eastward bound

so I left for school on thursday morning, off on the 1835 km drive to dalhousie university in halifax NS. I stopped off along the way for some lunch at my gramma and babba's place in long sault, right outside of ottawa. I got there relatively early in the day so my plan was to keep driving atleast some way through quebec, who knows how far until i get too tired to keep on driving. the beginning parts of the drive were brutal as i got little sleep the night before packing up all my stuff to get the move on. so after six hours of sleep i went down to where i was working in august and got paid, very generously i might add, and then after that i did some last minute running around and left. after lunch i went and kept on driving, and kept on driving, and kept on driving. the natural progression of the many many hours:

for most of you who know me well enough, driving is something i just love to do. when i found out i had the opportunity this year to do the ont-ns drive by myself, i was incredibly pumped, and although i didn't tell anyone this because they would've never allowed me to leave, there wasn't a single chance in hell that i wasn't going to do the drive straight. i left at 10h38am and got in about 5h40am, the only time i stopped was to gas up, and it was incredible. i spent the last two weeks about burning cds for the trip, and my ma last minute gave me the secret audio cd that she had lying around the house. now alot of people (SR included) fell that inspirational books and self-help stuff like this is all full of shit for lack of a better term, and i know people make a killing off of shit like this off of suckers that fall for the scams, but this book spoke to me. its all about the power of positive thought, and even if you cry out hoax every time you see it, i'd encourage you to take a listen or see the movie or read the book, whichever your preferece. so after arriving very early in the morning, i eventually got in touch with the landlord of the place i was looking at, got into the place (after a 1hr nap at ellen's) and moved into my new place. i gotta tell you, i wish i didn't sign that lease but i'm gonna try to make the best of it. its not that bad, but its certainly not that great, but who knows. it may work out for the best. the downfall and upfall of the place is there is no cable tv what so ever, so that means i'll be a bit more bored til i get adjusted but it also means alot of those friends that complained about not seeing me last year, this is gonna be the opportunity for us to hang out and me not have to spend any money to do it. i love my sports and i know wagner and i will be watching majority of the games in his room, and i'm sure if field gets centre ice again, me and the coyotes will be in company more often then last. this sounds of poor taste as in now that i don't have it, i'll use my friends for it, but you all know that i did want to see you more often, i just need a push out the door sometimes because i get so comfortable just relaxing by myself. i vow i'll try to fix this up a bit this year, for those mentioned and those not. so after getting settled i headed out to pei to see the girl that's been gone since april. ellen spent an amazing summer skiing hills and serving beer in new zealand and she arrived home on the 28th. i gave her the two days to get settled and showed up for supper on the 30th, but i'm not sure she's noticed me here yet. its crazy busy with everyone getting settled and so i'm really looking forward to when things settled down after the party in ottawa this coming weekend. the best part about this short drive to pei from halifax was a great guy named sebastien.

i picked him up just on my way outside of the city, and this guy and i were talking the whole time on the drive about everything. he's been on a little clensing expedition, taking him from montreal (where he's living) to northern newfoundland (where a complete stranger dropped him off). great guy, great musician and if you're ever in montreal, find out where his band is playing, or where he's teaching spanish or taking classes on the concordia campus, and get to know this guy. he's a rare soul in that busy city. my best regards to all those getting ready for school coming up, i'm pumped for the coming months for sure.

getting closer to normal

today i went by the walk-in clinic and finally got some anti-biotics for this bug thats been affecting me. i was told i should be good in about 2 days, great in 4, so i'm looking forward to that for sure! after popping some advil i mustered up the energy to go do something active, beach volleyball with some of the boys, and then i finally got to see my sister for the second time this summer. but by supper i was feeling terrible and couldn't stay for the whole time, the loudness of the restaurant was really bugging me. right now everyone that was watching the olympics should now be turning their focus to the US open, I've watched a couple matches so far and right now Roger Federer is playing against a relatively unknown who's holding his own pretty good, Maximo Gonzalez. can't say i've ever even heard much about him at all, ever. sorry dude. well, here's some photos from the beach, and we're trying to plan a little trip for tomorrow for one last hurrah of the summer, so hopefully that'll work out.

