Gentlemen, start your engines...

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Placemark	Time	Location	Distance to next	Time Spent	km/hour
A	10/22/2008 17:15	590 Tomlin Road, Prince George, BC	16.9		44.1
B	10/22/2008 17:38	Art Knapps, South side of PG	47.1	0:23	122.9
C	10/22/2008 18:02	Hixon	60.3	0:24	150.8
D	10/22/2008 18:48	Quesnel	138	2:23	57.9
E	10/22/2008 20:25	20 km south of Williams Lake	150	1:21	111.1
F	10/22/2008 21:46	5 km south of Clinton	118	1:37	73.0
G	10/22/2008 23:23	Kamloops	122	0:59	124.1
H	10/23/2008 0:22	3018 Crosby Road, Vernon, BC
Total			652.3	7:07	91.7

Last dance with Mary Jane...

So I'm all ready to go today!

The car is back. Was a fuel pump which was fairly pricey - $650 when all was said and done. New (domestic) cars are a pain in the ass with the fuel pump. In North America, we like to put our fuel pumps in the gas tank. This means that swapping the pump is a major process. Stupid fuel pump.

Anyways, I'm all pumped (ha ha) and ready to go. Looking forward to being down in Vernon in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. I love driving!

I feel like I'm getting emo these days but I miss driving down with someone in the car to talk to. Nothing like eight hours with someone to work through one's head.

Pessimism wins out...

Oh for crying out loud...

I woke up today feeling optimistic and the day made me its bitch.

Before I even got out of the driveway the car dies. I'm currently waiting to find out if I'll be able to drive it to Vernon on Wednesday. If not then I guess a rental.

Got my suit from Moore's. Holy christ I have some expensive taste. When all was said and done I dropped about $1000. I got some incredible (!!!) shirts and ties to go with the suit. Truly awesome!

I got my birth certificate ordered today so the passport will be soon to follow!

I ended up walking at least a couple miles today... which wouldn't be a big deal, but I wear steel toed steel plated work boots when I'm on shift and I have to say that they are effing heavy when you walk for a long time.

And I heard back on the mortgage. Find a co-signer or find $30,000 cash.

I'm going into work tomorrow at the crack of dawn. Thank god I have keys. Stupid car!

It's not pessimism, it's realism...

So after a night of sleeping on it, rushing into a motivational speech is probably not overly motivational!

I need to get a suit during the day today given that I didn't do anything on this front this weekend. I'm such a slacker but I think my brain really needed the downtime.

Had a call from my grandma confirming wedding attendance at somewhere in the 45-50 range.

I've been working on my upcoming AL-S/High Performance leadership program for 2009/2010 in Toastmasters available here.

I'm feeling more and more that accomplishments in life are directly proportional to the amount of goal-setting that one does. Feels that way with me right now. I've done more in the last two years for personal development than in the last five.

I totally need a Toastmasters girlfriend. *sigh*

100 ways to leave your lover...

...or perhaps I'm bad with the decimal place and there's just one!

Starting to gear up for the weekend wedding, pulling together quotes and getting things prepared. Thinking strongly of presenting a motivational speech for Tuesday night as there's a club that Allan Daem belongs to that he wants a speech for. Might be a nice change of pace because I'm out of town from Wednesday night on (so will thus miss out on the opportunity to speak at Prince George club).

Not sure what I'm going to be speaking about but probably exhorting people to always pursue their desires with passion. To always have a goal that you're working towards. To accomplish steps towards that goal continuously. To ask for help if you need help. To always constantly search out that which makes you passionate.

Blind Melon in the morning, so very refreshing...

Blind Melon / God's presents:

If my path be smooth or rugged
If with thorns or roses strewn
Where I go the Father seeith
And He will leave me not alone

If I take the wings of morning
far within the giant sea
Even there His hand will leave me
Even there my God will be

Though the gloom of night be round me
Though I cannot see my way
Yet the Lord will see and guide me
Because unto Him the night is day

If my thought are good or evil
Set me think to hide them not
there is one above all seeing
And He beholdth every thought

And ever more my eyes beholds me
And all my ways to Him are known
And His loving arms enfolds me
He will leave me not alone

In my next life, I want to be a table...

Another night at Toastmasters, and another turn in the chair position. Surprising how much I enjoy being chair considering how intimidated I used to be by it.

I was speaking with Randy after the meeting about the stages of comfort within Toastmasters. You start out scared of table topics, then of that icebreaker, then of the various roles in the meeting, the completion of your CC, your attack at the CL, your first time mentoring, chairing, executive positions, area governorship and onwards... I'm not sure where the path leads but so far it feels like a giant leap with every small progression.

