I forgot to mention Saturday was my last day of Call Center Hell so I'm FREE! Yay! Last day was fine but still left me exhausted.

As I'm also sure you've noticed I've changed the blog template. I was hoping to find one that reflected Summer in the Okanagan, you know all yellows, blues, and greens but alas I couldn't find a good one. I really have to learn how to create my own templates.

Some people are SO damned hard to entertain it's not even funny. My buddy from Washington State left this morning and while our visit was good I have to admit that I'm somewhat relieved that he's gone. Asking him what he'd like to didn't get any reasonable response; asking what he'd like to see was the same. It got to the point that he couldn't even decide what he wanted to eat! Personally I think the poor guy was exhausted from a lot of shit that's been going on for him at home and he just needed to escape. So I did my best to show him a reasonably good time on very little money. I think I succeeded.

This afternoon I went and had lunch with my parents as they were on their way back from Seattle where they were for the weekend. As I was driving out to Burnaby to meet them I was suddenly hit with a feeling that I was really gonna miss the hustle and bustle of the city. I love Vancouver but for too many reasons it's just best that I leave right now. Quite honestly this is the first that I've thought all that much about actually leaving. My Mom asked me today if I was excited to be going home and I quickly realized that I'm not excited. I actually don't have any feelings about leaving Vancouver. I'm somewhat indifferent. This move is just a means to an end so if it works out it works out. If it doesn't I'll move back.

Of course now that it's official that I'm leaving the get togethers and lunches are starting. You know, the 'I won't see you for so long' meetings. It's gonna be a fun week until I go. I'm planning on leaving either Wednesday or Thursday in order to be home in time for July 1st. Janet's already got the whole weekend planned and as it's Funtastic there is TONS of stuff going on in Vernon. I'm looking forward to seeing my Kelowna friends as well. Thinking back to reasons that are good about going back to the Okanagan I re-read my blog posts from August and man do I hope that this summer's gonna be as much fun as last!

Yay my old dorm friend from across the hall is coming to visit. He just called and should be here in about 10 mins! Looking forward to seeing him. He's gonna stay the weekend.

As promised here is an update on what's going on. After thinking about it for months I have finally come to the realization that I need to go back to the Valley. Honestly the way things are going currently I'm unable to keep up. The mono is insisting upon hanging around and does not seem to be getting any better. Unfortunately there is really nothing that I can do about that situation that will help it get better aside from taking a leave from my job. Actually the Mono is a pleasant excuse to go on EI which will help me live for a few weeks until I get better and get the needed rest to do so.

The realization that I was a moron for staying here fully hit me Saturday morning. I was having Martini's with Marcie on Friday night and talking about Frank's acceptance into law school. If he decides to go for it in September he'll be starting Law school, an MBA, and finishing his Certified Financial Analyst program. Well as I'm sitting there with Marcie I said to her "why is he doing all of this?" Her answer was "he wants to own a home in Vancouver someday" That really struck a nerve for me because I had to ask myself if it was really worth it to want to live in Vancouver that much. That and the fact that these guys are EVERYWHERE! Frank is not an anomaly. That and the fact that I have been sending out resumes all over the place for three months and haven't even garnered a single call back aside from the call center kinda tipped me off that I wasn't supposed to be here (ironically I got a call back from an employer today about a job!).

Personally I want to be able to afford to own a comfortable home and be able to drive a nice car. With the insane competition out there I don't see any chance of that happening in Vancouver anytime soon. That and you don't get rich or make any money working for someone else so as I dragged myself out of bed at 3:45AM in order to get to the call center in time on a Saturday morning things just started to make sense and by the time I was having my morning muffin break I was mentally already packed and ready to walk. I talked to my parents when they returned to Vancouver from their latest cruise and they were thrilled as they had been wondering when I was gonna get the picture as well and move back.

Quite honestly I'm not really happy or sad about leaving Vancouver. I'm really quite indifferent. I've had perhaps one of the most miserable years of my life here (and that's saying something!) and yet I've been happy here as well. I know that moving back to the Valley is the right decision for right now though and if it turns out that I made the wrong decision... then I'll move back. Right now I'm just looking forward to getting my energy back and getting my sleep schedule back on track.

