Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
recharge
after the weekend-breather, i am feeling a lot more unpressurized than i was at the end of last week. the knot in my shoulder is gone, the vague headachey feeling seems to have receded, and the world does not seem nearly such a threatening place today. i managed a nice balance of social time, alone time, and household chore time over the weekend to feel not only a bit fresher, but also ready for the days of commuting and working to come. i can’t remember the last time i felt quite this solid, probably it was before i moved because since then it has been non-stop travelling, visitors and other stuff.
so yes, this weekend i:
- attended a houseparty at my friend david’s on friday night;
- stayed home playing my guitar, talking to a friend online, sewing, reading and watching episodes of six feet under on my computer on saturday; and
- went on a group hike up around a proposed cut-block at the end of crow lake road on sunday before returning to david’s for chai on my way home.
i did take a bunch of pictures on the hike, but then forgot to unload them from the camera to share today. i am hoping i have a couple nice macro-shots in there, and am thinking of starting a new gallery of forest-shots on my online gallery as each forest trip usually produces one or two nice images.
the cool thing about the group hike was that is was lead by rick o’neil who is a local nature photographer and he does these hikes once a month on sundays to introduce people to their landbase as well as talk about what the corporations have planned. i have been meaning to go on his mycological walks since i came to the coast, and now i have met him (at david’s party on friday which is how i knew about sunday’s walk), i will definitely join in on the fall mushroom walks. he is a wealth of information about the area, and takes beautiful photographs as well.
so yes, the next two weekends are similiarly non-booked for me, i may go on another group or solo hike this weekend once i get my car out of the body-shop and before i take it to a mechanic for a pre-roadtrip tuneup, and then i will be leaving for bella coola on the 15th with meg o.
our plan is to drive there and ferry back, so this morning i put in my submission to reserve our ticket home from bella coola to ocean falls (stopping at ports in between along the way). i have heard that ferry route is beautiful and i believe it, knowing a little bit about the breathtakingness of the northern end of the island and the broughten archipelago. so yes, only three weeks until holidays and some major stress out of the way. phew…..
faltering
i know – i haven’t been posting much this week… it’s largely due to stress, but i am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and come this weekend should be pretty much smooth sailing for awhile. this doesn’t mean i don’t have lots to do (including preparations for my upcoming holiday to bella coola), but the really stressful stuff is quickly moving behind me (and i think the knot in my right shoulder has started to unwind a bit – it’s not nearly so movement constricting as it has been the past two days).
pictures from my housewarming party are online at the red cedar gallery under the tricklehouse warming album. check em out and i’ll hopefully post more tomorrow…. or on the weekend at the very least.
official summer
i’m having trouble focusing today, a bit tired after a few days of total exhaustion (some combination of too many weekends away, stress and a low-level cold i think) – which is making it difficult to string together enough words to make enough sentences for a blog post. but i will make a valiant effort as it has been 4 days since i last posted and that is quite simply not acceptable.
this weekend was my housewarming party, for which i have posted photos under the gallery tricklehouse warming on my photo site. i haven’t quite got around to labelling them yet, but they are almost all of the children who attended, so enamoured was i of having so many little people in my home for the weekend. overall, it was a fine party – about 20 people showed up from the city and the coast, and there was much feasting and drinking to welcome the new home into my life. i am really very grateful for the amazingness of the people in my world – there were all sorts of really cool folks at my house – and they all seemed to get along and have a good time. no weirdness – hallelujiah!
other than that, i took my car around to icbc and the auto-body shop yesterday and am now awaiting parts to get my vehicle fixed. at icbc, the estimator talked about writing it off – to which i reacted with horror – though in the end he agreed that my car (with its low mileage) probably has a lot of life left in it and so worked to estimate it at a cost they would cover.
on my way up to deal with icbc, i picked up a hitch-hiker on his way to sechelt, who told me the story of his horrendous industrial accident (forest industry) that had left him with half a hand and unable to work. by the time we got to town, he was crying and profusely thanking me for listening to his story – i got the sense that i often do when talking to people dealing with significant health/disability issues – that no one really listens to you once you lose the privilege of the able-bodied. fuck.
