Heard an interesting protest bumper sticker from Berkeley California the other day...


"There's a terrorist behind every Bush."


Controversial? Oh yeah.

Busy days... working hard to clear things up at work so I can enjoy my vacation... getting everything ready to leave Vancouver for Edmonton and then Las Vegas... finding the perfect wedding present wrapping - which will no doubt get crushed on the plane! I need a bigger suitcase! Off to work, now.. Ali will be with Kim and Ed tomorrow! Christy and I arrive Wednesday! Whee!

Singing... "I don't wanna work.. I just want to cut glass and bake all day.... "

September 11th, 2002. One year later. I have been quiet in my reflection. The media coverage of memorials and replays of images from last September 11th are everywhere. I do not need them. I do not watch them. I won't ever forget.

Peace Be. Please.

I remembered a time from my early teenage years - trying out for the basketball team at my new Junior High School. I worked my butt off at that tryout - hoping to make the team and play sports - but when the list of players who made the first cuts came out, my name wasn't on it. I was devastated. I was upset. I was too wimpy to go and challenge it. There was another Heather who tried out the same day. She wasn't as athletic as I was, she couldn't even hit the basket with the ball and yet her name was on the list. I was heartbroken. I still thought that teachers and all others in authority were infallible and all-knowing.

I wonder how different my life would be now if I had stood up for myself then and asked "Why didn't I make the team?"

My heart is with Kim as she battles the evil Snooty Lady Clan at the Worst Bridal Shop in Calgary. I'm so glad that she and Ali are so close and that Ali was able to be with her for the past week. I don't have a 'best friend' like that - I don't think I'm the 'best friend' type... but I know a beautiful thing when I see it and it makes me happy. The wedding is soon, and it will be wonderful and fantastic and fun and then it will (seemingly of key importantance at this point) be OVER WITH! Then Vegas and delightful hedonistic debauchery, which I'm looking forward to!

Hiking was great fun on the weekend, despite the rain. Ahhhhhhh... the Great Outdoors.

Word of the day: Exquisite.

Oh yeah... www.epona.com is no more... in case you'd ever gone there and wondered what the heck was up. They finally caught on to me. We deleted everything after we downloaded it all. All clear.

I'll find some other hosting, someplace... for pictures and the like.

It's tough to rationalize feelings. Dwelling on them doesn't help. Musing and fretting and worrying about them only allows them to take over. Feelings aren't rational, at all. The only thing that I find helps me to work through them without blowing them all out of proportion is to write about them. Morning Pages especially help me - but blogging can help almost as much.

What I'm feeling today is incompetent at my job. I'm not. I KNOW I'm not... but when it gets busy - I just don't feel as confident in my abilities as I should.

I have other feelings in the mix today, too. I'm wearing my favourite pair of pants. They are nearly too small for me. In fact they ARE too small for me. I don't like how that makes me feel. I know I'm going to do something about it, but I'm doubting that it will succeed even before I've tried. I know I am capable. I've done it before. I just have to exercise and eat right. 2 bagels a day with light cream cheese plus fruits and veggies, salmon and soy and I should be good to go. I just have to eat smaller portions. Cut the sugar and processed or fast foods -- add exercise 5 or 6 days a week and I'll shrink. I can DO this. I just have my doubts. I feel like I'm just going to keep growing instead of either staying the same or shrinking. Shrinking is what I want.

Do I join a gym just to pay them and not go? I ask myself these questions without an answer in my head, then I work through them here and find the answers. What if I reward myself with a gym membership if I can get up and go for a brisk walk/jog every morning for a month? I can take Rainy, she'd like that. When the weather starts to turn, I'll join the gym - and by then I'll probably have cancelled my cell phone - the cost of which will pay for the gym. I'm planning to cancel it, but there are some messages from M. on there that I want to save - so first I have to figure out a way to do that! ;-) I'm such a goof.

Back to work.

Following my train of thought is like following a thousand bumblebees all going in a different direction at once.

Alive and well.... well... almost well. I've been getting sick WAY too often since starting to drive from Maple Ridge every day to work... maybe it's work, maybe it's the car and it's leaky, fumey way.... maybe it's not getting enough rest, enough healthy food, enough exercise. Maybe it's all of the above. These things will all change. Slowly. I'm going to get a gym membership. In order to get the gym membership, I'm going to cancel my cell phone. I don't use it. Well... I would if my plan covered any USEFUL hours. I paid over $95 last month because I used it OUTSIDE the "included" time for my plan. My old plan rocked. I never went "outside the lines". The new plan they stuck me with sucks wide open ass. No free anytime minutes. Free weekday evenings and free weekends.. but they don't start till 7pm (I'm already home) and they end before 7am (I'm just waking up). So... I think I'll just give people my work number and my home number and let the messages roll in. I can check my work messages from anywhere, which rocks. My home messages, I don't know the number to call or the password for it. Hmm.. Have to remedy that.