I'm still really struggling with my upcoming inspirational speech. I've done a pair of inspirational speeches when I completed my CC but have really been out of the mindset to inspire. Coming home to an empty house (except for the cat) and doing the same thing day-to-day doesn't sound that exciting...

Tomorrow is another day. As Shakespeare said so eloquently "to thine own self be true"

It's Thursday AGAIN...

I love short weeks. Tonight should be interesting with Toastmasters. We went down from four speeches planned down to two. We'll see if those two follow through or not. Basically one advanced speech from Mark and one icebreaker speech from Dan.

Had a good talk with my grandma Redekopp last night planning out my uncle Rob's wedding. It's sounding more and more like I'm going to pull an all-nighter on the Wednesday - work all day and then drive all night so I can be available in Vernon for the Thursday/Friday before the wedding on Saturday.

I'm so heading out to Moore's this weekend to buy a suit. Very much looking forward to that.

I'm hoping today will be a more positive day. Yesterday started so well until Firstline called me in a panic.

One of my standard mantras is "people only perform to the level of your expectations, no more". If I extrapolate that to my expectation of my day, well... let's go with today will be a SUPER day!

And the bank says no no no...

So I finally heard back from Firstline Mortgages today and they confirmed that they will not allow me to take over the mortgage on Delhi. It didn't sound like they really wanted to come to the table at all - not even for a long amortization period or with extra money down. They were interested if I could find a co-guarantor but who wants to play that game?

For reference, it took from September 26th until October 15th to get that answer from them.

So I called TD Canada Trust, which has been my bank since I was 5, and had an appointment within two hours. Met with Jeff, he took my information and showed me my income to debt ratios and confirmed everything was OK basically. I'm supposed to hear back from CMHC on Friday as to whether they want to have me take over the mortgage or not. Hoping to god that they do.

Also, the time is ticking down until my Uncle Rob's wedding on October 25th. This will be the first wedding that I've MC'd for so I'm looking forward to the experience. Hopefully the years in Toastmasters are going to pay dividends.

This has been rattling around in my head all day: Allison Weiss / July 25th, 2007

Circled 'round the campus
In a t-shirt and pajamas
As I stared out the window
My heart began to break

Because it's all good
'coz I'm no good
and believe me
You don't need me

It's a big world
and I'm old news to you...

Oh, the things I do for Toastmasters...

Another morning and another Conservative minority win. We'll see how long this one lasts!

Got up at the crack of dawn this morning to go to a Toastmasters executive meeting. Time to discuss the club. Good times.

I'm still undecided on the Mexican coffee. I think it's overly weak given the ginormeous cuppa cup that I drink from for my morning java. We'll give it another couple days. We'll see how long this whole wake-up-and-grind-the-beans-fresh thing goes before I go back to the granulated generic coffee.

Note to self: need to figure out where the hell my cat goes at night. I seriously tore the house apart at 3-ish when I woke up and she was gone. Seriously. Have no idea where she could possibly be. I know she wasn't outside because she was warm when she popped up later.

Still desperately trying to migrate from pics.pachogrande.com over to gallery.pachogrande.com . It takes way too long to move my albums locally so I can re-upload them to the new host. So many good shots on pics though, so need to go through the exercise.

And the last horse crosses the finish line...

So according to my clock, the polls have just closed for the Canadian Federal Election. I forecast 1 1/2 more years of the same. Conservative minority with the remainder split between the BQ and the Liberals.

Seems a bit pointless in the grand scheme of things - I don't understand why the election was called now but we'll see how things shape up when the ballots are counted tonight.

This election it really hit home to me how much it bugs me when people don't vote. I don't really care about people who deliberately invalidate their ballot or similar to show their political angst, more people who don't vote through apathy. It seems like ignorance on a grand scale when you consider all of the people worldwide who would kill (or die) for the illusion of democracy. Alternately the direct relatives that we have as Canadians who have died over the last hundred years to defend the same.

Shame on you all!

On a positive note, I was inspired by my Mexican dream and have purchased some Mexican Kicking Horse coffee. I don't know if the coffee is any good, but it sure as hell smells good. I'll let you know how that experiment turns out!

And so it begins...

...another year of blogging and a new blog to boot! It's time to discard the old and start afresh.

On that note, I woke up this morning with the most bizarre dream. T and I were taking a Mexican cruise. We were boarding the ship when she told me that she didn't pack her camera and was going to use mine. Given that my dream camera was a high-end digital SLR, I wasn't amused with this. She threw back "well it doesn't matter anyways because I [T] picked the events for the first day and everything else is something you [Mike] wanted to do!".

Even in my dreams, eh?

Oh well, on a positive note I took some wicked pictures weekend before last during T's last weekend of moving:

I've got a couple keepers from this weekend that I'll post up later this week.