Here We Go Again

Hello People Who Read My Blog,

I have to apologize for the lack of posting lately. I have been meaning to get on, but life has been a bit hectic lately.

We had to move with only two weeks notice. We were able to find a place within one week and are now trying to get settled down there. Our landlord at the old place, his father passed away a couple weeks ago and his mom will be moving into the suite. Legally we would have two months notice, but he only gave us two weeks. After a few heated emails, we have everything all worked out. He owes us for one months rent plus damage deposit. He has also offered to give us $200 for moving expenses, but we'll see if we actually get that money or not. Mom and I are doing a final clean of that suite on Saturday and then have the final inspection on Sunday. I might email him and see if we can do the inspection on Saturday after we finish cleaning, as mom and I have planned to go to the States on Sunday.

So along with moving, we have also been trying to buy a new vehicle. I was going to trade the Xterra in for a Jeep Rubicon,

This is what the Rubicon we had picked out looks like. Commando Green.
Four door. Came with hard top and soft top.
Loved it so much.

but the finance companies think that I have too much debt against me so they wouldn't allow me to get one. And then Justin was trying to get a motorcycle so that he would have his own means of transportation instead of always sharing the X, but he doesn't have a good enough credit rating. So we will have to continue sharing the truck for now. He is going to be taking the truck this weekend up past Boston Bar for Josh' birthday. Which is why I'm going with mom to the States on Sunday. But that also means that I get the truck next weekend to go out to Burnaby for girls night. Yay girls night!!

As for right now, I am sitting upstairs at work. I don't start work for another 20 minutes, which is why I decided to quickly get a post up. I had already gone for a walk for about an hour, and now I'm just listening to Brad Paisley's new CD, Wheelhouse, on my cell phone. I am a country girl at heart. Always have been. This is a freakin' awesome CD!

Anyways I think that is all for now. Tonight and this weekend, I'm going to attempt to get the second room at our suite organized and hopefully get my desk and computer set up so that I can start using my computer again. I miss using my computer. I like my LiveWriter program for creating my posts much better than doing it on the Blogger site itself. Sorry Blogger, but it is the truth. Tata for now! 

Archery And Fishies

So this past weekend there was an archery shoot out at Semihamoo. It was just a fun 3D shoot. I had not realized that it was happening until I had gotten home from work on Saturday and Justin mentioned that Josh was going to take his nephew, Adam, to the shoot on Sunday and wanted to know if we wanted to go too. He also wanted to go fishing on Sunday so we figured that we would go early in the morning to do one round of the course (usually takes about hour and a half to two hours to complete depending if it ends up bottle-necking or not) and then go up to Stave Lake to try and find this creek that has some monster trout in it.
We had planned on being there about 8:30am, so that we could have breakfast there (the ladies always make the best food) and then get some shots in at the backstops as we haven’t shot in just over a month. Josh and Adam were going to meet us not long after 9:30 as that was when Josh was picking Adam up from his house. So we end up getting there at about 9. Have some breakfast and end up talking to Dick, whom we always shoot with at the range that we belong to. After a bit of conversation, we headed out to the backstops to warm up. My 20 and 30 yard pins are set up nicely. My 40 and 50 yard pins leave something to the imagination. We really need to get back into our rhythm of going to the range so that I can set those pins up properly. And start heading to the Thursday night shoots so that I can start figuring out my yardage again. Needless to say my shooting that day was not my greatest. I haven’t even tallied up the score cards yet. There was too many zeros for my liking.
One of the best shots of the day, Justin ended up making. We were at a wolf target and everyone had already taken there shots, and Josh told Justin to shoot the wolf in the eye. This was the resulting shot:

He got the wolf almost dead center in the forehead.
I was bored while we were waiting for the teams ahead of us to go, so I started having some fun with my phones camera and shadows. I like the second picture the best. It is currently the wallpaper on my phone, plus is my profile picture on Facebook.
 
After the shoot, we headed up to Canadian Tire so I could buy Justin a new fishing rod (I broke his a few weeks back when I fell trying to get out of a lake. I was more concerned for the rod than the fact that I almost smashed my head on a log). I got him a pretty blue one with flames on it (which I will be using until I get my own rod). We then headed up to Stave Lake to find this creek. We never did find the creek. So since we couldn't go fishing, we decided to buy some fish instead.

The pond in the backyard is in need of a good cleaning.
This is our pond. There are about 10 koi's currently in the pond. They don’t do a good job at keeping it clean. So we decided that it could use some plecostomus. So we bought two pleco’s.