Internet at home has been down. Will post this afternoon with a complete and full update.

'till then!

I'm leaving Vancouver. Dates to be announced.

Big news to come... I'll let you in on it by tomorrow. (Raph and Wifey you already know)

Well after my last post I went and got something to eat and rationality started to surface again. Not entirely but... I looked at the $500 bill that the BC Medical plan had sent and tried to figure out why the hell it would be so much money. Well it finally dawned on me once I called them and asked why I had a $200 balance on the account. The lady on the phone told me that it was outstanding from July-August 2004! Hmm... where was I working at that point. Yep you guessed it HBC fucked me over again! I can show you the pay stubs where they happily deducted that money but apparently it didn't go to where it was supposed to go which can now affect my credit rating. I am SO MAD I think I may go to labour relations tomorrow with my sad tale of mistreatment at the hands of "One of Canada's best employers" hopefully things will happen that way.

I've discovered a new form of hell. Let me introduce you to the 'Call Center' it's a place where people get up at un-godly hours to go and answer the phone where stupid people call in and ask rediculous questions (yes there are people that will be driving down the highway, see a truck with a phone number on it and will call in just to see what that trucks company does, I probably answer 20 or more of those a day!). Now one would ask why is that so bad. Let me tell you that repeating the same damned thing over and over and over again for 7.5 hours straight isn't all that it's cracked up to be. The turnover is so insane that I'm a Senior Agent already! Must keep plotting my escape. Maybe going home for a while to recover and try and get back on my feet isn't such a bad idea after all... I'll have to see if The Baron is interested in a house guest again this summer, as there's no way I'll move in with my parents.

At this moment I'm ready to give it all up and move home and live in my parents basement... Seriously drastic but I'm considering it. More unwanted inflated bills came in today. Money is tight... graspingly tight... can't... breath...

How does one "live large" or rather "seize the day"? I'm wondering how and what it is that I can do to make sucessful changes to my life. I wanna be sucessful, I wanna be spontaneous, I wanna be interesting. Yep, I think that sums up what I'm striving for... now if I wasn't so damned tired all the time!

Another very interesting thing was pointed out to me last Wednesday. I do everything very intentionally. Thinking back there are few things that I've ever done just because. Now I'm sure this isn't anything that's all that outrageously different but even in the relationships that I pursue there is always some ultimate reason that I do things.

Here's a short list of things that I want to do this summer.

1. Go to Salt Spring Island
2. Drink wine in Kelowna
3. Go sailing
4. Visit my friend in Victoria for the weekend
5. Go hiking with the Baron

By no means definitive but a good start I think.

I went to the Doctor today to have a mono check-up and complain that ironically I can't sleep at night and it's starting to affect my state of well being. He prescribed sleeping pills to get me back onto a regular sleep schedule as I have a nap after work and aparently it's killing my ability to sleep at night. Not good.

I bought The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Aside from that everything is pretty much normal here. Oh Mr. & Mrs. Smith is an EXCELLENT movie. I went in not expecting much but was very happily surprised. Two thumbs up from me.

Lately I have to admit that I have been thinking about wrapping up this blog in it's current incarnation.

That said life here has remained on it's leasuirely path. I've been spending the majority of my time resting. The resting has allowed me to finish Peter C. Newman's epic (700+ page) biography this afternoon, a throughougly satisfying experience. Now I'm trying to decide what my next book is going to be will it be pure fiction, a marketing book, or a book on spiritual guidance? I'm not really sure at this point still but I'm going to stop by the overpriced used book store on my way home from work tomorrow and see what I can find.

Last night I went out for the first time in about a month, with my friend the Mexican, we went to 'The Longest Yard' the new Adam Sandler - Chris Rock movie. Very funny, highly recommended if you just wanna sit and laugh.

So after the drama with my friend the other day it all came out the reason I havn't been seeing her since I moved down here is that she hates Lexi. Now that that's out things are fine. Sadly though now that I have mentioned it to a few other friends it's come out that NONE of them likes her. Not a one including my sister. This floored me because while I don't really care I was amazed that no one told me this before. Yeesh people some things just need to be said.

