I have less than a month to go before I return everything to my storage locker and hit the open skies again. Last time I departed I headed south and ended up in Argentina. This time I’m flying west and hitting a little island off the coast of Thailand called Ko Samui One of the aspects discussed in the book Vagabonding that seemed was relavant to me this summer was the concept of reintegration. The author claims in the book that after an extended trip it becomes difficult to find a way to fit yourself back into your old life. That was definitely the case for me this time around, and lately I’ve ...

It’s strange living in my apartment right now. I have half of the place boxed up, and am slowly selling the rest of it off. Even though my bed is still set up, it doesn’t really feel like home anymore, so I’ve been sleeping on my couch in the living room. That couch was one I bought back in 2001 in Ottawa, and we’ve been through a lot together. When I leave this place it’s going to its final resting place at my sister’s house, but it’s been a comfy companion for the last ten years. My bar stools sold tonight, as did my entertainment unit. In terms of large furniture, that leaves ...

I spent most of this weekend chilling out around the house. I took a bit of time out on Saturday to hit a few legs of the circle farm tour with Raeleigh and Eileen. One of these days I’ll manage to hit the rest of the places on the tour, but I’m slowly nailing them, a month at a time. I’ve been meaning to take a weekend trip somewhere, but with the rain I haven’t been motivated enough to get in the car lately. I want to get rid of my travel VISA soon, since it has a yearly fee attached to it, but before I do that I need to blow off a pile of points on it, and I plan to rent a pretty nice ...

It won’t be much longer now until things start heating up around here. It seems like just a few days ago that Christmas was here (or possibly it only seems that way because my tree is still up). I for one am getting pretty excited about enjoying the sun again when it comes. This summer I’m hoping to do quite a bit of camping and hiking. The campground reservation system for the lower mainland isn’t open yet, but I found out that the one in Tofino actually opened the other day. So I decided to whip out my credit card and book three days of camping on the Island in July. I’m going to probably ...

Well, maybe not *above*, but at least *at* Starbucks. Feels weird being back into the groove again to be honest. I have never been on a two week vacation before, and it’s strange coming back again and trying to fire the engines up again, especially when the engines have been soaked in beer for two weeks. I’m down at my local Starbucks in Vedder Crossing here trying to get everything in order so that I can hit everything hard again starting tomorrow. I started the evening with 400 messages in my inbox, and am down to around 15 now, which is a nice improvement. Once my inbox gets past about ...

One on the aspects of vacation that I always enjoy is getting time to reflect on things without the noise of the real world interfering. A couple of times I sat by the pool, staring through my book and thinking about things back home, about the last year, about my life, about the future. It’s really hard to believe that it’s been nearly a year since I packed up my things in Vancouver and headed back to Chilliwack. I spent eight out of the last fourteen years in university. While I had some really great times back in school, and met some really great friends, most of those eight years were ...

Today is day #13 down here in the Caribbean, and I noticed that the date was December 1st this morning. I gotta say, it’s pretty hard to take December seriously when the humidex is 40C and there’s not a cloud in the sky. This is probably the first December where I’ve ever been away on vacation, and it’s a bit surreal to be honest. After two weeks here, my clothes are starting to smell a bit like ass. I was hoping to use the laundry service here (where they pick stuff up in your room and bring it back, hopefully within a few days), but I just didn’t trust it enough. So today I filled ...

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been down in the Caribbean for 11 days now, but that’s how the math works out. I woke up this morning and spent a few moments trying to figure out what day of the week it was, since it’s pretty easy to lose track. Sara made it home ok, and Dale and I have been working on some BraveNewCode stuff since she left. Yesterday we spent most of the day in the room, Dale designing away and me coding away. We’re keeping the lid on most of the things we’re working on, but lots of cool things should be coming down the pipe. The wireless here has proven to be a pretty ...

About half-way through my flight the other day I went to the bathroom and really wasn’t feeling good. I really have no idea what it was, but my stomach was pretty upset and I was feeling a bit achy. Shortly after writing my blog posting yesterday, I ended up feeling pretty worse, and went to my room to curl up in bed. I passed out around 8pm or so, and slept until almost noon this morning (unfortunately, a rather unrestful sleep since my stomach was keeping me up). So I’m not sure if I caught something on the plane, or possibly ate something that didn’t agree with me (which I kind of doubt, ...

First off, Seattle was a lot of fun, and it was great seeing Dave and Lauren tie the knot. The ceremony was really well done, and the venue was spectacular. I had a really great time there with my friend Lynn and everyone else we met on the dance floor. I haven’t been all suited up in a while, so it was nice to dress up for a change. The Alexis Hotel fireplace suite was really posh as well, and it was super nice of them to put me up in it for the weekend. This morning has been a bit of a bumpy ride. I had a longstanding photography client issue I’ve been dealing with that I thought was resolved ...

