I've heard a clip of the NEW MADONNA from her upcoming Confessions of a Dance Floor Album. IT's AMAZING! I'm SO EXCITED to actually go out and buy this album it's crazy. Gotta have something to look forward to I suppose.

I think my music is slowly going to drive the Baron crazy though if I don't watch it. Good thing I'll be going away soon. I have an upcoming Albera trip that will be about 4 weeks. This coming week I'm going to Grand Forks for the week.

Ugh, I forgot to take my vitamins today and I've just felt like crap all day. I'm even surprised at how much forgetting to take these things screws my system up. By 9 this morning I was feeling it.

I FINALLY got the leather properly replaced on The Focus today. The leather on my drivers seat has been slowly cracking for months now and making me crazy. So I took it into my friendly local Ford dealer (who I won't name) to get it fixed. Three visits later it has finally been done to my liking (and even now I'm not thrilled about the creases but I suppose it'll have to do). Seriously though it really shouldn't be that hard to replace a seat.

Well it's finally happened. Matthew and his girlfriend are engaged. From the picture that was sent out I'm assuming that she proposed to him. This was totally expected.

As absolutely thrilled as I am for them I have to say that getting the message was somewhat depressing on a personal level. When I dwell on it, in so many ways it seems that EVERYONE is moving onward and upward with their lives while I rot in Vernon. I know this isn't forever but... sometimes it feels like it. God if only things had been different... but hey, they wern't and will never be now. I have to cling to the hope and thought that there is more to this life for me. There are great things in store for me... just wish I knew what and when. Meh...

I've been dying to show off some of the amazing colours and scenery from Vernon lately. But as I just have a very small camera phone good pics are hard to come by. Here are two I took on a walk with my Mother yesterday.

Thought it's hard to see the first one is actually a dwarf apple orchard. These small trees are COVERED in huge red apples. It's quite a sight actually.

The second pic is a tree, I believe Maple, that turned this stunning red hue just about overnight. I really have to thank the heavens that I live in such a georgeous area. I Love it Here!

Today is turning out to be a day of comtemplation. I talked to my counsellor yesterday and I'm really very happy with my progress right now. I really feel that my whole demenor and outlook on life has changed greatly. This has been echoed by many of those around me.

I can confidently say now that I am not gay.

Wow, how do I continue after saying that.

To completely and fully be able to explain this I'm going to have to do it in person and it's going to be very complicated. So I'm going to do what I'm sure is going to be a very poor job of suming up the situation in as easy a way as I can.

Growing up a number of factors led to a male gender idendity deficit that left me feeling less of a man. This led to an incredible deficit in my male identity. Feeling that I was majorly lacking
in areas that men should have I came to idolize and eventually lust over those qualities I believed I lacked (I have read a lot on this subject and found that Dr. Joseph Nicolosi's books have been incredibly helpful. I encourage everyone interested in the topic of the male-homosexual to read these books). It was this lust that created the same sex longings I experienced.

I want to get one thing straight right now. I know that many of you think that I have been 'brain-washed' by my counsellor because he is a Christian. Get that thought out of your mind right now. I'm sick of having people not giving me the credit for something that I've been working on very hard for the past year. Give me and my mental faculties more credit than that. Fact is that I've tried the brain-washing religious technique before to deal with this issue and it REALLY didn't work. That and my counsellor doesn't care if I'm gay or not. He doesn't have a set agenda in 'making me' one way or another. He's just able to walk down this road with me and provide guidance.

The road ahead is still long and I know there are going to be times of great struggle. Essentially I'm re-educating myself to have a healthy view of maleness and my own maleness. This will take time. Of course some of the longings and desires will remain (I don't know if they will ever fully go away) but I know now that I can move beyond them.

There is so much more that I want to say but I just don't know how or where to begin saying it. So stick with me and I'll do the best I can.

This post totally came out of nowhere. I was originally going to write about the fantastic weather we are having today. How very Canadian of me.