It would seem I'm somewhat of a radical. My radicalness is more a concept of the way that I think than in how I act (which is probably the definition of radical but I'm to lazy to look it up). I believe that having been influenced, throughout my formative teenage years, by some extremely intense personalities on both sides of many political and religious fields that I have come out of this with the ability to see both sides of a situation and weight it in my own mind before taking pieces of each argument then melding them together to form my own judgement. This judgement on a situation is generally slightly or greatly different from many of the prevailing thoughts out there. For this reason life has been somewhat lonely at times (Raphael and Matthew I really miss you two!) but at least I'm really starting to figure out why I always seem to have trouble fitting in with the mainstream train of thought, no matter how hard I try.

Deciding to have my regular Mono nap today I went to bed at 330 and woke up at 730! Oye, this is getting rediculous.

Here's a situation for you. I left a message on one of my friends phones this Friday asking her to call me back. Never heard from her. So today I get an e-mail asking if she was over-reacting because the 'tone' of my message made her afraid to call!? I'm sorry that's just my voice. So of course reacting to the message instead of responding I sent her a note saying that maybe if she'd return my calls more often I wouldn't sound so upsetting (?). Well of course her response was we need to talk about this. Um, ok. So I'm mildly confused, kind of angry and also a little hurt that my voicemail would come across so hostile a friend wouldn't call back. How frusterating.

Now I'm going to have a glass of wine and read for a while before going back to bed for what hopefully will be a better sleep than last nights was.

Since I contracted Mono I have frequently had nights of fitfull sleep. Last night I kept waking up from horrible dreams which seemed to involve all of the 'religious' people in my life. I would wake up and remember feeling angry, sad, depressed, and completely unsettled. As usual I don't remember my dreams but oddly enough two charaters stood out. My friend E from Prarie as well as my old mentor H from the Mennonite Church. At one point I woke up and kept repeating "spiritual abuse" though I don't know why; I do remember that there was a book on that topic that I had been meaning to read for quite some time. Needless to say I was actually very tired when it was time to go to work today.

Today I'm thinking about selfishness. I don't think of myself as a selfish person and I really hope that I'm not but I can honestly say that selfishness amoung people my age is my biggest piss-off. When people are so wrapped up in their own lives and just want to talk about themselves constantly (aside from in a blog where it's the audiences perogative as if whether they want to read it or not) I don't want to be around them. Now of course most people out there are under the illusion that they are the most interesting thing that's happened to mankind in at least a decade I think that's sad. There are a lot of people out there and you'll live a much richer and fuller life if you get to know some of them instead of constantly whining to anyone who'll listen about how you havn't found a boy friend or girl friend! Ok, now I'm starting to get specific and I can feel a rant coming on against a specific person so I'll stop now before any damage is done.

It's another lazy Sunday and I am again reminded why I dislike working on Sunday. I enjoy the peace and quite the day provides. I woke this morning rather late and am contempalting what I'm going to do with my afternoon. I think that sitting and reading is very much in order but I am also thinking that quite possibly reading would be better with a coffee. So now the question is do I go to a coffee shop and buy a coffee or do I go to Safeway and buy cream for the coffee that I already have at home... Ah decisions, decisions.

Daddy was in town for a few days which involved a pleasant visit. I always enjoy it when he comes down for a visit (so long as he leaves a certain someone at home...). So he just left and as has been the case the past few times that he's been down I spent WAY to much money. Well I actually needed what I bought today a new pair of Helly Hansen SHOES! I know your amazed that Helly is making shoes now, as was I, but they're very, very cool and oh so comfortable. The best thing is that they were on sale. Not by much but enough for me to be able to justify spending the money on them. As it is Sister's birthday in a few days I dragged poor Dad around looking at purses. Well after wandering all over Oakridge Mall (which was totally pointless as I knew I wanted to get her a purse from Guess?) we made our way downtown where I found a great purse and wallet. I'm very satisfied with what I got her. I hope she likes them as it'll be a bitch for her to have to return. Anyway now I'm going to go and read for a while as those little excursions wiped me out.