Recently in Updates on me Category

More in the realm of minutiae from our hero's blog today..

I've been playing squash competitively for four years now. I love the sport, and it's nice to have something that is both a very good method for maintaining fitness, and also a very fun sport.

On top of all that, the game has a very strong strategic component to it, and it is an extremely social sport. These are all aspects that bode well for my particular character, and help motivate me to stay focused and develop drive to continue improving.

However, I've never really approached squash with particular fitness goals in mind. The aim for me has always been to improve, but always with the main focus being that I wanted my shots to improve.

This past season I saw some reasonable improvement, though I wasn't improving quite as quickly as I would have liked. That being said, the higher up in level you improve, the more you start to see the phenomenon of diminishing returns. Greater effort for less improvement.

This year I'm taking a new approach. My goals are certainly to see an increase in my squash game, but also to set some tangible fitness goals that I can drive towards. I would consider myself a very fit person for my age. I play squash four to five times a week, I jog, I lift weights, and I also make an effort to walk or bike instead of driving whenever I can. I try to eat healthy, I don't smoke, and I drink a lot of water throughout the day.

K, that was pretty obnoxious, but necessary. Here are the areas that I would like to make some improvements towards this squash season:

• Less regular drinking



Boy, do I love beer. It tastes delicious, I love drinking it with friends, and yup, sometimes I love drinking too much of it. I'm comfortable with this, it's good to have some vices. However, if I can cut back on the amount of beer that I'm drinking on a regular basis, I will be able to cut back on the number of excess calories that I'm dumping into my system on a weekly basis.

How do I intend to do this? Easy - just being mindful of when I crack a beer, and thinking about the number of calories that each beer has. This doesn't mean that I intend to stress about every single beer that I crack - just that I'm aware and mindful of them.

• Cut back on excess calories and trim off some extra weight



Summer was good to me, and filled with lots of decadent eating. I'm anything but overweight, but I would like to trim down for the season and minimize the amount of extra weight that I'm carrying around. Actually, I should rephrase that. My goal isn't to lose weight. It's to turn any extra fatty tissue that I'm carrying into muscle.

To accomplish this goal, the first thing I'm doing is just taking note of the number of calories I eat every day. A little while back I posted the number of calories, on an average day, that my body is burning through. The next step is to figure out how close I am actually coming to this goal. I signed up for an account at www.livestrong.com, and their calorie calculator has a large database that you can search through (and, as an added bonus, can also suggest lower calorie substitutes if you're interested). On top of that, you can also add in exercises and have it automatically calculate the amount of calories that you are burning based on this exercise.

This a good tool. The most important thing to be careful of with something like this is to make sure that you don't take being mindful of what you're eating into the realm of neurosis. It's easy to become neurotic about the number of calories you're consuming every day, and things go downhill fast from that point.

Update: After using livestrong's daily plate calculator for a few days, I'm really impressed. They have taken a wiki-like approach to their database of foods, allowing users to manually enter an item that they have consumed, along with its nutritional information, and that information then becomes available to everyone out. I was amazed last night when I finished my glass of skim milk, and on a whim typed in "Islander Skim Milk" and saw "Comox Valley Islander Skim Milk" popup in the search results. That's a pretty obscure brand that's already been logged. Very handy.

The most important point I want to make here, from my own point of view, is that if at any point I reach a state where I've eaten more calories than I need, and I'm still feeling peckish, I'm not going to stop myself from eating some ice cream as a treat. It is important to reward yourself when you think you deserve it. All work and no play makes for a habit that won't stay.

• Build more fast-twitch muscle



Fast-twitch muscle is the muscle fiber that helps your body make fast explosive movements. Squash requires both high endurance and explosive movements (think doing shuttle runs for 45 mintues), and I would like to continue to build on my legs to develop more of this kind of muscle.

Weight lifting is one way to achieve this goal, but I'm only willing to go so far, and I want to take a varied approach to exercise so that I don't get burnt out focusing on goals that are too focused. Training on the squash court is, at least in my opinion, roughly equivalent to a full session of leg workout anyhow, and so this will be act as my main way of training for this goal.

Probably most important is just to make sure that lessons don't drop off as time goes on. Although Brendan and I have a pretty good routine set up, it's easily to let things slip if you don't remain diligent.

Going to the gym is boring for me, and I generally hate the sort of people that go to them. About two years back, I bought a set of spin-lock weights. Essentially just a bunch of ten pound weights, and two dumbbell handles. I can't go much higher than fifty pounds on either side, but, I'm not really interested in going much higher. My goal isn't to be huge, it's just to suplement my fitness regime with some weight training. The other benefit of doing this workout at home is that it integrates perfectly with my other hobbies - do a set of reps, play a game of Virtua Fighter, do a set of reps, work on some design for my blog. For me, the key to maintaining a workout regime is to introduce it in a way that minimizes its disruptiveness. If working out every night means that I no longer have enough time to play squash, or hang out with Bay, guess which one I'm going to drop? I'm hoping that this approach will allow me to continue on with these goals.

So I think that's mainly it. It's interesting calculating calories. I've never bothered to do this before, and its funny to see how I stack up against the figures that are recommended by the various health authorities out there. In general, I try to eat when I'm hungry, and avoid eating simply for the pleasure of it (I really do enjoy eating, but also recognize the danger of giving into this impulse). Since the first step is simply to record what I'm eating, and not bother making any changes, I've discovered that I hit the mark pretty close (it'll be interesting to see how that changes on pizza day at work), but that my diet is definitely carb-heavy, and low on protein and, get this, fat. Weird hey? I'm still trying to figure out ways to alter this balance, but I'll definitely start to turn my eyes towards things like peanut butter instead of toast and margarine when I'm looking for a snack.

Oh yeah, and least shocking revelation of all, I'm getting too much sodium. Is there anyway for a human being these days to not consume too much sodium? This little bastard is everywhere!

Alright.  I talked about it over a year ago, but I've chatted with Davin and asked what the easiest way to go about updating the look and feel of the blog is, and I now have a path to follow.

As you can see, the blog has now been updated to the latest edition of Movable Type, and as a temporary measure, I've changed the layout to use one of the defaults that are supplied with the software.  I think it's kind of ugly personally, but your mileage may vary.

Following on from that, I'm going to finish figure out what design approach to take, update the banners I had from the old site to work with that (I still like some of them so they will stay), and then I will begin slowly setting everything up with the new look and feel.  This will probably be a slow process, as I've got other irons in the fire at the same time, but at least it's good to be busy.  If you see the site going up and down, now you know why.

I anticipate one more update before I go into complete hermit mode, and that'll be related to a movie that was recommended to me this past weekend called Zeitgeist.

Several months of planning are coming to a full head now, as the Victoria Electronic Music Festival (VEMF) is set to go off in one (!) day's time.

I joined on with the management team after volunteering for the festival last year, and have been taking care of all oversight in the realm of the interactive portion of the festival. I've been really happy with some of the results that we've been able to turn around, and less excited about other things. But hey, that's always the way these things go.

With Bruce's help, I've managed to confirm a dance workshop this year, which is something that I'm ridiculously excited about. The workshop itself is not likely to be groundbreaking, as Serra (the instructor) and I have discussed and she plans to focus mostly on basic grooving and moving. Although this initially may sound boring to many people, I would argue that this is the single most important aspect that any aspiring dancer can learn. Being able to just sit and groove to any particular type of music is invaluable, and it provides you the blank canvas upon which you can then improvise the rest of your moves.

The thing that excites me most about this workshop, however, is that for TEN whole years now, I've bemoaned the fact that our little corner of the province is nearly a wasteland when it comes to resources for urban dancing. Graham and I have been pursuing dancing (obviously solely as a hobby) for that entire time, and it's been incredibly frustrating for me to have no particular arena that I could turn to for expertise and direction. I say me specifically because Graham takes a much more intuitive approach, and seems to be able to thrive without the direction that I, the more technical learner, require.

In addition to the new aspects of our interactive segment, we've got new sponsors, more venues, more music, and generally just a bigger and better festival than we've had before.

Working on the management team has been an incredible process for me. As some of my friends know, I work as a Project Manager in my "real life", and so the opportunity to put into practice many of the skills that I've cultivated in my career has been a very enriching experience. Part of this process has encouraged me and increased my belief that an ability to effectively manage people and processes is a quality that can transcend a given field (someone good at managing software projects can move into managing other types of projects - once they've acquired the important domain knowledge, obviously).

