To the Ones I Love,

This is an incredibly hard e-mail to write as quite honestly the message / situation is just awkward. As you know just over a year ago I came to you and told you that I was gay. During that time in my life I was going through a lot of mental and emotional unrest. Nothing made sense and I felt I didn’t fit anywhere. While in Vancouver I tried to live a lifestyle I thought that I was supposed to be a part of. Try as I did to convince myself that I was living the life I wanted to it just didn’t work. I couldn’t seem to quell the disquiet in my spirit or silence the nagging voice in my head that was telling me that this too wasn’t me.

Now after many months of personal reflection, soul searching and much emotional pain I have come to a conclusion. I am not gay (sometimes the simplest way of saying things is also the easiest). I have been working with a counsellor for many months now and by utilizing the tools he has given me I have been able to restructure many of my thought patterns and build better emotional boundaries.

In my situation the same sex attractions were symptoms of character deficiencies. Having identified and worked on a lot of these issues has caused the same sex attractions to subside. I can confidently say that I have moved closer to a sense of my own masculinity that I have never before been in touch with.

Finally I want to thank you and beg your continued indulgence. Thank you for bearing with me during this incredibly difficult time in my life and thank you for being a part of the catalyst for change. I know this may be hard for some of you to understand and that’s where I want to ask your indulgence. As I have learned so much about myself throughout this phase of life I would be happy to talk to you one on one if you have any questions.

Don’t worry, the KS you know now won’t be turning into something else. I’m tired of playing games and hiding behind masks, the sarcastic disinterested arrogant, pious religious fundamentalist, drunken partier, or whatever else I hid behind. As I grow to know myself I also sincerely hope to grow to know you in a deeper and better way.

This new chapter in my life is full of surprises and quite honestly a measure of fear but I don’t think anything that comes along is going to be any harder than this chapter that has finally closed.

I look forward to talk with you.

Peace… at last.

KS

I am just SO upset

I am just SO upset!  I haven’t felt this wound up for months now.  Tonight the previously mentioned Brother-in-law started asking me all these religious questions and basically told me that I was living my spiritual life all wrong.  Apparently he’d had a near death experience and since then God’s told him how he should live.  So my understanding of what God has told him is that he’s supposed to boss people around and tell them that they need to get involved with the church and to share their faith at every opportunity.  When I asked him if he’d taken the opportunity to share his faith today he tried to change the subject.  When I persisted he told me that God hadn’t pointed out an opportunity today, to which I replied that maybe waiting on God wasn’t the right thing to do maybe he was supposed to create opportunities!  Well he just changed the subject again and started talking about how God was using him to direct people towards Ministry opportunities where they would be used.  To which I really wanted to say “isn’t it wonderful that like many other Canadian public school teachers God has appointed you to be a delegater and task setter as opposed to someone who actually has to get their hands dirty in the undesirable tasks of witnessing and ministering to people!  If only I was so blessed.”  That’s what I really wanted to say.  Instead I held my tongue and swore at him in my mind.  Later The Baron commended me for my restraint but I don’t know how much more restraint I can show with this guy.  Even though staying with The Baron is temporary this is still my home at the moment and having this Ass come into my home and attacking me makes me incredibly angry.

The next thing that pissed me off is that after being promised the new truck for work for months now I have been told that someone else is going to have it till the end of this month!  I AM SO FUCKING ANGRY ABOUT THIS IT’S NOT EVEN RATIONAL!  I don’t know why but having the new truck means a lot to me.  It could be the fact that for the first two months of this job I was driving around in the oldest truck in the fleet and making due.  It could also be the fact that after all the shitty years of doing this job and NEVER getting the new truck I feel that it’s due to me this time.  Finally it could just be the fact that I was led on to believe that I would be getting it and there’s no FUCKING reason that they would give it to the employee they did give it to as she’s leaving the company at the end of the month anyway (I’m not mad at her in the slightest because she even called me today and asked why she still had the truck when she knew that I was supposed to be getting it and was looking forward to it)!  I’m SO angry about this I want to quit right now.  Unfortunately I have responsibilities that don’t allow that.  ARGH!  SO FRUSTERATED!

Ruth

Fuck!  I’m really feeling a great deal of frustration right now.  When I got home the other day from my trip I called Ruth, who is pretty much my only and best friend in Vernon, to find out that she’d disconnected her phone!  I was totally confused by this as we’d been text messaging the whole time that I was gone and she never once mentioned anything; coupled with the fact that up until the last I communicated with her she was supposed to start training to start working for my Dad’s company.  So I called her Aunt and asked her what was going on and her Aunt told me that Ruth was pretty anxious to go and had already changed her phone number to an Abbotsford number.  So apparently she’s moving to Abbotsford!  Anyway long story short she just called me and told me that while she was on her recent trip to California (where she used to live and work) that God spoke to her and told her that she was supposed to move on and apparently he told her to move to Abbotsford.

I am so angry and hurt that I just answered her questions with yes or no and listened.  I just can’t believe that she would make such an important decision and not tell me about it.  I mean we spent most of the summer together and hung out just about every night.

Knowing her I know not to take this personally as she’s done this type of thing before and I’ve lost contact with her and she always turns up eventually… this time though it feels like betrayal.  

Super Saturday

The Baron’s Sister and Brother-in-law are in town visiting.  While very nice people the Brother-in-law is slightly, shall we say, eccentric?  He’s a retired math teacher and keeps offering to help me brush up on my mathematical abilities!  No thanks.

Today has been a very expensive day.  I had the oil changed on the car and then decided that I should get some new windshield wipers too.  Turns out that windshield wipers are the same price as an oil change!  I couldn’t believe that and that’s even getting the super duper deal that my family gets on all vehicular maintenance and parts from our Ford dealer because Dad’s company does so much business with them.

I ordered The Baron’s Christmas present today!  I’m very excited about it because he’s going to absolutely LOVE it!  What I really can’t believe is how PACKED the malls are already.  For the past few weekends they’ve been absolutely insane.  In Calgary at Chinook it was actually difficult walking around in some of the stores because they were so busy.  I’m sorry people but Christmas just isn’t that big of a deal.  After last year of working for the majority of the holiday I’ve realized it’s much more important to spend time with friends and family than it is to spend a shit load of cash on people.  

I think I'm overtired. I even took sleeping pills and I'm still wide awake. So the logical thing to do is to write.

So I'm glad to be home. It's just so much easier to relax when your at home.

Ok, here's what's really on my mind. I made friends with a girl while we were all still in school. The girl and I get along famously and have often gone out together to the clubs dancing and such. Over this summer I really started to have some pretty strong feelings for her but of course kept them secret as she had a boyfriend who was a good friend of mine too. The last time that we went out together was in Penticton and the drive home was just the two of us and it was really nice and we talked and sang the whole way home. During that conversation she idely mentioned a few times that her boyfriend was really bothering her a lot. She didn't elaborate on it anymore than that and I didn't bother to dig because I figured it was really none of my business. Well upon arriving home tonight I gave her a call and after chatting a bit she told me that she and the boyfriend weren't together anymore! Wow. This whole time I was in Alberta I was fantisizing about the possibility of this happening and... now it has. So now there's a few things I've got to figure out / do.

