To the future.

Things I am looking forward to:

• Seeing my school friends regularly again.
• Having a consistent schedule, as opposed to my rather inconsistent work one.
• Having classes, strangely enough.
• The people in my classes. 
• Discussing Doctor Who on the bus.
• Seeing tech crew and their purposeful walks.
• Interesting moments with the people around my locker.
• Being in the upper age group of the school. 
• Hopefully choir, musical and possibly some other things.
• The overall positive energy at school that I don't have to work for.
• Picnics in Queen's square with my picnic buddies.
• Youth group at the Vineyard starting up again.
• A new beginning, of sorts.

Love,
-J-

Doctor Who season 6 ep.8 *SPOILER ALERT*

I know many of you are avid Doctor Who watchers, so I will warn you if you haven't watched the newest episode.

Are you sure you want to read this?

Will you hate yourself?

Are you sure?

My nails are Tardis blue in honor of Doctor Who returning. I am such a dork.

You still have time to leave and watch the new episode.

You have been sufficiently warned.
 
I watched the latest Doctor Who episode with a rather mixed reaction.

First of all, I wish they had introduced the character of Mels much earlier and actually expanded a little more. Her introduction seemed a little sudden to me. I would have rather wondered the importance of her character in earlier episodes or they could have even cut her entirely. Her entrance and exit could have been executed much better. 

The flashback attempted to fill the gaping hole of Melody Pond/Mels/Riversong was rushed. Personally, since they really seem set on giving the Riversong plotline a lot of time this season, I think this gap deserved more time then it was given.

I did, however, like flashback of Amy and Rory. It was pretty funny, actually.
 "I thought we were playing hide and seek." "We are, we just haven't found you yet."

"I'd love to, he's gorgeous, he's my favorite guy. But you know, he's gay."
"I'm not gay!"
"Seriously, in the time I've known you, when have you shown the slightest interest in a girl?"
*Rory freezes and runs*
 I was kind of adorable. It made them seem more of a couple because now I know a bit of their history.

Now, the actual 'Let's kill Hitler!' part of the episode.

It's an interesting idea, when I saw the title I was looking forward to it. It was disappointing.

They devoted like five minutes to that plot. The five minutes went in a circle, then was disregarded for the rest of the episode.

If it had been a sort of random run in with Hitler, as opposed to the selling point of the episode, I wouldn't have minded. I feel mislead about the content of the episode.

The little people in the episode were sort of left hanging. A sort of, 'Oops! The Doctor is dead (for the second time this season), let's forget the characters we introduced this episode.' That's two sets of characters left hanging in a single episode.

My overall reaction: They attempted to cram too much in this episode. Now that we know who Riversong is after such a long time of knowing very little, I feel that they threw too much of her at us at once. Hijacking and shooting the TARDIS, her regeneration, poisoning The Doctor, massacring Nazis, then giving up her regenerations to save The Doctor. Bit much all in an hour.

I think that after this, it will go uphill. It has paved the way for the rest of the season (I hope).
Love,
-J-

Someone else's reaction:

Let's kill Hitler reaction

Looking back.

Things that were good about summer:

• Getting closer to lots of people because of work.
• Seeing my savings account rise.
• Having a less foggy idea of what I want to do with my life.
• Tidal Impact
• Meeting new people (learning I have gained social skills)
• Having an intense week in Fredericton.
•  Discovering my strengths and weaknesses.
• Working with an awesome team of people through highs and lows.
• Getting over my fear of kids and learning to love being around them.
• Having the break at the end to see BC and (soon) Alberta. 

Love,
-J-

Hello Hurricane-Switchfoot

Kamloops. Kamloops. Kamloops.

I'm reporting from Kamloops.

I really don't have much to say, just that 'Kamloops' is one epic name for a moderate sized city in the middle of the desert.

We took a gondola up the mountain yesterday. They were fantastic.

 

And then to the desert:

Love,
-J-

*fails at thinking of witty title*

I'm in Whistler now. Just drove up today from Vancouver.

Victoria, I realized after two days, is an anti-hick town, for lack of a better phrase. It's into organic, environmentally friendly, small businesses, etc. This is coming from me, born and raised in a city where a large portion of the people are employed by an oil refinery, organic is unheard of, chain stores are the norm, and they don't give a crap about the environment. Victoria was a nice change from home.

My bro and I couldn't resist. Somewhere in Victoria.