The management team that we've put together for this year has been stellar, and there is almost nothing I find more rewarding that working with intelligent, talented, and capable people. I feel that we are a very dynamic group, and working with people like this makes for an incredible opportunity to learn, provided you're open to that potential. I've been picking up new approaches to a wide variety of problems, and learned how to deal with personality types that I would be much less likely to encounter at work. On top of all of that, I've been given (somewhat haphazardly) the opportunity to do some client and sponsorship interaction and to pursue action items that lie outside of my role as it was initially defined. Interesting piece of insight about myself - I don't completely hate marketing and corresponding with potential sponsors, as I thought I would. I just wouldn't want to do it for my full-time job.

This year has certainly been a year of transition for our group as we've moved through this process, and I've been gathering a large number of ideas that I think can take our process to the next level as we continue to move forward. It's the nature of the beast that whenever you first come onto a project, you bring with you a load of fresh ways of looking at things, and the necessity that you cannot implement most of those things, as you are doing everything you can just to maintain the status quo. Now that I have gone through one iteration of the project, I'm confident that I will be able to add much more from here on out.

So, enough about my own learning process and experience. If you're reading this, come and say hi to me when you see me at the festival on Saturday and Sunday. Being busy is not an excuse. I know that a number of my friends have a passing interest in dancing, so whatever you do, at least come on down and check out the dance workshop on Saturday from 4pm to 5pm. Serra and her dance crew will be doing their own freestyle demonstration after the workshop from 6pm to 7pm, showcasing some of their bboying prowess, and that's going to be pretty great too. Bare minimum - come on down and enjoy some beer in our beer garden and listen to some FAT BEATS.

For more details, go to our website here: www.vemf.ca. See you all there!

Another seven months without updating, another life-time of stuff that has happened.

Okay, so, I've sucked ass at updating, and that kind of sucks (ass). It's annoying for people that want to check back regularly, and more obnoxious because several centuries ago I talked about updating the design.

Updating the design is slow going - I've done my research and started on the design, but haven't been able to get much further than that. One thing worth considering is something I read about in order to get projects done - dedicate each month to doing work on a specific item. That way you provide yourself with focus, and you're more inclined to direct your attention towards accomplishing that goal. It's a good idea in theory, I'm just not sure if it pans out in practice.

This is just going to be a big muthalode update, and then, if the stars are aligned correctly, and my horoscope comes true, I will be able to start with regular updates again. Speaking on that note, the best way to continue with regular updates would be to shorten down the length of the blog entries I like to write. The trouble is, I love articulating and expounding on ideas, and that makes it really difficult to post blog entries that look like this:

Today I went to the bar and totally drank some beerz, it was radicalmundo (I'm totally in touch with what kids are saying these days). Tomorrow I'm going to home depot. its going to be a pretty good little sunday!

BORING. You can go read livejournal if you want to read posts like that.

Anyhow, let's move on.

I just got back from the Nanaimo Squash tournament, which is an annual event, and always a good time. I'll get into my review of that later, but first I'll go over the small stuff.

Currently I'm in the process of updating the Victoria Squash Club's website. It's a slow process, because there are many things that I'm not yet familiar with, and lots of work to be done on the backend. Dan and I have been putting in some hours on the backend to work out the details that we want to have up there, and it's slowly getting put into place. It's a little bit of a thankless chore, because we're essentially doing it as volunteer workers, but that's okay, because Dan is an integral part of the squash club, and I'm honored to be able to contribute in any way possible. So that's basically that.

Dancing

Steve, Graham and I have been regularly getting together now for weekly dance practice sessions. It's a casual event, but we still set up the video camera and record whatever is happening. Most of the time, it's boring footage - me practicing various fresno poses, and Graham being awesome without putting in any effort. But it's something, and it works towards us improving.

We've got a large amount of footage now, and one of the things I'm working towards is putting together a video montage of some of the good moments. It's a lot easier to capture Graham doing cool stuff than it is Steve or I, but rest assured, I'm in the process of looking through footage and piecing things together. The best part about this is that our friend's Steve and Dee have a really great space for us to practice dancing in, and it makes it much easier to actually practice on a regular basis.

I've been in contact with a girl that teaches some urban styles at the dance studio above our squash club, and I'm planning to check out the adult intro hiphop class that they run on Monday's from 8:30-9:30. I've got to dance, and have very little exposure with this particular style, so it'll be an interesting one.

Media

Hm, that's a weird heading. But there it is - media. I guess I've been living in a cave recently, but only now am I starting to discover podcasts. This isn't really rocket-science... it's just weekly broadcasts, kind of like a weekly TV show that I can download and watch whenever I'm ready.

In any case, this all started when I caught the Tom Cruise batshit video that has been posted on gawker. If you're interested in seeing it, just following this search link and see for yourself: Show me the Money!.

Watching this video and thinking about Scientology has re-awoken my love for critical thinking, and pushed me out in search of media related to this. I've been listening to two podcasts in particular: Skepticality, run by the team of Derek and Swoopy, and, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, run by the New England Skeptic's Society. Both podcasts are run by intelligent people that appreciate the art (is it fair to call an approach to what we observe in life an art? Maybe skill is a better term) of critical thinking. The dialogue is always interesting, and their are often interviews with very interesting people.

As I grow and mature, I continue to develop my appreciation for interaction between intelligent people. The whole is often much more than the sum of the parts, and I never grow tired of listening or participating. Qi is a TV show that tweaks that for me, and both of these podcasts do the same thing. I always walk away feeling like I've learned something after watching/listening to these kind of shows, and how could learning something ever be a bad thing?

Thinking critically makes you feel empowered. It causes you to introspect, and that leads to wisdom. It encourages you to consider your point of view, and why you feel the way you do about something. Above all, thinking critically is never a bad thing. We need to question what we are told, and why we are told something. Someone telling you that you should just accept something because they've told you so, is someone to be wary of.

That's as far as I can get right now - there's much more to be updated about, and I have lots of ideas in my head, waiting to be written out. It's just a time issue - there's never enough time!

Hopefully more to come.

I just wanted to use that title because it matched the totally awesome picture of Maui.

Anyhow, times, they are a-changing! The wedding is over, and our honeymoon was great, but now it's time to get down to business. Bay and I are in the gradual process of finishing up the final stages of putting our place in order. This probably seems weird, given that we moved in May, but shut it up you - planning a wedding is busy, and things got out of hand quickly.

Most of the cleaning and settling involves those last few boxes that take several centuries to unpack, and dealing with the remnants from the wedding. Also, printing pictures from the vacation, determining what to do with odds and ends, and general housekeeping that we haven't been able to get to until now.

We're certainly back into our usual routine, and I'm stoked about squash and on the road to improving past the last point I was at. I'm taking lessons with Tim now and hitting drills with him, and he's been a great guy to work with. Mike has been a great coach to hit with, and his technical approach to teaching is much more in line with the way that my brain is wired, so that's been very good. Look for some squash journals in the coming future.

As Bay has been unpacking the remaining boxes (most of them are things of Bay's to be dealt with), I've been reviewing my project backlog. Normally I have a list of things that I want to get done that I like to work through in my spare time. It's been almost 6 months since I've had the opportunity to do that, and so that aspect of my life has essentially been frozen. For the first time in over half a year last night, I sat down and realized that I didn't have anything immediate I needed to do. My chores were all done, and I just kind of wandered from room to room unsure of what to do next.

So, I started to revisit some of the things that I have had sitting in the back of my mind that haven't been dealt with in a looooong while. One of those top priorities are updating the website.

This website has been good to me. I designed it over four years ago (seems like longer), and it's provided me an outlet much better for spewing my thoughts into than I would have imagined at the onset. The initial layout was inspired partially by my friend Davin's original website. He had a similar layout, before moving towards something much more awesome, and way less "end of the .dot com era"-y.

I don't mind the design - I think it's fairly clean (if not a little boring), and I like all of the banners that I've put together. I've developed some good concepts and branding over the years, and hopefully can continue to use some of that. However, it's time to move on.