On my way home tonight I stopped and picked up the dog. He was SO THIRILLED to see me he started barking and barking. This is a dog that doesn't bark so this is a major event. The people that were babysitting him were stunned because they didn't think that he could bark. So it seems that I'm fully integrated into this world because the dog misses me.

Today both my morning and afternoon jobs cancelled so I came back to Vernon picked up my friend and we went to Gray Monk Winery for a glass of wine and cheeses and enjoyed the view. It was a PERFECT Okanagan Fall day. The breeze was slightly crisp yet the sun shone so brightly and warmly you didn't even notice. Truly wonderful.

Then I went back to Kamloops to fit some people for custom ear plugs. Not exactly glamourous that job. Sticking gunk in guys ears isn't wonderful but it pays the bills I suppose. What I need is money... lots of money...

Well I'm done work for the day. Finally an early day. Now if I could just convince the dark circles under my eyes to disappear things would be lovely.

I feel that I should be out doing something. Looking around, seeing what's UP in 'the loops'. Either way I need to get out of this hotel room cause I don't think it's good to just sit here and brood.

Dial up Sucks! Thank God I have it though!

So two things of note happened today. I passed five vintage Rolls-Royce Motorcars on the Trans-Canada highway in Chase B.C.. And a lady brought her pet goat to her appointment! Yes a pygmy goat. It was cute but still strange.

I just started reading The 17 Secrets to success by... some guy. Well the first few pages said that in order to be successful you need to have a love, passion, deep seated interest, etc. Basically a goal or something that you want and desire to become a world expert in. I agree because if you are going to be good at something and if I'm going to do a job for the rest of my life I want it to be something I love. Now I just have to figure out what that is.

Thinking things over last night I realized that my frustration with my seeming disinterest in finding a new job (and yet desperately wanting one) is very much a result of two things. The first and most important is that I have been focusing so much on my mental health lately that I haven't been able to do anything more. In essence I'm coasting in most other areas of life until I order my mental issues properly. This makes perfect sense but it is very frustrating. Frustrating in the sense that I've been used to working a number of jobs and going to school and having constant stimulation for so long that now that I am unable to do this it's bewildering. The second aspect is that I really don't know what I want to do and trying to focus on something that you can't even figure out is tough. The fact that aspect one cancels out aspect two just adds to the confusion.

Discussing some of this with my Dad last night I gave myself a deadline of December. I'm quitting this job come December.

Reading last years entry on here for today's date proves yet again how quickly things can change in a year. How quickly I have changed and how much. The Baron mentioned to me just this week that I am completely changed even since arriving on his doorstep in July. I feel different and things are starting to make a lot more sense. I always want it to move faster though. I believe my counselor would tell me to "stop and enjoy the moment." I'm doing what I can to enjoy that but...

I am REALLY looking forward to Saturday. I'm going to Quail's Gate Winery for a wine festival luncheon with Tim and Lisa. We decided that we are going to do two wine festival events for the Fall festival instead of going to our usual Fall Festival Grand Tasting. So this is event one and event two is looking to be some kind of Murder Mystery evening sponsored by one of the other local wineries. I really with I had someone to go with... Sometimes singleness does very much suck.

From Kamloops, good night.

Wow the days have been long lately. Unfortunately they've been starting at 5AM and lasting quite a long time. I think I have narrowed down part of what I dislike so much about this job. The complete lack of the ability to have a social life. It totally sucks!

I'm tired and kind of pissed off at my Dad tonight. He always seems to make me feel like an idiot when I mention things about work. Obviously the company is important to him but the fact that I'm one of his highest producers should stop him from jumping on my back when I mention anything about how a job went slow etc.

I'm back home. Very happy to be here. As I think you can tell from reading the past week everything was fine until Thursday. I just crashed. Even today I'm still exhausted. I had a short nap this afternoon and plan on sleeping as late as I can tomorrow.

