Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Vacation Planning

I'm getting to that point in my life where I've got to start thinking about doing all of the things that I want to do in my life. I guess in someways I hoped to have someone to share that with and I'm getting kind of old to go on vacation with my parents, although I had a great time with them in Scotland last summer. So I'm starting to plan my first trip alone.

I've always wanted to go to the Fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. So I'm looking into that. But so far I've run into a couple of obstacles. Number one, there is next to nothing to do in Sydney and if I'm going to pay $500 round trip for a flight I want it to be a couple of days at least. Also anything I have found to do so far has been for couples or familys. And since I am neither a couple or a family that leaves me with nothing to do, except rent a car and go out to Louisbourg for a day. I was thinking I might be able to hit up a spa or something too. But that's all I've got.

Anyone ever been? Any ideas? Should I just wait until I have someone to go with or scrap the idea altogether?

Monday, August 30, 2010

The Birthday Weekend

This weekend was my birthday weekend. Normally I don't do birthdays they aren't a big deal but I had already made plans anyway so I thought I'd make a whole weekend of it.

It started out Friday with the baseball game and dinner, which I've already talked about. But before that I had a little time to do some shopping around the Forks. I didn't get to a lot but I went to Kite and Kaboodle and picked up the second book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Now some of you may be saying "but aren't those books written for teenagers?" To which I would reply, what's your point. Seriously they're good. You should check it out.

Then on Saturday I went to see Dinner for Schmucks with my brother and his girlfriend. Overall I would say it wasn't a good movie but it had funny moments. But I got to the mall early, so again I had shopping time. So I stopped in at Chapters and picked up a couple more books. The last book in that series and also the latest book in the Outlander series which I also recommend. I've been putting off buying this book because the paperback version is a different size from all of the other books in the series, but finally I broke down and picked it up.

So I spent Sunday reading, finished off the book I was reading at the time and then watched the Emmy's. Why oh why did I watch the Emmy's?

So that was birthday weekend.

Friday, August 27, 2010

My First Ball Game

Okay so maybe I don't hate baseball quite so much. Or maybe it was the company.

Today was my first live-action baseball game. And while it wasn't the major leagues at least it was entertaining. We did a little pregame dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory since it was my birthday and the game started at 7 and my friends got off work at 5. Then we walked over to the ballpark just as the first inning was starting.

The home team lost 3-0 but you can't win 'em all I guess. But we did win free pancakes because the Goldeyes' pitcher struck out the "original pancake house's pancake batter". So now I'm going to have to go collect on those some day. Tons of foul balls though.

All in all I'd say it was a pretty good birthday outing.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Fantasy Football Season is Back

Last year's fantasy football season was kind of a bust for me. I spent about 5 weeks of it hospitalized and unable to participate fully. As a result I finished second last (the last place guy just quit). Anyway I had kind of thought since I wasn't really able to put out my best effort and it was getting close to the beginning of the season that I wouldn't be invited back this year.

But I got my invite yesterday and set up my team. Last year I named my team "Off Constantly" which was my brother's suggestion. And since my team was terrible I'm sure more than one of my league mates said "I beat Off Constantly this weekend". See how that's funny?

This year my team name is more topical. I went with "Favre's Sexy Texts" based on this Deadspin story. Also see this video tribute to the situation.

Can't wait for the draft to see who I get. Happy Football everybody.

Monday, August 23, 2010

A week later

Things just seem to keep getting more complicated. A week after this happened I'm still struggling with what to do.

A brilliant woman told me to quit talking to him and I think that's where I'm at. I took some time and tried to discuss with him how we were going to carry on as friends without all of that other stuff getting in the way. There was no satisfactory solution but to hope that over time it wouldn't hurt so much. Well almost a week later it still really hurt. And frankly the last thing I need in my life right now is more hurt. So I reached the conclusion that while it would be hard I would suck it up, take KEG's advice and stop talking to him.