Hard to believe I’ll be getting on a plane in 10 days and heading on vacation for two weeks. Truthfully, I’m really looking forward to relaxing by the pool with a few books. Reading is something I get a lot of enjoyment out of, but for whatever reason I go through big periods where I don’t really read all that much. So I’m hoping to hit a Chapters store before I leave and grab a pile of books. Like most vacations, I’m debating whether or not to bring my digital SLR. Truthfully, I think I’m going to leave it at home this time. I love having it around, but it’s just a pain lugging ...

How’s that for a title? It’ll pretty much sum my day up when it’s all over. For whatever reason, I’ve been super tired lately. Despite getting a fairly normal amount of sleep during the week, I’ve hit the last few weekends completely exhausted. Yesterday, for example, I spent a few hours sleeping on the couch by the fire. Upon waking up in the early evening, I watched a few movies, and then went straight to bed, sleeping in until around 10am (after the time change). It definitely feels great, but I really don’t know why I’m so tired lately. Friday afternoon I went out to see Matt ...

I just got home from dropping Dale and Patrick off at the Abbotsford airport. Without a doubt, it was a great visit, and it was good to catch up with both of them. As I mentioned previously, this last weekend was the last item on my radar for the foreseeable future. This last summer was extremely busy — I attended two out of town conferences, and it seemed like I was bouncing in and out of the city on a routine basis. Given that I moved into my new place here in January, it’s only recently that I’ve found the chunk of time necessary to finally unpack. We’re also been extremely busy at ...

It’s official – vacation is booked. I’ll be leaving Vancouver on the 19th of November, and heading to the Dominican Republic for two weeks. I’ve never really been anywhere on vacation for two weeks, so it’ll be an interesting experience. I’m heading to the Bahia Principe Punta Cana with Dale and Sara for a few weeks. I’ve been told that the beaches in Punta Cana are fairly amazing, so I’m looking forward to that. Plus, we’re staying in the Golden Club section which means we should hopefully be near the beach. Anyways, should be a great time. ...

Last night I had the choice of staying up at my campsite, which was all set up, or staying in my nice air-conditioned apartment. Given how gross it was outside, I actually decided to stay here and get a good night’s sleep. So this morning I had to wake up, do an hour long client call, and the head up to the lake and tear my campground down, which is thankfully all complete now. So I’m back at home, and definitely looking forward to a semi-normal weekend around the house. The last few weekends have been fairly crazy, either because I was driving down to Oregon, or because I was involved in ...

I woke up yesterday in Cascade Locks, Oregon and decided to hit the coast for a few hours. I bounced through Portland, grabbed a coffee and some breakfast, and had a really great, leisurely drive along a forested road towards Cannon Beach. I pulled in right around lunch time, and hunted around for a good place to grab some food. Thankfully I found a neat little brew pub, just a block from the water. I tasted a few of their beers, and also a nice plate of Halibut and Chips. Afterwards, I grabbed my camera and spent about an hour down on the beach. Cannon Beach is of course super beautiful. The ...

I’m current hanging out at the KOA in Cascade Locks, Oregon. It’s fairly dead here tonight, mainly because most people left today to go back to their 9-5 routines. Thankfully the wireless works a lot better now that not everyone is using it. My friend Sean swung by tonight, so we had a few beers around the picnic table. It was good to catch up. Last time I saw him was probably about six or seven months ago down in Portland when I had a job interview. I briefly went into Portland this afternoon to do a bit of work and to unlock my iPhone 3GS. Once I had my phone unlocked, I went down to Best ...

Well, today was a bit of a disappointment. I was hoping to be camping right about now, but apparently it’s next to impossible to get a campsite nowadays. Strangely enough, getting a campsite when I was in high school was trivial — you’d simply go up to the lake whenever you wanted a spot, and you’d probably get one. Worse case you’d head down to Chilliwack Lake (40kms), and find a nice spot there for even less money. Things started to change years ago when Discover Camping (the web service behind BC campgrounds) started allowing reservations. That means about half of the sites now typically ...

So yesterday I was sitting on my patio trying to figure out when to take a vacation. I still have a few small client-related items to finish off, so I’ve been waiting around for that. While going over everything in my head though I remembered that because I work from a laptop, there’s really no reason why I can’t work remotely. All I need is an internet connection once and a while to check email, and I’m basically golden. With that in mind, I’m thinking about testing my Nexus pass out in the next few days and heading south. Pretty much every KOA nowadays has free Wi-Fi, so I could easily ...

In a perfect world, I’d already be on vacation. But since we have a few client commitments that have taken a bit longer than expected, I’m still working away. My original plan was to maybe go camping for a few days this upcoming week, but that doesn’t seem likely right now. But hopefully by mid week I’ll be in vacation mode, and will be taking a few weeks of downtime (I’ll still be doing a few client related projects during this time period, but those don’t encompass more than a few days a week). I’m hoping to also finish off my new theme for this site, and possibly uprev a few plugins. I’ve ...