Congratulations Maynard and Estelle!!!! Their baby (2 days old in the pic), Victoria Lynn is to die for. I'm so jealous. You two are so very very lucky. What a cute and happy baby. You two really give the rest of us gamer people hope when we look at how you two met on AoD so many years ago and now are happily married with a child!!!!

entertainment

This is what happens when you put two crazy drunk guys in the same room :P

Frozen Land (part 3)

I'm feeling really happy here in this house. Even if I don't like Fort St John in particular, I'm at ease here at my dads as compared to Calgary. I'm not lonely, so I don't have to seek out comfort from afar anymore. I have a whole family here who is caring and helpful. I also feel at ease about the neighbors, no worries of any of them attacking me. I'm really working things out in my life and I can really say I'm happy. It's made me rethink alot of things from my past.

Realizing the changes in my heart led me to breaking up with Stefen. I was no longer prepared for a relationship with him. He's said I've changed and I guess I have, but I'd like to think for the better. It's hard though, after taking that step ahead, to backtrack to that 'lets just be friends' stage. I'm ready though, I think, to open myself up to finding the true love. I'm hoping I've found it, but I wont know for sure for a while now. I guess everything just has to play out in its own course now...and I'm not going to try and change anything from where it's going. I like this path :P No more thinking of the past or being unrealistic or just dreaming all the time. I'm going to make dreams come true in a real way and I will actually be happy. I know it.

I havn't gotten a job up here yet, though I really need to do so. I'm really running low on cash since I havn't been at Safeway since September now. My father has already had to slip me a few 20's here and there so I can take the kids to the movies and whatnot. I want a job though so I can save up. I graduate in June of this year and I don't plan on sticking around for much longer after that. I'll need cash saved up for when I leave. I'm hoping, rather it's my goal, to have a job by the end of February...I better get cracking on passing out more resumes :P

My brother moved out last weekend, in with some girl whom I don't know. Everyone's really shocked about it, except for me. He and I barely shared any conversations together since I got here, he's hardly ever home, so even now when he's not living here it doesn't seem much different. I fear though he's not going to make it, because he makes as much money as my father does, probably more, and he blows it all as soon as he gets it, by taking his buddies out to bars all the time and weed I'd imagine. He can never even come up with the cash to pay for his bills, like his fancy cell phone and sports car payments. My father usually ends up paying them. I doubt in the span of one weekend he suddenly changed his lifestyle so much that he's gonna be able to take on the responsibility to live with someone else and....cook.....clean....do laundry....pay for things :S I dont think any of that stuff is familiar to William. He seems to be a bit of a troublemaker now too, though I hear he was always a bit of a class clown in school. He's raised himself to getting into bar fights and whatnot now. I've seen him a few times come home with his tires slashed, and his eye punched in. He doesn't seem like the older brother I should look up to anymore :P Not that I ever did. I was always the different one in the family and I still lead a different path then all the other siblings.

My plans now for once I finish school in June, are to head east as always, but to Ontario now. For years I've been debating somewhere area...manitoba....new york...ontario. I've finally decided on Ontario. I'll be close to alot of friends this way, and not just some. I'll also be really close to some relatives, mainly Aunt Kay and Uncle Tom. I'm sure my mother will be quite pleased about that news and maybe even willing to come visit me sometime. With all the job searching we're doing lately and will be doing for the rest of the term in school, I figure I will have a nice job set up waiting for interview by the time summer rolls around. I'm not going to go all out with plans yet, just take it all one step at a time. Let everything take it's own course, and I'm sure everything will work out. Everything always works out.

Well you're basically up to date with all the main things in my life right now. I feel good for posting all this, now I can get back into the little ranty details like usual :P But not tonight...though i wouldn't mind saying a few words about the stupid accounting teacher I have up in this hicktown. I will refrain

Oh and I can't quite remember if I explained why I refer to this place as the Frozen Land. It hasn't been above 0 degrees except for one day since I've been up here. There have been several -45 days where the schools don't even close. I've not been impressed. The whole city is covered in ice and it's bitter cold instead and outside of the house. Princess thinks its funny how the likelyness of someone ending up in a cold place like this, it'd have to be me, the person who likes cold the least. :P And she gets over to humid Scotland...go figure grrr :P

Today was Matt's birthday btw Happy Birthday again *snuggle*

Ok I'm done for today. G'night

Frozen Land (part 2)