 


                   This is them still in the bag before we added some of  the pond water to the bag to help balance out the pH levels.









Justin had the honours of pouring the pleco’s into the pond.

  One of them instantly swam towards the rocks deeper down, whereas the other one stayed up near the top. Here is his picture. He is really hard to see, but there is a pleco in the picture. He is the darker smudge that is in a kind of ‘u’ shape in the middle of the photo.

We haven’t seen the pleco’s since we put them in the pond. However the rocks are getting cleaner, so they are currently still alive. It is still rather warm out here so they can stay in the pond for the time being. Once it becomes colder though, the lady at PetSmart told us that they should come inside the house so that they don’t die over winter. The only problem I see with that is that we can’t currently find them. Hopefully when it comes time to bring them out, they are a bit bigger so that we can actually see them to catch them.

Good news readers! I have bought a camera charger. It is currently waiting at my PO box in the states. So I will be getting that on Monday and I will be able to get actual good photos of the following weekend as Justin and I are going camping for 5 days with his parents. Should be fun times!!
Ta ta for now!!

Let’s Make Some Money

So I am in need of some money. As you may know, if I have mentioned it before, I turn pens. So, if my internet allows to actually get onto the internet (as currently it is being a b*tch and I am writing this in Windows Live Writer so that I can post it later) I am going to be putting 4 of the pens that I have made up for sale on Etsy. It would be a few more pens, but at the moment I am unable to find 5 of them. One of the five missing pens I know I gave away to someone who does not deserve to have it (which is quite unfortunate). But as for the other four, they are MIA at the moment. Probably in a box still somewhere. Or possibly still at my parents house in one of the many boxes that we have yet to bring over here.

Anyways…. I thought that since I seem to have gone up in the number of readers that I have, I would also post the photos of the four pens that I have for sale currently on here along with a link to each pen on my Etsy account. This way, if any of you are interested in purchasing one you can. All of the pens that I am posting today are twist style pens. I do have a few click pens, but they aren’t currently ready to be sold.

All purchases include a plastic pen case to hold the pen, it also protects it during shipping. Shipping will be $8 to the USA or Canada. For international shipping, please contact me through my Etsy page. I only accept PayPal.

I will also later on be adding some of the blanks that I currently have set up to be turned but haven’t gotten around to them. This way a person can special order a pen in whichever design they would like. Customizations would cost approximately the same as none customized. They would just take a little bit longer to get sent out, as I would have to actually create the pen. So instead of 1-2 business days for it to be shipped out, it would probably be about 4-5 days to be shipped out. I would of course contact the purchaser once the item has been shipped.

So these are the pens that I have for sale currently (click on photo to go to Etsy site):

This is comfort pen made out of Bubinga wood. It has gold hardware. It is for sale for $25. SOLD
***If you would like a pen similar to this, please send me a comment on here or on my Etsy page and I will make one for you.

 

This is a standard twist pen. It is made out of branch of a Mulberry bush that my friend gave to me. It has silver hardware. There is a single bump accent with a gradual taper towards the middle on the top half of the pen. Even though the pen is finished with lacquer, it still has a natural wood feel to it. $20 SOLD
***If you would like a pen similar to this, please send me a comment on here or on my Etsy page and I will make one for you.

This is a standard twist pen. It is made out of purple with red streaks acrylic. The picture does not do it justice for the iridescent-ness of the pen. It features a quadruple bump top half and is finished with gun metal hardware. This is one of my personal favourites $25

This is a shortened Parker Style pen. It is made out of white oak. There is a decorative crack in the wood that meets in the center of the pen. This is a heavier pen than the previous pens. The hardware is black and gold. $30

 

It’s Been Awhile

Oh My Gosh! I am alive! No I have not fallen off the face of the Earth. Although at times it does feel that way.

Things have been insane here lately. I’ve been working like there is no tomorrow, along with trying to find a new job as the one I currently have does not pay me nearly enough. So with not enough money, things have been a bit stressful at home between Justin and I. This is not a good thing at all. Although through the stress we have also been going on a few little trips here and there.

We have bought a kayak. And we both have our fishing licenses so we have been fishing some of the local lakes lately. I have only caught one fish so far, although everyone says that it does not count as I was not able to bring it out of the water. I was just able to get it to shore, and then the stupid thing spat out the hook. It wasn’t a very big fish. Only about 6” long. Either way, it was my first fish that I have ever caught.