First of all I need to communicate my non-gay status to her (which by the way is not surprising anyone I tell... I know I don't get it when I told people I was they wern't surprised, now I tell then I'm not and they're not surprised... whatever). Then I need to let her know of my considerable interest in her. Then I need to pray that it all comes together. I'm actually not really all that worried about that part of it now because hey there's no point in getting all ahead of myself. I'm looking forward to this Christmas season even more now because I'm hoping to stake out some kind of "territory" with her before some other guy moves in... but at the same time I don't want to be pushy. Fact is the two of us are going to co-host a New Years Party (somewhere, we're looking into the chance of getting a cabin at a ski hill but The Baron has already offered the house, which has been the site of some fantastic parties already this year) so there's a perfect opportunity.

The girl is amazing and is actually someone I'm willing and planning to go to great lengths to get. Ok. I'm done now.

That's what I'm thinking about tonight.

Last Night

Well tomorrow I head back over the mountains to home.  I’m so very happy to be going there.  I’ve had a good time in Alberta but it’s starting to wear thin.  I’ve invited myself over for dinner at my Calgary cousins, I’ve visited a lot of friends and relatives along the way but it’s got to end.  No more travelling thank you.  

I bought two new CD’s yesterday.  The new Kayne West, my first rap CD!  I have to say it’s an excellent CD and gets two thumbs up from me.  Hell it’s so good I almost feel black while listening to it…  The other CD is the new Rolling Stones – A Bigger Bang.  I’ve never been a fan of these old guys before but I find the music on this album fairly enjoyable.  I think that I’ll burn a copy for me to keep and give the original to my Dad as his car refuses to play burned CD’s.

Well I just had an excellent Turkey dinner at my cousins home and I’m having a glass of Little Penguin Shiraz which is making me sleepy.  So we’ll see you at home.

Three Hills

This is an excerpt from an e-mail I wrote to Matthew cause he can’t see the blog from his present location in China!

Hey ya'

Get this I'm sitting in the Wireless Steakhouse in Three Hills right now!  Go figure.  As if that isn't the strangest idea I've ever seen.  The two don't go together at all and honestly I don't give the place much of a chance but hey it 'served' my purpose for this morning.  It's -13 here right now but in true Prairie fashion it doesn't feel like it.  So I'm doing my requisite visiting through Three Hills.  I stayed with my Great Aunt last night and now I'm meeting some cousins for breakfast and then I'm off to visit with an old Missionary lady I knew when I was at Prairie.  It's weird being back here.  Even though I wasn't happy here I did have an awful lot of good times.  Ok, enough nostalgia.

I'm heading home on Thursday and I have to say I'm happy about it.  It is weird though because this trip has been really good.  I can't say I mind being on the road anymore.  Now that I've exercised my demons life is so much different.  Everyone is telling me how much I've changed and even I feel it.  The Baron tells me I just seem more comfortable in my own skin, my Parents tell me I'm not as caustic and mean, and others just can't seem to figure it out.  I have to say that I feel like I've lost something in a way as my humour sarcastic and mean as it used to be isn't there anymore in the same way.  It's actually hard to think of things to say to cut people down.  Maybe I'm just in a slump... although if I'm not I'm good with that.

Tofield

November 7, 2005

Well I had a good weekend in Calgary.  Unfortunately I didn’t realize that my first job this morning, in Tofield, was just out of Edmonton until yesterday.  So I drove up Highway 2 until the snow started to fall.  By the time I reached Leduc there was a thin layer of snow all over the highway that made it feel like I was driving on butter.  I slowed down to between 40 or 60 kms/hr but the fools around me didn’t.  I had one jack-ass fish tale in front of me twice before he finally pulled off the highway as I’m sure he only had summer tires on!  Now I’m in Tofeild listening to the CBC and the accident reports are crazy.  You’d think that living in Edmonton people would know how to drive in snow.  SLOW DOWN!

Because of this weekends antics I’ve decided to quit drinking.  Yesterdays hangover was just horrible and lasted until I went to bed last night.  Now don’t worry I’m still going to drink wine but anything else is done.  No more…

Travelling through Alberta has been rather interesting actually.  Listening to CBC and witnessing the hyper-growth economy in action here just blows me away.  It’s rather frustrating that in both Alberta and BC all you ever hear about is how there’s not enough workers to supply demand and yet I can’t seem to find a job that I actually want to do.  How does that work?  It really gives me incentive to keep working at looking to see if Narcissus will be a viable business.

I’M GOING HOME ON THURSDAY!  I’m very much looking forward to it as I’m pretty tired of travelling.  It’ll be nice to see my friends again.

So I'm in Calgary. Arrived after driving all day. My trip went: :Leduc, Wetaskiwin, Camrose, Wainwright, Provost, Calgary! I was so fucking mad at the clients in Provost. The bastards kept me waiting around for two and a half hours for no reason! If my truck was powered by anger I'd have made it to Calgary in no time.

Anyway I'm exhausted so just wanted to let you all know I'd found an internet connection. Would you believe there's one accessible from my Uncles house! Accessible from the basement no less. Makes me hate Edmonton even more!

Leduc II

November 2, 2005

I went to Edmonton last night (from Leduc where I’ve been staying this week) and had supper with Raphael’s brother.  Dinner at Earl’s was excellent and I had a fantastic time.  Really enjoyed the conversation with him after spending the summer with him we’d become much better friends and I’m quite glad about it now.  

Tomorrow is my last night in Leduc and then I head to Calgary for the weekend.  I’m looking forward to staying with Uncle Frank and seeing all the cousins down there.  Also looking forward to seeing my friend who used to be from Penticton and who we’ve been partying with so much there this summer.

Leduc

October 30, 2005

Ok, I’m starting to feel a little bit crazy.  Last night I was sitting watching TV on my own and it just hit me that I was tired, lonely and frustrated.  As decent as this trip has been I’m looking forward to it being done now more than ever.  Kind of stupid as it’s going to be this last leg of the trip that’s going to involve more friends and people that I haven’t seen in a long time.  Don’t get me wrong I’m looking forward to seeing them but even though I’ve been able to stay with relatives I’m ready to go home.  Weird actually as once I’m home I’m sure I’ll be tired of being there.  Am I the only one who has this stunted form of wanderlust?  I love travelling and going to different cities and when I’m home I want to leave but when I’ve left I want to go home.