I got the slight impression of it being a bit stuffy, though. It might be because of spending time with Dorothy and her husband, who are rather well off. Eating supper at their house was slightly akin to a Friday night supper at the Gilmore household (Gilmore Girls FTW?). The main difference was a less hostile environment and the absence of house help. But seriously, they were practically an Emily and Richard. I felt like I had been there before, but I guess it was only the large portion of Gilmore Girls I have consumed lately.

Last morning in Victoria, we visited the Butchart Gardens. Insert long string of pictures: 

This hedge makes other hedges feel inadequate.

Never have I found more loveable grass.

In Vancouver, I felt like I had been dropped somewhere in Asia. I was definitely a minority there. On Saturday night we visited one of my parents' friends from RVA. We had supper at an Indian restaurant, which was empty because it's still Ramadan. It was awesome, cheap Indian food, something that I can't find at home :(

On Sunday morning we visited Granville Island. I got a few things and a tasty mini cheesecake. We collapsed for the afternoon and then ate Chinese food. We picked the restaurant by walking down the road and seeing which was the fullest.

Today we hung around the mall, drove from Vancouver to Whistler, consumed coffee and wandered around aimlessly in the rain. Also, my brother knows many songs from "The Sound of Music." I'm not sure if he's ever actually seen the musical.
Love,
-J-

Today's post brought to you by jet lag.

I had quite the day yesterday.

This morning I woke up at 4am. I kind of rolled out of bed, into my clothes, brushed my teeth and got out the door to the airport.

Airports at 5am are a sort of zombie fest. Nobody is particularly awake, you see (except the flight attendants).

I got about an half an hour of restless sleep and a few nice pictures on the flight:

The Toronto Skyline at 7am through fog.

Terminal 1.

 We arrived at the Toronto airport a little after 7am (Toronto time) and found a bigger zombie fest. We then proceeded to find Tim Hortons. It was quite a decision to go into the Tim Hortons line, considering half the airport was also in the line. But alas, we just went with it. We wanted bagels and coffee and nothing, not even a marathon line, could stop us.

We had a little under an hour to kill before our flight to Victoria boarded, so I decided now would be the time to put myself together. More teeth brushing (with a questionably moldy toothbrush) occurred, I put on some make up and my glasses to distract from the whole zombie vibe I was giving out, and then the coffee kicked in. I was in great spirits for the next six hours or so. My mom and I then pondered whether one of the guys running past could pull off plaid-on-plaid.

The flight to Victoria was on a bigger plane than the one to Toronto. My dad was thankful that his head didn't brush the ceiling this time. My brother and I found this graphic on the emergency card amusing:

I'm not sure how much of the plane could actually muster up that leap.  

Whenever I get on day flights, I have no idea how to kill time. Reading a book doesn't keep my attention (probably due to the amount of caffeine keeping me alive when I travel), and I usually resort to listening to music. This time, I resorted to Sudoku. I have no idea how much time passed, but I worked my way through the levels until I gave up part way through the hardest one. Then I went for music and staring over my brother at the amazingly 2-D prairies and then eventually the mountains.

We landed in Victoria, after nearly twelve hours of traveling, just before lunch. It was weird, considering we felt like it was almost time for supper. We were met in the airport by a alumni from my dad's high school (in Kenya) who offered through a mailing list months ago to show us around Victoria and have us over for supper (today). Dorothy was really nice and brought us to a little restaurant that was part of the flight school. There were people in flight suits all around. I managed to eat half of a good, but incredibly large, burger.

After lunch we headed to our hotel in downtown and crashed briefly. We went exploring downtown in an attempt to find a drug store. We crashed a little longer, then went to Nando's for supper. After we went back to the hotel, I fell asleep at 7ish.

That brings me to now. Somebody forgot to turn off their 4am alarm from yesterday, but did change the time. I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

Hence the post title.

I'm pumped for seeing more of Victoria today. I always like cities.
Love,
-J-
Currently reading: Jane Eyre

Surfing stickman Jesus.

The summer students' stick man version of the first few lines of the chorus of Days of Elijah.

I'm particularly proud of the surfer Jesus on the cloud. *bow*.

My cat this afternoon, on the drive to her exile at my grandparents' house while we're in BC and Alberta. Twiga wasn't a happy camper.

Tomorrow I have the day off, so I shall be packing for vacation.
Love,
-J-

Several awesome things.