As I have evolved, so too must my creative outlets, and although I can look back through the archives and see clearly how I've matured not just as a writer (Yikes - did I really think the word horsecocks was that funny?) but also as a person. However, aside from the writing, very little has happened to the website itself to indicate that progression. So, the requirement is obvious, and now it's a matter of turning that requirement into a set of actions.

I think I talked about doing this back when I moved the site to a new server, but I was biting off way more than I could chew thinking that I'd be able to fit that into the planning required for the wedding and everything else that was going on. I think I had some ideas at the time for items that I would like to implement on the site, but my focus has since shifted.

So, what I want to do is:

• Draft up a new layout for the site

This is the most important part. I've been using two column layout forever, and I would like to at least attempt to come up with a better, or at least different, way of organizing the content.

• Determine a color theme that I want to use for the site

The current site uses a white background, with blue lettering and highlights. That's okay, but it's a bit dull now. It would be nice to try something a little more bold. Davin and Graham are both using black-based backgrounds, which look nice - something along those lines, but still unique, would be nice to try out.

• Come up with a background for the site that works with that color theme

I was talking to Davin today about how to put together some textures to be used as a background. I've fiddled with a lot of what he described in Paintshop Pro (the uglier, more inbred cousin of Photoshop), so that'll be the starting point.

• Figure out a way of archiving the existing site

It'd be nice to retain a reference of what the site used to look like, if only so that I can refer back to it later on if I want to. Also, I'll need to determine if the archives have to be shifted across - my assumption is that, since they are static pages, they will continue to exist with the old layout and design.

So that's it. Sounds easy right? There's a lot of work there, with many sub-tasks, but that's cool, because I'm a project manager, and breaking things down into manageable chunks (manageable from an implementation standpoint, as well as from a mental standpoint) is what I'm good at. Hmm.. It would be nice to be able to then delegate all of that work to someone else once I'm done breaking it down though.

The most immediate step to take is to begin looking at other sites that are out there on the AOL, and see what I like. From those I can draw inspiration and go from there.

Stay tuned!

Well, the culmination of about 1.5 years worth of effort has happened, and I'm now officially married. The 1.5 years includes time spent with me starting to save up money to put towards an engagement ring, planning the proposal, going through with the proposal, and then planning for arounf ten months to get everything in order for the big day. Add in to that the fact that we bought a condo, and you've got a lot of action packed in there.

The ceremony went off without a hitch (unless you count some wayward tears on both Bay's and my faces as a hitch), and was the perfect length. Even though it was a catholic ceremony, it didn't drag on (an hour long mass would have been a bit tedious for a lot of our friends that aren't religious), and Father Swavek (the priest marrying us) was a pretty cool guy throughout the whole process.

The photos went really well, and the reception was a really great time. I didn't feel like I was being pulled in a direction I didn't want due to obligations, and I got to spend a good amount of time with all of my friends that were there. A number of people have told me that at their wedding they barely had time to do anything because they were so busy going around and thanking everyone and talking to people they didn't even know that well. Bay and I were close with pretty much everyone that was in attendance, and I never felt like I was neglecting one group of friends for another.

Writing out a summary of everything that happened strikes me as pretty boring, and would take a bunch of time to do. Instead, tonight, I'm just going to include the script that I wrote for my thank yous, and comment about any anomalies. If nothing else, it may be interesting for anyone reading to see how I prepare when giving a speech.

Alright, I've got a lot of thank yous to get out here, and, as most of you here know, I don't enjoy talking very much. So, if I speak in a monotone, no one laughs or coughs, and I take only three breaths, I think I can get through this in about 30 seconds.

[Deep breath]

Yup, that's right - I write notes about when to take specific actions if I'm hoping to get some laughter. Or just to help myself relax. The deep breath won't really do much for laughter - if people were willing to laugh, they'd do it at the end of my last comment about getting through it in under 30 seconds. What actually happened is that people chuckled - rather than take a deep breath, I jumped in and told everyone to cut it out. Horray for mild humour.

Worth mentioning is the fact that I didn't make a note of the pause after the obvious joke about me not liking to talk very much. I guess I just assumed I would know to pause there.

We don't usually get the opportunity to thank the people in our lives - we're busy, it usually comes off sounding sappy, and worst of all, there's often the expectation that the compliment we give be reciprocated. However, I've got the microphone, and I'm going to cut the cord when I'm done, so this is going to be sweet.

That's the initial light-hearted joking out of the way. Now I start to get into the actual thank yous.

I want to preface my thank yous by saying that I'm a firm believer that the people in our lives are a direct reflection of the people that we are.

We don't get a choice of who our family is, but that's not what's important - what's important is that those people have had a direct effect in shaping the people that we grow up to be. Our family are the fires and pressure that help forge the jewel that we grow into. And yes, I DID intend to refer to myself as a jewel there.

When I started writing the speech, I had the idea that I wanted to use some kind of metaphor to demonstrate the role that I feel our family and friends play in our lives. The metaphor of a diamond or some other kind of jewel seemed fitting, so that's what's going on here. Referring to myself as a jewel sounded a little arrogant to my ears, so I threw the joke in to lighten it up.

As we age and mature (or at least, as I do that), we start to meet and choose friends that resonate with us according to how we live our lives and what we believe in. Our friends are reflections of various facets of our lives, and people that affect our lives positively. We don't get to choose our family, but we do get to choose our friends. Yes, our friends also shape the way we grow and develop, though most of that happens after we've passed through our most formative years. However, I think that to a greater extent, our friends are the light shining through the facets of our personality, helping to reflect who, and what, we've become.

There's the other half of the same metaphor, though subtle - I only allude to it with the words "the light shining through the facets of our personality...". Anyhow..

So, in the interest of reducing our speeches to under 30 minutes, onwards!

I would like to thank...

* Mom, Lew and Rachelle

For bringing up Bay, and helping her to become the person that she is today. For welcoming me into your homes, your family, and your hearts. For trying to accomodate my picky tastes in food no matter how much we insist that you don't, and for letting me sit on your couch and read when I'm just not in the frame of mind to participate in conversation.

It's hard to thank your in-laws without sounding trite. I tried to make this personal to avoid that.

* Squash friends

For always being down for having a good time, and for putting up with my constant no-shows while planning for our wedding.

I wanted to thank all of my squash friends individually, but that would have taken too long. Plus, if I did that, it would have taken away from the importance of thanking my other friends. Not that I value one group of friends more than the others, but the rest of the people I wanted to thank had been in my life for a significantly longer amount of time, and thus played more of a role

* Jay

Jay for continuuing to defy my expectations and helping to broaden my horizons.

Jay's the newest men's club member, and a great guy. I wanted one more sentence here, but those two items are definitely significant.

* Davin

Davin for being one of the most understanding guys I know, a constant source of inspiration, and a kindred spirit in appreciating the beauty of the world around us.

I didn't thank Davin for MCing the event, though that would have been a good move as well. He definitely helped bring the entire reception together into a copacetic event, and kept the ball rolling smoothly.

* Davey

For never requiring me to explain myself, and for understanding synnergy on a level very few people do. For laughing with me at the stupidity of life, and the stupidity of the people around us. No, that's not a thinly-veiled comment about anybody here.

I think Bay might have been worried that this would be taken as an insult by some people, but I feel it was a pretty safe joke, especially given that I'm explicitly stating that I'm NOT commenting on anyone there. If someone still wants to think I'm attacking them after that, well, I can only cover so many bases. At some point you just have to stop trying to please everyone.

* Adam

For teaching me the joys of the wee Dram, for getting me into as much trouble as I get you into, and most importantly, and I can't stress this enough, for being an honor to share a name with.

It's hard to thank Adam for specific things. The easiest thing to say would be that I never have a bad time hanging out with him, but that might end up inferring that I had less of a good time with other friends. Adam's just one of those guys that is a great partner in crime. Plus, added bonus, he's the other half of Team Adam (seriously, get yourself a friend with the same name - it's good shit).

* Graham

For sticking beside me through all of the good and the bad. For putting up with my quirks and moods, and sharing in so many of the good times. For teaching me what friendship is all about. For never giving up and rising to all of the challenges that face us in life.

Graham is the easiest one to thank, since he's been there the longest. Being friend's with me the longest means that he's been through the most with me, and has put up with the most of my shit. It's a testament to our friendship that we're still buddies after all this time.