Spent yesterday working on the feasibility study for Narcissus I ended up spending way more time defining who my customers were than I originally thought I would.  Working through this feasibility study keeps bringing up doubts I wasn’t expecting but so far nothing has popped up and told me it won’t work.  I’m still waiting for that.

As I contemplate going into business for myself I know more and more that it’s the right thing for me to do.  I’m just so disinterested in doing anything else.  Anything I can actually see myself doing I don’t seem to be qualified for and anything that I’m qualified for I can’t seem to get because of the competition.  Although to be fair I haven’t even bothered trying to get anything in the recent past.

Today I’m going to visit a friend from Prairie who’s living in Wetaskskiwin.  Looking at the lives of some of my friends I’m frankly relieved that I don’t have his life.  Married and has a child, living with the in-laws and being supported by his wife as he stays home with the kid.  Ugh just not what I’d want although I’m thrilled that he seems very happy about it.  Either way I’m looking forward to visiting with him as we were really close.

Edmonton II

October 26, 2005

I am super frustrated tonight.  Not only is the only hotel in Acheson (the industrial park where I start work tomorrow at 515AM full but I haven’t been able to check my e-mail since Saturday!  It’s making me crazy!

Other than those two irritants, things here are fine.  I am really tired though.  I hate 12 hour days.

This weekend I’m going to start cobbling together a feasibility study for my store… which I think I’ve decided to name Narcissus!  The Baron and I were discussing store related issues before I left and that name popped out of the conversation.  So from now on I’ll refer to the store as Narcissus.  I was reading over my Entrepreneurship text from school today and it indicates that a feasibility study is the first step.  I’m glad I started reading that book because I knew that a Business Plan wasn’t the first step but I couldn’t remember what was.  Now I know.

  

Edmonton

Let it be known that I am officially annoyed with the backwards, red-neck Province of Alberta.  I don’t get it.  Have they not heard of wireless internet here yet?  Frankly I’m not surprised.  I’ve noticed this before while travelling in Alberta.  It seems that things come slower here than BC.  Things I take for granted in BC (i.e.- reasonably good coffee or wireless internet) seem to take a while to catch on here.  Now I’m not saying there isn’t any wireless internet connections, it just seems that most hotels here haven’t figured out there is a demand for it.  Hell we were in Grand Forks a couple of weeks ago and they had wireless internet at Johnny’s Motel.  If Johnny’s has wireless why doesn’t The Yellowhead?  I can only assume that if I come back here in a year or so they will have it.

I have seen hell today.  It took the form of the largest Mall in North America… and me with $0.  Seriously I was so depressed I had to get out of there fast.  This no money thing is sucking I tell you.  I think I had more money when I was a student, as a student though I wasn’t driving a great car though…  Last night I stayed at my Aunts home in Leduc so I finally got a good night sleep.  Today was a really slack day with just one job but tomorrow will be a little bit busier.  

Talked to my Dad last night and my new truck is ready!  They’re going to Vancouver to pick it up this week.  I’m very excited that I’m going to have my own truck from now on.  Shuffling between trucks is a such a pain in the ass because you constantly have to get things the way you want them and then you get changed to another truck again.  So getting home to that will be pretty nice.

Slave Lake III

October 24, 2005

I’m finally leaving Slave Lake.  Not a moment to soon either as far as I’m concerned.  I woke up feeling pretty crappy today but still better than I felt yesterday which was just unreal.  Rarely do I get headaches like I had all day yesterday, it was so bad my stomach was even upset.  So of course I tried everything in terms of drugs that I carry with me but to no avail.  Next was a cup of coffee and wouldn’t you know it the headache subsided greatly.  Now the problem was that I was up till about 1130, which didn’t make me all that happy as I was exhausted.   This whole week I’ve looked like crap because of the terrible quality of sleep I’ve been getting.  Even using the substantial amount of skin care products that I lug around with me everywhere hasn’t helped to subside the dark circles and puffiness under my eyes (although it does sooth them).  Yes, I’m a certifiable mess, it’s only Monday and already I’m longing for the weekend.

Today marks the first day of the second week of my trip.  Only three more weeks to go and even though this week had a few hitches (mostly sleep related) overall everything has gone superbly.  No major problems or anything to complain about.  I’m almost sorry about that.

It’s been months now since I’ve seen my counsellor.  I did talk to him on the phone about 4 weeks ago but as for actually being in his office it’s been a while.  I’m looking forward to the opportunity but I really feel fine even though I haven’t seen him for such a long time.  I really feel that’s a significant milestone.  That and the fact that I don’t freak out as much anymore on the way I think things are ‘supposed’ to be.  Rather I’m generally pretty content to let things ride.  The old Popeye adage “I am who I am” is actually starting to make sense to me but more importantly it’s starting to mean something.

Slave Lake II

October 23, 2005

I am so ready to get the hell out of this town.  Now yesterday when I was writing about how much I enjoyed this place please don’t confuse the town with the lake itself.  Slave Lake, the body of water, is amazing.  Misrepresenting itself as a small ocean (from certain vantage points) with beautiful white sandy beaches the lake itself is about the last thing that you’d expect to find in Northern Alberta.  The town… well the town is fairly typical of what you’d expect to find in Northern Alberta.  I believe the liquor store to person ratio is likely extraordinarily high.  

Hardly to my surprise yesterday’s Edmonton Sun ran the “shocking” cover story that Alberta led the nation in mental illness and depression numbers among citizens.  Apparently the oil patch has something to do with it.  I’m shocked!  The working conditions are dismal, the jobs generally terrible and the only reason most people do them is for the obscene amounts of money to be made.  The sad fact is that the oil patch probably extracts an equal amount of life, or the will to live, out of its workers as it does crude.  As an uninformed visitor looking around these towns and hearing about the substance and alcohol abuses I’m not surprised.  Usually I would be the last person to encourage more social spending on community support but here I think the cry for these resources is actually justified.  The majority of the guys working up here are here to make tons of money and leave.  What I don’t understand is how they figure they are going to be able to escape from the lifestyle the oil patch allows them to afford.  Sadly many of them don’t seem to be able to make that break of reaching the ‘magic bank balance’ and then quitting to pursue whatever it was they originally wanted to do.  For many of the young men that move here in pursuit of that dream they don’t have any social network and few if any friends.  No wonder depression is a leading killer in Alberta.

I’ve spent the great majority of the last two days in my hotel room and as nice as it is I tire of it too.  I’m really looking forward to staying with my Great Aunt in Leduc tomorrow night.  This much alone time isn’t all that much fun.

I rented four DVD’s yesterday and how finished watching them all now.  Last night I watched the first four episodes of Desperate Housewives which I enjoyed immensely.  After the Housewives I watched Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter which was a surprisingly good movie.  Not at all what I expected it to be a definite recommend.  Today I watched Mulholland Dr. which I thought would be a great movie but turned out to be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life.  The only reason I rented it was because every time I go into a movie store I always notice it and think that it maybe good.  So I finally rented it.  BIG MISTAKE!  After that I watched The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, which I know I vowed I would never watch.  In spite of myself and a killer headache I found myself enjoying.  It was quite loosely based on the book so I can’t fault them for screwing up what I view as one of the best books ever written.