Along with fishing we have still been going 4x4ing. There has been some new trails that we have tried out. Unfortunately, I was not able to take many pictures as my camera battery is dead and I cannot find my charger for it anywhere. I know that it is in the house somewhere because I have charged my battery once before. But can I find it now? Nope. So I have been camera-less for about a month now. Hopefully I can find it soon, otherwise I’ll have to find one in a store. I really don’t want to buy a new charger, but I can’t live without my camera for much longer.

The internet down here, has been very finicky lately. It took about 20 minutes for me to connect. I have figured out that swearing loudly at it, makes it work. Sometimes…

This is just a quick little update. I hopefully will have some time to make a real post sometime soon. Complete with pictures.

Until next time

Just A Little Quickie

Hey Everyone!

Just wanted to do a short little post before heading to bed to let everyone know that I’m alive. Things have been really busy around here lately. We have been in our new place for almost a month now. We have been really busy with archery events almost every weekend, placing quite well. At last weekends event, I came home with 2nd place and Justin got 1st, in our respective categories. This weekend we are taking a break from archery to do a CORE course to get our hunting licenses and then next weekend it is another archery shoot including a campout.

Lots of busy-ness for us. So much that we haven’t even finished unpacking yet. Anyways, I am off to bed as I have an early day of work. I shall do a better posting later once I have more time, plus pictures.

Tata for now!

It's Official!

I completely apologize for the recent hiatus. There has been a lot going on lately. I ended up giving a proposal to Justin. No, not that kind of proposal. I wish though.

The proposal that I gave him, was that we are to be out of my parents basement by the end of the month. With being out of the basement, we then get our membership to the Ridgedale Rod and Gun Club, our passports and our month rec center passes. Well, we are officially moving on March 29. We found the perfect basement suite for us. The place is huge, it has a bar, our own laundry and a fireplace. I will have to post pictures once I get my computer set up and all the moving boxes are dealt with.

So today, my job is to start packing. I'm going to be having two boxes going at once. One box is what I am packing, and the other will be labeled "Craigslist" and anything that I don't want anymore (DVD's, books, clothes, etc) will be going into that box. Once we move, I will post everything that is in that box on Craigslist (most likely as a giant ad) or on Ebay depending on the item. It's funny, because among the normal boxes of "kitchen", "living room", etc there will also be one box, labeled with Fragile but will also be labeled NASCAR.  Gotta love being a NASCAR fan. I'm going to take the shelves that I have all my items on currently with me. They technically are my brothers shelves, but he hasn't used them in years. So I don't think he will really mind.

I am really excited to be moving. The stress that I am under currently at home is getting to be unbearable, so moving is going to defiantly be the best thing we can do. It will be nice to have our own place. Can do whatever we want. Don't have to worry about letting mom know that we won't be home for dinner. I'm also kind of nervous too. As this is a big step for Justin and I. Yes we were originally going to move into our own place just under a year into our relationship. And we have been living together for two years now. It is going to be different. I just hope that nothing changes between us, unless it's for better, once we do move out. I don't see that happening, but it is always a possibility.

One thing that is going to be interesting, is that I don't really have any place to do my pen turning. So what we are going to have to do, is find me a rolling cart that I can put my lathe on that way I can just roll it out the door onto our porch. That way I still have a place to do turning and I won't have to leave my lathe, band saw and drill press at my parents place. How I will get everything all organized, I'm not quite sure yet. I haven't really thought about that yet. My pen turning isn't high on my moving list. Getting everything else organized first is my main concern.

Anyways, I really should go organize my boxes into sizes. Have to love working at a tool store, picked up about 30 boxes this morning. All my boxes have tools on them. I have Makita, Milwaukee and Hitachi boxes. It's awesome. Until next time blog-stalkers!!

Taking The Plunge

I have done it. There is no going back now. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully third time is the charm.
If that made no sense at all, which it probably didn’t, I have signed up for an online course. It is not the Engineer ticket course that I’m pretty sure I have mentioned before. Instead I am taking an accounting course online.
I decided on accounting because I am good at math and it would still keep me in the customer service industry. I love helping people out, it just isn’t financially sound at my current job. I have no room to advance where I currently work. With the accounting course, there are so many different opportunities for me. I could be payroll clerk, bank teller, accounts receivable, book keeper. The list just goes on and on. And while looking for some jobs for Justin yesterday, I found a lot of places looking for accountants. It is a job that is in high demand right now. Plus, since I can go at my own pace at the course, I could have a new job in 6 months. That’s if I go quickly through the course. I don’t know what the course set up is like yet, as I haven’t done my first introduction exams yet. I decided to make a post about it first. Got to love my priorities. Plus, I didn’t want to get too into it right now, as I only have an hour before I have to go take Justin his lunch and then go to work myself.
Yay me though for taking control of my schooling. And sucking it up, and going forward with plans instead of just putting them off, like some many other things in life.
Oh and it is third times the charm because this will be my third time going back to school since graduating high school. I have taken a Massage Therapist course (which I horribly failed at) and I have my diploma in Graphic Design (which is incredibly hard to get into). Although with the Graphic Design I can segue that over to wedding planning (another venture I want to have) and design brides stationery items. I already have a potential client in my sister-in-laws brothers fiancé.
*raises imaginary glass*
Here’s to a new experience and hopefully new future in a better career field!
 **clink**

