I did have a rather enjoyable day actually. I left the house almost as soon as I got up this morning and went wine tasting with a good friend from high school days. Then went and visited the Answer Man for a while. So even though I am currently feeling like a bit of a loser things have been good today.

I'm in a total state of turmoil right now emotions are sloshing around and spilling out all over the place. I'm angry, depressed, frusterated, and just fed up with life as it is at this point. When will things ever straighten out. When will I be able to accept myself for the fucked up loser that I am and when will my family quite trying to impose their ideas of what my life is supposed to look like. ARGH! Angry... so angry. STOP MANIPULATING ME!

Well as expected Christmas has been a little bit tough around here. I've just about had it with my family already. Well my parents anyway. First night I was home there was a great discussion between the two of them as to what would be given to the poor girl that would get stuck with me. Very lively and oh sooooo funny. Fuck you.

Christmas say me recieve a girlie calander from my Uncle featuring half naked women dressed up as construction workers. Classy as all get out. Even if I wasn't gay I wouldn't want that anywhere near my walls. Just tasteless.

I'm so done with being home. I would actually seriously consider going home early but I have a doctor's appointment that I need to go to on the last day that I'm here. Guess the only thing to do is avoid being with them for the rest of the time I'm here.

Merry Christmas from Vernon!

Well after a furiously busy Christmas shopping season I'm heading home tonight. Back to Vernon! Sister is going to pick me up at 12:00AM in Kelowna then we will be heading home from there. Can't wait to see her. Hope the bus ride is alright. I'm planning on taking a little Vodka punch with me to make the bus ride and whoever is sitting next to me a little more pleasant. The worst part about this though is that there is no snow here or in Vernon so I could have very easily driven :(

Test, test, test.

I am changing a lot of things right now. Mostly my online presence in it's many forms. I'm looking into changing the address of this blog. Those of you who need to know the new address if that happens will be informed. Have a Great Night!

Thought for the evening... 'How does one find themself?' Any suggestions would be entirely welcome.

What is it about the ocean that makes me slightly melancholic. As I wandered along the seawall path today drinking in the scent of the salty air and feeling the cool wind fly through my hair I felt a little down and alone. It was an almost enjoyable feeling though. I seem to relish it even though I dislike it. Does that make any sense?

I just got home from watching Oceans 12 with Jake. It seems that he is doing well and the outlook is that we will make it as friends which is great and makes me pretty happy. I don't regret the experiences of the past few weeks because I learned a lot about myself in them but that doesn't make them any easier.

I got an e-mail from Raphael's mother tonight telling me that she knows about my lifestyle and that she's ok with it. I'm happy to hear that but at the same time am wondering how in hell she found out. I'm sure I'll know soon. This throws the need to have a talk with my parents into a whole new light. Merry fricken Christmas.

And the headache increases... So Pavel ditched me at the bar. Yes, he ditched me for a number of hours and he had my coat check ticket and VISA (I wasn't sure I would be responsible if I had my VISA, so I gave it to him as he doesn't drink). So after a series of increasingly pissed off txt messages to his phone he finally showed back up. All I said to him was get my coat. We did and grabbed a cab back to my place. As I was stone cold sober I told him to get his stuff and go to the car as I was driving him home. After a trip in which I'm sure he pee'd his pants (the FOCUS hadles incredibly allowing one to take corners at almost 80kms, Raphael's wifey would have died of terror) I dumped him at his place and said, you do understand why I'm furious don't you. He said he did and I drove off. Lesson learned never go to the club with Pavel again.

Lexi's gone and I'm lonely. So I called my friend Pavel from Richmond and we're going out to Celebrities! Update tomorrow.

What a day. I knew we were having a visit from one of the biggest cow's in the company who comes in approximately once a month. Basically came in and destroyed my self-confidence again. Most of the things that she was yipping about though had to do with issues that I could not control. There is no magic formula for making a person who is not a natural sales person an amazing sales person. You can work with those people, find out what motivates them, teach them what you know, demonstrate how to do it, etc. Unless they have the drive and the ambition to do it and are hungry enough to do it then it's not going to happen. There is nothing I can do about the team that I inherited.