i'm also gonna try to figure out a way to size down the photos (if you click on them, you'll realize they're huge)

50 years

the family just celebrated my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary at my uncle's cottage. it was great because almost everyone was up there, and the drive up also coincided with Nash and Evan's return to canada after their post-planting trip to europe. i knew it was gonna be a great weekend from the start, because while driving up to the airport, i see Bartucci driving along the 407, first time i got to see him all summer. had i had the camera ready, you'd all be seeing his beautiful face smiling back at me through the car windows. so the weekend was great, my uncle's cottage is awesome besides most of the snoring Thomas' and the lack of hydrogen peroxide at the cottage. the virus illness has gotten a bit worse, or alot worse actually, and i wanted the OH for my ear. oh that note, if anyone's ever got a bad earache and they don't wanna do the peroxide in the ear, take a hair dryer, put it on low, and blow it in your hurt ear for 15 minutes. i worked it for 10 minutes and it was great, but not totally clearing the clog, so a bit longer probably would've done the trick. also try sleeping on a hot water bottle or a heating pad.

so here's a couple pics from the weekend, nash excited to be back, view from the cottage, and some family shots.

feeling ill

I've come down with a terrible hitch in my plans, its called a virus. Viruses are really funny things, because this is what I don't get; I didn't do anything different, I didn't go around licking doorknobs or eating much food off the floor, so why did I go and contract his stupid virus? What I really can't get is after I took a little visit to the Doctor, which is kinda weak on my behalf but I wasn't sleeping well at all and fading fast, he told me its almost an epidemic of this virus infection going around his patients, while I'm positive that I haven't come in contact with any of these people before I stepped into his office that day, so how do we all get this sickness together. But I'm just as sure that Oakville is just as small while seeming big as all the other cities of the world. Anyways, its a hitch because I was trying to do some training after the planting season, I was putting in 100 km between the pool, the bike and the feet on the road, and this side tracking really is not in my favour. Anyways, I was gonna take time to really inform everyone about what I've been up to lately, but because I'm needing the rest I'll see if I can do it tomorrow, because I am officially finished working for the summer.

pure heart in 1h48m58s

If any of you happened to miss the men's triathlon race last night in Beijing, our Canadian hero really represented what our country stands for. I've never in my life seen such a true show of desire and heart to get the job done. Silver to Jan Frodeno is certainly good enough for me considering the lead group tried to drop Whitfield atleast three or four times because they knew how dangerous he was at the end of the race, and his reputation was shown in true colours when he came back in the last 500m to almost take the race before the German hit another gear. But I'm telling everyone, this was the most impressive athletic feat I've ever seen and I'll remember that race for the rest of my life.

Photo from en.beijing2008.cn, taken by Adam Pretty/Getty Images

communication with the outside world

So, after deep consideration about trying to avoid the time wasting of msn accounts and facebook, and wasting my own time looking up information on all the great olympians that are compeating for Canada right now in Beijing, I stumbled upon Simon Whitfield's blog that he has at this website (http://simonwhitfield.blogspot.com/ - check it out). Now, this is something that I could get used to, I thought to myself.

After I came home from tree planting this summer, I realized how quickly I'd lost contact with most of my good friends from home and at school because I got rid of my facebook account a while back and avoiding msn since october at the school year, I no longer hear from anyone and everyone thinks I've just dropped off the face of the earth. Well friends, NOT true. I simply needed to buckle down in school and that really was the best way.

So thus is my solution. When I make a new post of this website, I'll probably send a general email out to some folks whom I'd think might be interested in reading about what's going on in the life of me. Until then, I welcome emails from people who might be looking to waste some time and let me know what's going on in the life of you.

Now I lost most of the pictures from the summer in a computer hard drive accident, but here's some of what I could get from emails sent to folks at home. My sister got married in July, and the rest are from planting.