My Co-Workers Are Not Family

This will be a rant. Mind you it will be a short rant, but either way a rant.

On Monday, February 11, it will be the first ever Family Day stat holiday in BC. My work will be open. The government set this stat holiday as a day to spend with your family. Well I will be at work for 10.5 hours instead of spending time with my family. Although on the plus side, whoever works this stat holiday will get the May long weekend off (as the company has decided to be open that stat also, along with Canada Day). I don't see how that will work for the May Long, as more than half of the staff is working on Family Day. So that will leave maybe 3 salesmen and the other cashier will have to come in.

On the bright side, at least I'll be making time and half.

Can't wait until I can leave. Going to start an accounting course online soon. Then I can leave....

I Can Kill A Dinosaur, But I Can't Kill A Moose

So this past weekend, was the first archery shoot of the year. It is BC's Largest Indoor 3D Shoot. Actually it is BC's only indoor shoot.

Justin and I have been going to the shoot for the past three years, but this is the first year that I participated in shooting also. It is the one time a year that we see different archer's from around BC, plus some from Washington. For example, our friend Dan is from The Nock Point down in Mountlake Terrace, WA. The only time we see Dan is at this shoot. We tried to get into a round with him but our timing just never worked out right. Oh well. There is always next year.

There is 15 targets in total. They range from 15 - 40 yards for the older people. They also have shorter range of smaller animals for children 12 and under. The furthest target of those is about 5 yards away.

This is a panoramic of a past shoot. I had my camera with me, but I never took any pictures. This is basically what the set up looks like. Each year they change what order the animals are in, except for the stupid moose. The moose seems to always be on shot 13 and it is the longest shot on the course at 40 yards. For some reason I could not shoot the moose at all. I have a 40 yard pin on my sight, but because my bow has a lower poundage, it doesn't have enough "umph" behind it to make it that far. I figured after our last round, that in order for me to hit the moose and not the wooden backstop, I would of had to have my pin all the way on the top of the wooden backstop to actually hit the moose itself.

At the end of the day they always have prizes and awards.

There is always little prizes like sights and rests. They also have prizes of a couple targets. And then the large prizes of bows. This year they had a long bow and a PSE Evo as the prize bows. We didn't win any prizes this year. It would of been cool to get the Evo though.

My favorite target is the T-Rex. He is about a 35 yard shot. And he was always a good shot for me. I don't know why, but I can kill the T-Rex quite well. This is what Mr. T-Rex looks like.  Except this year he was facing the right instead of the left. He also had a few wooden palm trees infront of him.

I think I did fairly well for my first time doing a shoot. We did three rounds in total. My scores for those three rounds were: 108, 73 and 74. That is out of a possible 150. Justin's scores were much more consistant at 132, 132, and 133. Needless to say, he is much better at it than I am.

This year we are going to try to go to as many of the shoots as we can. The rest of the shoots are outside, so that will definately be weather permitting. It will also depend on the terrain of the shoots, as with the hurt foot I can't exactly be galavanting through mountains and hills. There are two camp out shoots also. So those should be fun also.

Lastly, as I didn't take the photos, I just want to give credit to the person that did. I was able to find the pictures online here.

Happy Belated New Year To You

I have been terrible in writing my blog lately. Needless to say it has been rather busy lately, what with Christmas, New Years, being sick and family. I may continue to be on a bit of a hiatus due to some of the family stuff, but I will try my hardest to get on here when I can. I did already post a new blog this morning, although it is missing pictures as I am currently blogging at work. This post was originally written on my blackberry on January 8, 2013. I had written it upstairs at work before my shift started that day. Although I am going to have to read through it as I go, as some of the details are now wrong (such as the part that I have another blog to put up, but I already did that before I got to this one).

