So Leila just came up to me at work today and said congrats. I said “for what?” And she said she was recently on an Air Transat flight and came across a pile of photos in the middle of the in-flight magazine from my last trip to the Dominican Republic. She said they all said “photo by Duane Storey”, and that she was sure they were mine. Funny thing is I had no idea they had been published. I know Air Transat has a section where users can submit their photos for consideration, which I did after coming back from the Dominican Republic, but nobody ever contacted me and said they were going ...

In 1997, I decided to mix things up a bit and took a summer job up in Whitehorse, YT, working at the weather station up there for Environment Canada. It was really my first time away from home in any capacity, and also marked the first time I was in a long distance relationship. Needless to say, when I walked off the plane way up north, I was a bit bummed, and a bit out of sorts. I spent the first three days living in a hotel room, desperately trying to find a place to live, since Environment Canada only offered to pay for three days of hotel. I finally found a small room in a trailer living with ...

Wow.. I’m beat. I made the mistake of staying up late last night, thinking that I would be tired enough to pass out and get a few hours. Unfortunately, I hardly slept at all last night, and am at the airport, completely bagged. It’s 5:50am, and I have another 40 minutes before the plane boards. Clearly I was a bit tired last night as well, since I drove all the way to my landlord’s house to drop off six checks that I somehow made out in the wrong amount on all of them (something that wasn’t discovered until I got all the way back home);. Thankfully, I brought along a mild sedative, and ...

I got back home last night at around 2am and promptly climbed under my duvet for a long night of sleep. I spent the evening with some old high school friends, and invited myself into a poker tournament that was going on in the evening. I somehow managed to come in second out of ten people, even though I don’t really know how to play (which seems to always sort of happen – I won our first work tournament last year, and come in fourth out of thirty last time). I just woke up around 11:30am here, and feel fairly rested. My stomach is clearly not impressed that I have stopped antibiotics, but ...

Not much new to report. Work is going fairly well, and I’ve met most of our Ontario company now. Derek and I hit “downtown” Kanata and hit a few local establishments tonight, which was actually a lot of fun. I have two more days here, and then I get on a plane and head to Toronto for Matt’s concert. I’m actually getting pretty excited about the whole ordeal. I talked with Tony briefly tonight and he’s in the same hotel as me, which is cool. The next time I probably blog will be in Toronto, a few hours before the pre-show meet-up. ...

The plane ride was fairly uneventful. I haven’t flown West Jet for a while, but thankfully everyone on board still had a great sense of humour, and the flight was nice and smooth. I was pretty happy to see that new Harry Potter on the in flight entertainment, since I haven’t had time to see it and I had really wanted to. On West Jet, you have to pay if you want to watch a movie, but I figure I can kill a paperback in about 4 hours or so, so paying $5 to watch a movie isn’t that bad a deal. The rest of the time I spent messing around with my new iPod, and I have to say, that thing is really ...

Last night I met up with John and Rebecca to watch the hockey game down at Fogg ‘n Suds. I’m not super familiar with the Canucks line anymore, so being around super hockey Canucks people is a bit intimidating. That being said, I did manage watch some of the game and to lose myself for a time in the high-ball fishbowls that they were serving there. John and me, hanging out at John and Rebecca’s house – not sure why we put hats on I’m smack in the middle of packing for my trip, trying to figure out what to bring and what not to bring. As the first leg of the trip is work-related, I ...

Slight change of plans. I was originally going to go to Toronto on the 26th, but I’m going to go to Ottawa the week before for work. So, I’ll be bouncing into Toronto on the 26th, but instead of coming from Vancouver, I’ll be coming in on a flight from Ottawa. That will put me into Toronto several hours earlier, which should take a bit of pressure off with having to get downtown from the airport. I’ll be staying out in Kanata in a really great hotel called The Brookstreet Hotel, which just happens to be owned by Terry Matthews (whose company recently merged with ours). Apparently Terry ...

Well, I’m currently sitting in my boxers in a Montreal hotel about to go to sleep. I spent most of the day either thinking about traveling, or actually traveling, so when I landed in Montreal at 7pm, I was a bit tired from the whole ordeal. Leaving a foreign country where the rules of leaving aren’t really clearly defined is a bit stressful for me. The whole tourist card thing turned out to be not a big deal, and eventually I made it through customs and security. It’s amazing how less anxious I become whenever I land back in Canada — there’s a certain comfort with knowing your bank card ...

So, this is the first blog entry I’ve written in quite some time while disconnected from the internet. I’m about 30 minutes out of San Francisco, somewhere around 40,000 feet. I feel like complete shit, and I’m really glad I decided to head back today instead of risking being down south and getting even sicker. A few minutes ago I had my head in my lap in pretty much unbearable pain — turns out my right ear had some real problems adjusting to the change in pressure in the airplane, probably since I’m so congested right now. If I don’t see some major changes in how I feel by tomorrow, ...