So I tried to tell him that. It didn't go well. First of all it hurt like hell. I mean to go from spending hours a day together to none at all was just a terrible thought. But I rationalized it by saying to myself that the only way for both of us to truly move on was to make a clean break. For some reason he got angry with me. He told me to take some time to figure out what I wanted, and then when I told him he got mad. So mad in fact that he said some really, really terrible hurtful things to me.

He later apologized for these things and told me he spoke out of anger and pretty much begged me not to cut him out of my life completely. I told him I'd think about it and he agreed to give me as much time and space as I needed. The problem is now I'm just not sure that he really is the guy I thought he was. I can understand that he was upset but what he said was totally uncalled for. At this point if he's waiting to hear from me it's looking like it might be a long time, and might be a simple FU. Yes I realize that's not real grown up but I'm not so sure that he even deserves a grown up reaction from me.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The end to the relationship that wasn't

I'm sure some of you have been wondering about my love life since I wrote this post about a month ago. Well here's the story.

I met this guy online (hey we're in the digital age I won't feel bad for meeting people online!) about 4 months ago and we've been talking everyday ever since. Usually for several hours a day. But sadly he's 19.5 hours away by car. About 3.5 by plane. From the beginning I think we knew that distance was going to be an issue, but in a world of Skype and webcams and long distance relationships it was possible that maybe it could work out. Well it didn't. As much as we always wished we could be together physically to kiss or hug or cuddle it just wasn't practical.

Even when we talked about visiting each other there was always a problem. And neither of us is exactly rolling in cash. So I guess it just wasn't meant to be. So we had the where do we stand talk and settled on friends. The problem is it's hard to talk to him now because all of those romantic notions I had about him are still in my head.

But it's even harder now as I'm finding out there are things he didn't tell me because he didn't want to hurt me. Like that he's been dating. We had talked about how we were going to deal with the issue of dating other people because we weren't together and we live so far apart. And I said I wanted to know. He was always reluctant and didn't want to tell me unless things got serious but I needed to know so that I could properly prepare myself for what was to come. So he agreed. Or at least he agreed in theory, apparently in practice he felt the need to protect me.

So yeah we're done. It's been a couple days now and it's still a little rough. But I'm not quite ready to cut him out of my life completely. I know he cares about me, and I care about him. So it's hard to just say so long. But right now I'm so pissed at him that I don't even want to talk to him. Am I out of line? Am I over reacting to his lie by ommission? Have you tried the long distance thing?

Edit: After reviewing the transcripts (of course I save these things) it turns out it was an actual explicit lie and not a lie by ommission. Which makes it a little worse.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Losing Touch

I went to a going away picnic today for a friend who is moving to Switzerland next week. I'm super excited for her and wish her all the best of luck on her journey. She and I lived in residence together at University my first two years and we've tried to keep in touch ever since.

Which got me thinking about all of the people that I know from residence that I HAVEN'T kept in touch with. Have our lives just diverged that much since our student days that we no longer have anything to discuss? Was residence really our only common link? Is it worth attempting to reconnect with these people or should I just remember the good times and reflect on that part of my life from time to time?

I may never have answers to these questions. Do you still keep in touch with your friends from college or university? Have you been able to reconnect with anyone you've lost track of over the years?

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Rain Delay

So I didn't ever mention that I won tickets to a baseball game. About a month ago I was in the Chiropractor's office and there was a draw for tickets to a game for the local minor league team. Then they called me last week and told me I won. I was going to take my Dad because he's never been to a game but my cousin was getting married that day so he had to be at the wedding. So I called my brothers and they were all busy that day too. So I asked one of the guys from work if he wanted to go. He agreed and so I was pretty excited for the game today.

But wouldn't you know after standing around for an hour and a half the game was rained out. So now I have to go back to the stadium and exchange the tickets for another game. Hopefully my friend will be able to make it to the game.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Karma

Sometimes being nice just has it's own rewards.