That'll pay for my fitness club membership, and working the 9:30 to 6 shift as much as possible will mean I can go before work - if I work at 6am I'll go after work. If I work inbetween shifts, I'll probably go after work, too. Have to find a gym with incredible hours. Have to go 5-6 days/week. Have to eat better. WILL eat better. Have to find my new running shoes... where the heck did they go?!?

The trip to the Kootenays with M. and M's Mum was awesome. A great break despite getting yet another dizzy spell and sore throat and other bacteria-induced goodness. We went to Peachland and then on to Lemon Creek (sleeping in Bonnington at a friend of their family's home) and travelling to Lemon Creek one of the days to clean up and document the damages done by their previous tenant. Hard work and disheartening for M's Mum... but hopefully she'll figure out what to do with the property from here. Peachland (and a home of another friend of the family) was our stop the next day as well -- and there we had a whole day where we didn't have to go anywhere or do anything. We went to SummerHill Winery (the one with the Pyramid in Kelowna) and then drove a back road up by chute lake and then down around the bottom of the valley to return to their wonderful view property for a delicious BBQ of steak and chicken with fresh veggies from the garden. Yum. Later on that evening after dinner M and I went for a LONG walk. It wasn't planned as such, but I tell you.... a walk like that every day and I'd be fitter than Janet Jackson. Okay, maybe not that fit, but I would be able to eat anything at all that I wanted and not gain an ounce. It's quite a climb from Okanagan Lake to their sweeping view property. Quite a climb. Ow. Travelled home over the back road from Peachland to Princeton - fun and windy and twisty and gravel. I felt like I was in a rally! M. even let me drive for much of it - even though I could see the HUGE grin on his face the whole time he was driving. Love you, M. Tons.

I'm tired today, but looking forward to just two weeks from now when I head out to Edmonton to be a witness and a wedding party member at the marriage of my two dear friends Kim and Ed. They rock so hard it hurts - and I get to be part of it. I know there have been times where Kim wondered why she asked me to be in it - but if she can just feel one iota of the love in my heart for them, she'll remember why... even when I'm at my most trying. Celebrating with them is going to be one of two highlights in a very turbulent year for me. The other being meeting my soul mate. I'll miss M. but I'll be able to call him at work and give him remote love from Edmonton and Vegas. Wish you could come with me, babe!

So... like.. yeah... and stuff...

Whee. I have my dress, I have my wedding gift (well first of two - the first, I bought, the second I'm waiting until my skill level improves at Stained Glass before attempting.... I want it to be worth hanging in the window!) Plus, it'd be better to give it to Kim and Ed when they MOVE OUT HERE in case of breakage during the journey/shipping of said gift to Alberta and back to BC when they MOVE OUT HERE. ;-)

And on to the coming weekend. I have Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday AND Tuesday off. I'm going to go with M and his Mum to the Kootenays, once more! It will be a fairly relaxed trip in a rental car - so we will actually have a stereo - possibly even a CD player. I'll have to ask M. tonight and maybe bring a couple of CDs with me on the trip if we do. Wow. Music on a Road Trip. What a concept!?! Heh.. it's only stunning to me because our last trip out there was in The Beast. The Beast has only an AM radio. There's not much AM radio out there... and what there is is only available for a limited time while quantities last. Drive by the sign that posts the radio frequency and you're nearly out of range, already. It's pretty much not worth turning the radio on.

Perhaps I'll invest in a CD player for my car... one that I can transfer to a NEW car when I get it --- and then reinstall the original radio into The Beast when it moves on in the world.

Whew... time to go home already! Whee!

A Story: I didn't do my Morning Pages for 3 days. I started to freak out about Life, The Universe and Everything. I did one page out of three this morning (so far) and suddenly things don't seem NEARLY so bad.

The Moral: Morning Pages are my brain's very best friend.

In other news:

Yes.. the "new beau meeting the parents weekend extraveganza" happened on Saturday.. amidst the 65th birthday party for my Aunt and my mother meddling in the cousin to cousin mini-fued that my brother and cousin are embroiled in. Neither of them asked for her help. Of course. Mom says "He's fine" when I ask what she thought of Matthew. Course, she's embarassed that she got overly tipsy in the hot tub and could barely walk afterwards.. I've never seen her like that -- must have been the stress of the twenty minute confrontation she initiated with my cousin. Why? Oh why? I may never know.