* Brendan

Brendan for the fact that you never stop making me look bad, and giving me a reason to keep working out. For teaching me that I'm not the only person in the world, and for making it necessary that I learn the concept of sharing.

May sound silly, but my brother is definitely a good foil to me. He accentuates the areas in my life where I could improve, and helps me appreciate my own strengths. He and I don't talk often, and have a relationship that is not as warm as many familial relations are. Nevertheless, I have a great deal of respect for him, and this was an attempt to articulate that. The working out bit sounds kind of stupid, in retrospect. I think I improvised and cut that bit out when I was speaking.

* Mum

Mum, for teaching me sensitivity, and compassion. For teaching me that it isn't worth doing things in life if you're not willing to do them all the way. For teaching me not to take anything for granted - not friends, not family, and not life. For teaching me to always put myself first, except when it's time to put others first.

* Dad

For teaching me how to laugh, both at myself, and at everyone else, and most importantly, for teaching me how to make others laugh. For teaching me that living life doesn't have to be that difficult, and for teaching me that if you want to live life right, it's worth it when it IS that difficult. For teaching me to be true to myself first and foremost.

* Mum and Dad

For teaching me that the journey is what matters in life, not the destination. For teaching me how to love, and for living with me through all of the good and the bad moments. Yes, this is one of the good moments.

Thanking my parents was easy, and all of this was really just speaking from the heart. I could have gone on longer with ease, but that would have detracted from the other people I wanted to thank, and it also would risk boring people (and then as a result, detracting from what I wanted to say in the first place). For both of them, I wanted to make sure that I had something there that was somewhat contradictory, because that's the way life can be, and that's how we have to live our lives. Sometimes you really do have to put yourself first, but sometimes, you also have to put others needs before your own - life is all shades of grey, and there is very rarely a black/white decision.

Aside from myself, my Mum and Dad are the people most directly responsible for the way that I have turned out. You don't need to be articulate to thank your parents - just think about the things you like about yourself. You can bet that they played a role in shaping and developing those traits.

* Bay

And Bay! For sharing with me in the lessons that life has to offer. For sharing with me in the joy of learning, and for being my partner to discover the world with. Thank you for teaching me new ways to learn, and new ways to appreciate the world around us.

Thank you for being beautiful in a way that will only continue to grow and develop as we age together. For keeping me honest when I most need it, and for being willing to tell me when I'm being a jerk.

Maybe it's stupid to thank your wife for being beautiful, but this not just empty rhetoric on my part. I really do see in Bay a beauty that only goes stronger as she learns more self-confidence. She's young in many ways that transcend age, and that's a quality that I value incredibly highly. If you think I'm being superficial thanking her for this, then you didn't really understand what I'm thanking her for.

Thank you for your courage, your strength, and your compassion. For working with me to make it through the tough times that require the strength of two people, and for sharing with me in the joyous moments that would be too much for just one person to cherish.

Thank you for forgiving me later when I step on your toes, and thank you for being the reason that this wedding actually happened.

Thank you, for being my wife.

And that's that. Bay and I head off to Bali soon, and after that, Hong Kong. It'll definitely be a welcome break after such a busy past year.

In other news, I played my squash league game tonight and really sucked. I haven't written any squash journals in quite some time, and that's largely due to the fact that I haven't had any time to take lessons. However, our hotel in Bali has a squash court in it, which will be a good morning workout (I don't want to go on vacation only to put on 20 pounds), and I plan to re-dedicate myself to those once I get back from the honeymoon, so look for that to start up again.

It's been a while since I've been able to find time and inspiration to write a blog entry. There are many reasons for that, but the two most obvious, indisputable ones are that I'm getting married in just under two weeks, and that I suck ass at writing unless I'm inspired.

Fortunately, I've got a slight break in the clouds and the stars have aligned. I've got time to sit down and actually type something up, and the past few weeks have provided lots of inspiration to write about. It's probably easiest just to iterate over each of those little tidbits of inspiration and talk about them.

• Dancing

My dancing inspiration has been at an all time high. My practice sessions with Steve are now a regular thing every Friday night, and Graham is now coming out and dancing with us as well, which is great. Graham is one of the most intuitive guys that I know when it comes to learning, so his insight into dancing is often at a totally different angle than my own, which is very technical.

Let me try and elaborate on those two terms I used. An intuitive learner is someone that picks up things seemingly just by watching them. They don't need to break something down into its specific parts - they just see it, in its essence, and learn from that. Intuitive learners are, to me, those jerks that can just watch someone really good and then start to mimic that. Intuitive learners are those people that you will ask questions like "how often do you practice?", or "how many lessons have you taken?", and they will tell you, "well, I never really took lessons".

Technical learners are people like me. We like to break things down into small units of detail that we can then practice and study. Once we've learned all of the little bits, then, and only then, it's time to put them back together to create the whole. For anyone technically inclined out there, it's almost like the difference between analog and digital. A truly good intuitive learner will always have that almost natural ability that is impossible to imitate for someone like myself operating on a very technical level. However, those of us that are technical learners are able to gain a much greater understanding of the very smallest bits of a given skill, and so in many ways (but again, not all ways) have what I believe to be a greater understanding of how something works. (Love it or hate it, there are pros and cons to both sides of the coin, and we have to accept that which we are).

So, anyhow, as I was trying to say, Graham has very different insights into my dancing that I would not normally think of during my technical approach. Additionally, as I continue to reflect, I've discovered that I learn a lot when I'm in the process of teaching. That doesn't really mean that I'm necessarily better than the person that I'm teaching, but everytime I need to explain something to someone, I gain a better understanding of it myself. Dancing with my friend Steve, who was initially a breaker, and is now picking up popping (a much better choice as we continue to age) has given me lots of opportunities to break down and explain to him how to make a given technique work, and in doing so, I have learned how to do it better myself.

The ultimate goal for the end of this year is to teach a brief dancing tutorial at the Victoria Electronic Music Festival when it rolls around next year. Hopefully I can get some people to help me with that - I think Graham would provide a good foil to my mostly technical approach. As an aside, you can see the most technical person I've ever known dancing by heading over to my friend Michi's website. I've never met someone as focused as Michi is, nor who learns as technically as he does. His technical ability is almost a hindrance to his progression due to the fact that he creates such a strong focus that he starts to lose sight of the greater picture (the sum of the parts is greater than the whole...)

• Night-club waltzing

So, in addition to my weekly Friday sessions with Graham and Steve, Bay and I have been taking weekly dance lessons on Saturday to learn how to dance for our first dance. This style of dance is colloquially called The nightclub waltz.

Ever since I started dating Bay, I've always wanted to take dance lessons with her. Part of the problem has been timing, part of it has been laziness, and part of it has been the way we learn. What's that? The way we learn? Yup.

See, Bay is an intuitive learner, and a good one at that. She learns by feeling, and when she feels, she feels the whole. She sees a dance style and understands it without needing to break things apart like I do. (I should interject here to mention the fact that I would consider myself somewhere between the middle point of being technical and intuitive and Michi, whereas I would place Bay in the position of still being somewhat technical, but definitely more inclined towards intuitive).

So, what that means is that Bay has always wanted to go out and take lessons with me, but those lessons are more akin to "If we go out tonight, we can get a 1 hour dance lesson free, and then they open the dance floor to everyone and you can just do whatever". See, to me, that's a death sentence. I need to see a move, be shown how to do it, and then be given the opportunity to practice it over and over until I've committed it to memory. "Sure", you say, like a jerk, "you can just do that once they open the dance floor". No I can't - there's nothing worse for me than sitting on the dance floor with a bunch of people being awesome and me practicing one single move over and over.

Anyhow, Bay tracked down lessons that we could take weekly at the YMCA and signed us up, which is rad. If I have one piece of advice that I wanted to pass on to aspiring dancers of any style out there (and hopefully at least one person that appreciates popping has read this far), it is that you should never pass up the opportunity to take dance lessons, even if it's not the style you're interested in (although I still stand by my initial problem with taking a lesson for an hour and then dancing with awesome people afterwards).