Tonight I am going to pack my things up and try to go to bed early.  I’m hoping that the headache will go away with some rest.  Tomorrow looks to be a very long day.  Week 1 of 4 down.  Only 3 more to go.

Slave Lake

October 22, 2005

Wow the past couple of days have been excessively busy.  I’ve been here in Slave Lake since Tuesday and it’s been non-stop until now.  Even this morning (Saturday) I had to go to the Pulp Mill for two hours at 6AM!  So now I’m sitting in my fantastic hotel room on the shores of incredible Slave Lake looking out the window considering the things I should / could do today.  There are the usual chores, washing the truck and cleaning it out, laundry, and mailing off the completed work to the office.  But right now I’m pretty much content to just sit here.  I do really wish that I had internet access though as that would help to dull the monotony.

Quite honestly Slave Lake has turned out to be the biggest surprise of a long time.  The last time I was here was about 5 years ago.  At that point this place was a dismal little dump.  The first clue I got that things may have changed was when I called from High Prairie the other day and tried to get a hotel room.  Every room in town was booked!  At this point I kind of got a little worried because I needed to stay here.  I called the office and told them to find me a room as I wasn’t having any success.  Thankfully they found the place I’m staying in on the internet.  I can’t even describe how much I like this place aside from saying that I would happily live here… well maybe a few months a year.  Yeah, I think I’ll trade in the car and buy myself a big ass Ford F-250 King Ranch 4X4.  Then I’ll go get an obscenely high paying job on the pipeline… yes that’s exactly what I’ll do.

So back to reality.  I’m looking forward to hitting Edmonton on Tuesday.  It’s a shame that all of the people I used to know in Edmonton no longer live there.  I do have to make a stop at The King’s University though to drop off some things for friends of The Baron’s.  I suppose I’ll also see Raphael’s brother while there.

I’ve really been missing Vancouver lately.  I’m not sure if it’s just because things in life are getting so predictable and I’m longing to shake things up a little or if it’s cause I just really want to go shopping?  Possibly a little of both.  

The more I think about starting my business the scarier it gets.  There are so many things that I never learned in business school.  Mostly things like how do I figure out how to get the suppliers I need on board, how do I open a retail store with absolutely zero money of my own, etc.  So right now because I happen to have ample time for reading I’ve been re-reading my Retailing text book from school (which is proving to scare me more with talk about population density equations and retail failure rates) but I’m finding that it’s not really all that much help cause I already know everything it’s trying to tell me.  Seems I didn’t miss very much from that class.  I’ve decided what I need is a mentor.  Someone who has been successful in retailing and would be willing to help would be excellent.  I know one person in Vancouver who used to own 10 Club Monaco’s when the chain was just new and who’s a real retailing diva but I’m going to have to track her down again.  I don’t think that’ll be hard.

Wow, a bald eagle just soared past my window.  I really wish my stupid camera phone was able to take a picture that adequately portrayed how beautiful it is here.  I’ve tried numerous times to get it to work but it just can’t get the immensity of the lake.

I suppose it’s time to go and wash the truck.

Grande Prairie

October 17, 2005

Few words can describe Grand Prairie better than ‘eeeeewwwwww!’.  Because of the oil boom in this Province the city is booming like there’s no tomorrow.  It’s amazing.  I arrived in town late this evening after driving for 11 hours to get here.  Looking at the hotels on the strip I was dismayed to see No Vacancy on every single one as far as the eye could see.  So I just walked into one and asked the lady at the desk to find me a hotel.  She probably called 7 before she got one that had 1 room left.  I high-tailed it over to the place to get the room before someone else did.  Just because I’m grateful that I have a room I’m not going to pass judgement on this place at all… aside from saying that I’ve stayed in cleaner accommodations at logging camps 12 hour drives into the bush!

The drive today was long but I’m driving one of the new trucks which is quite, comfortable and has a CD player.  Thank God for small mercies.  It also has a V10 engine which made the hills almost effortless.  While most of the drive was pretty the 4 dead moose that I saw laying on the side of the road quickly sobered my driving.  Not a pretty sight.

Tomorrow I’m heading up to Slave Lake where I will spend the rest of the week and… possibly the weekend.  My Mom has cousins there, where doesn’t she, but I’m not sure if I really want to get in touch with them.  The last time I was in Slave I did and it was a slightly disturbing experience.  I guess I probably will call them because I do have to spend the weekend there but I’m quite terrified that they’ll insist I go to church with them.  They’re extreme Pentecostal and I don’t think they’ll look lightly on my personal rule while travelling.  Never attend a church with Calvary, Living, or Freedom in the name.  I’ve had a few to many strange experiences with those types of churches.

Finally a story that I forgot to mention the other night.  While The Baron was making supper for Sister and I, I happily pointed out the fact that a deer was eating a part of one of his trees in the front yard.  I was happy to point this out because I know how irritated The Baron gets about this.  In a sudden flurry The Baron was out of the kitchen, still holding the really large knife he was cutting veggies with, and racing after the deer pelting it with small stones and yelling!  Truly one of the most magnificent displays I’ve ever seen from him.  Sister and I were laughing heartily when he came back in the house still brandishing his knife menacingly and muttering about pesky deer eating everything.

I'm still updating my blog on Word but STILL havn't been able to find a connection. I'm going to a friends house in the next little while and I'm hoping I will be able to connect and update from there. Cross your fingers!

It's proving rather difficult to find hotels with Internet connections. I'm at the Public Library in High Prarie right now waiting till my next job. I've been passing the time by listening to CBC's call in show about the strike that is going on in Brooks, Alberta at the meat packing plant. Suffice to say listening to a radio call in show on CBC without the obnoious Mark Forsyth (the man I love to hate) was refreshing. Callers who didn't agree with Marks point of view wern't cut off or anything! Very good and insightful program even though I did have my finger on the 'Send' button of my phone most of the time as I wanted to weigh in on the topic. Likely best I didn't as I really wanted to scream at most of the callers.

Later on it's off to Slave Lake. I have been blogging on my laptop and will post when I get the chance.

The Baron's surprise party was an absolute success! I'm very pleased with myself. I had invited Sister over last night for supper under the pretense that she hadn't seen The Baron for a long time and wanted to have dinner with him. This worked wonderfully aside from the fact that we ate a large lovely meal and were excessively full by the time that all of his friends arrived carrying all sorts of appetizer. The actual arrival of the guests happened in two stages. One of them arrived exactly at 7... as planned. She explained herself fantastically by saying that because he missed dinner with her last night that she thought she would stop in for coffee. So of course The Baron was slightly confused but happy to see her. As we were all sitting in the family room having coffee and chatting the door opened and in rushed all of his other friends singing 'Happy Birthday!'. He was completely flustered. Such a great thing to see. The rest of the night involved everyone sitting around the house and enjoying each others company while enjoying coffee and snacks.