So I thought I'd get into school right away when I got here. The emails sent back and forth between myself and the counsellor sounded pretty much like everything was set out and that they just needed me to arrive up there to sign a few things, pay my fees and that was that. But it didn't quite go that way. First day I met the counsellor in person, he sounded quite disappointed that I hadn't made an attempt to previously get in contact with Lasha the woman in charge of the program in which I wanted to get put into. I found this very boggling considering he'd never once told me in the emails that I was supposed to and so I'm not quite sure how he expected me to know that I should have done this. Then he tried to tell me that if I wanted to, I didn't really have to take this program, that I could just go out anywhere that very day in this hicktown and get a secretarial fulltime job. I informed him that the reason I moved up here was not to do with work but that I actually wanted to take this program at school as quickly as possible so that I could move again. He frowned at this and asked me where I would go. I told him that I planned to go back east to possibly Ontario or New York. This seems to really change everything (I later find out that apparently all the counsellors around here hate you if you do not plan to live here the rest of your life). He goes on to tell me that it'll be very difficult to get me into this class, because everyone and their uncle wants to get into this program, and they only have so many computers. He'll try his 'best' but I'll be totally lucky if I get in. Then he goes on to try and convince me that I don't really want to take the ATB program, but in all reality I want to take this other course (I can't even remember what it was, but it was totally different than what I was currently taking). I have to tell him like 10 times that I do not want this other program that I am quite sure I want the ABT. He seems doubtful and gives me a giant magazine about this other program that I should read over and get back to him on. Then he has to remind me that my transcripts havn't yet arrived, which I tell him I am aware of because my marks arn't yet available, and he has to act like theres no way at all I will get into their school without my transcripts. And he seems doubtful on my intelligence, so he makes me sign up for something called a CAAT test that 'everyone' takes though nobody outside of BC that I know of has heard of it. I found out later that only people who have been out of highschool for 5 years or more are required to take this test, but he made me do so anyways. I end up getting all Above High School Knowledge on each part of this test, and the next time I meet this man, he's totally kissing my ass as if I'm some genious, when I must admit that test was a total joke and I'm sure even my little sister could have aced it. Either way, he had me totally distraught about this whole change. I was so sure I wouldn't be getting into school now until next semester and possibly having to start over again because he also tried to get me to leave by saying "well nobody has ever transferred mid term to this school before...it's just unheard of". And I just had this feeling that by moving up here I'd wasted what would turn out to be a half a year of my life.

But he gave me contact information to this Lasha lady, and I called her and she totally made me feel better. She was like 'oh of course there is plenty of room for you to join? what? no we don't need your transcripts right away, you can just start up with us anytime and when they arrive they arrive. Come on in and I'll get you're books ready and introduce you to everyone.' I'd been really worried about the transcript thing, because SAIT wasn't releasing my transcripts once my marks became available (All A-'s plus one A+ thank you very much) because they apparently didn't get my notification that I wasn't returning to their school this semester. And so because I hadn't paid the fees for this semester that they stupidly signed me up for, they were refusing to send out my transcripts unless I paid them 2600 dollars. I spent many hours on the phone half talking to this office lady at SAIT (who had very rude phone manners such as burping into my ear and crap like that) who was prolly the least helpful person I've ever spoken to (the other half waiting on their stupid holding line). After faxing a few things around and yelling at some dumbies, I eventually had the hold taken off my records and my transcripts were sent up. I started class a week after all the mixups.

My classes are completely different here than what they were in Calgary. Instead of the 3 classes of 50 students, I've gone one class of 14 students. And only 3 instructors that teach the whole program. Instead of my noon-4 classes in Calgary, I have *sigh*groan*bitch*sighagain* 9-4 each day. And so I have to get up at *sigh* 7am. It's quite horrible, and I'm finding it very hard to get myself up that early. I need someone to sleep with me who will bite and kick me out of bed each day *wink* The school itself is puny, and 80% of the students are for some strange reason international students (mostly asian). I find this really weird, because if I was from some other country and decided to come do my studies in Canada, I would think to come to a better know place like maybe Vancouver, or Toronto, even Calgary. I wouldn't be like 'oh look Fort St John...this looks like a lovely cold cold cold hicktown for me to go to school'. It's kinda neat to seem them though. We usually eat our lunch earlier then them, and just near the end of our break they come out and it's like a swarm of activity that overwhelms us poor ABT girls and sends us fleeing back to our little private hallway in the dinky school. Though there is this one international student who is from France, and that to which has resulted in my classmates giggling at me each time we go to lunch now, we chat here and there. He bumped into me one day and from hearing him chat to others I'd automatically known he was french, so as he excused himself I pardoned him in his mother tongue. It really confused him at first, guess he didn't think that he'd meet anyone else in the area who could speak french. But now every time we pass each other we share a few words. Hmmm...it's also alot harder to skip at this school now. If you don't attend class without calling in and leaving a message as to why, Lasha actually calls to make sure you're ok. In calgary, if I didn't feel like going, I just didn't. And the teachers didn't care especially not enough to worry about calling the houses of 50*3 different students to see for what reason they didn't attend class. Everything is way more fast paced here and I'm actually finding myself with homework now. Which is very difficult for me, because I can't remember the last time I did homework...maybe like early highschool or something :S