Here's why. Every time I've taken a dance lesson, no matter what style of dance it's been, I've had revelations that have extended beyond the style that I've been taking a lesson for. Just this past weekend I was practicing at Steve's, and I suddenly realized something about my fresno that was directly the result of what I'd been taught taking our ballroom classes. This, to me, is the beauty of dance; good dancing transcends a given style. It represents an innate ability to understand your own body and to connect with the music. Whenever I hear someone dismissing a style of dancing, I always ask myself "is it the style that is illegitimate, or this person's ability to understand dancing?"

Anyhow, the dance lessons have been awesome and a lot of fun. Multiple times Bay and I have headed into the dance class, grumpy from wedding-planning-related (get to work, Hyphen!) arguments, and left the class remembering that we do, in fact, love one another. I cannot recommend dance lessons enough, and at any age. If you're young, start now - you'll be glad you did later on. If you're old, start now - you'll wish you had started when you were younger, but try to see that as a sign of how much you enjoy it now.

Bay and I actually received what we perceived to be a really nice compliment after our first class when the dance instructor came up to us at the start of the second class and said, "So, you guys have got a lot of dance background.. What types of dance?" I can't speak for Bay, but, being almost purely self-taught in the styles of dance that I pursue, and being recognized in this manner, this was one of the nicest compliments I have ever received regarding my dancing.

• Stag

When most people hear the word Stag, they assume any one or more of the following:

• Stripper(s)
• Crazy amounts of booze
• You're only single once
• What happens in Vegas/Wherever you currently are, stays in Vegas/Wherever you currently are
• etc.

Leading up to the last weekend, I had made a point of stating the fact that I wanted to keep things classy. Don't get me wrong here. I will admit that strippers have an appeal. It's a cheap, tawdry appeal that is not lasting, and is very objectified, but, it is an appeal nevertheless. However, cheap and tawdry appeal wasn't the way I wanted to remember hanging out with my friends before I got married.

So, all I was told was the time that we would be taking the ferry over to Vancouver, and what time we'd be heading back. People would keep saying things like, "Wow, your stag is going to be the bee's knees". (They didn't use terms like that, but I prefer to think of all my dialogue happening on old timey radio). I'd always counter by saying, "Well, I made a point of saying that I wanted to keep things classy", which always got countered with, "Well, if they listen to you".

Fortunately, my friends know that I'm a dick and would probably not have much fun if they dragged me to a strip-club. We headed over, and the first move was getting escorted by the Chief Steward Officer to the conference room (CSO is not a title that just anybody gets). In the conference room, my buddy Jay set up an espresso machine and made us all coffee, and the rest of the guys pulled out treats. We hunkered down and started drinking coffee, eating junk food, and playing some hard-core Magic.

What? Magic isn't cool? Suck it, it is when I'm writing about it in my blog. And if you're someone that went to Junior High School with me and remember thinking what a dork I was when you saw me playing it in the math classroom after school, well, guess what, I'm still a dork, but now I'm sitting inside the conference room on the ferry playing it, instead of Mr. Swagar's classroom. Shit, that sucked. Anyhow, we 'gicced it up right nice, and then headed into downtown Vancouver.

Actually we headed off the ferry and immediately started following maps that the guys had printed out. We made our way out to Burnaby, and stopped at one of the mecca's of Magic, Mishra's Game Factory. We got some beer because they weren't open yet, then headed in to pick up all of the Magic cards of our dreams. Once we had our gear in order, we headed back into town to check into our hotel.

After the shittiest drive ever (living in Victoria is way better. I don't care what anyone says), we made our way to the hotel. It was difficult not to let my eyes get drawn towards the fact that directly across from the hotel were offers of 99 cent pizza, and 25 cent peep shows. Why is it that peep shows are cheaper than food? All I'll say is that you never have to make the decision between your dongbone and sustenance in Victoria.

While checking in, we grabbed some drinks, and I laid down my one and only rule (aside from keeping it classy) - don't tell people that we're here for my bachelor party. People that understand me deeply know that even though I often end up being the center of attention, my real goal is to make everyone feel welcome, have everyone enjoy themselves, and keeping a good balance. As soon as an individual is told that it's my bachelor party, it becomes pretty hard to balance things out. I was here to have a good time with all of my friends, and that's all.

We headed up to our hotel rooms, got comfortable and played some Magic. When 7pm rolled around, we all classed our shit up, put on blazers, and headed out into the street. Davin had decided upon the restaurant, and it was a classy but intimate joint called Something something something. I actually can't remember the name, but it was pretty nice. The waitress and busser came over to chat a bit, but we busted them when they told us that they were from the island originally and had no facts to back that claim up with.

"Seriously, where is the second biggest hockey stick in the world??"

They were still pretty cool though, in spite of not knowing the deets about the island. We finished up dinner, and after the waitress brought us a list of bars to go and check out, we decided to go with our original decision of Yuks Yuks. Yah, that's right, I bolded it instead of putting it in italics. It's that intense.

Our attitude heading into the comedy club was summarized very well by my friend Davey: "Good comic: awesome. Bad comic: awesome". One way or another, we were going to laugh tonight. The only real question was whether it would be with the comedians, or at them.

The answer? At. Just the week before we left, I had gone and seen Russel Peters at the Royal Theatre here in Victoria, thanks to my friend Caroline's most righteous job at the box office there. I thought Russel Peters was pretty good, when I looked at how much he made me laugh. But then I went to Yuk Yuks. As soon as we headed down the stairs, we were greeted by a giant named James with at least seven elastics in his hair and a voice that said, "Screw throat lozenges". When we told him that we didn't have reservations, he responded with incredularity, however, what we didn't tell him was that we had something better than a reservation - we had my friend Davey. Davey suggested that he "Show James my ID" loudly and then made an obvious gesture of folding a 20 dollar bill around his ID and passing it off. Hey, look at that, it turns out there is room. Not only that, but there's a VIP booth for us!

James told us to sit down and relax until the early show finished, so we hung out and had a few beers. We chatted and relaxed, and then James gave his speech before we went in. My friend Jay, attending, is a member of Toast Masters International, so he's into public speaking. He thought fairly highly of James's speech, though I was less impressed. For those interested, some of Jay's points were that James dropped into the language that would hit his audience (I felt he would have done that every night, regardless of the audience - though maybe that reflects more on the clientèle of Yuk Yuks), and he used motion to release nervous energy, plus a few other points.

We got our seats and started diving into buckets of Sleaman's. The seats looked onto the side of the stage, and that was pretty rad, because I've never actually been in a comedy club, and, in spite of that, I consider myself a bit of a comedy afficianado.

Well, don't see any of the three comedians we saw if you consider yourself the same thing. The most interesting thing I noticed was that each of the comedians sucked in a different, but very similar, way. The first comedian was clearly the local comedian that was going to remain as such. For the rest of his life, or until his hair started to turn grey, he was going to be working here at Yuk Yuks. At lot of his humour revolved around pointing out people in the audience, and then making incredible obvious observations.

"Wow, you're old. What are you, like... 52?"

"And wow, you're young! What's the age difference between you two, like... 102?"

Just as an aside, and for those that look deep into comedy, he's doing a few things here. He's mentioning a specific number, like 102, instead of a thousand, because that's generally more powerful on the audience, and he's also making an obvious but somewhat reasonable embellishment about the difference in their age. For hacky comics, obvious but reasonable embellishment equals gilariousu! For people that understand humour, this same formula repeated throughout an entire act, with nothing else, actually equals suckbone. Needless to say, most of the crowd thought this guy was funny as all shit.

The next comic started out a little better (though interestingly enough, my friend Davin thought he was easily the worst of the three), but he quickly petered off. One or two masturbation jokes are funny, if only because they have shock value. Just make sure that they're not only funny because they have shock value. Oops. He started to lose his funny pretty quickly. Needless to say, most of the crowd thought this guy was funny as all shit.

The last comic was definitely the worst. Why? Let me tell you. Physically, he was short, stout, had glasses, was poorly dressed (as had been the last comic), and annoying. He also had an Irish accent (him being from Ireland was a significant portion of his act), and curly hair (not a significant portion of his act). My friend Davey summed it up best when I came back from the bathroom and he mentioned that "Everything this comic has said is unbelievable. He's already told us about him being stuck in a toilet stall because he was stoned. That never happened". Not only did none of this comic's material have believability, one of the most important facets of good humour, but it also just didn't matter.