In other, not so exciting news, I've caught a very nasty cold. Not so happy about that. Although the experience that all of the colds I had in the last year while working for HBC have helped cause I know there's no point in waiting it out I'm taking as many pills as I safely can to decimate this virus!

Today will be spent doing some laundry and getting prepared for my Alberta trip that starts on Monday. I'll obviously try and keep in touch but I'm not sure what the facilities I'll be staying at will be like so I'm not sure if I'll have internet access.

Well it's finally happened! My Baby's turned 30... 30,000 that is! On my way to Kamloops tonight I had to take this picture. I'm so upset. Why can't they stay young and cute forever?

In other news I'm conducting entry research on a business idea I had last week. I've got a partner who's very excited about the idea as well and we're going to see if it'll work. I just found out about one potential competitor already though and I'm slightly worried. Oh well to soon for that. Cross your fingers and wish me luck! If all goes well I plan on opening our doors sometime in April or May.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAPHAEL! May life continue to be a float down a pleasant stream with Wifey and all those you love. You have always ment an aweful lot to me and I truly love you. May the next 25 years be full of the colour green, fabulous music, good friends, good books, and all the other things you love.



Well I managed to get a whole bunch of things out of my system last night... mainly the desire to go dancing and have some fun with some great friends! The Murder Mystery was completely hoaky but because Tim and Lisa were so much fun we had an absolute blast. Not surprisingly our table managed to entertain all the surrounding tables. There's a little tradition that we have when we go out for food, we name the waiter or waitress. Well last night, inspired by her flashy earings, we named our waitress Margarita! Turns out that it was the poor girls first night serving and well... lets just say we made it fun. We're still not sure if she really enjoyed it when we implicated her in the murder with the actors but we thought it was uproariously funny.

After dinner we went to Penticton's Blue Mule danced for a few hours. All in all a great evening with the promise of more fun today!

I believe the picture speaks for itself! Yes, this was my hotel room this week. Honestly when I opened the door I think the carpet assulted me! Either way I feel violated for having stayed there. I don't think my sense of colour will ever be the same. The beauty of the thing that you can't quite see is the bed spread in the bottom corner of the pic. The bed was actually a BRIGHT peach colour! OMG The whole room only looked ok in the dark... and even then it was bad. I really shoudn't complain to much about this place though because it was meticulously clean. So basically the final word on this is that if your of Ukrainian extraction (as I partly am) you really won't have a problem staying at the Greenwood hotel.

Next in this mini picture tour is a lovely little number I've entitled RAGE! Why you ask would a seemly innocuous little red Jeep cause rage? Well normally this wouldn't cause me to even give it a second thought. Well when said cute little Jeep is driven by a very old man wearing a cap, the cap wearing variety of old men are perhaps the most infuriating drivers I've even encountered, and doing 70 Kms/hr down a straight stretch of road Clearly marked as a 100 Kms/hr zone the rage is explainable. Now when there is a steady line of cars in the opposite lane thereby not allowing a chance to pass for quite a while the rage is downright excusable! I fear that Raphael is going to be a hat wearing little red wagon driver someday... seeing as Wifey already is (it's true minus the red wagon... so far)!

Overall my trip to the Grand Forks area was quite a success though. As mentioned in my previous post I enjoyed the food and overall the people I was dealing with were a very pleasant lot. I'm hoping that my 4 week trip to Alberta in a few weeks will prove as pleasant as this one was... although I'm not expecting the weather to be nearly as decent.

Since I've been getting up at such ungodly hours this week 3:00AM etc. I'm dying right now even though it's only 9:18. So that said I'm signing off and going to bed. Very busy weekend coming up. Tomorrow is a quick Thanksgiving dinner with my family. A Murder Mystery dinner with Tim and Lisa and Sylvia in Kelowna then likely going to Penticton with Sylvia and will end up meeting with Janet and going out. Then Sunday it's Thanksgiving dinner with Janet's family and Monday is recover from the previous two days. Happy Thanksgiving to all you Canadians out there... displaced and otherwise.

Yes I'm still alive. I've been down in the Grand Forks area eating Borsch and Bread with Vereniki. Yum!

I actually took a picture (will be posted soon) of my hotel room in Greenwood because it's so God damned ugly! Once you see the picture you'll know what I mean. Of course the town of Greenwood doesn't have Cell service and I just noticed while checking out of my hotel room that they do offer internet connetivity... Oh well. I'm using the computer at the town's combined Tourist Information Office and Museum. The pasty animic looking fellow at the front desk seems to be getting antsy because I've actually come in and taken them up on the use of a computer. It's rather a strange set-up because I actually had to come into the back office of the Museum to use the computer! Come to think of if I'm getting antsy just setting in here... it's kind of creepy with the big pasty guy floating around...

God Damn does my head hurt. I thought I was actually going to throw-up a couple times today because my stomach was so upset from the head ache. Thankfully the job today went fairly quickly for 11.5 hours. Tomorrow it's off to Grand Forks where I'm very anxiously awaiting a meal of Borsch and very likely bread! Sometimes there are perks to travelling to the middle of nowhere.

Oh in case your wondering the new template got changed again. Didn't like it.

Tonight I'm thinking about some of the kids that are left on the outskirts of society. Ruth came over tonight and we watched a movie and ate some pizza. Ruth is staying with an Aunt and Uncle in a poorer part of town and as I was driving her home I commented on how many kids there were out wandering the street. We pulled up in front of her gate and across the street there was a young guy, I would guess around 13 or 14, wearing a t-shirt that he'd pulled his arms into, sitting on the back bumper of a van. Ruth and I sat watching him for a few moments and discussed whether we should do anything. Finally I said we have to at least ask him if he's ok. So we dropped the window of the car and asked if everything was alright. He tersely answered that it was. His face was clearly telling us to leave him alone. We backed away. Now everything about this situation was ringing alarm bells in my head and frankly still is. Of course once help has been offered there is nothing that can be done once it has been refused but still the desire to help doesn't dissipate quickly.

I bitch and moan about my life and the wrongs done to me all to frequently but the truth is that overall I've got it good. My parents love me and would do anything for me. And I have friends all over the world who would come through for me. If only every kid were so lucky.

So it was time for Template Change... not sure I like this one. Possibly a bit to frilly. I also added Site Meter Counter to the page as I'm totally curious to see if there are more people reading this thing than the ones I know are. We'll see.

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.

