the hardest sections.
To get a break from the rocks we walked across driftwood for a couple of miles. At first I was scared but it ended up being super fun. He loved it of course. He's got great balance, even with a 50 pound pack on his back. I did okay, but only if I relied heavily on my hiking poles.
We loved camping at Cedar Creek. We were on a site raised up from the beach and we had our first camp fire. It was lovely.
Seals! We also saw otters while we were filtering our water one evening. They hung out with us for like 20 minutes and chilled out on the same log we were sitting on. They were cool.
The rocks were kind of cool. Some led to some interesting beach nicknames. My dad had heard about one of them and knew this was it when he saw the picture.
This was Cape Johnson. I loved these rocks. They were flat and super easy to walk on. Plus there were all sorts of tide pools with cool seaweed and starfish and sea urchins and all kinds of neat stuff. This was our third day and we had to get across this headland before the tide hit 4 feet. It meant an early wake up and quick camp exit but we made it!
Cool rocks that we had to walk through. That calls for a picture!
This is Hole-In-The-Wall. One of our funniest moments occurred about 1.5 minutes following the taking of this picture. There are no pictures taken for about 8 hours following the taking of this picture. Here's the story:We had to do a really easy bit of rock climbing to get around the other side. There were tons of people (without packs I will point out) doing it with no problem. This was close enough to La Push that tourists could easily do a short day hike here and back without having to carry a pack and tent and stuff. Anyway, I knew I could do it, but I was nervous about doing it with my pack. I don't have the best of balance on a good day. So I asked my boyfriend to put my camera into the waterproof dry sack I had along so if I fell into the ocean my camera wouldn't get wet. He lovlingly agreed (although I wouldn't be surprised if he rolled his eyes behind my back) and somehow as he was stuffing it in the dry sack, it slipped out and fell directly into the water (oh the irony). Oops! He jumped down with his pack on and grabbed it out of the water in about 10 seconds. The water was just started to soak through the nylon case and we weren't sure how wet it had gotten so we put it away in the dry sack and buried it in my pack and didn't take it out for a couple of hours. That's why there's no pictures of Rialto beach or La Push or our hitch hiking adventure to get around the river (too big to swim) to the Third Beach trailhead.
Then, being lazy and not shortening them, I got him to fasten my hiking poles to my pack so I'd have my hands free. Except they got stuck on an overhang and popped off my pack and they took a swim in the ocean. Back into the water he went to rescue my hiking poles. I seriously owe the guy for saving all my stuff that day.
What should have taken us 2 minutes had now taken twenty so finally I took off my pack, crossed the section, held onto his pack while he went back for mine. The people that later ended up giving us a ride while we were hitching had passed us while this whole drama was going on. So embarrassing.
We did make it to the Third Beach trailhead though.
Look at the roots on that baby.We hiked the 1.5 miles from the trailhead to Third Beach. It was packed and for the first time we slept right on the beach with everyone else. He was super excited to make a big camp fire again.
On our fourth day we covered 14 miles. It was our longest day. This was early on at Strawberry Point. Someday I'd like to go back and stretch our 4th day into 3 days because of how pretty it was and how much exploring we could have done. Apparently there are sea caves out there to explore. This was the closest to them that we got though.
We saw an eagle at Toleak Point!!! See it on top of this rock? We wondered from quite a way off whether it was a rock or an eagle. But it was definitely an eagle.
See. Here's the proof.
Some beaches were nicer than others. This was beautiful but there was a lot of seaweed all over the beach and there were these bugs that lived in it. And they were cool in that they ran away from us instead of toward us (unlike any bug I've ever met here in Saskatchewan) but they are still bugs and I wouldn't want to sleep on this beach!
Anytime the headland was too dangerous to cross (regardless of tide level) there were overland trails to take. Most of the overland trails were quite steep. If you look real close, you can see me climbing the ladder.
If you didn't look real closely, here's another shot.
Filtering water was a thrice daily chore. We tried to plan to hit major streams when we wanted to take a break anyway. This was about half way on the overland trail past Toleak Point beach. We were planning quite a long day for ourselves and we should have had lunch while we filtered water here. However, I was being stubborn and wanted our major break to be on the beach.Would have been great except that we got lost trying to follow the instructions of some hikers we'd met earlier in the day. They told us to take the "barely visible path to the left once we could hear the ocean" to avoid a landslide. Probelm: There were A LOT of barely visible paths to the left once we could hear the ocean. After we had been lost long enough for me to start to break down (there may have been a misting of the eyes) He saved the day, found the CORRECT "barely visible path to the left" and we went down some more ladders to a beautiful beautiful beach and had a nice long lunch break. We were on the north end of the Mosquite Creek beach.