Before the confrontation, my mother chatted with M. and seemed to get along well with him. My Dad, as usual, was quiet and just watching everything that was going on around him. I didn't realize that he was IN on my Mom's verbal assault on my cousin until she came back to the table and, between sips of wine, told my Dad all about it while he lent a sympathetic ear and my brother rolled his eyes at her.

I speak to her today and ask her a favour... could she look after Rainy... from the get-go I fear the tone of her voice when I call. She sounds tight and wound up. Unhappy about something - but what? She tells me about the stomach troulbes she's been having for the last 2 months and how she's got to go in for nasty tests this week - and blames her strange state on that... I'm probably reading way too much into this,in fact I know I am. She's agreed to look after the puppy if I make sure that the groomer can take care of her in the morning rather than the afternoon. I should relax. I know she'll come around eventually... wish I could just not have everything I do in my life that she doesn't approve of be a huge stress point between us. I guess that's mostly up to her, though, when it comes down to it.


And I wonder, at times, why I'm so fucked up?

Strange that the full moon is when I start to bleed. I've been off the hormone control pills since March... and it's shifted around slowly each month. I mark it on the calendar to track it and today I noticed that it is actually a full moon. I wonder if it will stabilize there or if my cycle has shortened... as it has been moving back a few days each month. We shall see! It's an adventure... and this month's adventure involves cramping and headaches. I wondered why I had a headache that wouldn't quit this morning... and now I know. Thank goodness for the ease of the keeper. (Thanks Christy for putting me on to it, I love it!) I never have to wonder if I have enough "supplies" to last me through the month.. or if I've remembered to re-stock my purse. I just put the keeper in my purse when I'm done for the month and it's ready whenever I need it. The only unfortunate thing is that I can't help anybody else out if they've gotten caught by surprise without any supplies.

Ugh. Bleeding. Headache. Cramps. I love being a woman. Despite all that.

Took the course... passed the course! Boy... that sure sounds a lot easier than it was! It wasn't difficult, so much as a whole lot of information to assimilate in a short period of time. Long days... but worth it. Glad I took the course, don't know that I'll ever use it, but if I need it - I have it.

Hmm.. in other news... I don't feel much like posting these days. I get all my ranting and figuring of things out done in the morning writing something called "Morning pages". Morning pages are a tool from the book The Artist's Way by Juila Cameron. What you do is write 3 long hand pages every morning. No more, no less. They don't have to be about anything... you just have to DO them. Occasionally mine are just gibberish, but sometimes some really deep things come out that I've been fretting about and didn't know how badly they were affecting me. I ask my Morning Pages questions... and the answers come, eventually. It's even more cathartic than writing in my blog has been for me. That's saying a lot.

Thing is... it doesn't leave much to rant or rave or write about here at the end of the day. That may change as I proceed along the path of The Artist's Way.

Trying to cut some glass tonight... but so far I've been distracted by the television AND by my computer.. and by the fact that I have no tape to tape my pattern together with. I can solve that problem tomorrow at work -- but for now, I promised myself some glass cutting -- so I think I'll just have to find a smaller pattern and cut something for that!! It'll give me some practice before starting the bigger project I'm working on.

At any rate... I'm off to do that, now.

I'll try to update from time to time about how the journey to creativity is going...

Finally going to take that Wilderness First Aid course this weekend... the one that I got strep throat for last month and had to miss... (only I didn't know it was strepp throat until the Tuesday AFTER the weekend).. Eep!

So I probably will be online even LESS than I am, now.

Reading about QuakeCon makes me want to be there, too... I even played some Single Player Q3 yesterday... was fun.. but OSP messes up my SP action. Have to figure out how to move it out of the way when I want to play SP.

Anyway.... must get gear organized for tomorrow and figure out how to get where I'm going. Early start. 8am... 45 minute drive away. Ick. Leaving earlier than I did for work this week. Hah!

Have to get back into good habits. Bad ones have taken over for too long. The more organized I am, the better my life will be. I started getting more organized today at work and it continued all the way home with me. Now... If I can just organize myself into getting some exercise and eating right. I've been far too lazy for far too long. The bit of extra weight I'm carrying is getting me down. I don't like how I look in pictures these days... I feel like I'm letting myself go... and I don't know where it will end. Time to nip it in the bud NOW before I let it slide. Motivate. Motivate. Motivate. RAH! Can anyone tell me how to eat? I suck at menu planning for weight loss. I rock at menu planning for pure unadulterated enjoyment of FOOD. I love food WAY too much and I loathe exercise for exercise's sake. Bad combination.

Next year at this time I will be living close enough to work to once again bike there every day. At least, that's the plan. Up to an hour ride each way I'm willing to put in - though 20 minutes each way would be ideal. That gives me loads of places I can potentially live. I want to live in a house, that's for sure... no more apartments for this girl and her dog.

