Well, it's been another fantastic weekend *grins* 

My friend had his Halloween party last night (being the day after Haloween) and was a totally awesome time, made even better by the fact that all the silliness was pretty much completely sober. Barely any one was drinking, and the few who were had one or two. It's enough to make me wish I'd gone through Art school instead of tech school, -almost- (98% of the people at the party were art school students currently or art school grads) The only thing that sucked is that I had to leave earlier than I wanted to, because my stomach was objecting to the can of pop I had in a quite painful manner. 

But, that, and the little amount it let me sleep, did not in any way stop me from going climbing today! Today was our 2 hour basic climbing lesson, which essentially covered everything we need to know to pass our belay test next time we go, which for my friend and my self, will most likely be Wednesday night, after I get off work. Planning on going at least twice a week, perhaps more if my schedule and my body will allow it. I can't go for too long right now, my endurance is shit, only about 3 or 4 times to the top of the wall before my arms are telling me they won't do any more, but that's ok, endurance will come with time, and this gives me great incentive to work with my free weights and build up my arm strength.

I'm also very proud of my self. I challenged my self to a harder rout today, a 5.8 on a wall that tilted outward instead of being straight up and down, (I'd been doing 5.7's on plain old vertical walls last time) and I made it to the top with only one take. I'm -really- proud of my self. 

I didn't expect to, but I seem to have some natural affinity for the sport. I've had 3 different people who have been climbing for years comment that my technique is really good for being such a rank novice (today was the second time I've ever climbed) so that makes me proud too.

I do believe that it's shaping up to be a good winter for me. Perhaps the best I have had in a very, very long time. That makes me extraordinarily happy.

I had a dream last night that I had a different pair of awesomely fun colored socks to go with each of my pairs of scrubs. I wish I really did! :oP

I have a lot of random pieces of paper that clutter my desk at any given moment that I use to jot things down on, often the name and artist of a song I want to try and track down to add my my MP3 player. I happened to turn over one such piece of paper just now, an index card I must have written on a year or more ago and it had the following written on it..

I came up with an awesome Christmas sculpture idea last night at about 3:30 am while trying to fall back asleep and keep my mind off the nightmare I just had.. The hardest thing is going to be convincing my self to -keep- something I've made for a change. I hope it turns out as well as I'm imagining. It's going to be challenging, but I need a challenge.

Well, I've just finished editing the last of the pictures from my last two hikes, so perhaps I'll start getting some uploaded before the end of the weekend. No promises though.

I had a very frustrating day at work today, and I'm really -really- glad it's a long weekend..

Yay! Thanksgiving weekend! I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to three days of sleeping in, and some home made pumpkin pie with real whipped cream.. Mmmmm *drools*

Mer... for some reason, no matter what picture I choose to upload as my new profile pic, they're coming out all pixilated and I don't know why!!!!

I have a bruise on my jaw from where it made a very solid connection with the head of a large Rottweiler we were trying to take blood from today. The left side of my tongue is also swollen from where it got caught between my teeth at the wrong moment. I think I would have laughed if he got me in the face and I got a black eye.

So after spending months getting more and more frustrated with the limitations of the photo-editing programs that came with my camera and computer, I finally picked my self up a -real- photo-editing program. Corel PaintshopPro Photo X2. I've installed it but I haven't had a chance to start playing around with it yet because we have company over at the moment, and I can't spend the whole night hiding in my room. Unfortunately this also means I probably won't have an opportunity to spend any real time with it till next weekend. Boo!

This evening's company happens to be my older brother, who I haven't seen since he helped me move my stuff out of the condo in Edmonton last spring. He brought his new girlfriend over to meet mom and I. She seems like a really sweet girl.. I hope it works out for them. They've been dating for 3 or 4 months, but she leaves for home (The UK) in a few days and will be gone for 6 months to go to school.. I can't help wondering if they really know what they're getting into with wanting to stay together while she's gone.. Especially since my brother doesn't have internet access at home, and his only phone is a pay as you go cell phone that he doesn't always have time on..

*sigh* I certainly wish them all the best, and better success than I had.

I really want to take an art class this fall/winter, but all the classes I can find start at 6 or 6:30, and I don't usually get out of work till at least 10 after 6... It's frustrating.

