An Update, While I'm Waiting for the Dishes to Dry

...and by dry, I in fact mean cool down... and by dishes, I mean dish water.

Right. Glad we've got that sorted.

So, updateness: Jasper-planning seems to have halted a bit. The lack of immediately available funds is sort of sucking the enthusiasm out of the trip-planning processs, but at least now we have a rough idea of what we're doing and a back up plan if our first idea doesn't work. Suddenly, I find myself in very high demand; everyone seems to want something before I go, but unfortunately, no one has any money to pay me. I'm not so worried about it, family is family, so of course I'll work for them as cheaply (free) as possible, but it's the amount of stuff too - as if they don't understand that my time is valuable or that I could conceivably have anything to do other than their stuff. I don't have a 9-5 job, so immediately, I have 24 hours a day of free time.

I'm a little stressed. I think a large portion of that is because I'm seriously considering moving to Jasper (or somewhere nearish to there) instead of just visiting and I haven't told anyone other than my family this yet. I won't decide for sure until Xmas, but I don't know. I just feel like I need to get away from here... but I think part of that is because, no matter where I am, I'm always looking for a way to escape my life... but now I'm freaking out because I'm afraid that if I go, my dog won't be looked after properly, or he'll just be horribly upset and do what he did last time I went away and spend weeks lying where my bed had been, looking sad. But he's too old to take with me, even if I was going by car or plane. Really, Loki is my hold up in everything. I can't stomach the idea of leaving him for huge periods of time... but if I could come home every three months or so, I think I could manage.

That's really it, actually. I hardly see most of my extended family now, and I can call my Gran and my Grandma from wherever. My Gran thinks I should be travelling anyway, and my Grandma won't remember how long I've been away anyway. My immediate family I'll miss, but we'll talk on the phone and send emails; there's nothing I can't cope with there.

K, well, I think my dish water is likely cooled enough to finish this load. Ugh, I hate dishes. Sorrry for the downer post; maybe the next one will be more cheerful.

The Short Long Weekend

I have no idea what I did for the first two days of the long weekend... other than work out, but I do that every day.

Today, I did lots of fun things.

I went out for breakfast with my parents, which was yummy.

I read and answered reviews for Aigaion Girl, which I had a lot of. This is because I put in my last set of author's notes that I plan on self-publishing, so as well as my regular number of reviews, I had bonus ones, with people assuring me they will buy it when it comes out. Also, I gave A/G to Jammy to read.

I entered another photography contest (the first one I entered was a few days ago). Over all, I think the pictures are pretty good. I don't know what I'm up against, though, so it's hard to say whether or not I have a shot.

James and I headed to Starbucks and he bought me a frozen drink, which was tasty, despite the fact that the girl behind the counter didn't know what skim milk was, and ended up giving us splenda syrup.

After Starbucks, we walked to Natalie's house, where she wasn't, and called her, and found out she wasn't there.

Then I showed James my work out route, and the bat-cave bridge (it's a little bridge that looks like the bat cave, if that wasn't clear). Somewhere during our wandering, we saw a group of people in period clothes playing minigolf. They're my heroes.

We went to Timmie's, then to the casino, 'cause we were supposed to go to the casino last time James was in town, but we forgot. The casino rocks, by the way. I'd never been in there before, so it was quite the experience. They IDed us at the door, which was to be expected, then the guy caught me completely off guard when he asked me what my middle name was. My middle name is actually Athena, but I haven't gone by my first name since I was eight weeks old, so it took me a minute to realize that Athena is actually my middle name. Once I said 'Athena', he looked at me some more, then asked me to spell it. When that was over with, we went inside, and James got ten dollars to split between the two of us. While we were playing the slots, I took a picture of James, and this female security guard came out of nowhere within about two seconds, and told us we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. She was very appologetic, but we had to delete the picture we'd taken, which kinda sucks. Hence the less-than-flattering picture that was taken by the sign out front. We were probably at the casino for an hour or more, and in that time, managed to not only not lose, but also, to get ahead by $9ish, so that covered Starbucks, which is pretty cool.

We walked back to my house, then to my Mummy's office, to print Aigaion Girl and print out some wallet-sized copies of the above picture, then came back to my house, ate pizza and played Pick Two (best game ever).

Loki and I walked James most of the way home, then turned around and walked back. Then I uploaded some pictures to Facebook, and now I'm writing this. Basically, I packed my whole long weekend into today.

Also, as a totally random aside, I was writing Aigaion Girl yesterday or the day before and trying to find music that had to do with the apocalypse or end-of-the-world type stuff, and I came across Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire. I've always liked the song, but I'd never actually listened to the words. I left a comment to that effect on the YouTube video (also mentioning that I thought the song was oddly suited to our current global climate), and someone gave my comment thumbs down, because they thought I was talking about global warming. God, people make me sad... but go listen to the song, 'cause it's good, and it is appropriate today, possibly even moreso than it was when it was written.

I think that's it for today.