Bits 'n' bites

* Introducing... Trudy! Woohoo! I have a new roomie! August really seems to be the month for friends staying with me. Last year it was my friend Cathy who was here from Australia doing an occupational therapy practicum. This year it's my friend Trudy who's crashing at my place while she finds a place to stay! Yippee! Of course, I'll only actually get to be roomies with her for about a week and a half, but hey.

* Sunday Tradition: Yesterday I did the last (for now!) in a series of Sunday hikes. Just cause I had to work doesn't mean I can't enjoy my vacation on the weekends! Every Sunday in July a small group of friends and I have gone for a hike and then for a swim in the ocean. It's been dubbed the "Sunday Tradition." The only day we didn't swim was yesterday cause it was cold-ish and kinda rainy, but I figure, it was raining, so we got wet... that counts, right? I'm trying even to think of all the hikes we did: the Chief (in June), Brother's Creek, Deep Cove/Quarry Rock (ok, that doesn't totally count as a hike, but I'm keeping it in anyhow!), Hollyburn, Elfin Lakes, High Falls Creek. I think that's it. It's been so great to get out into the mountians and enjoy.

* Elfin Lakes! I can't believe I haven't talked about this yet. This is just going to be the Coles Notes version... My friends Brian, Rebecca, Dave, Angela, and I went camping/backpacking two weekends ago ('member my freakout about having so much to do and still going camping? Hee hee). It was AMAZING. We hiked in to camp in Friday evening and got to watch the sun set over high alpine meadows and snowy peaks as we hiked. Saturday we did a day hike to the rim of an old volcanic crater. Most of the valley had been scraped away by a glacier hundreds of years ago, so it was fairly barren, but so beautiful. And hot. It was somewhere in the range of 35 degrees that day. Hot hot hot. BUT, there was still snow! It was perfect, we'd grab a handful and rub it on our necks or our arms to cool off. Or we'd 'help' eachother get cooled off via snowball fight! We hiked up a ridge but decided to take the gully down. We boot skiied and bum skiied down most of the way. Wheehaw! The evening saw us swimming in the lake (coldcoldcold!) and eventually lying out looking at the stars, complete with several of the shooting variety. We hiked out on Sunday, went for a swim in the ocean when we got down, and finished the evening with burgers and beer (a margarita for me!) in Kitsilano. Ahhh. It was beeeeautiful!

Pictures from the weekend are here (I was going to tantalize you with a few perview photos, but dumBlogger isn't letting me upload photos... again! Ach, just click the link!)

* Taking care of business: Whoah boy. I woke up this morning and realized that I have TWO days till I leave. TWO. I thought that, oh, about three seconds ago there were still two WEEKS left. Appartently not! I have been on the go since about 6:30 this morning cleaning, packing, organizing, phoning, booking (I got my nights booked in Vernazza - YEAH! I was having a hard time and thought I wouldn't be able to stay there), running errands, and shopping for random trip stuff. Still. It's insane. BUT, I crossed almost everything off my list today. If I play my cards right, I can be done everything by early evening tomorrow and just chill out. YESSSSS!

* Somebody stop me: My two splurges today? Decent-ish seats for Aida at the Roman arena in Verona, Italy, and an mp3 player. I wanted some music to take, I was going to rip a bunch of my CDs into mp3s then cram a bunch of albums onto a few discs and just use my discman. I tired it, then realized my discman is 10 years old. Mp3s no workie on 10 year old discman. Grrr. So I sucked it up and joined the mp3 crowd. I got a smoking deal on it, plus a free extended warranty (it had been purchased and returned, but still is in perfect condition). Turns out when I plugged it in to charge it, it's full of music, too! Score! Is that normal, or did I just inherit the previous owner's playlist? Whatever, free music! Yippee!

* Adrenaline: I think that's about the only thing keeping me going right now. I really should sleep. Once the laundry is done. And the blue bin'o'junk is cleaned out (the one where I shoved all the stuff I didn't have time to clean up before I had company on Saturday. Yeah. You know you do that, too.). And once I play around with my new mp3 player. Ha!