Do you ever find yourself talking to someone that has stories that sound good, but in your head you think, "Okay, maybe that happened, but who really cares?". Well, that was this guy. All his stories were either unbelievable ("I got stoned and was locked in a bathroom stall because I couldn't figure out how to get out!" - No you didn't), who cares ("Isn't it annoying when you're in a bar with an Irish person, and the American beside you blah blah blah"), or both ("Check it out, I've got a lampshade on my head!!!!!!!1").

My friend Jay defended the fact that they were up there speaking, which I can respect, but that doesn't make a good standup comedian - that makes a good person that can stand up there and speak. And beyond that, really, it just means that someone isn't intimidated by standing in front of a bunch of people. Is that even really that big of a deal? I guess so, for a lot of people, but for me, you need to actually do something after you stand up.

I won't bother getting into any of the other reasons, although if someone writes a comment and is actually interested, I'll dive write in. I'm also interested to hear counter-points to my argument, because I really don't feel as though I'm the authority - I've just thought a lot about this particular avenue.

We headed back to the hotel and caught some Z's, then made our way back to the ferry and towards home, but not before a second trip to the beautiful BC ferry's conference room. I made it home safe, without any weird diseases, and with some pretty awesome memories. You really can't ask for more, and if I did, I wouldn't deserve it. I've got a pretty clutch set of friends, and this was the ideal weekend for me. I just wish we didn't have to wait for special events to do this kind of thing, but hey, maybe that's just one of the reasons that we have special events.

• Weirdos

Man, those weirdos! I've had an insane week at work, and reflection and the ability to unwind and laugh at life have played large roles in remaining sane and being myself. Reflecting on life is something that I always do (often too much), but laughing at life can sometimes be eased along by other people.

Well, what do you know, I was given the chance to laugh at life on Friday of this week, potentially one of the days when it would serve me best.

Early Friday morning, an e-mail arrived in my inbox to let me know that I had been requested as a friend for someone named Jacob Justice Beatification.

Now, in spite of having one of the most thoroughly dynamite names I've seen in a while, I didn't recognize him, nor his creepy picture. How do you react to these kinds of situations? You respond to their initial message, and see where things go:

Jacob Justice Beatification It's my brother from another mother!! what'up bitch?!?!

Okaaaaaaaaaaay... When someone you don't know hits you with a random mesage, you reply by forcing them into the uncomfortable role, rather than assuming it yourself (eg, "who are you?").

Adam Quiney [parsing facial logs] No match.

[parsing name logs]
No match.

[parsing speech mannerism logs]
No match.

K, I don't know you. Do you know me?

The onus is now on him to take the initiative, rather than on me to try and figure out who he is. He'll probably counter by pushing me to figure out who he is..

Jacob Justice Beatification yes. beer me.

I'll give you a hint, I'm from Syria.

See, he's trying to push for me to accept the role of trying to figure out who he is by getting me to guess. I'll just diffuse the situation some more..

Adam Quiney No good, I know far too many Syrians for that hint to do me any good.

I do know a lot of Syrians. However, at this point, we're still in an area where this could definitely just be one of my friends playing a joke on me. The key then is to not tip my hand at all. Just keep saying things that don't really mean anything and see how things flow.

Jacob Justice Beatification dammit, that is always that problem. Why can't I be from a country with less prominent and friendly people in the world, so I am more memorable, like England or America.

A further hint then, all those Syrians you know pay my salary from their taxes.

I must warn you that if you cannot figure out my true identity then you are not the person I am looking for and there will cease to be anymore facebooking communicae with you. I assure you my photo is real.

So now we're starting to stray a little bit from the realm of people I know. The jokes have been a little off-target, which sometimes is just a sign of my friends joking about things that I don't yet know about, but after a few of these in a row, it's cause for suspicion. Then, on top of that, he's sticking with the Syria angle, which wasn't funny to begin with. At this point I started to suspect.. Plus his ultimatum is dumb - the threat being that.. what, I don't get to have him as a friend, when he was the one that requested our friendship? Always remember who controls the power in these situations.

Adam Quiney I read in a book that in Syria, sunglasses don't work, and you can only eat the left half of chickens to avoid getting the bird flu. If you can confirm these facts, I will be willing to ask you further questions, such as how much weight you can lift clean over your head.

This is pretty classic diffusion. Notice that I don't address anything that he has said, other than his continued point that he is from Syria, and on top of that, the only way that I address it is with ridiculous questions that no intelligent person would ask. If I say so myself, I kind of like the "reward" that I offer him for answering my questions: I will ask him further questions about how much he can lift over his head. These questions are a good way of determining who I'm talking to. If it's a friend of mine, they'll answer with a witty response. If not... Well, I don't know how they'll answer..

Jacob Justice Beatification you fail.

Please reject my facebook friend request, as I am told there is no way to withdraw it myself as this motherfucking piece of shit website is in no way useful to me anymore. I am going to fucking assassinate someone over this.

Ah. That's how they'll answer. So, this is the point you are looking for in an argument. Whenever the person you're arguing with degenerates their argument into swear words, personal attacks, or other things not related to what you were discussing, you have won. The two of us weren't even in an argument here, but the balance has clearly shifted towards me at this point, as the swearing and random (not to mention somewhat disturbing) assassination comments indicate. All of these signs point to two facts: This person is not a friend of mine (my friends all have good senses of humour and would not crack so easily), and, I can now claim this sovereign conversation as my own.

Adam Quiney Wow, it only took four messages to get a degeneration into swearing and assassination! I think what I will do is just leave up this friendship request as a reminder of the great conversation I once shared with you.

May your hopes and dreams grow as freely as your most righteous mustache.

At this point I've no longer got anything vested in the conversation. It's not like I had anything vested to begin with, but now I really don't care how it turns out. I'm playing around, and the two possible results are: He doesn't respond, and I have a hilarious conversation to store, or, he does respond, and I get to string things along further. The point here is that at no moment in the conversation do I truly care, nor have anything vested, in the result of the conversation. When you're approached by weird people like this, invest nothing of yourself in the conversation. They are the person approaching you, and so they are the ones that should be validating who they are to you. Take your time, and realize that the path the conversation takes is as enjoyable as the conversation itself (this may get lost on a few people).

So, clearly, a lot going on. By the next time I update, I figure that I'll probably be married, and will have passed a huge milestone in my life. When I used to work at UVic as a co-op student (if I pass along one piece of advice to people younger than me, it is that doing co-op will make your life better - honestly!) I used to listen to these two really great DJs, James LBS and Avery, from Washington DC. Not too long ago, I looked them up online, just to see what they're up to. They're both still DJing (a sure sign of people that love what they do, and believe in it - surround yourself with these types of people), and Avery had just recently gotten married. I had no connection to Avery, aside from one e-mail I'd sent him to tell him I appreciated the music they played. Nevertheless, the significance of the fact that he got married was mostly lost on me. It didn't really matter, he was just another person. I expect that a lot of people that are only partially connected to me will feel the same way. Even so, to those of you that are truly my friends, whether you have been there since the start, or merely for the last few months, you will know how much significance this event plays in my life, and how much you all have contributed to this moment in my life.

As always, keep it real, and be true. (to you. Worry about the other people later).

Like the title says, I'm back! Pretty wild stuff. It's been about six months since my blog went down, and the rest of my life picked up considerably since then, making it very difficult to find the time to set things back up.

Here's what's been going on:

• Buy a condo

Oh yeah, I bought a condo. Most people know about this, but it may come as news to some. This happened right at the Pac Rim tournament this year, and my motivation through this tournament was quite low as a result. Bay and I had been looking for about 6 months prior to this, and had yet to see anything that we liked, aside from one unit right at the start which sold shortly after.

• Pay for a condo

Once you buy real-estate, you go insane running around to get all your money and stuff together. You get only a week usually to get your financing in order, have a building inspection conducted, read through the last two-years worth of minutes from strata meetings, shop for mortgages, etc.

You can get some of this done beforehand, to an extent, but no matter what, it seems like you're suddenly sucked into the INSANITYVORTEX!!

• Move

Moving sucks, but, when you're moving out of the place we had, and into a place that you're hoping will finally be a home, it takes some of the sting out of it. Still, loads of packing to get done on our part, as well as organizing everything. We were actually very fortunate, because a huge amount of our friends volunteered to help, which was really cool. The whole process was actually pretty fun, and it was nice getting the hell out of our old place. Man that unit sucked.

