YoDeL-Ay-He-HoO!

That's stuck in my head. Maybe because I am going on my hiking trip in about 48 hours.

Yes correct, I am officially completely insane. I was *supposed* to start training with a 60 lb backpack like 5 MONTHS AGO, but did I listen? Noooooooooo, I did not. Dillusions of physical adequecy or new-found confidence??!...well it's hard to tell. But I've never been one to turn down a challenge. And I can handle just about anything. "Except intolerance to other peoples cultures. And the Dutch. " :) I am teetering on the brinks of being completely terrified to the other extreme of excitement and anticipation. It's an emotional see saw. I've felt from the very beginning I was meant to go, and I can't wait. I think it's cool to do something brave that you're scared to do. Like when I went skydiving. It's empowering. And I've climbed so many mountains of my own this past year I guess I just think this will be gravy. And even if not, I think of what I tell my kids all the time..."Just because something is hard, it doesn't mean you can't do it. It means you have to try harder." Part of me right now wants to kick myself in the ass for saying that and the other half feels like I deserve a pat on the back. I can't stand this internal bickering. Maybe I'll kick myself in the back and be done with it. Someone used to tell me that all I am is just a pretty face, and other than that I was nothing, that people didn't like me and if they did, once they got to know the *real* me they wouldn't like me anymore. For so long those words held me back, in every way possible. And even sometimes now when I'm not paying attention they'll try to creep back but I don't listen anymore. All I know for sure is this was meant to be. And whether I go and do it, or die trying, (where's some WOOD! Knock on wood!), it's just another part of my journey and I'm sure if I do make it back I'll be a little different of a person. It is my mission on this trip to take every bit of anger, bitterness, resentment, rage, disappointment and negativity I've felt in the last 6 years and find it and use it as my fuel... I'll have a jet pack. So to all those who think I don't have it in me to do this, I only have 9 words for you... Yodel-ady, yodel-ady, yo-de-lay-hee hoo! Yodel-ady, yodel-ady, yo-de-lay-hee hoo! Yodel-ady, yodel-ady, yo-de-lay-hee hoo! See you all August 5th!

Check out PostSecret

( PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. )

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Wicked Illusions

Good Security Measures

How to install a wireless security system:

1) Go to a second-hand store and buy a pair of men's used work boots, a really big pair. 2) Put them outside your front door on top of a copy of Guns and Ammo magazine. 3) Put a dog dish beside it. A really big dish. 4) Leave a note on your front door that says something like:

"Bubba, Big Mike and I have gone to get more ammo - back in 15 minutes. Don't disturb the Pitbulls, they've just been wormed and are mad as hell." Signed: Billy Bob.

Twelve Books...

Twelve Books You’ll Never See In A Bookstore … taking into account the authors and the books’ titles

1. How to Pleasure a Woman – by Mike Tyson 2. Words I’ve Never Mispernounced – by George W. Bush 3. Pacifist’s Guide to World Domination – by Cindy Shehan 4. Things I’ve NEVER Lied About – by Bill Clinton 5. Prudent Shotgun Handling – Dick Cheney 6. Why America Is Just THE BEST – The Dixie Chicks 7. Things I Absolutely Love About President Bush – Michael Moore 8. My Strategy for Finding the Real Killer — by O.J. Simpson [Forward by Scott Peterson] 9. To All the Men We’ve Loved Before — by Ellen DeGeneres & Rosie O’Donnell 10. The Book of Baby Names – by George Foreman 11. My Beauty Secrets – by Jane Reno [Forward by Madeleine Albright] 12. Things I Love About Bill – Hillary Clinton [Forward by Ann Coulter]

Free Fallin'

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

This is me skydiving at the Westlock, AB airport...that's the runway down below.

By far that was probably the scariest thing I've willingly done.

Taylor and I want to go this summer so if anyone else wants to join in let me know!