The beach by Mosquito Creek. No mosquitos that we could see. Just 2.2 miles of moody-weathered beauty. I would have liked to spend a day here. I really think I will try to do that someday.
A quick diversion to scare all the birds just before we had to leave the beach.
We had to watch for these markers which designated the overland trails. Sometimes they were super hard to find and we would both be squinting in the distance while we walked worried we'd missed the trailhead. But we always found it eventually.We started on this trail after already having hiked our longest day of the trip. It was 3.5 miles long and we had no idea what to expect. We'd heard differing reports on it's difficulty. A friend of mine from work who'd hiked it in the past said it would take 2.5 hours. A ranger that we talked to when picking up our permits said it took him 4 hours. This worried us greatly and was the reason we decided to tack it on to our 4th day instead of saving it for the 5th day. There was a section the next day that we could only cross between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning because of the tide. Some days, the tide doesn't even go low enough to cross but we knew it would that day. If we missed it, we would have to wait until the following morning and be set back an entire day.
Since we had no way of knowing how long the overland trail would take us (I mean if it took a ranger 4 hours, it could take us 6!) we would have had to get up at 3 in the morning and hike it in the dark to make sure we'd get to Jefferson Cove by 7:30 at the latest. So, we decide to hike the trail that night. Thankfully, because it had been a "warm, dry" year, we managed it in around 3 hours. Maybe a bit less.
We arrived on the beach before Jefferson Cove around 9pm. The tide was almost at its height and the entire sandy part of the beach was covered with water. We couldn't set up any sleeping arrangments and had to perch ourselves up on some driftwood until the tide started to go down at around 12:30am. My wonderful wonderful guy made us a driftwood table so we could spread out a blanket and unpack our bags to get our food and warm clothes.
This is his beautiful driftwood table. I think eating dinner on that in the dark and the mist was one of my favourite meals. We'd accomoplished so much in the past four days and even though we were uncomfortable, cold, wet and tired, we were so content.
The point you see in the distance is the headland of Jefferson Cover that we had to hike around before the tide rose above 2 feet in the morning or risk being stuck for a day. Not that that seemed like such a bad when the beach looks like this... Problem is that pesky tide would rise again and we'd be back on our driftwood table in a couple of hours.
Headland completed! That was the final edge of it and you can see that the water is already starting to creep up.
A last picture of the gorgeous beach before we had to head inland for a half hour walk to the car.
Always glad to see my little blue car! We were very thankful that it had not been vandalised in the several days it sat waiting. Guess we didn't need to hide anything in the spare tire cubby after all.
Here is a final picture of the beautiful Washington coast.Next summer is the West Coast Trail! My dad's even agreed to come along. How exciting!
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Making an honest woman of myself
I went on a super fun hiking trip this weekend. It's a 40km hike in Prince Albert National Park near Waskesiu to Grey Owl's Cabin. It was time to do this seeing as I work at a backpacking store and have never done the most popular backpacking trip within easy driving distance of the city I live in. I feel so much more legitimate now. A friend that isn't really that into hiking totally made my day when she agreed to go with me!!! Even for me, sleeping by myself 17km down a trail is a bit much. I maybe would have hiked it alone, but not slept out there.
So with my equipment, some borrowed equipment, and our happy-go-lucky attitudes (seriously, we were so cheerful you would have been annoyed to be with us) we were off!
We were armed with our bear spray and glad to have it when we saw this sign.
The path was easy to follow and so pretty. It was excessively pleasant. This bridge was a bit sketchy though. There was extra lumber beside it as if they are planning to rebuild it but haven't had a chance yet. You can't really tell, but there are a couple planks missing and it's pretty bowed.
So with my equipment, some borrowed equipment, and our happy-go-lucky attitudes (seriously, we were so cheerful you would have been annoyed to be with us) we were off!
We were armed with our bear spray and glad to have it when we saw this sign.
The path was easy to follow and so pretty. It was excessively pleasant. This bridge was a bit sketchy though. There was extra lumber beside it as if they are planning to rebuild it but haven't had a chance yet. You can't really tell, but there are a couple planks missing and it's pretty bowed.
Taking a break!
After 20 km of walking, we finally reached the cabin!! The first word's out of my mouth were, "Wouldn't it be awesome to live here!" At that particular moment, after a long day, both of us having sore feet and backs, my hiking partner did't agree wholeheartedly that she'd like to live there. And maybe I wouldn't either, but it would be nice to have it as a vacation cottage maybe.
We had to walk 3.3 km back to our campsite where we'd already set up our tent. I wish I'd taken a picture of the bear caches. The backcountry campsites on this hike were awesome! They had platforms built to store your food and toiletries with ladders. So much easier than having to tie your food up in a tree.