Lets start out with the family stuff. One of my brothers isn't happy with me currently as he thinks that I am stuck in life and wants to see me move forward. I should also, maybe, mention that he is also one of Justin's friends. He said that he isn't happy with some of the choices that I have made in my life, which I'm pretty sure means that he isn't happy with the fact that I am still dating and madly in love with Justin. My decisions. We love each other and make each other happy and that is really all that matters.

Anyways, in a talk that I had with my brother, he also mentioned that he wanted to see us get a new place and move out of my parents basement. Hopefully this happens a lot sooner than later. We had found a basement suite that we loved in the next town over. But after going through expenses closer, moving out there would not have been feesable. Yes the place was excellent (2 bedrooms, huge backyard, in suite laundry, really close to my best friends house) but money has to come first. It would of been a longer drive to get to work, plus with our work schedules I get off work 1.5 hours after Justin does so he'd drive home, sit for about 40 minutes and then have to drive back out to pick me up from work. So we are currently biting the bullet with our housing selection and looking for an apartment along with basement suites. We didn't originally want an apartment, but they are much cheaper than getting a basement suite. I have been checking out PadMapper for looking up places as they compile a bunch of sites together. I currently have a favorites list of about 10-15 different apartments that I want to check out. I am going to make a spreadsheet and compile all the information about the apartments (such as laundry info, do they allow pets, parking, cost, etc). and then go searching from there. I'm going to be a bit picky when it comes to choosing an apartment. Such as I want it to have a double sink in the kitchen (easier to wash dishes if  no dish washer) and I want to have a bath tub (I miss having bathes).

This year I have made it the year of changes. There is the first change of new place to live. Second is finding myself a new job. I am currently looking into accounting programs at different collages in town. I haven't done much research yet, but hopefully I can find something that I can online that way I don't have to quit yet. Wouldn't be able to afford a new place if I have to quit my job to go to school full time. There is also a few other changes I want to make. Such as updating my wardrobe, doing more with my scrapbooking and card making, getting back into archery more, and trying to be more active in general (while still keeping my foot in mind). I'm also wanting to start designing and saving for my next tattoo.

Well I think that is all for now. I shall get some more truck stories up soon, as my camera is getting quite full of pictures from us going up trails. Although we haven't been going as much lately because of the amount of snow up the mountains. Heck there is even a time where I drove up the mountain in the snow. Man that was an adventure. There aren't any pictures of me driving as Justin didn't take any. But there are some new pictures after we switched driving, as I had driven as far as I could comfortably. Yeah that will be a fun post to write about.

Tata for now readers. :-)

These Boots Were Made For Walking And That's Just What I'll Do

So this post is extremely old at the moment. I originally wrote out the jist of it on my blackberry on Dec 9, 2012. One month later I'm actually getting around to putting it onto my blog. It won't be the whole post as I have to add photos still (I'm blogging at work again because my boss isn't here and I don't really have anything else to do), but it will give you something to read for now until I can get the photos up. Plus I will be doing another post today as well (minus photos) that I started writing on my blackberry the other day. So there will be two partial posts today. And now onto my story....

December 9, 2012
I got new tires for Truck on Friday. They are Goodyear Wrangler Duratracs. We went with 75's which are an inch taller than the ones that I had on her originally. These ones are really knobby and have a nice deep tread pattern. They are all season tires but have a mud and winter rating, which is something that I really wanted when we were getting a new set of tires.

So on Sunday, Justin and I decided to go on our weekly drive. This week we decided to up the Chipmunk Creek Forest Service Road (FSR). We started out on the Slease FSR. While driving on Slease there was a little bit of snow, nothing that made us really put the tires to work. When we turned onto Chipmunk, it was a totally different story. There was a lot more snow on that FSR. But as we are the adventurous type and we wanted to test out Trucks new boots onward we went.
***Yes I call Trucks' tires boots. They are not shoes, as those are the brakes. These are boots.***
We were following a single set of tracks the majority of the way up. At the end of those tracks was a smaller pickup with chains and they were playing with a snow machine. After their truck there was nothing but fresh powder just waiting to be driven in. Now this is what I'm talking about. Fresh powder. New boots. Lets go!

We didn't end up going as far as we had hoped. The snow was rather deep and we were literally plowing our way through it all. So we got maybe half a km past where the guys were playing with the snow machine before we decided to turn around. Where we turned around, we were in about a foot and a half of snow and at an elevation of 2771ft. I opened my door to see how deep it really was and my door made a "door angel" mark in the snow.

Needless to say, we will have to try this trail out again some other time once a couple more people have driven on it before us.