Love Quiz

1. You are walking to your boyfriend/girlfriend's house. There are two roads to get there. One is a straight path which takes you there quickly, but is very plain and boring. The other is curvy and full of wonderful sights on the way, but takes quite a while to reach your loved one's house. WHICH PATH DO YOU CHOOSE? Short or long? 2. On the way, you see two rose bushes. One is full of white roses. One is full of red roses. You decide to pick 20 roses for your boyfriend/girlfriend. WHAT COLOR COMBINATION DO YOU CHOOSE? (Any combination including all one color is fine.) 3. You finally get to your boyfriend/girlfriend's house. You ring the bell and the maid answers. You can ask the maid to please get your loved one, or you may go get them yourself. WHICH ACTION DO YOU TAKE? Ask the maid or do it yourself? 4. Now, you go up to your girlfriend/boyfriends room. No one is there. You can leave the roses by the windowsill, or on the bed. WHERE DO YOU PUT THE ROSES? Bed or window? 5. Later, its time for bed. You and your loved one go to sleep, in separate rooms. You wake up in the morning, and go to your boyfriend/girlfriend's room to check up on him/her. You enter the room: IS HE/SHE AWAKE OR SLEEPING? 6. It's time to go home now, and you start to head back. You can take either road home now: The plain, boring one thats gets you home fast; or the curvy, sight-filled road that you can just casually take your time with. WHICH ROAD DO YOU CHOOSE? Short or long? Analysis 1. Which road do you choose to take to your love's house? The roads represent your attitude towards falling in love. If you chose the short one, you fall in love quickly and easily. If you chose the long one, you take your time and do not fall in love easily. 2. What combination of roses do you choose to give your love? The number of red roses represent how much you expect to give in a relationship. The number of white roses represent how much you expect in a relationship. Therefore, if a person chose all red with one white, he/she gives 90% in the relationship but expects to receive only 10% back. 3. Do you ask the maid to get your love, or do you do it yourself? This question shows your attitude in handling relationship problems. If you asked the maid to get your loved one, then you may beat around the bush, maybe asking a third party to intervene. Avoidance of problems runs high. If you went and got your loved one yourself, then you are pretty direct. If there is a problem, you confront it and deal with it. You want to work it out right away. 4. Where do you put the roses? On the windowsill or on the bed? The placement of the roses indictate how often you'd like to see your boyfriend/girlfriend. Placing the roses on the bed means you need lots of reassurance in the relationship, and you'd want to see your loved one every day, if possible. Placing the roses by the window show that you don't expect or need to see your loved one that often; seeing them just once in a while is OK. 5. Do you find your love asleep or awake? Finding your boyfriend/ girlfriend asleep: You accept your loved one the way they are. Finding them awake: You expect him/her to change for you. 6. Which road do you choose to go home? The short and long roads now represent how long you stay in love. If you chose the short one, you fall out of love easily. If you chose the long one, you tend to stay in love for a long time.

Oh my, can I actually be 33?

Well this is me in my thirty-somethings. Yikes. Well...I actually feel younger than I did at the same time last year but I guess being reasonably happy can do that for you sometimes. Last night I was thinking about where I was a year ago today and it amazes me the lengths I have come in such a short period of time. And how different EVERYTHING is. I could never even have imagined where I'd be to this day. But I'm glad, and things are finally coming together. Makes me want to post something inspirational. Sometimes we just need to be reminded! A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?" Hands started going up. He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this. He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill. He then asked, "Who still wants it?" Still the hands were up in the air.Well, he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. "Now, who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air. My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our life we are dropped, crumpled and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or will happen, you will never lose your value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who DO LOVE you.

The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or whom we know, but by WHO WE ARE. You are special-Don't EVER forget it." If you do not pass this on, you may never know the lives it touches, the hurting hearts it speaks to, or the hope that it can bring. Count your blessings, not your problems, and remember: amateurs built the ark ... professionals built the Titanic.

And my best advice is GROW A SENSE OF HUMOR PEOPLE!!!!!

Have a great day everyone!

Wendelinas' Canada Day Galleria

This was my first Canada Day Celebration in AGES!!

Although I was sick and miserable with an earache, I decided to rough it and show some patriotism for our awesome country!

My man and I took the train downtown, met up with Tay and went for drinks at a little pub on 109 street. There we met up with a very jolly Irish chap named Mike. Mike had a very thick Irish accent and seemed to like speaking in lymerick, and spoke very highly of his wooden-legged wife named "Peg".

Then we watched the fireworks from the High Level Bridge. Very nice but altogether not very long.

Afterwards, we thought it a fine idea to go down to Whyte Ave.

So we walked.

To Whyte Ave.

Seemed smart in the beginning.

But that was already after I took a couple sudafed and Tylenol and had a few rum & 7's.

Taylor had stupid leather sandals so halfway up Connors Hill I had to trade her shoes so her feet wouldn't hurt. It took FOREVER. Partway up the hill Taylor ran into some very sociable Edmontonians who even gave her a few shots of rum, but Craig and I missed out because we were racing to the top of the stairs. (I wish I had my camera out then, because Craig won, and even did the "Rocky" at the top, even yelling "AAAADDDRIAAAAAAN!")