Sorry for the absence. On Wednesday night my ancient computer running Windows 98 had a melt-down. Frankly I'm a little peeved because I had a lot of music on that thing as well as my personal files. Oh well c'est la vie. I'm currently waiting for delivery of my brand spanking' new Acer Laptop! Yep, I decided to go portable because of all the traveling that I'm going to be doing in the next couple of months. That'll mean that I can post updates from just about anywhere... And I'm sure that I will.

I picked The Baron up at the airport last night. He's looking fantastic, which is reasonable after biking half-way across the country. Very trim and tanned. We celebrated his return and the fact that the house was still standing with a bottle of Lake Breeze 'Delice' dessert wine & fudge.

I'm mentally gearing up for my trip to Vancouver tomorrow. I'll be there for four fun filled (I wish) days of Audiometrics training. The only thing I've been told by the boss is that I had better not fall asleep in class as the instructor seems to have it out for people from our company again.

The mental preparedness that I have to do has more to do with my emotional outlook on being in the city again. It was reasonably tough on me to have to leave the city and all my friends there in the first place so going back will have it's challenges. I've changed SO much since I left there it's not even funny. My outlook on life is much better & I'm having far fewer emotional struggles. I am looking forward to the day when I'm emotionally whole and won't be facing the homosexual issues that I have been as much. To anyone out there reading this that deals with the same things I have been, there is hope. Never give up hope.

It's funny how psychology works. At one point your floating along feeling as though life is grand and the next your so beaten down and weak it's almost unbearable. Well that happened to me last night. I have been delving into my past lately and some of the things that I have found have been apalling. Now I'm feeling a mixture of different feelings. Mainly hurt, anger & humiliation. The hurt and anger are mostly directed at my parents because of their inability to have seen how things were affecting me and my young life. The humiliation is mostly felt because of the way that my Uncles treated me growing up. Sadly when I talk to my parents about this they, while of course upset, tell me that it was their intention, by having me spend time with my Uncles, to get the male influence in my life from them that my Father was unable to give because of his constant travelling. It's really a travesty that all of this backfired and the best of intentions ended up causing me a lifetime of hell. Now I'm just trying to hold it all together. Tonight I hate my family. Tomorrow I think will be different.

Well I'm back. I got to spend two days and three nights in wonderful Revelstoke B.C.. Actually the only complaint I have about those two days is that they were really boring. One of the days I walked to town from my hotel three times, just cause I was so sick of sitting in my room. Problem with that was once you've walked to town once and seen everything there really isn't all that much more to do. I actually found myself in the real-estate office where I was completely stunned, no I would say that I was agahst at the price of re-estate there. Since so many of my friends seem to be buying homes right now I've been finding myself watching the price of real-estate. I've completely given up hope that I'll ever be able to buy a home in the Okanagan but thought... well maybe a nice little town like Revelstoke would be a good place to live. Much to my eternal disappointment I can't afford a house in Revelstoke! I could possibly afford a trailer... but seriously.

Yesterday I lived the Okanagan dream, laying around sunbathing on a private dock on Okanagan lake with three beautiful women. Sometimes life is just good.

My Mother's Birthday was this week but because of various schedule conflicts within the family we're celebrating it tonight. I for one am looking forward to an awesome meal tonight.

Well I stayed up WAY to late last night so I'm slightly tired now and feeling like I could be quite irritable later if I don't watch it. I think I'll go get ready for the day then go lay down again for a while.

YAY! I solved the MSN Messanger Problem all by my little old self... well actually I googled it and a Geek Forum gave me the answer. Thank God for some Geek named Japstar! I think I love him... er, her... whatever.

Oops, I'm back. Totally forgot that I would be home again tonight and then leave for two more nights tomorrow morning. Worked 9.5 hours today, fortunately it was a good day and all of the construction guys that I was testing were plesant and organized. A real rarity for construction sites. Most of the time when I pull up with the truck to a construction site the guys are absolute jerks cause "I don wanna get my hearing tested" (said in a really whiney tone of voice that is not at all becoming of a construction worker. Come to think of it I come across very few people who actually want to get their hearing tested. Personally I don't see what the big deal is. Your getting 15 minutes off of your crummy labour job to go sit in an air conditioned box with some head phones on to listen for a tone and press a button. It only happens once a year! So anyway as I'm sure you can see when it does happen that people are civil about the whole process it makes my day that much better.

Today for truck reading I worked my way through half of Augustines Confessions I happened to come across it on The Barons bookshelf and decided that it was high time I read it. I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how much I can relate with this African Catholic Bishop from 39? A.C.E. Seems that many of the struggles he went through in his early life are somewhat parallel to some of the struggles that I'm dealing with.

When I returned from Kamloops tonight I was just crazed with a feeling of loneliness. I knew that going home to a hot empty house wasn't a good idea so I called my Grandma and went for dry ribs at Sir Winston's a local pub. It definetely helped.

My God Damned MSN Messanger has been refusing to work for the past few days here at home. It keeps popping up with 'Sorry, we were unable to sign you into MSN Messanger at this time. Please try again later. 80072efd'! What the fuck! If anyone reading this knows what 80072efd is PLEASE TELL ME IT'S MAKING ME CRAZY!

Going out of town for work. Not sure what the internet situation will be but I'm going to look into mobile blogging!

Will write Saturday.

I don't think The Barons house has ever seen a party like it did last night!

Overall the wine festival weekend was a roaring success (although there were a number of Diva moments that were really quite tiresome)! Friday was a wonderful day of touring a few wineries, then returning to the house to have dinner. After indulging in a little to much wine, and forcing Raph's younger brother to put on a fashion show of his new clothes (to Rupaul's Supermodel) we went dancing at the club. By the time we fell into bed somewhere around 3 that morning it was almost guaranteed that the 800 departure time we had planned for wasn't going to happen.

Surprisingly, even though Sister did her damnedest to stall us, we were only an hour behind schedule for the day. Tim and Suzy were collected in Kelowna and we set off with two cars. I decided to ride with Tim and Suzy because all the Diva tension in the other car was just way more than I could bear (that and their A/C actually worked). By 300 everyone had, had enough of wine tasting so we headed back in the direction of home. Tim, Suzy and I decided that we were going to go to the beach, while the rest of the tour went to sleep off hangovers from the night before, for a while and they took me to this fantastic beach I'd never been to before. The water was absolutely amazing.

Returning to the house Suzy and I immediately set about preparing the rest of the food. Blessed girl that she is she already had all of the meat prepared. Everyone was stunned at how amazing this meal was. We had beef skewers, chicken skewers, prawn skewers, veggie skewers, greek salad & a tossed green salad with Marcies famed house dressing. To finish off we had two types of tiramisu. I completely lost count of the number of wine bottles that were littering the house. I do know that every wine bought that day was consumed. After cleaning up and visiting for a while a few of us went to the bar. Not surprisingly Sister, Sister's best friend, Suzy and I were the only ones who actually stayed at the bar as Marcie and Jade decided that two nights in a row was a little bit much.