 Inspired by The Book of Awesome, a great read and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside:

• Community days with bouncy castles.
• Naming the band The Forest Hillbillies for the day. 
• Seeing the above band, consisting of several guys in their late teens and early twenties, bouncing on the bouncy castle.
• Starbucks donating coffee
• Facepaint.
• Chalk.
• Bubbles.
• Getting a ridiculously large comfy sweater that I have every intention of wearing from Value Village.
•  Random clothes items from thrift stores.
• Nailpolish.
• Arizona green tea.
• Finding my office clean and organized after it resided in complete chaos for several weeks.
• Having two days of work left but two paychecks to come.
• Two days of work consisting of decorating for VBS.
• Office machines, i.e. folding machines, paper cutters, etc.
• Coworkers who understand the obscure references I make.
• Sunday afternoons.
• Hanging out with friends after not seeing them for a long time.
• Couches outside.

Pointless office work is pointless.

Alas, I have been sentenced to a week and a half of office work. Whoa is me.

If it was useful office work, I might not mind. But it`s putting two hefty binders worth of information about past members of my church into a spreadsheet. Sasha tried to convince me it was useful. I didn`t buy it, considering his reasoning was,"Would you have been asked to do this if their was no purpose?" Son of a bitch.

My day went something like this:
Arrive at church to find one person there.
Ask if soccer camp is at the field or church.
Hear people debate about above question for 20 minutes.
Find out I have to do 'data input' for the morning. Decide it sound mind-numbing.
Do registration for soccer camp.
Cut up some brochures.
Prepare snack.
Go upstairs to start data input.
Spend half an hour on the A section.
Spend half an hour on the B section.
Go downstairs for a brief break due to mind-numbing.
Kid gets injured.
I offer to fill out incident report, get turned down. Guess the only paper work I'm trusted with is the useless type.
Sasha tells me to go back to data input.
I gripe.
I spend half an hour on the C section.
Talk about how I hope that is the last time I have to do office work.
I have lunch.
Staff meeting.
Find out I'm doing data input for a DAMN. WEEK. AND A HALF.
Cry and have Sasha use his 'oh, you are totally valued' speech as I yell asking why he chose me for useless paperwork. He tries to make me feel guilty with idiotic reasoning, but I'm way too infuriated.
Lay on floor in empty room.
Prepare for Sunday school.
Paint a box to look like a stove.

And that is how ridiculous my day was. Yeah for more days of mind-numbing stupidity. Maybe I'll get through the D, E, F, and G sections tomorrow.

Lesson of the day: when something is so boring that the secretary waits for months for someone else to do it, you do not want to be the one forced to do it.

Week and a half left of this job. Hallelujah. The most miserable week and a half of my existence, however.

Then to BC and Alberta for 2 weeks!
Love,
-J-

City buses: 70

"I think I'm having a Wednesday."

A Wednesday, for the last few weeks, seems to mean that I am both hyper and tired and completely unable to take anything seriously.

Seriously, last week at youth, I laughed for five minutes (I was seriously ROFLing) because Caleb said something about ducks going over a waterfall.

This week so far has been Music Camp. Kids come in, sit down, and learn the basics of drums, piano, or guitar. I worked with beginner guitar yesterday with Sasha, which was frustrating me because he seems to have little respect for anything I say. Today I was working with (ever so slightly less beginner) advanced guitar with Connor, who is a year younger than me, and I now have the chord progression of A, E, F#m7, D stuck in my head.

Gerald has this week off, so I've been enjoying talking to Montgomery and Catherine. We've danced to VBS music, painted boxes while wearing painting shirts size 4X and put my crayons to use.

Youth retreat this weekend. Totally not looking forward to it, considering it looks like very few people are coming and it's taking place at the church. Overnight. Sleeping in the same building I work in isn't really a retreat.
Love,
-J-

City buses taken: 65
Current facebook status:  I have a 64 pack... of crayons.

My weekend: kiwis, TV, and weird dreams on friends' couches.

This weekend was pretty much a huge Gilmore Girls marathon.

I am also attempting to finger knit a string long enough to go from my room, down the hallway, across the living room, across the kitchen, and into my basement.

Can't say that I don't have goals.

I am also considering the prospect of vlogging. Thoughts?
Love,
-J-

City buses taken: 62
Currently reading: Out of Africa by Karen Blixen