One of my girls has been getting herself into trouble a lot lately because of the attitude or at least the way she comes across to people. She basically told one guy (another Associate) tonight to get lost because he was interrupting her sale, so of course he came running down to the office, where I was in the middle of a melt-down with my HR Manager, and told me she had been rude to him. I told him I would talk to her, which I did, and then I left. Later in the evening he comes up to me and say's "Did you talk to her?" "Yes." "Well when can I be expecting an apology?" "Um, you can't. I have talked to her and it won't happen again. That's all you need to know." For god sake these people are insane. Why in hell would he come and expect an apology. It may have been the right thing to do in his eye's but I'm not going to take her dignity away from her because he came running up and told on her. She's already dealing with the fact that she has been talked to twice now so there is no way I'm going to make her apologize. I swear this job is more like baby sitting all the time.

Sometimes life just seems so empty. You can try and fill it up with things, party's, alcohol, people, etc. but there is always that something else missing. What is it? My Christian upbringing would lead me to believe that it is God... but this feeling existed even while I was in the depths of spirituality. What brings these thoughts on tonight? I just returned home from the Management Christmas party for the store and after watching the majority of the management team get increadibly intoxicated I excused myself and drove home. As I slid my butt onto the cold leather of the driver seat my eye's darted up to my cell, which was attached to my visor, in the desperate hope that someone... anyone had left me a message. Did someone miss me? Was someone wanting to hear my voice? Does anyone care? Not tonight. No messages. Of course this is indicative of the emptieness that I feel my life holds right now. Gee no one called me on a Tuesday night while I was out at a party with about 30 people in attendance. Once again even though surrounded by people I was alone. I am... alone.

I talked to Sister after I talked to Jake and we decided that Christmas is going to be one hell of a drunken mess. We're going to get very drunk and go clubbing in Vernon then go in Kelowna to. Oh it's going to be an interesting Christmas this year.

What a fucking rediculous day. So I took the car in for an oil change and they told me that it would be a couple of hours so I'd better just go home. So they gave me a ride home and that was it. Four and a half hours later I called a cab and decided that I should go back and get the car because there is no way that they would still need it. When I finally got there after waiting 45 mins for a cab they told me that it would be about 20 mins. When I asked why it was taking so long they told me it was because there were a lot of cars in front of mine. It's not like I didn't have an appointment or anything! Gee's.

The day only get's stranger though. While at home I thought I would go onto gay.com's chat room. I started talking to this guy who seemed really cool. Well in the course of the conversation I told him the name of the mall I worked at and he told me that he had worked there until a few weeks ago. I asked him where he worked and he told me at Aveda. Well stupid me told him that I had been crushing on this guy that worked there for a long time. Long story short, he was the guy! What are the odds? Seriously I have no idea. Rapheal would you please work out the odds and let me know on this one? So yeah, I asked him out for coffee. And to my surprise he actually said yes! Oh dear. So I went and met him for coffee tonight and had a very nice time. I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to hear from him again, you know how you get these feelings, but it would be nice. Anyway I got home from coffee and Jake popped up on MSN. Well when I told him about my day he was SO NOT HAPPY! The situation degenerated until we finally decided that he (Jake) didn't want to see me anymore. To be honest I am sort of relieved because I have to admit I wasn't ever really attracted to him. He's a great guy and a lot of fun but.... I am really sorry that I hurt him and hope that he will eventually be a good friend but I honestly don't think that's going to happen. We'll see.

With so few day's left 'till Christmas I recently got into a bit of a panic and decided to do all of my Christmas shopping. Now of course because I adore shopping this really isn't a chore. The only problem that I run into at Christmas is, of course, money! But then who doesn't. This year shopping was easy. I went into my store early two days in a row and did all of my shopping in one fell swoop. In all I think that I spent about two hours in total shopping for everyone on my list. I have to say that I pride myself on the cool gifts I find for people. I love shopping.