• Clean old shitass apartment

The worst part about moving is that after shiting all of your stuff, you have to go back and cleanup the old unit you've now left behind. Bay and I couldn't do any unpacking, because we still needed to paint. We still had some other stuff to bring back across as well, and on top of everything else we needed to get the carpet cleaned.

We rented a carpet cleaner hoping that we could save money doing it ourselves, which lead to this hilarious exchange between us and the property manager for our apartment:

Okay, the place looks good, did you get the carpet's cleaned?

Yup.

Who'd you get to do it?

Bay and I look furtively at each other

Errr... EZ.. clean? Something like that? We can't remember the name.

Okay, well, all I need is the receipt and we're good to go.

Ah. K. See you.. We'll mail it to you

We eventually had to own up and pay for professionals to come and do it, but I was so sick of the unit by this point that I couldn't make myself care. We were out of there, and that's all that mattered.

• Paint condo

Painting takes a loooooong time to do, and it's pretty painful when you're living out of boxes because you need to finish painting. We were absolutely not willing to live in yet another place that had the same white walls that every other apartment we had lived in before, and besides, Bay and I had ideas.

We took out extra money on the mortgage to be able to afford some paint and furniture, and so we were set to go buy paint. Turns out, we were set to go and buy about $1000 worth of paint and supplies. Yikes.

Throw/Dropsheets suck ass - you put them down and they constantly move away from the wall right as you're about to drip paint on the wall. Bah!

It's annoying not being able to unpack as well, and Bay and I got some really incredible fighting action going on, just from the stress and annoyance of living out of boxes and wanting painting to be finished. That being said, each room finished helped steel our resolve, and by the end of it we were pretty happy with the colors we'd chosen. I'll post pictures of the rooms within the next couple of days, provided I remember to.

• Buy Furniture

Bay and I lived on our own for a while before moving in together, and since that point, we've had way too much stuff, all of it mismatched, for the spaces we've lived in. We sat down and went through everything that we owned, and started throwing out huge lots of it. It's not that we didn't like our stuff, but often times we'd just outgrown it. We put together a shopping list and headed out for furniture. This part was actually kind of fun, except that most of the time the stuff we really liked ended up costing way too much. We found a nice couch and dining room table at Dodd's, and figured we'd pick up everything else we needed from Jysk or Ikea.

Head's up - Jysk sucks and is way overpriced. We were super dissapointed with the furniture that they carried, as it all cost a lot, and was built quite shittily (it might be a real word).

Ikea really came through for us though. Lots of people are rigidly opposed to Ikea, but when you're on a budget, and are willing to look through the cheaper stuff and pick out the things that are a little higher quality, I think it's pretty good. We managed to cover almost everything else we needed off our list with a little bit of creative thinking (eg, in order to get a lingerie chest for Bay, we had to buy a bookcase with a classy door - it works great, looks nice, and saved us about $200 over what we would pay normally).

• Unpack and assemble furniture

And this is pretty much the final bit. Unpacking is much more fun than packing is, and even more so when for the first time in our lives (at least since moving in together) we actually have enough space for everything, and storage to eliminate clutter.

• Buy small cat

Oh yeah, almost forgot about this one. Bay and I had wanted a little catd00d for some time now, and once completing the bulk of our painting, we went out and talked to a few cat rescues. We chose the cuddliest cat we could find in order to act as the polar opposite to Maui, and picked him up two weeks later. He's sleeping in a small catball on the couch as I type this.

So that's a lot of stuff to get done! We're mostly complete now, just finishing unpacking the last couple of boxes, and now that all the furniture has been delivered and setup, we need to paint the hallway.

Here's what I needed to do get the blog back up online:

• Get my old Linux machine to boot up again

Okay, this probably wasn't as hard as I thought it might have been. Initially, my server just ran by itself, without any monitor, keyboard, or mouse attached to it. When it went down, I didn't really have any way to figure out what was going on, other than connecting to it using SSH (a pretty low level way to access another machine). For some reason, the computer wasn't accepting SSH requests, so I couldn't do that.

• Fork out the cash for a domain and good web hosting

When you're moving it's hard to find $150 to just throw to a webhost.

• Back up my old blog and upload it to the new web host

Just spent most of today doing this and the next item. I've had worse days, but there's definitely quirks to figure out and get past in order to get everything working again.

• Figure out how to make all of the components work together

So that's complete now, for the most part. As I said, I've been without a blog for six months, and a ton of stuff has happened. Part of how I learn is by writing out my thoughts and articulating them, so I've been dying to blog. I've got a lot of catching up to do, and the summer is just starting to pick up steam in a different vector. Now that getting our place all set up is winding down, wedding, squash tournaments, music festivals, and other excitement are starting to pick up speed. I'll be blogging about that all, so stay tuned, and welcome back!

Yah, so, like I promised, I've got some pictures of the old eye. Everything is back to normal now, but this is what I looked like about a week and a half ago:

So yah, as you can tell from the stitches, I was pretty lucky to get hit where I did. I've been wearing eye-guards ever since, and it seems to be working out alright. Nikki tells me to stop taking them off and they won't fog up, but I think that's just because when I play her, I'm the one doing all the sweating and running.

I'm feeling pretty positive about squash right now - Like I mentioned before (I think I mentioned it), I've been jogging on my lunch breaks, and I'm slowly pulling things back into shape. I'm not really winning games yet, but I have specific things that I can work on, and that helps motivate me a lot more than hating every single aspect of my game.

The Vancouver Island Open is this weekend, and a bunch of friends from out of town are coming out to play in it (Bevan, Blake, etc.), so I'm excited about that too. I don't expect to place too highly in the tournament - this time around, my goal is to play well and not focus on the score. I just want good matches.

I'll give an update afterwards and post what I've got to work on.

I haven't made any dance related entries lately because I've been injured, and because once I was ready to get back on my foot, I wanted to focus most of my efforts on bringing my squash game back up to speed. I've been working on the same old stuff, and while it's come along slowly, there's still a lot of things for me polish up. My friend Simon has been taking lessons with some really major dancers (eg, founders of some of the styles that I do), so I've understandably been very jealous of that opportunity. He's coming over here for a few nights before he leaves Canada to head back to his homeland in Australia.. Hopefully we get a chance to bust out together before he's out of here and exchange knowledge with each other. Will post more about that too.

Enjoy those photos!

I logged on to my site today and saw that it was blank - had it really been that long since I'd made an update? Guess so. I had two entries that were in draft mode, but dag yo I really hate proof-reading my own writing.

The last two weeks have been so packed with stuff that it's hard to seperate everything. The Victoria Electronic Music Festival is an annual event that happens in Centenniel Square on the first weekend of August. The first one took place about five years ago, and I was just coming out of my hardcore raver phase (awesome phase). That event was put on by different people than the remaining three that we've had since then, and was somewhat disorganized. Additionally there was no beer gardens (which, let's be honest, are kind of pie), and the event really felt like a rave during the daytime.

Don't get me wrong - raves have been a large part of my life, and I did a lot of growing up at them. That being said, they're kind of seedy, loads of people are on drugs, they feel anything but professional, and they're definitely something better left in the dark (imagine seeing someone at 6 in the morning after they've been tweaking on some random drug (90% likelihood that it's cat pee) and dancing all night long). That is some scary shit.

The event was taken over by Bruce and James (who I met this year) two years later, and they've been doing it every year since. My friend Davin has played a large role in VEMF as well, and it's been cool to see it grow into what it's become. This year was without a doubt the best time I've had yet. Things really felt like a festival rather than a daytime rave, the beer gardens were in full swing, loads of people were dancing, and the music was really great.

Anyone that knows me (or even reads this blog) knows how much I love dancing, and I stayed rooted firmly on the dance floor for the better part of both days. A ton of old school friends came out that I haven't seen in a long time, and it was just a really great event all around. The last two years, Davin and my other friend Justin have put on a production/DJ workshop as well, which has been really well received, and I think it's awesome to do things like that and help expose people to the details behind the music. This year I mentioned to Davin that I thought a dance workshop would be really cool, and how much I would like to be a part of that. Ideally I would like to bring someone like Jake (who's workshop I took a month ago when he was out here) out here, and then help out myself in any way possible.