The best thing about transferring up here I must say is this: Instead of graduating in the May of next year (which is what would have happened if I had continued going to SAIT), I will be graduating June of this year. I'm so happy. I will finish by summer start, and by the end of summer I hope to finally move away.

Christmas here was...well probably the most eventful christmas I've had since before we left Newfoundland. I'd really grown to hate the holiday spending it with my mother and stepfather in Calgary. Christmas Eve the kids all tried to do the traditional thing where we all dress in fancy pjs, and drink hot chocolate, and listen to christmas music, and read The Night Before Christmas. It kinda went wonky though with us who were of age drinking beer and the christmas music was more of Buddy Whatshisname And The Other Fellas, and it was kinda hard to hear Dale telling the story over my drunken father telling old BS stories. William and I just kinda sat back drinking our beer and laughing at the funny scene. The kids had me up all night (they made me sleep in Meaghans room on the hard floor--this is tradition so I HAD to) watching movies...out of my choice we watched the Scream movies, which then scared Kenneth the point he wouldn't sleep which prolly led the majorital reason as to why I got no sleep. 10 minutes after I'd started to doze off, Meg's alarm went off (at 5 AM!!!!) and the kids were up and ready to start their day. I'm not a morning person and I got dubbed the Grinch/grouch of christmas, because all through opening presents I dozed off and didn't really look happy. It's not that I wasn't grateful for the presents or that I wasn't enjoying doing a real christmas scene...I just couldn't understand why we couldn't have done it 5 hours later. There were so many presents it was quite unbelievable, I'm gonna have to excuse it to the fact that we just have a big family. I'd never seen so many wrapped gifts at once before though :P. I myself never really got anything of importance. Mostly because I hadn't asked for anything, which was mostly because I didnt' really need anything. Some of the bigger gifts I got were, an electric toothbrush (which I had told my father a week previous that I did NOT want), a yellow and gray jacket I might never wear, a leather briefcase/shoulder bag for school (more professional than the one I'd been using for the last few years), and uhm well I can't really think of anything else of important at this time. After we opened our presents, we all went back to bed for a few hours (go figure :S) to wake up around noon and prepare ourself for the day. We had a huge dinner with a few relatives showing up and a few friends, and going out to visit and playing some games. All in all it was fun.

Well I'm off to bed now, there wont be much more to really say in order to catch up...I'll do that another night though, am slightly tired.

Frozen Land (part 1)

Ok, I've decided after looking back on old posts the other day, that I needed to make more :P Definately need to update. I doubt I'll find the time to completely update myself tonight though, so I'll do like I did last summer and put it into parts.

I'll try to remember as much as possible. Hmmm lets see where to start.

Alright, so as anyone might have noticed through all my previous posts, I really wanted to move. Mainly to get out of the ghetto Bowness, but also to get out of Calgary if I could. I never thought I'd be able to do that until after I finished post secondary. All major plans to get out of my mothers place though usually failed. And I wasn't supposed to be graduating until the May of next year. But everything was getting hard to handle in that city. Mainly, the restraining order had worn off and I was terrified to even step outside, for fear of that pervert even looking at me. I felt lonely, as most of my friends never called anymore and I was really becoming a hermit, shutting myself inside playing online games all the time. It felt alright at the time, like I was a quiet, closed off person. But it was getting to me.