I have been plesantly surprised lately with the number of e-mails from different people from the coast who have been wondering how things are going. I did make a lot of good friends down there. Even though the experience of working for HBC was horrific I still stand by the fact that there are a lot of good people working for the company. Unfortunately there are and equal number of truly evil, untalented people within the corporation as well. Ok, I'm blabbing now, off to bed.

What if this is all there is to life. What if I've reached my peak. Maybe I'm condemned to riding around in a truck doing a shitty job that I hate for the rest of my life. It's Friday night and I'm sitting in a hotel room in Williams Lake. I hate my life.

Being pulled in two different directions. Two different worlds. Calling me. One I don't fit in anymore, nor do I want to, yet I long for it. The other, foreign, scary, a place where I don't fit... yet. Yet that place is my goal. That is where I want to be. The process of getting there may just end up killing me. Laying in bed last night I desperately wanted to cease to exist. Why can't it be that easy?

Why is it that Starbucks stubbournly refuses to use chocolate in their mochas? I suppose the argument would be then it wouldn't be mocha. My argument is that they would taste much better and they would likely sell more. For some reason though today I got a craving for a SB mocha and had a Grande once work was complete.

Still in PG, anxiously awaiting episode deux of The O.C. which airs tonight. Seriously can't wait! And no this isn't a product of being stuck in PG I really love living vicariously through the characters on The O.C. . Am I a little to old for it... probably. Shouldn't I be smarter than to be sucked into a common soap opera... absolutely. But OMG I love Julie Cooper. The woman is so DELICIOUSLY EVIL I just LOVE to hate her. I wonder what dastardly deeds she's going to carry out tonight. Self-preservation at it's best, that's Julie Cooper!

Schedule has changed now so I'm looking forward to going home tomorrow. Not sure if I'm going to drive all the way home tomorrow or if I'm going to stay the night in Quesnel. It'll all depend on how tired I am tomorrow after work.

Well I decided today that fall has officially come to the North. This picture was taken at a rest stop approximately 80 kms out of Prince George on my way there from McBride. I was hoping that the fall colours from the trees would show up better but this will have to do. Driving along Highway 16 today offered many stunning fall views. There seemed to be a lot of deciduous trees mixed in with the conifers and the mixture was simply gorgeous and stereotypically Canadian. Trees as far as the eye can see.

McBride I do want to add is a ridiculously small isolated town in the middle of nowhere. Check it out on a map and I'm sure that you'll agree it's truly in the middle of nowhere. Last night at a restaurant I witnessed a very sad attempt at cross cultural communication. The table of German tourists were having a hell of a time communicating to the waitress. Mostly cause the waitress kept talking to them like they were 3. I was so embarrassed. Oh well what can you expect.

Currently in Prince George and some things have pleasantly surprised me. There is a lot of growth going on in the city. Lots of new buildings and businesses are going up. The majority of the people I've seen are still as fashioned challenged as ever though. On a quick walk to Starbucks (mercifully it's still in the same place) I witnessed everything from capri pants with white socks pulled up to hair scrunchys! Oh well what can be expected, change comes slowly to the North.

Seems that I've lost that 'I'm just desperate to sleep gimme a room with a bed look' look. Upon walking into the hotel in Clearwater tonight the lady at the front desk took one look at me and said, I'm completely full except for one room and you don't want it! Hmm, ok. Can I see the room? So she gave me the key and I took a look at the room which was completely acceptable (come to think of it this isn't a surprise as she also told me that their wireless internet didn't work, but as you can see it works perfectly well). God knows I've stayed in worse. Puzzeling over this I looked into the mirror when I walked into the room and figured it out. My clothes screamed CITY. Good thing I brought my work clothes to wear for the rest of the trip wouldn't want to be discouraged from other hotels to. Actually the other factor is that people in small towns stare at you if your wearing anything half-decent that isn't flannel.

