In a little over 24 hours, I'll be heading into Vancouver with my friend Tony, ultimately ending up at Vancouver International for a flight to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. This will not only be the first vacation that's ever been longer than one week, but it'll also be the first time really since March where I'll have had a full week to basically kick my feet up and relax. While the last few weeks have been a bit light in terms of work, Dale and I have been going pretty much non-stop all of this last year, even working part of Christmas at the start of the year. That's why this year we're ...

I'm heading to a friend's wedding in Seattle in November. I'm actually pretty excited about the trip because it'll be my first real weekend there since 2007. Seattle's one of those cities I always expected to fall in love with, but for whatever reason, just haven't managed to yet. I suspect it's because I don't really know where to go when I'm in the city, but I'll do a bit more research this time around. The last time I was there I stayed at the relatively trendy Hotel Max, which was fairly central and had a decent little lounge. I was talking to the people at the Alexis Hotel in Seattle about ...

I got a call from Canon today about my lens with water vapour in it. They verdict: completely unfixable. To be honest, I'm a bit pissed off. When I shipped it out to them, I followed it up with a call telling them it was rather urgent, and they needed to get to it first since it concerned water damage. The lady on the phone told me they were 5 days behind, and there was nothing she could do. Anyways, when they finally get to it, it was corroded inside and not worth fixing. The replacement cost of the new lens is around $1600, so I'm going to be submitting my first ever insurance claim. The shitty ...

Well, my dad is officially on vacation right now, and I'm only a few days behind him. It seems weird that in just four more days I'll be getting on a plane and disappearing for nearly two weeks. The next couple days are likely to be extremely busy. I have to get some new clothes and sandals for the beach, and also get my place cleaned up and my bags packed. Hurricane Dean is hitting Jamaica pretty hard right now, and is supposed to head towards Mexico next, so it's likely it will be completely gone when I get down there -- hopefully nobody down there gets hurt while it's passing through. I get ...