It's been a very long time since I attempted a self portrait. I think that should be my next major project.

I bought new rechargeable batteries for my camera this week so I would have good batteries to take with me tomorrow to Drumheller, and I forgot to charge the damn things! How typically me.. *sigh*

*laughs* I have sore abs from wrestling with that big goofy lab yesterday.

So we get a reasonable number of drop off euthanasias at the clinic I'm working at now. The majority of them are cats. Most of the time one of the more senior techs deals with them, so I really haven't had much to do with them besides bagging them for the freezer, before tonight.

I had the ill luck to be the only tech still working this evening, and we had a drop off euth. The Dr gave it the first dose of Euthanol in the liver, and I was -really- hoping that would be enough.. it often is when they're as sick as this poor cat was.. But unfortunately, it wasn't.

So, I learned how to give intra-cardiac injections tonight. Not the funnest thing I've ever done.. I knew not every aspect of the job would be fun, and euthanasia among the least enjoyable aspects, but still.. Not fun.

I guess I'm lucky. One of the other techs that works at my clinic graduated from the same school as me, 4 years ago or something. Apparently when she was in the program, they went to the SPCA 3 times a week to do euthanasias. She said it was so depressing, and I can totally imagine that it would have been. I would have been crying my eyes out every single time I had to go there. I'm SOOO glad they didn't do that any more when I went to NAIT.

And we had a really crazy Lab in today that would -not- let us trim it's nails. With three people practically sitting on it we still couldn't keep it still enough to trim them without sedating it first. The thing was a total wing nut.

And yesterday was crazy cat day. We didn't deal with a single nice cat. They all wanted to kill you and required the leather welding gloves to restrain them safely.

Yup, this is my job, and for the most part, I love it.

The truth of the matter is that I'm not happy. I haven't -really- been happy for a while. And I need to take steps to change this. I need to take steps to change my life. 

The first and perhaps most important of these steps is going to be seriously limiting the time I spend on the computer. From now, until an un-decided point, I'm only allowed to check my mail and messages once a week. All that the majority of the time I spend on the computer ends up doing is leaving me lonely and depressed. This is not acceptable. 

So my apologies to the few people on here I talk to on a regular basis, but I'm going to be around a lot less. I don't love you any less, but I need to stop making my self miserable. Hope you understand. I will be around once a week. But only once a week.

I really need to get more motivated, in multiple different areas of my life. The biggest being health and my art. I've been -meaning- to do something about both those areas all summer, but all I've done instead is work, read, and sit on the computer. *sigh* 

Any suggestions for getting motivated?

Well, hopefully the video will play for you, kept stalling on me.. I am totally in love with this song right now..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKnTpRvdQJI

Hmm, how odd.. I just accidentally logged in using my e-mail address instead of my normal log in and it worked... Most curious.

So I'm laughing at my self tonight. 

I've been looking Everywhere for these two, $100 gift cards for BestBuy Electronics that I got for Christmas. I swore I put them in my wallet and had been carrying them around with me, but when I was going through my wallet while I was in Aus one day on the bus with Nic, they weren't there. Of course then I was worried that they had fallen out somewhere and now were lost for good. I hoped I would stumble across them while I was un-packing my boxes from Edmonton and Kelowna a month or so ago, or at least have a brain flash as to where the hell I'd put them for safe keeping, but no go. So after searching every place in my room I could think of and not finding them, I eventually gave up.

Tonight, I finished the most recent book in the Steven Erikson series I'm reading, and was in need of a new book. So, over to the little book shelf that lives behind my closet door (which is usually open, which is how the book shelf is behind it but not in my closet) that holds most of my yet to be read books or books that don't fit into a series (The series books have their own shelf or two) Lo! there's a Charles deLint book on the shelf I forgot I had! Well, that doesn't belong there, it belongs with all the -other- Charles deLint books (yeah, they have their own shelf too, pretty much) and a book or two to the left I see these thin pieces of blue cardboard, what looks like 4 of them. "Now what on earth are those??"

*laughs* You guessed it, my missing gift cards, still in their little cardboard holders that they came in. Now what possessed me to put them there I will never know. But, that's where they're staying, because if I move them, I'm bound to lose them again!