My father presented me with this idea when he came down to visit. He suggested that I look into the college up here in Fort St. John, the city that he lives in. He said I could most likely transfer up here, and he welcomed me to stay at his house rent free. I was skeptical at first, because I didn't have any friends up here and it was such a small place. But I don't have that many friends left in Calgary now, and despite being in Calgary all that time, I am from newfoundland and am used to smaller places. So I looked into it on the side, really considering it. I never posted much about it before, because I wasn't sure who actually read my blogger and didn't really want anyone finding out about my thoughts on the subject until I had actually told them personally. It took me even longer to tell my mother, she was one of the last people to find out that I wanted to move. I think she could have known for a while that I did, but never said anything about it. Despite the fact that we fought every single day, I don't think she'd meant to push me away like she really had. Anyways, I also waited until last minute to tell her because Id idn't want to make my life a living hell for the time remaining I had to stay there until my move. So it was kinda like ME:'blah blah blah i'm leaving' MOTHER:'when?' ME:'next week' and then she freaked out majorly, mostly because I wasn't going to be there for christmas. But she got over it quickly, to help me pack (which I'd been holding off too cuz you know she'd prolly think something was up if she noticed me boxing up all my belongings) and to spend the last bit of time with me.

At this time I was 'dating' Stefen. We called it official, even if we were a country away from each other. I felt alot of comfort in him because we are both good friends and we were both quiet people that spent alot of our time hiding on our computers. Felt really nice to have someone to openly say 'i love you' to whenever wanted.

So I packed up all my stuff and said some goodbyes to only half the people I prolly should have, but I was doing that 'not gonna look back' thing. And I havn't really. Not yet anyways. Well I guess the last few days I have been thinking back on the last few years, which is prolly what brought me back to my blogger. But I don't regret moving up here. The only thing that would make regret it in any way would be 1) I had to leave Cura my adorable kitty that slept with me every night and purred in my ear and comforted me always behind. I'm hoping once I move out of here I can pick her up and take her with me. 2) It's fricking cold here!!!! Everyone knows I hate the cold. Absolutely hate it. I don't know how I'm going to survive here.

So here I am now living in Fort St. John, BC...aka hicktown of the frozen land. I'm living with my father and his wife, two of my stepsisters, my half brother, and my brother. You'd think it would be crowded, but we have a huge house. I think I will describe the house. It's two floors, on the first, with the bottom floor being half basement in the front. On the top floor there is three bedrooms and two bathrooms (both of which have jecouzes in them), a living room, a dinning room, a little entertainment room, a kitchen, and a kitchen eating room (we eat in this room unless there are guests over in which case we eat in the dinningroom). On the bottom floor, its basically a giant entertainment room which has a huge air hockey table, two dart boards with playing space, a mini bar, a giant wall sized tv with surround sound, a giant stereo system, 3 couches and various other furnishings. From the entertainment room you can get to meaghan's room, and another bathroom, a storage room, the furnase room with freezers, Williams room, then the computer room, and across from there, my room. Unfortunately my room is right next to the giant sized tv, so until everyone goes to bed I have whatever show is on blasting my walls.

My room is actually way bigger than any room I ever had in Calgary, though I have the smallest bedroom in the house. Because this room used to be a game room, that my father redid into a bedroom for me. The air vents didn't work in my room, and still dont, so for the first few weeks that I got here I thought I was going to freeze to death in my sleep. Even with the 8 blankets I managed to give myself. But my father found an electric heater that I now have plugged into the side of the wall and I have constantly turned on to provide me the warmth I so love. Every other spot in this house and this city is cold. So I bundle up whenever I leave my room. William got a new bed for his room when I arrived, so I got his crummy old bunk beds when I came. The matresses are hard enough that half the time I feel I mind as well be sleeping on the floor. But I have been given some feather stuffed pillows and I still have my giant purple bunneh to cuddle and not feel like I'm sleeping on bricks. After several weeks I also managed to convince my father to run the cable internet cord into my room so I could hook up both my ps2 and my computer to the net. He's telling me this isn't permanent as he still thinks I should just put my computer and stuff in the computer room with the other computer. I still like my bit of privacy though so I'm glad I got him to cave in on the matter. Mostly I just need to be away from all the siblings I have up here. It's overwhelming to go from living alone (practically) to now living with 4 other siblings. I have a nice spaced closet that I keep my dresser in (my dresser is only halfway filled because I didn't bring with me much clothes) so I'd have more space. I also have a little plastic trunk to keep all my bathroom stuffs in. Two little night stands and a tv stand, all of which I've managed to cover with little plants that I've bought since I arrived here, and also a fish bowl that I keep two siamese fighting fish in (they don't replace Cura, but it's something to do)

I had imagined that upon moving up here I'd get directly into the college, because before I turned down my following semester at SAIT I made sure to email the counsellor at the college up here and he told me there would be no problems and that I'd get in right away without difficulties. It was much different when I actually got here though. But I guess that I'll save that for another night, since it's getting late and I have a certain someone to chat with before I go to bed.

Stay tuned for part two of the frozen lands *shiver*