So my brother and I have been going to Folklorama shows for the past two weeks. We whipped through our first family pack by Thursday of last week and thought we could easily get through another by the end of this week. However circumstances were not in our favor. He was tired, then I was sick, then he had stuff to do, and when we did go to a show on Tuesday I forgot to take the tickets. So we had a lot of tickets left when my older brother and I finally did get to a show tonight.

I looked at the family pack which had 10 tickets left and thought there's no way I'm going to use all of these in the next 3 days (Folklorama ends on Sunday) so I turned to the group behind us and asked if they already had tickets. They didn't so I offered to use some of my prepaid tickets to pay for their admission. We all missed the first show cut off by about 10 people so the organizers of the pavilion shuffled us upstairs to see the cultural displays and get some food before the show. Although some of the food was downstairs but they took us to get it and we were allowed to bring it up. Once my brother and I had gotten our downstairs food and found our way upstairs again we were sitting at the same table as the group of young girls (and a mother) that I had paid for. So we chatted a bit. Then we went down to watch the second show. Just before the show started the mom comes up to me with a plastic bag and says "the girls just wanted to say thanks". The bag was filled with all sorts of Scandinavian (that's the pavilion we went to tonight) goodies, Daim chocolates, some sort of Swedish strawberry cream cookies, Danish baking.

So it just goes to show that sometimes doing something out of the goodness of your heart has rewards. I didn't expect anything in return for admission I just thought I'd do a good deed for today. But I thought it would be rude to refuse the gift. So now I'm just going to have to eat sweets for the next week. THANKS GIRLS!

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

And this is why you need to have a backup credit card

So my mom called today to tell me that I had a call from CIBC fraud services. I didn't think it was a big deal just that maybe they were checking on my recent trip to the US. So I called. Then they started asking me all sorts of questions about my account "to verify" they said. Well I'm no dummy and the number I called wasn't the number on the back of the card so I called that number and started all over.

Well as it turns out my card was compromised, that is one of the stores at which I purchased something had their information stolen so my card number was made public. So they voided my card and they are going to send me a new one.

Thank goodness I have two credit cards (one for just such an emergency) and also thankfully CIBC was looking out for me.

Sunday, August 08, 2010

Well this should be interesting

There is something wrong with my cell phone. I don't really know how to describe it other than that the screen doesn't always work. This is an issue when you've got a touchscreen phone. So i took it in to Rogers today so that they can send it in for repairs, but of course while I was there the phone worked perfectly fine.

Anyway they did give me a donor phone but it's one of those old late 90s models. At least it's a flip phone. But I have no idea how to use it. But the good thing is I won't be stranded on the highway without a phone. But I guess no texting for me for a while.

The problem started occurring after the bar on Friday night. I suspect they're going to tell me it's water damage but really it's more like perspiration damage. So it won't be covered under warranty, but we'll see. Until then I guess I'll just have to figure out how to use the clunker.

Saturday, August 07, 2010

Another Random Sighting

Okay it's been a couple of years since the first one. About 4 in fact but still. Tonight I had another random run in with Jonathan Toews. The first one happened when me and my friend went to the mall, then to River City Sports and finally to Tim Horton's where he was with his family. Kinda strange but it was also a little exciting.

Tonight I was at the club with a couple of friends for a friend's birthday. I haven't been to a bar in about 6 months. Not since the last birthday party I attended. And who should arrive at the bar about 10 minutes later but our favorite Conn Smythe trophy winner. I knew right away that it was him but I didn't care, he's a young guy out on the town, big deal. But all night long you heard whispers of "Jonathan Toews". Then the birthday girl found me on her way to the bathroom and got really excited to tell me he was there.

So if it's not a big deal why am I writing about it? More to keep track of it than anything else. I mean if it keeps happening I have to assume he's stalking me, right? For the record I'm just kidding about the stalking part.