This was my first time using my new tent and new sleeping bag. I was very excited about it! It was a bit of a chilly night though.
I love moss. And there was so much of it on this hike. I felt like gasping with delight when we came around a corner and saw this.
We were so glad to get those boots off. Even though I enjoyed the hike immensley, that satisfying feeling of getting those dang boots off your feet is unlike any other.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
ice ice baby
I was walking down the trendy artsy street that I work on yesterday and there was a super cute little ice cream shop. I would have expected to hear some jazzy or folksy music coming from it. Or maybe oldies. But instead it was hard core obscene rap. It was just wrong. If I ever own an ice cream shop there will be strict musical rules.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
I hate being unreliable. In some ways I am very responsible. But in other ways, I am very disorganised which sometimes leads to me forgetting I've made plans and totally ditching on something. I did that yesterday. I had an appointment yesterday morning before work but because of the long weekend, I forgot that yesterday was Wednesday. I thought it was Tuesday. How does a person become better at stuff like that? I wouldn't use an electronic scheduler book (and wouldn't want to even if I thought I'd keep up with it) and I've really been trying to write things down on my calendar. But if I don't get a chance to write it down right away, than I usually lose the piece of paper that I've written the appointment on.
Okay, venting done.
I just watched "The Bucket List." It was an interesting movie. My main thought about the whole movie is that I hope I'm the kind of wife that would not only encourage my dying husband to do something like that but go along with him and have even crazier ideas than him.
Sometimes I have an illogical aversion to something. I get the idea in my head that I don't want anything to do with these things and no one can convince me otherwise. Except every once in awhile circumstance conspire that I try them out and then I love them. For example, I was very against getting a cell phone when everyone first started using them. But then I was given one for work that I used pretty much as much as I wanted to (perk!) for almost 5 years. I have to be honest that giving up that phone was hard to do. I ended up caving and getting a personal cell phone about 7 months later. It is only a pre paid phone, but considering how strongly I originally opposed the idea, that is a pretty big step.
I was also sure I would NEVER use Skype. I didn't have a webcam, didn't want one, and had no use for figuring out how to download it. The phone (a landline at that) was fine for me. But when I was in Hawaii some of the participants that were at Haggai for the training essentially stole my computer and downloaded it in front of me. Since they'd already downloaded it, I decided to buy the cheapest webcam I could find ($19 at Walmart) so that I could talk to my parents on Christmas day and see them. Well, it was kind of cool actually. Then I talked to my grandparents. Then my parents again. Then when I came home, I talked to a couple of friends that I'd made while there on it. And now, I use it at least 3 or 4 times a week and I am extremely grateful for it. No crick in my neck if I want to talk on Skype while I do the dishes! I've even made dinner with my roomate here in Saskatchewan while the two of us have chatted with someone in Hawaii. It's so cool.
The newest "sure I'll never have anything to do with it" thing, is that Twilight Series. I mean vampires? Are you serious? How lame. Except I have one friend who's read the books at least 4 or 5 times and saw the movie in the theatre at least 5 or 6 times. So I decided to watch the movie. And I was impressed. So I read the book. I admit that I still kind of laughed whenever the girl said, "Edward is a vampire," but overall, I got sucked in. And now I can hardly wait to read the next one.
But I don't ever want to play Settlers of Catan. And that one, I'm going to stick to.
Okay, venting done.
I just watched "The Bucket List." It was an interesting movie. My main thought about the whole movie is that I hope I'm the kind of wife that would not only encourage my dying husband to do something like that but go along with him and have even crazier ideas than him.
Sometimes I have an illogical aversion to something. I get the idea in my head that I don't want anything to do with these things and no one can convince me otherwise. Except every once in awhile circumstance conspire that I try them out and then I love them. For example, I was very against getting a cell phone when everyone first started using them. But then I was given one for work that I used pretty much as much as I wanted to (perk!) for almost 5 years. I have to be honest that giving up that phone was hard to do. I ended up caving and getting a personal cell phone about 7 months later. It is only a pre paid phone, but considering how strongly I originally opposed the idea, that is a pretty big step.
I was also sure I would NEVER use Skype. I didn't have a webcam, didn't want one, and had no use for figuring out how to download it. The phone (a landline at that) was fine for me. But when I was in Hawaii some of the participants that were at Haggai for the training essentially stole my computer and downloaded it in front of me. Since they'd already downloaded it, I decided to buy the cheapest webcam I could find ($19 at Walmart) so that I could talk to my parents on Christmas day and see them. Well, it was kind of cool actually. Then I talked to my grandparents. Then my parents again. Then when I came home, I talked to a couple of friends that I'd made while there on it. And now, I use it at least 3 or 4 times a week and I am extremely grateful for it. No crick in my neck if I want to talk on Skype while I do the dishes! I've even made dinner with my roomate here in Saskatchewan while the two of us have chatted with someone in Hawaii. It's so cool.
