moonrabbit

The year is starting to make up for it's lousy start. Turns out my new room mates are awesome.
I wouldn't have survived this month without them. We have dinners together and go out to movies.
I've already forgotten what life was like before they moved in.
I was without net for about ten days. In this time I designed a new work bench and finished the fourth season of Dr. Who.
Does anyone else see the irony in having Timothy Dalton play a Time Lord?

My dad came to visit a week ago. The first day we drove out to Chilliwack specifically to go to the airport for pie. And let me tell you, it was worth the drive.
I mean getting out of the city with my dad and seeing the sights was worth it too. But the pie alone could have done it.
You should go.
Turned around and headed home, stopping at a Princess Auto which was like a can of PBR to a recovering alcoholic.
There isn't one within city limits. Not sure I could even get there by bus if I wanted to. Got all kinds of cool shit.

The next day we went up to Squamish. Stopped at every scenic overlook we could find. Went to an old mine that was an an episode of The X-Files and I think MacGuyver. But they've restored so it can be a museum. Doesn't look as cool as it was when it was rusty and dilapidated.
Again, didn't do much in the town it's self. I got a coffee and took a picture of a diner called Naked Lunch.

Woke up early the next day and headed for the ferry to the Island. Found a nice winery just off the boat. We sampled four wines. One was called Novine white, which was ok. The Strawberry Rhubarb was really good. They used mostly rhubarb so it stays dry and only use a tiny bit of strawberry for flavouring. It was perfect.
Also the Novine red, which was a Merlot and Pinot Noire blend. The best red I've had since the night before I left Ontario last April when I opened the Vino Nobile at my sister's.
So I had to get a bottle of each of those.
The last one we tried was a blackberry desert wine.
Now, we made ice wine a while back, and it was too sweet for me. I think even with a sweet desert, I prefer port. So I'm wary of any desert wine. But this was great, even on it's own. Would be perfect with cheesecake.
So I spent close to $60 right then and there. Now I'm aching for an occasion to open them.
I hope my favourite liquor store carries their stuff. Marley Farms they were called.
Look for them. Drink their booze.

We stopped in Victoria for lunch then headed up the coast to Nanimo(Yes, this is where Nanimo bars were invented). Again, stopping at every scenic overlook and park that we could.
We stopped at a spot in the river we visited in 1995 when the salmon were making their way up stream. No salmon this time, but was nice place to stop.
Once we got to Nanimo, I boarded the ferry to head back to Vancouver and dad headed north on the island to visit a friend of his in Port Hardy.
From Horseshoe Bay I took the bus to what I thought was North Van where I was to attend a kegger my room mate's boyfriend was throwing. Turned out I was in West Van which I thought was on the other side of the bridge. Stopped in a Safeway to get some snacks. The clerks all seemed really out of it, it was kind of surreal.
I found out where I was and where I had to be and got there just fine. Low and behold later that night, the out of it clerk from Safeway shows up which made things even stranger. Already this city seems small.
There wasn't nearly the girl to guy ratio that there appeared to be on the facebook invite, and what made it worse was that just about every girl that did show up was with someone there.
Good times were had by all. Apparently some drama after I went to bed.
In the morning there were more people there than I thought there were.
The girl... You know... The girl? How every party has that girl that just gets smashed, gets lots of attention from the guy and sneered at by the other girls... Yeah well she was there. We were all having some fun at her expense the night before. But she stayed and helped clean up, then we accompanied each other on the walk/bus/seabus/skytrain home.
She was actually a very nice girl. We had a good conversation, and I gotta say I kind of found myself attracted to her.
Seems that the guy she came with got really drunk and accused her of doing something with someone else, called her a bunch of names and pushed her. Hence why she was there in the morning and he was not.
So I'm thinking of playing vulture here and swooping in while she's down. But she was stopping on her way home to get some things from his place.
They ended up patching things up, but she says if he shows any sign of acting like that again, she's gone. Said she's been through stuff like that before and isn't going to take it.
She did strike me as smart that way.
Remains to be seen, and I'm definitely not going to lose any sleep over her. But we'll see what happens in the future. I think I'd still rather find myself a nice tomboy.

The girl started talking to me again, which was nice. We had a good conversation the other night and left it feeling a bit better than we had been. We'll be friends again eventually.

So my new work bench is almost done. It's going to make it a lot easier for me to make jewellery.
But there's other things I want to do too.
I really want to go shooting again, and camping, only thing is, unless I make some friends with cars(Which I hate to rely on.) I can't just up and do it whenever I want to.
Which sucks, because learning to drive and get a licence is going to take three years and I'm not even sure I could pull it off, not having regular access to a car on my own.
I don't even want to drive! I hate cars. I hate being in them, I hate being around so many of them while they're zooming past. I'd only use it to get out of the city.
There's no shooting ranges in the city. I don't know how much a cab would cost to get out to one of them.
I need to find out if it's legal to transport a handgun in the saddlebag of a bike. At least then I'd get in better shape too.

I think I'm going to get a lot done this year. I've found myself with a lot of drive, almost have all my debts paid off. Going to start putting away more money for some undetermined trip somewhere. Get some more guns and a bike maybe?
Hopefully make some money off my jewellery.

I didn't get much accomplished tonight. I didn't sleep well last night and was pretty beat when I got home from work, so I just curled up on the couch with a beer, some chips and my flecktarn blanket and watched The Kingdom.
Going to hit the hay soon so I'll hopefully have some energy tomorrow night to do something useful.


I didn't want to buy a monopod for the ancient, manual 450mm lens my dad gave me, so I snagged the bi-pod off my airsoft rifle, hooked it up to the camera mount for my night vision monocular and made myself a nice little rest. Going to design something a little more stable that still allows me to do some of the steadying techniques I used with this little rig.


UPDATE!
Desk is finished! For the most part. I still need a permanent tray for catching the metal dust.
Found a skill saw for $25. I may never use it again, it may not survive making another desk. (I made like, two cuts with it.) But I didn't want to put out the $100 for a laser guided one right now. So if I really need one in the future, $25 isn't too much of a waste, considering it got the project done today.