There will be no more bruise pics for a while... the place where I've had my grandfathered free 'staff' web site on the corporate web server has changed my login password for ftp. I'm begging for a few days extension and a few days notice!!! I need to pull everything back down OFF of there. I figured the free super fast virtual domain hosting site was too good to last long.... but it lasted for about five years!

Stream of consciousness blogging.. oh yes, indeed.

New bruise pics here.

I Am A: Chaotic Good Elf Mage Ranger


Alignment:
Chaotic Good characters are independent types with a strong belief in the value of goodness. They have little use for governments and other forces of order, and will generally do their own things, without heed to such groups.


Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.


Primary Class:
Mages harness the magical energies for their own use. Spells, spell books, and long hours in the library are their loves. While often not physically strong, their mental talents can make up for this.


Secondary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.


Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail)

Only had one page this weekend so far... and the weekend is nearly over. That one was an easy one... here's hoping that's it for the shfit.

Very relaxing weekend, yet active. M. and I finally found Sipa Sipa footbags (hacky sacks). We looked for them all over Nelson. We looked for them all over Calgary. We called around Vancouver. Where, oh where were we going to find one?? Guess where M. works? MEC. Guess where we found Sipa Sipa footbags? MEC Yeah... we were laughing, too. Now to get good at this hacking stuff... could take some time!

Played softball tonight. We were warming up and I was playing 3rd base... I took a line drive to the left thigh. Ow. Ow. Ow. It's going to be a beautiful bruise... I'll take day by day pictures of it and try to show them to you... the pics from the night are here.There is one of my thigh right at the end... it's changing colours rapidly, though. That one .AVI was because I forgot I had the camera on "movie" so... I did get the home run... but a lot of shots of the ground, too. =)

Time for sleep.

Time cannot go quickly enough while I'm at work. It's just DRAGGING today.

Maybe if I actually try to do some work it'll speed the day along until 3:30 when I can leave to pick up M. So far no takers on pager. I'll just say "fuck it" and sleep in next week if I get paged -- it's Ross's fault for scheduling me at 6am!! I NEED MY REST!

So... the business of life continues and the mental/emotional/spiritual? revelations materialize and solidify in my consciousness and cease to slide in and out. These things become more concrete day by day... talking about them helps -- had a great long talk with George tonight. Hope I helped him. =) He rocks.

Going to have a fairly relaxing weekend.. as long as I can get rid of pager.. ;-) Hopefully I can... because really the money isn't nearly as important as my health... which hasn't been so uber stable lately. For one thing, I'm gaining weight (my own non-diet-conscious non-exercising fault) but this lack of exercise and poor diet are weakening my immune system... add to that an unhealthy desire to stay up to all hours of the morning spending time with M. and you have a recipe for health disaster. I'm spending more time at home this week (and this weekend) and next week my bro is away so I'm obliged to come home and let my doggie out right after work as well as feed his cat. Sadie is cute as a bug. as the plans to head to Seattle have temporarily fallen through. I'll watch my new LoTR DVD with M (who hasn't seen it yet?!?!!), spend time with him here, go for a hike, build closet shelves and hopefully play some softball. =) But not do much else.

At any rate... I'm sleepy. It's time for bed.

George. Remember, you ROCK! Don't ever let anyone else make you feel like you don't!

Kimli makes me smile and laugh. Loudly. With snorting. It's no wonder I can't read her at work!

I love M.

Had a fantastic vacation. I want to move to Kaslo.

Problem is, I'm already feeling overwhelmed by work and the general hectic-ness of life. It's been 2 days since my vacation. So... I've decided to simplify. The first step will be cancelling all credit cards but one. I have yet to decide which one gets to stay a part of my life... but I WILL cancel all the rest. Step two: Cancelling all "rewards programs" cards and "club cards". Of course, I'll get some free goods from them with my points, first... ;-) But after that... I don't want my spending habits to be tracked anymore or have to dig through 250,000 cards in my wallet to get 40 cents back and 10 points. Forget it.

I want to move to part time work. I suppose that I can... but I have to decide whether or not it's in my best interests to do so. My health would likely be better, my emotional state, my standard of living... but working full time will get money for my dreams faster... I will start with the first two things and see what happens. I love my job... but only for 8 hours a day.. when it goes overtime like it did today -- it's the suck. I don't get paid any extra for staying... so why did I? Especially when it stressed me out so much. The good thing is, I made it through the stress without breaking down... it was close -- but the 1.5 hour drive home gave me tons of time to ponder life, the universe and everything. Seeing a car flipped upside down with fire-fighters working to free the people inside kind of put things in perspective a bit, too.

Simplify.