Category: Miscellaneous

Anna-Maria has announced that she is actually coming home! I guess I had nothing to worry about “losing” Anna by not convincing her to stay. Who would have thought there could be a chance she might not be brainwashed into staying there forever? Who would ever have guessed that she would come back alive? She is flying out a week from Friday in the morning and will arrive in Calgary in the early afternoon. Not to give away any surprises but I’m going to be waiting for her because when I set up my school schedule I put almost all my classes on Monday to Thursday with only one morning class on Friday. Who knows, I may even have time for a part time job peddling internet hosting to the kids on the swim team every Friday. Speaking of the swim team, yes I do plan on continuing swimming for the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns, my goal is to drop my 50 free time under 24 seconds by the end of the year. (Here is my current ranking in Canada — I was ranked 79th at time of publishing). Also I would like to work on my Butterfly skills — I can’t possibly do any worse than I did last year.

A little while ago I read an article in the Medicine Hat News about a weapons inspector that had been found dead somewhere in England. I made the offhand remark that I felt foul play had been involved and Dad was pretty mad that I would insinuate that the British Government would ever do such a thing. Well Dad this article isn’t proof of my suspicions, but it does add fuel to the proverbial fire. Now do you think I was so wrong to question the circumstance of his death?

It turns out I don’t have to work on the 23rd at all and although I was scheduled for the 24th it looks like I’ll be able to trade with someone and have the weekend completely off. So plan for me to be coming on Saturday, August 23rd. Until then I have my own house to look after.

Speaking of looking after my house, I have been letting Anna and her room mate stay here this last week. Zee has a cat that doesn’t realize what the purpose of screens are and has ruined at least two of my screens so far. Zee says she’ll pay for them which is nice, but it’s just giving me a bit of stress. The cat got locked out last night and then jumped up into the house through the bathroom window. I woke up after what seemed like hours of the sound of cat pawing away at my door. I got up and thought who locked the cat in the bathroom, well when I let him out I saw the ripped open screen blowing in the wind. GRRRR. Well that’s it for my story and I’m wanted on the phone. Take care and keep blogging.

I’m back in Lethbridge with Anna-Maria. Zee did a great job putting the place in order while I was gone. It turns out that Zee’s ride to Vancouver seems to have decided not to actually go, leaving her stranded at my house looking for another way to move out to BC. Her mother did offer to take her out there before and it looks like she might just have to take her up on the deal, well, I’m not sure what she’ll do but I’m sure she think of something and be out of here soon – not that I minded her here cleaning up the place… :) But I’m sure she’ll love it out on the coast.

Anna-Maria is up in the air about whether to go with her family to New Mexico for the next week or so. She is going to miss seeing me again until after her Montreal trip if she does in fact go with them. I’ll probably go see her at the airport in between trips, if I can swing it with work and everything, but still it would be really nice to hang out with her until she leaves for that long stint in Quebec.

So for tomorrow I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do. I would like to go Kayaking in Calgary with Corry but me being here in Lethbridge and he being in Medicine Hat and me not having anyway to get my boat from here to Calgary presents kind of a problem. I feel somewhat guilty about the lack of kayaking overall this summer and I know I’m going to regret not having gone much once school starts and the snow begins to fall. Alright not much else to say right now, so I’ll post again if anything interesting happens.

I showed up at work tonight and wouldn’t you know it – nobody else was there. I talked to Michael, the 400 lbs supervisor, and he said that he thought Pattie had given me a call to tell me that there is no work until next week. Now I should have been happy about this right? I mean especially after I was just complaining that I had to go to work. Anyway he looked at the schedule for next week and I was off all week. I thought well isn’t that great first of all they tell me not to come in for a week because there’s no work and then when there is work I’m still off. Just then Les came in and I asked him about the schedule. “What you want to work?” I thought he meant right now so I said, “Yes”. Ok, come in Tuesday at 5:00.

It would have been nice to have another week off. The grass is always greener . . .

When I think about going back to work in 45 minutes, I just don’t feel good about it. I’ve had a week long vacation from my telephone survey job and now they want me back. It’s a good thing I had that other job though, because if I were relying on just my pay cheque from Environics to pay the bills, I’d be pretty mad at not having any work this last week. As it stands I’ve enjoyed only working at the pool and don’t feel like making any phone calls tonight. I’m planning on getting tomorrow night off and I already told them I couldn’t work on Saturday. I also got the day off on Saturday from my life guarding shift.

I unfixed / re-fixed the tape with Jackie’s wedding on it. Though I haven’t tested it yet, I did get it back into the broken – but working state, that it was in before. I don’t have a camera to test it though. Anna-Maria has been stressing about her singing at the reception but I think she’ll do just fine. She never did ask anyone to play the piano for her, so I am not sure what her plan is. Is there someone that will be able to play for her? Well I’ve been coming to the blog for the last few days and have been disappointed with the lack of posting lately. So for those about to post I salute you.

Currently there is a water restriction on watering your lawn if you live on the South Side of Lethbridge. I of course haven’t watered my lawn all year except for once last week and once yesterday. The ban started yesterday… oops.

I figure I have been quite the conservationist up until now anyway so they should cut me some slack. It was weird because when I started watering yesterday, I looked down the street and nobody was watering. “That’s odd” I thought, but then thought here I go watering my sickly, ant infested, dying lawn. (Most of the ants are gone – but there are still a few stragglers and I’m out of diamaceous earth).

Anna got me a camera from the school but it hasn’t been working with my computer so we are going to have to find another one. This is the only one available at the University and this is clearly the reason it was still available. Anyway I have the pictures of Jackie so now I just need to get this video and the images of Glen and I’ll be cooking with gas.

While in Disneyland Anna and I took in the pirates twice, once in the theatre and once, of course, in the Disneyland park.

We missed seeing the premiere held right in Disneyland by a couple of days. However there was still such a great atmosphere to see that movie! For one thing most everyone in that theatre is on vacation. They are there to have a good time, and a good time we had! When the movie started the audience responded with applause and cheering, and as each actor made their debut appearance in the show, again the sound of an appreciative audience filled the theatre.

The thing about clapping in a show is – while it may seem really out of place in a place like Lethbridge or Medicine Hat, seeing a movie like Pirates right in Downtown Disney felt like we should applaud, like it would have been rude of us not to show our appreciation. I remember the first time I ever went to a show where the audience clapped was in Manhattan at the biggest theatre in the city. It was the opening night of “Lost in Space” and the crowd there was electric. There’s a pretty good chance that the actors in the movie were there that night because we had just been to the taping of Dave Letterman where Mimi Rogers was on the show promoting this movie, and since it was opening night it would make sense that she would have been with us in that theatre. Anyway despite Lost in Space being a truly horribly crappy movie I’ll always hold a certain fondness for it in my heart because of the memories associated with seeing it in that atmosphere.

Back to Pirates of the Caribbean. The thing to remember about this movie is that its main motivation is a ride that opened in 1967. The storyline does require you to suspend your belief in reality and may result in a disappointment for some but the Disney-ness factor of the movie will win out overall, if you let it. I can’t give my highest recommendation for this movie, because honestly it could have been better, but I by no means give it two thumbs down. I think it’s a pretty good show that deserves at least a Matinée viewing if not a full fledged night time $9.00 US viewing (but I only recommend paying $9 if you are in Downtown Disney). My thumbs are definitely higher than Dads.