So, that's the weekend before this one. I came away from it having such a good time, I was having trouble imagining having that much fun for a while afterwards.

Buuuuut, this weekend was the Jericho (pronounced Yeriko for extra cool points) Sun and Surf squash tournament - one of the few squash tournaments that goes on during the summer. I was sitting on the fence about whether or not I was going to go last year, but after the awesome times I've had on squash tournament road trips this past season, I knew I was going to be going to this one.

Our immediate crew was myself, Jeff, Dan, Thomas and Bevan. Jeff was driving (and in his pimp-ride BMW no less) and we made it on to the 1 PM ferry. We hung out with some of the juniors that were taking Stu's squash camp in Victoria (so I already knew most of them - Cliff, Rafik and Thomas the frenchie), which was all good, but involved maybe one too many stories about people shitting their pants. I usually like to keep the shitty pant stories down to a minimum and a low volume when I'm rolling in the crowded seating areas of ferry, but that's probably just because I'm a prude or something.

We made it into the hostel at around 3, and discovered that just because people in hostel's are constantly meeting new, young people from all over, they do not need to have any personality whatsoever. I got the Ross Geller bring it down a notch gesture given to me after expressing a little bit of enthusiasm that we would be getting bunks that were all near each other. I made a mental note to avoid being turned to stone by looking directly into the employee's gaze and finished checking in. We headed back to the club and started a pretty typical routine - three quarter court. Brief diversion: Man, what a nice club. Right on the ocean, beautiful patio, nice courts, reasonable food and drink prices, hot tub, swimming pool, couches, etc. etc.. I thought to myself how cool it would be to be a member at a club like this, but knew in the back of my head that that wouldn't make any difference if I didn't get to be surrounded by the same awesome people I see everytime I head up to Victoria Squash Club.

We hit the ball around for a bit (Thomas winning most of his rallies in spite of having a sprained ankle and having to hop everywhere to get the court. What a dick), then came off court and hung out to watch some WISPA matches. For those not in the know, WISPA is the women's equivalent of the men's PSA tour. Basically international players travel around the world, enter WISPA tournaments and get paid. Or something like that. The games were great, and after watching a few, I caught a ride with Bevan and Rafik over to the Arbutus club where I was playing. I lost my match, dissapointingly, to a guy from Tacoma named Barton. I wouldn't have been dissapointed if I felt he was a better player, but I think I could have beaten him if my head was in the right place. I took the first game off him pretty handily, but just couldn't put any kind of strategy to work for myself in the next two games. I started to get things to click in the fourth game part way through, moving the score up to 8-6 for me, but couldn't close the deal, and was just not able to make things work. Oh well, I don't have to ref right? After the match, Barton came over and complimented my playing and told me that I was a real gentleman on the court. That felt pretty good - I pride myself on being a good sport when I play, and it's nice to get complimented on that fact explicitly.

I hung around to watch the end of Rafik's match, which he ended up losing - I gather he'd been one of the favorites to win the A division, and he was pretty choked when he got off court. His mom, Shaney, gave us all a ride back to Jericho, and Bevan and I got ready to put on some beer goggles. The weather was amazing, and we hung out on the patio until around 1ish, chatting, slaking our thirsts with tasty malt-based beverages and meeting new people. By the end of the night, we wound up getting a ride home from some random girls driving around on a stagette mission. I'm not really sure what their plan was for the stagette (it seemed mostly to consist of driving around in a car with the bride-to-be wearing a blindfold), but hopefully the totally random encounter with us added something to their evening. Somehow we made it back to the hostel without any knife wounds (though I almost got turned to stone by another employee who must have had his personality surgically removed - what's with that place's hiring policy?), and I dragged my ass out of bed at 8:45 and tried to wipe away the gummy film that had grown across my eyes.

Jeff drove Dan and I to Jericho, and then headed to Arbutus for his match. I walked up to the draw sheet and found my name. Sweet, I'm playing at Vancouver Lawn and Tennis club, and Jeff is now gone. That makes me a boner, and one with 30 dollars less in his wallet after the cab ride there and back. Worst of all, I stepped on court to warm up and I think I managed to remain standing by sheer force of will alone. Decent! I lost the game in record time, but wasn't too upset about this one - I think I probably could have beaten this guy too, but really didn't deserve a victory after the night I'd had previously. So, basically I paid 30 dollars to go somewhere and lose a game of squash in ten minutes. At least I got to watch some lawn bowling.

So, just like that, I was out of the tournament. I wasn't the least bit troubled about that though, because while the squash was definitely a major motivation for going, the other half of out-of-town squash tournaments is the partying, and I know I'm an open player for that sport. I headed over to Arbutus again before dinner to watch Bevan's match (who, miraculously, had pulled off a victory at 8:45 that morning, and this was after the night before) with Blake, Erik (Eric?) and Nikki. Blake, Nikki and Erik went on court to play some squash while Bevan got ready for his match against my buddy Erik Fell, but I'd forgotten my squash gear and so I couldn't join them. Bevan brought out the suck in full force for his game against Fell, and really didn't put anything together. Let's see, who in our crew did that leave? Nikki, Blake, and Erik had all been knocked out before we even got into Vancouver, I was now out, and Bevan just got knocked out. That left Jeff (who I hadn't yet heard from how he did) and Dan. We headed back to Jericho just in time to catch the last two games of Dan's match, and hey, it must have been kismet, because he had turned up the suck to maximum as well. He played someone that liked to play very soft pace and lots of drops. Dan's a very versatile player, and would normally be able to deal with this by speeding up the pace and taking the guy out of his own game, but Dan couldn't stop himself from dropping every chance he got. Giving us even more fuel for our jeering from the bleachers, he only managed to put about four of his shots past the service line. Oh Dan.. Dan came off court right when we found out how Jeff did, and just like that, we were all out of the tournament.

I was kind of glad to hear that - it meant that we would all be on the same level later on that evening. We had a great meal and again hung out on the patio, this time with a smaller table, but a tighter knit crew of people. At one point I even managed to meet someone by tricking her into spilling a glass of beer into my lap and then using her apologetic vulnerability as an in to start conversation. Vanessa actually felt pretty bad about spilling the beer, but I could tell and figured it wasn't really that big of a deal. She turned out to be a pretty cool girl, and Dan, her and I ended up hanging out until the wee hours of the morning.

I woke up Sunday morning at 10:00 AM after four hours of sleep with a sprained ankle, and some mean looking cuts on my hands. What had happened? Bear attack? Knife fight? I settled on the most likely reason - I'd gone swimming in the ocean at some point and tried to hug a jellyfish. Stupid! I won't make that mistake again. And what's this? I've lost my keys too! Geez Adam. Oh well, makes for a good story right?

We spent Sunday hanging out and enjoying the company of friends and the weather (and of course, the hot tub), and around 5:00 PM got ready to go. We said our goodbyes to old and new friends, and hit the road to try and catch the 7:00 ferry. We ended up waiting around until around 9:30 until we made it onto a ferry. Apparently there'd been a suspicious briefcase left on the previous ferry, and they didn't want to take any chances. Oh well. I finally rolled into home at around 12:30, after we'd dropped off Thomas and Bevan at their homes. I think I managed to fall asleep around 2:00, ridiculously over-tired as I was.

The trip was a ridiculously good time. Like I said, the weather was awesome, and the club was really nice, but what really made this trip so great was the friends that I got to hang out with - I hope that we get this lucky again with the people next time we head to a tournament. Bevan's heading over to Vancouver in a few weeks time, because that's where he found work after graduating, which really sucks, but at least I know that we'll be able to meet up and have a blast at tournaments like this throughout the year.

Star players on this trip were: Dan, Jeff, Thomas, and Bevan - can't get a much better road trip crew than these guys, and Nikki, Vanessa, Blake, and Erik - I wish more of these guys played at our club, because I had a blast partying with them. Word up!

Holy man, that's a long entry, and my ankle is turning some weird shade of color that I would name cream of jaundice and gangrene. Okay, now I've gotten back from getting x-rays done and it looks like everything is all good. I'll see about posting a picture of my battle scars tomorrow when I'm up for it.

Oh yeah, last update - remember those keys I lost? I got back in after getting a whole new set of keys cut, emptied out my bag, and watched as my keys fell out onto the table. Nice play Adam. Nice play.