Today my baby goes in for an oil change and I'm going to see what I can do to convince the dealership that my split windsheild is in fact a warrenty issue. The fact that nothing hit it and it just started to split tells me that there is a fault in the glass. We'll see, I don't want to have to shell out the $300 deductible ICBC would demand to fix it.

I'm actually getting excited about going home for Christmas. Call me a sucker for punishment but whatever. Looking very much forward to seeing Sister.

What a night, the store was open until 11 and in their infanite wisdome the marketing department in Toronto decided that they would run clock specials throughout the night. Essentially a clock special is a special that is only good between a certain time. Well let me tell you did we have some fights on! It was absolutely insane, an example of the issues that customers had with the specials was the Ferraro Roche special. Ferraro three packs were on sale for like a $1 each and many, many people were intent on buying them. Unfortunatly one lady got there first and bought the entire table full! So of course all of the customers that showed up at 701 instead of 700 were absolutely furious and were looking for a Manager to lynch! Now in their endless wisdom all of the Executives had left the store and left myself and another Sales Manager to deal with the evening. What FUN! Aside from the Ferraro controversy there was also one in Fragrances involving $9.99 Oscar de la Renta perfume as well as a freakout in Men's wear over $9.99 digital camera's. Really people life is far too short for this kind of stress. Go home, watch tv, get a life in general!

Well I have to say that the Christmas spirit hasn't exactly touched my heart yet this year. Working in retail right now is perhaps one of the most stressful jobs one can have around this time of year. Now of course all occupations have their own version of stressful times but Christmas just isn't supposed to be a stressful time for anyone. Today I have had a fairly productive day already. I have managed to go down and finally buy my bus ticket home for the holiday's as well as trudging down 4th Ave. with a pretty good idea of what I was going to get Sister for Christmas! I managed to find the perfect gift and I know she's going to absolutely LOVE it. The rest of my Christmas shopping is going to be done in the next few days and I'm hoping to get most of the things I buy at The Bay so that I can get everything transferred to Vernon free of charge! What a brilliant guy I am.

Well after an exhausting number of days that were very busy Rapheal left this morning. It was good to see him but I wish I would have had more time for us to just sit and visit. With his visiting schedule and my work events we didn't really get to visit for all that long. I am glad that I got to see him and the Answer Man anyway.

Do you ever feel one dementional? I do much of the time lately. When people ask me what I do when I'm not working my inevitable response has been that I sleep. Sad really. I need to find other things to do after work... or at least when I'm not working.

I'm going to look into finding a counselor down here. I've been feeling really out of sorts lately and I've been extremely moody lately, to the detriment of those around me, and I hate to say it but I think that my bad moods have correlated with the beginning of my relationship with Jack. I honestly think that I may actively be trying to push him away. Either way I'm very frustrated and it would probably do me some good to talk to someone.

Whew, what an interesting couple of days. Rapheal is finally here but I havn't had a chance to see him yet. I picked him up two nights ago at the airport drove home, went to bed. Yesterday morning I had to go to work quite early for an event that I was running and then I was told I was expected at the store Christmas party. So I raced from the store to the restaurant downtown where the party was being held. I managed to eat an excellent dinner and then gracefully exit by 9. Visited with Rapheal and the Answer Man at my place then I went to bed.

Now Raph and the Answer Man are at the Dutch Counsellate getting some business taken care of and I'm starting to slowly work on cleaning up the apartment a little. I'm expecting my guests will be back around lunch and I think I'll take them to Minerva's for Greek food.

I'm still run down and I'm periodically losing my voice, which is really frusterating, but I'm happy I'm on my day's off.

Oh my drunk again. This time I just really felt like having a bottle of wine. So I went to the store and bought one! Yay, wine. I wish Janet was here with me we always had such great times watching Will and Grace and drinking a bottle of red. What a girl I think I'll call her.

I did! I just talked to Janet! I LOVE HER. I miss her so much. Ok, going now.