I hate it when people ask me what I'm going to do after I've finished working for my Dad. Seriously if I knew believe me I'd be doing it, or working towards doing it. I really don't know. I guess it's not really so much that I don't know what I'd like to do but I have no idea how I'm supposed to get into doing what I want to do. I suppose that I should use some of the time that I have now to be researching this stuff in order to get a better idea but honestly I just don't care. In the past few weeks I've noticed that I am in a period of apathy with just about everything. I'm almost at the point of calling myself lazy. I don't want to read any books, I'm not interested in starting any new projects, even meeting up with people just seems like to much effort. I wish I could get out of this stuck feeling frame of mind.

Tomorrow I start out on a 1 to 2 week trip through Northern BC. I start in Clearwater, Vavenby, McBride, Prince George, Quesnel & Williams Lake. These are just the highlights worth mentioning. There are plenty of other hick towns I'll be blasting through. I have to spend some time at my parents house tomorrow in order to dig out some of my fall / winter clothes as they're already talking about snow levels in the daily forcasts. I'm not really sure how I feel about this trip. I know that I'm likely going to be a complete mess because of the truly horrible hours that I'll be working. All week I'll be working more than 12 hours a day. Not a prospect I'm looking forward to.

I bought The Killers 'Hot Fuss' CD today. It's not usually a genre that I would typically listen to but I'm loving it. This guys are awesome musicians. In fact there's a lot of awesome Brit music out there right now that's worthy of a booty shakin.

A friend of mine from Vancouver asked me if I would move to Lake Louise with her and work at a resort. Now this prospect in itself isn't all that exciting but I have been thinking a lot again about doing some travelling. It seems that all of the people around me are doing it and as I feel totally stuck anyway and really don't have anything worldly to speak of it may not be a bad idea.

I had the drivers seat on my car replaced today because the leather was cracking like crazy (and as I'm not three hundered pounds and the car is new there is NO reason it should be doing that) so the guys replaced it with a new seat but they fucked up the install so bad I'm furious about it. I could have put it on better myself! So the car is going back again next week while I'm gone so it can be re-done properly.

Finally I went to the Vernon Vipers game tonight. What a boring exercise that was. The stupid Vipers were playing the Prince George Spruce Kings (or Poplar Queens, depending on who your talking to), they took 65 shots on goal and only got 1 goal! The other team only took 21 shots on goal and still managed to score the first goal of the game. The game went into double overtime and still neither team managed to score. The game ended 1-1 and man was I bored. Come to think of it did you hear about the hockey game in the leper colony? There was a face off in the corner! Ugh, sorry for that just couldn't resist.

I'm starting to notice a pattern with the anger. It seems to happen when I'm hungry and have worked for more than 8 hours. Today I had a 12 hour day and the anger bubbled to the surface around the 9th hour. I was hungry, wanted to go home, and tired. I was FURIOUS at just about anything and everyone. Most of the anger centered on my Dad though. My messed up logic was blaming the situation on him because he owns the company so naturally it's HIS fault that the day sucked. I really have to figure out a way to deal with this in a good way, it'll be to long of a year otherwise.

Wow how exciting... I've been comment spammed!

I'm pissed. Irrational anger is coursing though my being. Irrational only in that I want to be positively mean to people tonight. I'm holding myself back though. I think it's just cause I'm tired. I worked a 12.5 hour day today. Specific things that are making me angry are:

1. My truck is the oldest in the fleet and is having transmission issues. I have been promised the brand new truck as soon as it arrives but it's still in Vancouver waiting to be built. My understanding is that it could be months. Now I've driven my current truck before and I suppose overall it's not a bad truck it just urks me to NO end that it doesn't have a CD player, it has a tendency to throw heat inside the cab all the time and even having the windows wide open doesn't seem to help. The aformentioned transmission problem means that backing up has to be done as SLOW as possible because if you go to fast the damned thing starts bucking like a mad bull.

2. It was 30 degrees today and I was testing at a location at which I had to leave my backdoor open all day for hours at a time so it was hot.