So anyways, we decided to go to the Atlantic Trap and Gill, which is of course...A Newfie Bar.

(I've never been there, but I have on occasion waited to get in but the line was always too long so I never actually went in) I'm standing in line when who do I see but my old friend and coworker FRANCIS! And then we see Craigs friends at the back of the line. Woo hoo!

It was really fun but last call came way too early. We left shortly after 2 and somehow to ruin the perfect day, we all lost Craig. I was devastated! We waited, and looked, and waited some more, but to no avail. I lost my baby! I ended up going home, wondering what happened, not knowing if he would ever even speak to me again :) but he did, and now we have this wonderful memory! (If you leave out the whole ending part!)

But I'm still paying for it. Going out whilst sick completely crashed my immune system and now I am suffering but hopefully the antibiotics will kick in soon so the fever and sweats go away. Ugh! Yesterday was the worst. It was as if the fiery hands of satan himself reached into my head and started squeezing all the leftover religion from my childhood, burning me up, sweat rolling off my forehead onto my pillow and a puddle down the back of my shirt. If I had the strength to get up I probably would have dialed an exorcist.

Anyways, that's about all, I finished reformatting the other day and now I'm going to be getting back to work. Hope y'all had a great long weekend!

My complaint about The flow

My computer generated complaint about Womens "monthlies..."

Let's start this letter with a little quiz: 1. How scornful can The flow be? 2.Where is The flow's integrity? 3. Essay: Compare and contrast The flow's reports to those of the worst kinds of arrogant spielers I've ever seen, focusing especially on who is more likely to contaminate or cut off our cities' water supply. Don't worry; I'll give you all the answers throughout the course of this letter as well as a wealth of other information about The flow. Let me begin by citing a range of examples from the public sphere. For starters, The flow either is or elects to be ignorant of scientific principles and methods. It even intentionally misuses scientific terminology to create an inconsiderate world of guilt and shame. And that, in my view, is our real problem.

My complaint about My kids

My computer generated complaint

about my kids...

This is so funny!!

I undeniably hope My kids give this letter five minutes of its precious cappuccino-sipping, cancer-stick-puffing time. Some background is in order: I am not concerned with rumors or hearsay about My kids. I am interested only in ascertained facts attested by published documents, and in these primarily as an illustration that one must consider the semiotics of charlatanism in order to fully understand My kids's litanies. Am I aware of how My kids will react when they read that last sentence? Yes. Do I care? No, because there's a time to keep silent and a time to speak. There's a time to love and a time to hate. There's a time for war and a time for peace. And, I claim, there's a time to fight scurrility and slander. Or, to put it less poetically, My kids claim to be fighting for equality. What they're really fighting for, however, is equality in degradation, by which I mean that My kids intend to create a new social class. Hotheaded hackers, fork-tongued pinheads, and vitriolic, sententious prima donnas will be given aristocratic status. The rest of us will be forced into serving as their myrmidons. As if you didn't know, if My kids think that they can make me get fired from my job, then it's barking up the wrong tree. My kids's claim that it is better that a hundred thousand people should perish than that it should be even slightly inconvenienced is not only an attack on the concept of objectivity, but an assault on the human mind. This probably does not affect your daily life, but it is a fact. It must be pointed out over and over again to My kids's intimates and, in a broader sense, to incoherent heresiarchs that My kids's favorite tactic is known as "deceiving with the truth". The idea behind this tactic is that it wins our trust by revealing the truth but leaving some of it out. This makes us less likely to shatter the adage that children should belong to the state. I am not going to go into too great a detail about the worst classes of self-satisfied, wild publishers of hate literature there are, but be assured that the concepts underlying My kids's obtrusive, pigheaded perceptions are like the Ptolemaic astronomy, which could not have been saved by positing more epicycles or eliminating some of the more glaring discrepancies. The fundamental idea -- that the heavens revolve around the Earth -- was wrong, just as My kids's idea that two wrongs make a right is wrong. The end.

Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator

This is the best site I have seen in a long time!!

Have a complaint about someone, having trouble putting your feelings into words? Try this!

It is hillarious!

http://www.pakin.org/complaint

My Work of Art

Cleverly named "Windy"

...this piece was inspired by the makers of Sudafed,

NyQuil and Amoxicillin, all of whom I had the pleasure

of meeting after I returned from the doctor yesterday...

Maybe a little too much pleasure??