Suzy and I had the most fun I've had in a bar in a VERY long time. The events are as follows:

• Three times we were approached by random strangers who told us we were "the cutest couple".
  
• We ran into a classmate from school who was trying to figure out what the hell the two of us were doing at the bar together without Tim.
  
• I bitched a random girl out for being a bitch when I asked her if we could sit at her table because our feet were tired. After I told her off she apologized and we ended up chatting for a while.
• Random girl dances up to us and yells 'You two aren't from around here are you!?" At this we couldn't help but lie, we told her we were from Montreal, as we were sure the truth that I'm from Vernon and Suzy's from Winfield would have been very disappointing.
• We flattered a female bar tender so well that all of our drinks for the rest of the night cost $6 (not each) each time we went up.
• Our dancing attracted a lot of attention, could have been the low dips :P
  

The whole time at the bar was a smashing success... it probably doesn't hurt that Suzy's a stunning 6' natural blond who was wearing 6" heels.

This morning the Vancouver people left rather early and Tim, Suzy and I lounged around and ate various breakfast foods and left overs from last night.

When I get some copies of the pictures from the day I'll consider posting them here.

To Tim and Suzy,

Thank you SO much for ensuring this weekend was a success!

Love,

KS

IT'S WINE TOUR DAY! Full update in a few days.

Lord has today been boring. I'm glad that Jade is on her way here to help liven it up! It's gonna be a good weekend.

Today Dad and I went out and bought me a raquet ball raquet and a set of three balls. Well after practicing for a while we tried to play for a bit. Immediately I was completely dis-heartened as my athletic ability really shone through. I sucked. Now of course I was expecting to not be amazing but it was really frusterating and disheartening to do so poorly. It was really a major blow to my esteem. I'm sure that I'll get over it eventually but it still hurt.

Having realized that my bathing suit is nowhere to be found I decided that it was time to go and buy myself a new swim suit. Well I'll tell you that finding a swim suit at what I thought was a reasonable price was comepletely impossible in Vernon during the middle of swim suit season. So instead of doing the rational thing and buying a regular ugly suit I went and spent more money than I think I ever have on a single item of clothing on a brand spankin new pair of Billabong board shorts. Now the price was simply outrageous but I have to say they are very cool. They're brown with an orange and teal plaid pattern running through them with teal and white accents going up the legs and crossing the back. Now I'm just going to have to get over my better judgement that's telling me to take them back to the store.

Feeling really drained tonight. I really need to go to bed early as well so that I am ready for the Vancouver invation starting tomorrow.

Well the Okanagan is on fire again. I wonder if this will affect the price of wine next year from Osooyoos wineries?

Been a slow couple of days over here. Just working and doing nothing important. Just got home from watching Bewitched the movie. Consider this a warning - it's terrible. Some movies should not be re-made and this movie was one of them!

Went for coffee tonight with one of my friends from my parents church. He was very concerned about my spiritual well being. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I was explaining to him how I'm taking some time off from religion right now because I have to find my own identity. He launched into a somewhat misguided attemept to explain to me that it's only once we have taken on the identity of Christ that we can truly know ourselves. Sure... Thanks. I think I've even preached that sermon at one point in the past myself. The conversation was enough to make me really look forward to getting smashed drunk this weekend. Can't wait.

Another excellent weekend. I had Tim and Lisa over for supper last night and I found a receipy for an incredible gourmet burger (wow I just figured out how to use that link feature properly!) and paired it with baked beans. Yes, it was about 38C out and I decided to bake beans, I may be an idiot. Either way we had a fantastic meal and a great visit. We made plans for our wine tour this coming weekend and judging from the planning it's going to be an AMAZING time.

Today I went to a car show with my Dad, which was fun.

Bit of an interesting

Risk (the game) is better drunk. I wish I knew that for sure though as I didn't even get buzzed tonight when Janet and her little brother came over to play. Sadly even though we got the little brother drunk and then cheated like crazy he still beat us. Tragic really. Now I'm sitting here in the hot basement listening to little Raph play the guitar and watching bugs bounce off my computer screen.

Testing the new look.

Wow am I tired. Yesterday's drive really kind of wiped me out more than I thought that it would. I think the extreme heat of the day yesterday caused the drive to be more exhausting, even though I have a/c in the car. This morning I woke rather early but stayed in bed for quite a while. It's really a good thing that I don't have an actual job. When I got into the car this morning it was almost hard to see through the wind sheild as it was caked with bug remains. I arrived at the office after stopping to wash the bugs off the car.

After doing a little bit of work I called my friend the Professor and asked if he would give me some pointers on my golf game. Of course he was happy to help so I went up to visit at 1. Arriving at his place I commented on the insanely large house that was built next door to his. Asking who in hell was going to be moving into the house he said no one. Apparently this 6 bedroom monstrosity is a German couple's 5th home. They will be using it as a ski chalet of sorts for their friends when they come to visit. The Professor figures it's worth approximately $800,000! I suppose if you MUST have a 5th home it may as well be decent...

After chatting about the house we went to the back yard and worked on my swing. I'm happy to say that I think I've got it down again. If I actually put the time and effort into it I think I could be a really decent golfer.

Even though the majority of the day today was good I was really feeling an emotional turmoil, the residual effects of yesterdays counseling session, that was quite uncomfortable. It really didn't help that my Mom called from her place of work and asked me to pick her up because my Uncles and Grandmother were being total ass holes to her. I'm really starting to despise some of the dynamics of my family. Thank God my parents have been looking into our family dynamics and our relationships with each other. I have to say they have been amazing lately in their evidence of personal change. I really applaud them for walking out into a very uncomfortable place and working on it. If only it were as easy with members of the extended family. It's sad when you have feelings of hate towards members of your extended family for the way they treat your Mother.

Personally I'm trying to learn how to be alone. After this weekend, which was super spectacular, when everyone left and KS was on his own again I freaked out. I didn't know what to do with myself. When everything else is gone and I'm on my own, who am I there with? What is my identity? I think I've asked this question before but here it is again... How does one find themselves?

I used to think that I had a really good idea of who I was but in the past year I've found that I was totally wrong about that. I liken my search for my identity again to opening Pandora's Box. Once I opened that damned box thinking that I would find a neatly woven tapestry that was to be my identity (gay) I had the nasty surprise of finding out that it was filled with hundreds of little winged pixies (leave the obvious joke alone please) each holding a thread of the tapestry that makes up me.

Each of those threads is of vital importance to who I am and the damned pixies won't stay still so I can grab them. So I feel as though I'm running around a room (yes, I had the sense to open the box in an enclosed room... Clever huh) vainly trying to grab threads of identity out of the air as the damned pixies dangle them in front of me. Some of the pixies are slower than others so I've managed to grab a number of threads and I've got them safely in a bag but the number is far to few to even start to think about starting to weave. I think the thing with pixies though is that eventually they get tired and they do have to rest. Once they're resting I'll be able to more easily pin the little bastards down and see what I've got to work with.