That’s right. Yours truly finally got his butt off the couch long enough to go outside and get some exercise. I’m happy to report that I managed to rollerblade at a pretty good clip for a whole half-hour without puking or anything. I guess you could say this officially kicks off my getting-in-shape thing (please don’t search the archives for the last time I said this). I’m going to be attending a pool party in Las Vegas next Friday, and I’m hoping that with enough effort I can lose twenty pounds by then and look absolutely smokin’ with my shirt off. A guy can dream, can’t he? ...

First, I just want to say how bad Aldo shoes suck. I’ve blogged about that fact before I’m sure, but now as I am about to throw away a $110 pair of Aldo shoes that didn’t last six months, I am suddenly reminded of it. After the first two months, one of the soles came off. I told the guys at the store, and they just assumed I was way too hard on my shoes. So, I coughed up some cash and had the shoes fixed by a shoe-fixer guy. Two months later, same deal, except on the other side. So, I coughed up some more cash and had another shoe repair person fix the second one. Jump forward two months, ...

You thought this day would never come, didn’t you Air Canada? All your posturing, your laughing. You may not remember us, but we sure remember you. Oh yes, we haven’t forgotten the night we had together, have we precious? We remember landing in Toronto, coming back from a brief trip to Boston, so anxious to finally get into our own bed in Vancouver and fall asleep later that night. And dream. Yes, we dreamed once. Of fields and sunshine. But it took that from us. Yes, took it from us they did, my precious. Upon arriving in Toronto, one of its minions came forth, only to announce that our ...

I’m pretty bagged, so this will be short. The flight leaving Heathrow was pretty much a complete clusterfuck. Apparently they were out of gates, so they just parked the 747 on the concrete a mile away and had to shuttle us all there in small groups.. We took off around an hour late.. About an hour into it, we had some pretty wicked turbulence, which for someone who hates flying basically unnerved me. I popped a few sleeping pills when we hit altitude and managed to sleep for most of the flight home (surprisingly, because I had an aisle seat, and nobody asked me to get up so they could go to ...

So I gotta jet.. Here are the photos from London. ...

Now that I’m officially done what I came to do here in Finland, it’s really time to let loose and party it up a bit… I just demolished my first beer here in the Oulu airport, and am now working on beer #2 waiting patiently for my plane to board. I’ve spent the last hour researching cool spots to go drink beer tonight in Helsinki, and I have a few in mind that I’m going to check out later.. I can’t be too drunk or out too late tonight since I have lots to do in London tomorrow, but I’m going to do my best to drink as the locals do. Jari and Seppo impressed me with their drinking ability ...

I approximately 24 hours, I’ll be stepping off a plane at Heathrow and rushing madly to see some of London before my connecting flight to Vancouver leaves in the early evening. I think I’ll probably only have about 3 and a half hours to see London, which I’m sure doesn’t give me much time to see very much. With the time constraints, it looks like I’m gonna shell out $100 for the express train that goes from the airport to Paddington Station near central London. From there, I’m really not sure what I’m going to do. It still seems like quite a haul to get to any of the attractions, ...

I’ve been in Oulu, Finland for a few days now, and thankfully last night I actually got to go out and see a few things. Jari and Seppo were nice enough to take me to a pretty fancy Russian restaurant last night where we had some great food, nice wine, and of course some type of random vodka shot. Afterwards, we sort of started our own mini pub crawl, checking out a few of the bars in the Oulu downtown. I really love the architecture over here. I’m not sure how you’d really describe it, but everything is really quant and different looking. Last night was pretty cool because there was this ...

So my body decided that it would take a brief unscheduled break from sleeping at around 2am this morning.. I decided in that time I would throw a few photos up from yesterday (I don’t have that many). Oulu is pretty quaint so far, and I’m actually really eager to walk around and see some things (since the architecture looks really cool from my hotel window). I have to be on-site around 9 this morning (which means I need to get back to sleep), but afterwards I think my hosts are all taking me for dinner. For the most part, my digital SLR has been in my backpack most of the time. I took a few ...

When I lived in Ottawa, there were times when I used to get a little homesick and miss Vancouver and Chilliwack. When that happened, I was fortunate enough to stumble across a little website called KatKam.ca. It’s a live webcam that points into the direction of the evening sunset, only a block or so away from my apartment in Vancouver. To this day, I always religiously check it out from time to time when I’m out of town, just to see what I’m missing back home. Here’s a shot of the sunset tonight that I missed. I’m heading to the airport now to fly up North. See you guys in about a week. ...