still….lalalalalalaaaaa

Life is pretty swell, kids, I gotta say!!

I’ve been busy since the weekend, and it’s been great, and the weather being gorgeous hasn’t hurt at all!  We finally got our new hard drive hooked up, only to discover that our internet had a loose connection, so we were without it from Sunday to today.  Dad and I were outside ripping part of the deck apart in order to replace it tomorrow.  A lot of it’s kind of rotted out, and it was very crappily built in the first place (by the previous owner of our house), and we’re not even sure how old it is.  Whilst I was painstakingly pulling railings out, nail by nail, an Aliant truck pulled up in our driveway, so Dad took a break to go talk to the guy and oversee the internet fixing proceedings with my mum.  While he was gone, I was pretty proud of myself because I managed to take out an entire side of the steps…plus I got to whack things with a hammer   He came back out eventually, and I’d removed quite a few of the steps, and the seemingly endless nails from one of the long railing planks.  Dad’s hoping to have the whole job finished by Friday, but I’ve only got tomorrow to keep assisting him, because I leave for Leslie’s pubcrawl on Friday. 

I came back in the house a while after the Aliant guy had left, and got to be back on our Windows XP computer and let me tell you…it was GLORIOUS.  I really missed it, especially when faced with the alternative: our old Windows 98 desktop *shudder*  Granted, everything off our old hard drive is gone, but I’m going to re-build it slowly, and take care to BACK EVERYTHING THE HELL UP this time.  Also, we have a different internet now, and we can apparently network it with our old computer, which I’m not crazy about since the damn thing freezes half the time anyway…*shrug*

Sunday I went to Annapolis Royal for the first time ever, with Kate, and we walked her dog around L’town before we went.  It’s a nice little town, but there’s not much to it.  We picked blackberries from her mom’s garden (her whole family’s away for several weeks, driving across Canada and she comes home from the city almost every weekend to check on the house), because I knew my mum would LOVE them.  She’s always told me stories about how much she liked picking them in her childhood because they grew wild in her village in Wales, so I thought it’d be a nice surprise.  Annapolis Royal, specifically Port Royal, was soooooo pretty and picturesque.  Nearly every picture I took could be a postcard.  I took a really awesome one of Kate sitting on some rocks looking out at the water, and when my mum saw it she was all like "Oooh, you should get that blown up and give it to her parents, I bet they’d like that!"  We watched the sunset from those same rocks, and then it started getting colder so we decided we should probably head back and find somewhere to eat.  We figured it was probably best to not be too adventurous since we’re both on strict budgets right now, and ended up eating at the pizza place that’s maybe a 5 minute walk from my house haha.  It was soooooooooooo good.  The entire time we hung out, we just talked-talked-talked, and actually covered some pretty deep issues!!  I love talking to Kate…well okay, I love talking period, but there are some people that it’s just so easy to go hours with.  I didn’t get home ’til close to midnight I think, and Kate ended up staying for an additional 15 minutes or so, and I showed her my room cuz she hadn’t seen it since it’s been painted.

On Monday, I went to the mall with my parents to drop off a resume at the photo shop, and it turns out the chick that’s now manager there is the same one that interviewed me back in January, before I took the job at SDM (because they called first).  She remembered me, and told me that I’d picked a perfect time to drop it off because they were just reviewing resumes that very day and were going to start interviews this week.  So I set myself a limit; if she hadn’t called by Wednesday, I’d phone myself on Thursday.  It’s looking like that’s what I’m going to have to do, but I’m pretty confident that I might actually be able to get this job.  After I’d finished at the photo shop, I took a walk down the mall, intending to drop in and see if Kevin was working, but stopped before I got there because I noticed Danielle working in the accessory store.  She told me she was going on break in 15 minutes for a whole hour, and asked if I’d like to meet her at the food court at 4.  I did, and went back to my parents, who were having coffee in the food court and let them know my plan.  Blah blah blah, I spent Danielle’s break with her, just hanging out and talking, and it was pretty great!  She asked if I’d talked to my Dad yet, and I told her I hadn’t, but I’m working up the nerve to. 

Tuesday was pretty freaking awesome.  Sara called me and asked if I wanted to go over to her house for a mini-party that evening, with her, Danielle, Alyson, Andrew (who’s visiting home from Acadia), and Brett, this guy that they go to school with at X, who was staying at Aly’s for a few days.  So I said I’d go, and told her to call me with details of when to come over and such later on.  Not long after, Leslie called and asked me if I wanted to go to Crystal Falls.  Now this place is sort of legendary around here, because a lot of people aren’t quite sure where it is, and you have to hike in to get to it.  But when you DO get there, you can jump off a cliff into the water, and there are some pretty waterfalls. 

So, I was really psyched to go because I’d never been and always wanted to ever since I heard about it.  Leslie’s brother, sister and hyperactive dog came along as well, and we picked up this other chick Ash on the way.  I kinda know Ash a little bit, through mutual friends and so on, but we’d never hung out before yesterday.  She’s one of the few out lesbians that I know around here, but she is way quieter than I was expecting.  Anyway…the hike up was kinda long, and really rocky and I nearly killed myself tripping several times, but when we got there…wow.  It was pretty.  I was too chicken to try jumping off the cliff until I was sure of how deep the water was, and even then I was enjoying myself too much in the water to bother climbing up to do it.  Jeff, Beth, Ash and Leslie all got out of the water and walked/climbed around back the way we’d come in, but changing direction and heading for the top of the cliff to get over to the top of the falls to sit and so on, but I stayed in the water not realizing they’d done so right away.  I swam over to the base of the falls, which is a lot harder than it sounds, because I was going against the current.  And I’ve never been a strong swimmer by any means.  My last swimming lesson was uhhh…yellow, I think, and I’m pretty sure swimming lessons don’t even go by colour anymore, so that should give you an idea of how far I got and how long ago it was.  I managed to get my feet on a ledge at the bottom of the falls so I could stand up and give my legs a break from treading water.  I ducked my head under the rushing water a bit and it was alarmingly cold but so refreshing.  Eventually I tired of that and jumped back in the water and swam away from the falls and in a wide arc so I could see the top of the cliff to see if everybody was up there or not.  They weren’t.  I just happened to turn my head and look back at the falls though, and saw Jeff standing at the top of them.  I yelled out to him and waved, and tried to tell him what I’d just done, but he couldn’t hear, so I swam back towards the falls.  It was tougher going this time because I was tuckered out from my first attempt, and I think I took a slightly different route because the current was stronger and it felt like I wasn’t going anywhere.  A couple of times I almost got sucked under (Leslie was watching me and told me that I scared the hell out of her later on), but I pressed on because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.  I eventually got to the spot where I’d been before and held myself up against the rock face, gasping, then looked up, saw Ash and Beth looking down at me, and waved up at them.

–to be continued–