One final story for the night. I met a guy in a chat room who I've been getting to know (no it's nothing like that!) and we talked on the phone last night for the first time. Well in the course of the conversation he mentions that he works at Starbucks. Well because I'm a total Starbucks whore I knew immediately which store he worked at as I'd never seen him at the two that I frequent the most.

Of course if I was a total stalker freak I'd have rushed out at the very first chance to see who this person was. Well I'm not like that, intentionally anyway... After picking my mother up at work she said that she needed to go to the bank. As this was not unreasonable and I was hankering for a Frappuchino anyway I said sure. Immediately upon walking into Starbucks I realized my mistake! As luck would have it he happend to be working! We locked eyes and immediately knew who each other were. I just about turned to stone because I'm now thinking 'OMG he's going to think I'm stalking him! With my MOTHER!'. I didn't really know what to do so I just kept my sunglasses on to avoid eye contact and made my Mom go and order the drinks while I hung around at the back of the store. Those were the most stressful moments I've ever spent in a Starbucks. Later when he sent me a text message asking how my frappuchino was I just had to laugh. So thankfully he doesn't think I'm a total freak (I think). Ok, story's over.

If you got this far in this post congratulations I don't know if I would have. Have a Great Night / Day wherever you may be.

Mood: Slightly overwhelmed by emotions.
Music: Random MP3's

Back from a whirl wind day trip to Vancouver for a counselling appointment. Glad I went.

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target="_blank">Which Golden Girl Are You?

This just in : Blaze + Leather Seats = One Very Unsteady Little Dog!

Merciful God, thank you for the light cloud covering. I don't know if I could have handled another 30+ day.

Plans for today...? Not a clue. Most likely will involve Jade, other than that I dunno.

Gas to Penticton: $30. Bottle of Vodka: $23. Cover for the club: $10. Drinks: $30. Falling in the lake fully clothed at 330 in the morning: Priceless.

So this is what a hang over feels like... ugh. Last night was awesome. We all had such a blast in Penticton we've decided we just may do it again next year.

Jade and I spent many hours on her family's boat yesterday on Kal and Woods lake. The weather here is so hot it's just insane. I actually managed to even out my farmer tan which was kind of nice as I was day glow white up to this point. So after we went on the boat we went up to her parents house where they fed us some awesome food.

As soon as supper was over we got ourselves ready and hit the road for Penticton. Sadly on the way down I was stopped for speeding... but because I was so nice he reduced the fine from excessive to just plain ol regular speeding. Happily this was the sole low point to the evening.

We got to Penticton and the gong show began. We went and visited friends, made new friends, went dancing at the Blue Mule, cruised around town in my car with the stereo cranked, went swimming at 330 in the morning, went to bed at around 5 and woke up at 9. So I'm actually not sure if I'm suffering from a hang over or from lack of sleep. I think it's actually more the sleep thing.

When I got home I had a sleep in the basement and I ordered pizza for supper. Now I'm going to watch a Bollywood/Hollywood and go to bed really early.

Oh and I think I may have found a place to live come September. After much thought I figured that I may as well just get a place in Vernon. My original intention was that I would live in Kelowna but as I'm going to be on the road a lot there's no real reason to be in Kelowna. My friends down there all have lives and I'd rather not organize my life around the potential chance that I'll be hanging around with them when I can still do that and just drive down to see them if I want to. That and the fact that rent in Vernon is SO much cheaper helped the decision. The place that I may goto is a one bedroom upstairs suite downtown for $475 including all utilities & full cable! If it's acceptable once I've seen it I'd be silly not to take it.

Had a great day today! Again it was stupid hot and it's still really hot probably close to 18 right now at 1020PM. Today I went with my Dad to the raquet court and he taught me the finer points of racquet (sp?) ball. I have to say that after my first lesson I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to playing some more.

Tonight we went to the CASCAR races at the Vernon Sun Valley Speed way. Watched some really cool, 450hp cars rip around the track 100 time in less than 40 mins. It was awesome.

Now I'm sitting here in a really hot house with a very lonely medium sized border collie drinking a glass of wine and contemplating tomorrows escapades. As previously mentioned Jade is in town so we're going to spend all day boating with her parents then we're packing up and heading to Penticton for the evening where we're gonna party it up with some friends of mine. Thankfully we'll be staying at one of my friends homes overnight so we can stay out as long as we want.

One frusterating event of the day was when I called the E.I. office and asked them what the hell was going on with my claim. It's been about four weeks since I filed it and still no money. Now as you can imagine things are getting a little bit desperate around here at the moment and that's not good. Well it turns out that they screwed up ("we're so sorry!") and I'll possibly get my money in another 3 weeks! By which time of course I'll have been working again. Fucking Government institution! Other than that though a throughoughly enjoyable day.

All the sitting around I'm doing is making me fat! Better stop eating so much dessert :(

The past two days have been hot. Really hot. The house is almost unbearable even though I make sure to open doors and windowns every night and morning. It's just to hot to keep up. Everywhere is hot though so there's really nothing to be done about the situation. Good thing I like Okanagan Summer heat.

Tonight we did what we always do... watched a movie. I love watching movies in the summer. Tonight we watched Mighty Aprodite, a throughouly watchable movie. I enjoyed it but I have to say that I would much rather have gone to the beach. It seems that the people I'm around now don't enjoy going to the beach! How frusterating.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the long weekend. I'm supposed to be going to the car races with my Dad tomorrow night. Then Saturday plans are to go to Penticton with Jade and party it up with the Penticton people. I really hope the weekend is decent.

There really isn't all that much to report since Saturday's post. The weekend with Marcie, Frank, Tim and Lisa was fantastic. One of the best spontaneous weekends I've ever had. Sunday was my Dad's birthday party but I was so tired that I left at 7. This was fine though as the party consisted of a number of his friends so I didn't think it was a big deal to leave.

I think because of Saturday's events I was completely worn down and Sunday was the inevitable crash. So I've been recovering for the past few days. Tonight I had my parents over for supper, which was nice as it was kind of an interesting experience entertaining them for a change.

This weekend Jade has informed me that I'm going to be REALLY busy as she's coming down again for the long weekend. Apparently we're going boating and dancing and a number of other activities that she's got planned. Should be fun.

I've really been struggeling with myself the past couple of days. I think, as usual, it's a result of being overly tired but its been tough to maintain a realistic perspective on things. All things considered it's been a good summer so far.

Well today was a smashing sucess. Tim and Suzy just left which shows that Marcie and Frank got along with them well. We had a fanstastic day of drinking wine, eating cheese and going to the beach. The only kink was when Janet called and invited herself along and I had to brush her off. How do you tell someone that is supposed to be a close friend that no one wants them around because of the way they act?