nerdy, i know

those who know me know that i'm a 'little notebook' nerd. i carry my little notebook with me everywhere to write down important and, more often, not-so-important things in so i don't forget them. i'm also a 'great quote' nerd - result being that i have a lot of good quotes in my nerdy little notebook. since it's time for a new notebook, i was going through the old one and thought i'd share some of the best quotes i read/heard this year:

"I looked at myself...as a monkey given my life to play with, prodding it, trying to stretch it into different shapes, dropping it and picking it up again, suspecting always that it must have some use and meaning, tantalized and frustrated by it but always unable to make sense of it."
- Ted Simon (in one of the best adventure/travel books ever, Jupiter's Travels)

"But I will walk the road, however hard it is, because only on the road can you see that yesterday lies behind you and tomorrow waits on the path ahead. The road measures life in distance. The further you travel, the longer you live."
- Ma Jian (a chinese political activist/journalist that walked across his country to learn more about life in it, and wrote about it in his book, Red Dust)

"Heaven's not a place where you go when you die, it's a moment in life when you actually feel alive"
- Spill Canvas (overall, not a great band, but damn, that's a good line)

lac-la-stupid

i'm officially nominating lac-la-hache for the stupidest town in bc award. it calls itself the 'longest town in the cariboo'. Bah. all that means is that they put the stupid welcome to signs 20km on either side of town so that they can lower the speed limit to 80kph through 40km of cow pastures. stupid stupid long town.

that's the rant, now on to happier things...

i drove back home today from a wonderful (albeit a little rainy) 10 days in the kootenays - the beautiful, mountainous, full-of-outoodrsy-people kootenays that helped me recover from my summer in the john and that have convinced me that that is where i want to live when i finally decide to actually live somewhere. i did some hiking and biking and visiting (big thanks to Chris and Rob for putting me up [putting up with me?] for so long!) and relaxing and overall had a great little vacation.

that wonderful time of the year again

Every time the seasons change, I find myself saying, "oh yay! ______ is here. _____ is my favorite season!" Now I think I've figured it out - I just love it when the seasons change.

Here's why I'm excited about fall:

~ because i knit about 5 new toques this summer and it's finally cold enough to wear them
~ i pulled my down vest out of the closet today and went for a long walk with it on
~ it's cool enough for cords
~ i love when the ground starts to freeze and the grass is all crunchy and dry when you walk on it
~ i love unexpected early snow falls and waking up to everything white
~ and, of course, i love school supplies. even though i don't have any reason to buy them this year, i love looking and touching and half-wishing that i had a reason to buy a nice new note-book.

meet the rhinos

the death of a fire season

First, I could see my breath.

Then there was frost on the ground.Next, it started to snow. And it kept on snowing until the entire fire was white.
So we lit a new one to keep warm. And that was the end of fire season 2006. For me anyway. Some hardcores are still at it for another 2 weeks but I'm headed somewhere sunny :)

chim-chimeny, chim-chimeny, chim chim cher-oo

Tonight, we got back from 3 days and 2 nights on a fire and headed straight to the grocery store to get some more fire food. We went right from work, without stopping to shower or even taking the time to wash our faces, so I was more or less black from head to toe and smelt like a campfire. Nah, a forest fire.

I was standing alone near the check-out when a friendly looking lady with an irish accent asked me if I had been to a wedding.

Huh?

When I told her no, she said, "Oh, well some people believe that it is lucky to have a chimney-sweep kiss the bride at their wedding."

Maybe that's a business I ought to look into.

the 11-hour shopping marathon

2 very tired fire girls
14 hours of driving
11 hours of shopping
3500 dollars spent

3 very productive, albeit not very relaxing, days off.

wonderful williston

What we expected to be a weekend fire turned into our biggest money-maker of the season. We just got back from 10-days on a fire near Williston Lake. The first 5 days felt a little rough since we were camping and waking up to frosty tents and frozen hoses. The last half couldn't have been cushier - we were put up in a beautiful heli-ski lodge where we enjoyed comfy beds with down duvets and were fed gourmet dinners every night.

Alex watching the action from the lakeshore.


Who's that sexy fire chick ?!

Johnny lighting it up....trust me, this actually does help put the fire out.

Another frosty morning - every day it got harder to get out of our sleeping bags.

The most beautiful pump site in the world.