3. A co-worker pissed me off. We were supposed to meet up to exchange some work but he made me drive all the way across town to him to get it.

4. I forgot my toiletries at home, including razor, shampoo, facial cleanser, etc.

5. I just am.

What is with this. Overall the day went fine. I just sat in the back of the truck and watched The Sopranoes on my Computer all day. Really I shouldn't be acting this way. Lately anxiety has been making me crazy.

So I'm in Kamloops. Work has officially started and here I am. Already I'm thrilled that I have my laptop. My usual hotel just got wireless internet last week which is just amazing timing I think. That and tomorrow I'm going to have to sit in a parking lot waiting for clients for 6 or more hours. Does this bother me, well a little, but at least I have my laptop with it's DVD player and I rented some movies from Blockbuster before I left so I'm good with the whole sitting around for hours issue.

Last night Tim and Lisa came to my parents house for an 'End of Summer BBQ Celebration'. This summer truly was a good one and we wanted to send it out on a good note. I opened a bottle of French wine that Raphael had brought for me, last time he was home from Holland, and it was fantastic. Very dry and yet full. Went excellently with the steak. We also sampled a bottle of Sumac Ridge Gwerstrameiner Ice Wine, their first year doing it, and it was excellent. A good time was had by all and it truely was a good way to end a fantastic summer.

So I'm in Kamloops. Work has officially started and here I am. Already I'm thrilled that I have my laptop. My usual hotel just got wireless internet last week which is just amazing timing I think. That and tomorrow I'm going to have to sit in a parking lot waiting for clients for 6 or more hours. Does this bother me, well a little, but at least I have my laptop with it's DVD player and I rented some movies from Blockbuster before I left so I'm good with the whole sitting around for hours issue.

Last night Tim and Lisa came to my parents house for an 'End of Summer BBQ Celebration'. This summer truly was a good one and we wanted to send it out on a good note. I opened a bottle of French wine that Raphael had brought for me, last time he was home from Holland, and it was fantastic. Very dry and yet full. Went excellently with the steak. We also sampled a bottle of Sumac Ridge Gwerstrameiner Ice Wine, their first year doing it, and it was excellent. A good time was had by all and it truely was a good way to end a fantastic summer.

Ok, I may be foolish but I signed up at freeiPods.com. According to a whole bunch of media outlets (AOL, CNN, MSNBC, Wired, etc.) they are legit. So c'mon and help me get a free iPod by clicking this link!

Here it is, my first post using my NEW laptop! I'm very pleased with it. It's an Acer with a 15.4" screen. It's got all the usual desired bells and whistles so now I'm just spending a little time getting the settings to where I want them and learning Windows XP. Sometime today I'm going to go and buy it a nice case and a mouse as I despise laptop touch pads.

The long weekend began with a Staff BBQ at my parents house last night. Tonight should see me in Penticton visiting a friend. Then Sunday is going to be a day of rest. Monday Lisa and Tim are going to come to my parents house for dinner.

As is typical on Labour Day the weather is gloomy and rainy. Personally I think it's God's way of showing displeasure with Unions!

Have a good day.

I'm back from Vancouver. The time in class was deathly boring but my after hours events were not so boring. I managed to lock myself out of my friends house the first night. I, along with thousands of others, was evacuated from Metro Town Mall in Burnaby when a suspicious package showed up in a Telus store. This involved me arriving at the mall just in time to end up trapped in the parkade with previously mentioned thousands of others & their cars for over an hour trying to escape. And the traffic lights on the Lougheed Highway didn't work the next morning on my way to school. Not bad for four days.

I saw my counsellor while I was down there and it was awesome. A really good visit where I feel as though I possibly made some break-thru's. Realizing that my life seems to be on a different path from others helps. Keeping this in perspective helps me not to feel like a loser because I'm living with my best friends Dad and don't really have a place of my own to speak of. Or that working for my Dad isn't a mark of failure. Both are just a means to an ends.