then, since i had 30 minutes to spare (i was early for the icbc appointment) i drove to porpoise bay to think about my hitch-hiker encounter and found a shady place by the sea to watch a flock of canada geese and their young-uns swimming out in the inlet. i realized that i have not been in the forest for many weeks, and right there committed to spending as much time as possible on the sunshine coast this summer. no more trips to vancouver island until the fall, no more weekends in the city… this summer is about swimming in the chapman creek pools and hiking the heather trails as much as is possible. of course, planned travels are still going ahead, but i have realized the need to nip the burn-out weekends in the bud before they become an out of control weed binding me up in travel that is not restorative.
i have another pseudo-date this evening with a guy who i met once a couple of years ago through another friend. he “chatted” me on the georgia straight dating site, and i immediately remembered him from going to dinner on the drive. i am not sure why i arranged this meeting other than as a distraction from a rather stressful appointment tomorrow morning. i don’t even know that this is a date, as we have pretty much just agreed to drink a six-pack on his porch – but seems like a fine way to kick off the official start of summer and make a fun re-acquaintance. i’m staying in town tonight at margot’s which will be the only night this week that i am crashing in the city… phew for that! i am really feeling the need for some home-time these days.
girl meets guy, drinks beer
even though denny says i can’t be in the hopeless freak club if i actually have dates, i think he’s wrong, and i had a sortof date last night in any case. as i mentioned in yesterday’s post, this person from the internet turned out to be a co-worker which i knew would provide ample fodder for conversation if there was any lag-time involved so i agreed to meet him in horseshoe bay after work on my way home. it turned out to be a pleasant meeting, we had lots to talk about, drank a couple of beers (on an empty stomach – i was a bit drunk when i got on the ferry), and it generally turned out that we have some politics and other things in common.
so yes, it was a good meeting – and i think we will hang out again. i don’t have any other type of read though – and i didn’t have an immediate physical attraction (though that means very little for me, because i find physical attraction something that grows as i enjoy spending time with a person). he seemed to enjoy spending time with me and indicated he would like to meet up again. so we will see, it could just turn out to be an interesting friendship or something else. i really can’t predict this one at the moment.
awards and dates
more personal posting- i’m still trying to catch up from monday. so this post is about two strangely inter-related things… i received an award at work this week and i have a date tonight with someone i met on the internet. how could these things possibly be connected? apparently in random meg-land these things are more than possible.
on monday, i received an award at work for a project i completed a year and a half ago. i really didn’t want to make a big deal about it (awards – hokey and stupid, right?) but i have to admit that being recognized for three years of work in some formal way is pretty nice. i now have a strange-statue thing to grace the top of the bookshelf in my office and a certificate to hang on the wall. i keep meaning to take a picture to post to this blog, but haven’t got around to that yet. my friend george came in from chilliwack to be my “guest” at the ceremony which i really appreciated, and one of the directors who sponsored the award-request was also there and very pleased about the whole thing. interestingly, i was the only individual woman to receive an award, and only seven other women (out of fifty-one people to get awards in total) received awards as part of group projects. in all, i was happy to be recognized in such a way and at the very least i now have a solid statue that would a good throwing projectile if times should get dire.
as for the second part of this story – back on the weekend, i received a “wink” from a decent-seeming fellow on the georgia straight personals network… so respond i did on monday morning when i came into work, before i went out of the office for the day (i was working at library square in the morning and at the awards ceremony in the afternoon). this fellow describes himself as socially-conscious, into indy-culture, vegetarian and nature loving… all attributes which interest me of course… enough to promise some interesting email conversation at least. yesterday, i received a response to my email, which contained some interesting factoids (he lives on a sailboat, he lived on digby island for many years, etc.) but the one that stood out for me was where he works. which is (you saw this coming right?), for the same federal government department that i do – though not in the same building, and in a different capacity altogether. so ha ha, i thought, that’s a funny coincidence – i emailed him back and said – “guess what” just a brief note because i was almost laughing outloud from it. ha ha, he writes back, that’s funny – i was just downtown yesterday at the awards ceremony with some of the guys from work…… yup, and turns out he remembers me getting my award (i was the first one to be called up, hard to forget).
in a subsequent email he asked me to dinner at the foundation (one of my favourite east van veggie restaurants) but because of schedules and timing and ferries we are meeting tonight in horseshoe bay instead. normally i wouldn’t agree to anything like this so quickly, but he is a co-worker so the “stranger danger” factor is diminished somewhat. so there it is, an award and a date with a stranger….. plus george took me out for dinner last night – i can only think some goddess is smiling down on me this week…..
Red Cedar 