The newest "sure I'll never have anything to do with it" thing, is that Twilight Series. I mean vampires? Are you serious? How lame. Except I have one friend who's read the books at least 4 or 5 times and saw the movie in the theatre at least 5 or 6 times. So I decided to watch the movie. And I was impressed. So I read the book. I admit that I still kind of laughed whenever the girl said, "Edward is a vampire," but overall, I got sucked in. And now I can hardly wait to read the next one.
But I don't ever want to play Settlers of Catan. And that one, I'm going to stick to.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Money, that's what I want
Hmmm. So I'm one of the managers at a backpacking store now. Big career change for me but so far it's been lots of fun. The only problem is that I see everything that comes into the store and I want it all. I just bought a wicked cool tent. And a new Therma-rest. And today while looking at a different product, I just about bought a camp stove and a down sleeping mat. They are both amazing products which is why I want them but I totally can't spend that kind of cash right now. And I haven't even added up what I've spent on clothes in the past 3 weeks. It's slightly ridiculous. Now here's the thing, compared to most people, I probably haven't really spent that much or gone that crazy. But compared to myself, this is INSANE behavouir. My family has always known I was the lone gal of our clan that didn't like to shop. But it appears that I just never had the right motivation. I've never really had too much of a problem with overspending. I've been fairly careful with my funds and usually have decent self-discipline. But apparently I've lost some of that discipline. I don't know what to do. This is foreign to me!
Someone's been sitting in my chair...
Ahhh. Hee hee. Ahem. You know when you were supposed to do something for a friend and you didn't and then it got to the point where it was embarassing to admit that you forgot because it had been so long so you sort of just avoided the entire situation? That's sort of how I've been feeling about this blog. I have lots of stories about Hawaii to tell but never enough time (it seems) to tell them. And so I've avoided blogs almost entireley to not have to think about how longs it's been. So that's my story about why I've been away so long. But I really am trying to get over my pride about things, especially that involve communicating with people so here's my attempt at getting myself back on the bandwagon.
So a few weekends ago I was out of town. I'd left breakfast's dishes on the counter. I'd had company the night before but I'd peeked into the spare room and noticed that she'd made the bed. Sunday afternoon when I returned home, I noticed that a glass that I never use was on the counter with traces of orange juice in it. I knew I hadn't used it and my first thougt was, "Who's been drinking my orange juice?" Then, a while later, I was using the phone in the spare room because my cordless sucks and dies after like 20 minutes but I don't want to spend the money on a new one yet. Anyway, the bed looked like it was made kind of funny. And differently than I remember seeing it before I left. I assumed that I must have just not noticed that my friend made it like that, but a small part of my brain thought, "Who's been sleeping in my spare bed?" When my basement roomate got home that night she informed me that I indeed did have a Goldilocks stay at my house that weekend. She was a girl whom I had actually already considered asking to move in as a roomate this summer so when she phoned my other roomate desparate for a place to stay, the girl told her to come on in and make herself at home! So it was fine (except I would have liked to clean up a little bit better) but boy is it ever a creepy feeling to realise someone may have been inside your house without you knowing.
That, my friends, is my attempt at getting back into this strange blog world. See you soon.
So a few weekends ago I was out of town. I'd left breakfast's dishes on the counter. I'd had company the night before but I'd peeked into the spare room and noticed that she'd made the bed. Sunday afternoon when I returned home, I noticed that a glass that I never use was on the counter with traces of orange juice in it. I knew I hadn't used it and my first thougt was, "Who's been drinking my orange juice?" Then, a while later, I was using the phone in the spare room because my cordless sucks and dies after like 20 minutes but I don't want to spend the money on a new one yet. Anyway, the bed looked like it was made kind of funny. And differently than I remember seeing it before I left. I assumed that I must have just not noticed that my friend made it like that, but a small part of my brain thought, "Who's been sleeping in my spare bed?" When my basement roomate got home that night she informed me that I indeed did have a Goldilocks stay at my house that weekend. She was a girl whom I had actually already considered asking to move in as a roomate this summer so when she phoned my other roomate desparate for a place to stay, the girl told her to come on in and make herself at home! So it was fine (except I would have liked to clean up a little bit better) but boy is it ever a creepy feeling to realise someone may have been inside your house without you knowing.
That, my friends, is my attempt at getting back into this strange blog world. See you soon.
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