Matt’s mom and sisters and I took to the streets of Halifax and had a girly day out. We started out at Luxx, which was FANTASTIC. We had some white wine and brunch/lunch food, and it was all so reasonably priced. I’m proud of my choice, as I had a baby spinach salad, and it was delicious, too!

After that we went and saw some homes that were decorated (inside) for Christmas. The first one was a bit lackluster but the other two were absolutely gorgeous. It definitely made for a wonderful day out. I’m glad I went!

Matt and I are headed to the post office today to mail my permanent residency application. Am I scared? Not as much as I have been in the past. See, I’ve spent two years staring at this application and praying that things would work out. Now, I’ve done all I can, and I’ve been told that I should be okay. I mean, why would they tear me from my husband? So we mail it, registered, and wait for the response. It’ll still be a while (QUITE a while!) but I don’t care; it’s worth the wait.

In celebration of mailing our paperwork, Matt and I will be heading downtown for the Busker Festival. He’s never seen it before, and I’m sure long-time readers will remember that I didn’t quite make it there last year so I’m excited to go and take some photos. And why wouldn’t I be?

On August 7th, the streets will come alive. For the 22nd year indoor theatres will be emptied and brought to the Halifax Waterfront, across 6 spectacular stages. Over 500 performances will take place between August 7-17th and crowds will be introduced to genuine ‘street theatre.’

Tell me that doesn’t sound cool. I’m so excited!

I’ve been very lazy about blogging the past few days, but that’s because I’ve been busy! Not busy doing anything spectacularly important, mind you. Just busy. Wasting time, I guess. I’ve been a bit antisocial, too, and I think it’s because I’m overwhelmed with my own stuff and while I completely appreciate that my friends come to me with their problems, I’m not doing a great job with handling them lately. So I do the best that I can and hope that they understand that I’m not trying to be a cold-hearted kind of person, but instead that I need to focus on straightening my life out first.

I’ve made a list of things that I need to do for immigration. The scary thing is that the list fits on one Post-It. I write big, too, so this means that it’s coming right down to the wire. I’ll be mailing it out hopefully by the end of the week. Scary? Yes. Terrifying. But I’m so ready for it all to be over already so I can move on with my life. The packet of information is already crazy thick, so I can’t wait to see just how thick it is when it’s done. Not to mention I’ll be waiting with my fingers crossed until the day that I get that envelope with the approval in it. Enough about that, though. I’ve already had my one allotted panic attack for the day regarding that!

I’ve spent the past three days at the beach. Not today, but the three days before that. Lots of sun, a bit of a burn, and lots of exercise. Swimming makes me happy. I prefer the ocean over lakes and to be honest, I prefer pools and wave pools over lakes too, but swimming is swimming and I’ll take it wherever I can get it! My shoulders and neck are a bit sore where they were burned but I have no regrets. I haven’t been out in the sun so much in over three years, so I’m well past due.

Last night Matt and I went with Jane and her boyfriend Rob to the casino for a thing with Matt’s coworkers. Jane and Rob are really close friends with Matt’s boss (they’re the reason he found out about the job!) so it was nice having them there. Another of Matt’s coworkers and his band were playing while we were there, and they were awesome! Absolutely fantastic band. It was nice to get out, have a night out, have some drinks and good music and just laugh. It felt so carefree. We gambled a tiny bit - when I say a tiny bit I mean that we used $10 in the slot machines and that was it. It was fun but we knew we didn’t want to spend too much. After the casino we decided that we really wanted some food (mind you, at this point I’d had a couple Smirnoff Ices and a Cosmopolitan, so I was along for the ride no matter where we were going!) so we stopped at a little pizza shop and got some take-out. Jane and I sat on the curb with our feet in the street and tried to figure out where everything was in relation to where we were standing (She definitely knew much more than I did about that!) while we waited for the food, and some crazy guy with no shoes came up asking for a light. After that, I managed to trip in a small hole in the sidewalk and skin my knee. Oh, the things you do when you’re a bit drunk. It was overall a great night though, honestly. I’d do it again in a heartbeat!

I’m debating whether to upload this short video that I have to youtube or not. It’s a guy at the casino that had obviously had a few drinks, and was apparently dancing with his daughter. Unfortunately he stopped shortly after I got the camera out, but I got some good footage! If I do upload it, you can bet I’ll be posting it here. It was one of the highlights of the night!

Check that number out. That, my friends, is the number of steps I took today. TODAY. One day. 13,853. According to my pedometer, that’s about 3.3 miles, and 300-something calories burned. Yay! Matt dropped me off outside the US Consulate on his way to work (I had to pick up my passport, so he dropped me off) at about 8:30. Then I got my passport and started to head toward the bus terminal and a thought occurred to me. “Wait, why am I going home already? It’s 9:00 in the morning and I’m downtown, I know how to get home, it’s a day when there will be people around, and I have money to call Matt if I have a problem. Screw going home, I’m exploring!” With that thought, my day really began. I visited all sorts of places, walked uphill and downhill, wore my poor little feet out for four hours, and then hopped on a bus to get home. I got some incredible photos, which I’ll be editing and uploading to my 6/19/08 Flickr set for people to see.

As sore as I am, and I do mean sore, I’m so proud of myself. My aching hips, calves, knees, feet, ankles… they’re all proof that I did something good today. 13,853 steps.

I have five days until my 23rd birthday. Weird, I know, that I’m counting down the way I am, like a kid waiting for their tenth birthday. But it’s one thing I get to count down to, even if it is insignificant and just another day to everyone else in the world! Matt works all day that day, so I’m hoping to find something else to do. I could do ZA with my team but I feel like my birthday should be something special. Jane’s told me that we’ll do something and she’s not quite sure what yet, so I’m waiting to see. It should be interesting, at least!

Walked to the gym today and did a Body Attack. Decided to forgo the weights and the Body Flow today because I wasn’t feeling very well - it’s good that I went at all! Matt came and picked me up from the gym because I bought a bunch of groceries to last us for the week or longer and was in no shape to walk home with them. We had a lovely dinner of lasagna (frozen, obviously) and garlic bread. Yum!

Found out some good news yesterday that started out sounding like bad news. My Grandma called me and sounded awful - she had no voice and sounded very tearful. She said “Hi Ang, it’s Grandma” and the first words out of my mouth weren’t “hello” but instead “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” because she had me so worried. She told me she just had a bad cold, which is much better news than the bad news I thought it was going to be. Anyway, she went on to tell me that she and my Grandpa might be coming up to visit me in a couple weeks and she wanted to know of the best route to get here and what are some hotels near my apartment. I’m so excited, because this will be the first visit I’ve had from anyone since I’ve lived here! It’ll be nice to show someone around on what’s now “my turf” or something.

I was hoping a bit that the next time I saw my family, that I’d be thinner than I am, but it’s okay. I’m honestly getting more comfortable with myself as I work out more. It’s about quality of life, not the amount of weight on my body, I think. I’m discovering that I’m looking better than when I started at the gym, amazingly. I looked at myself in the mirror at the gym today and thought “Wow, I don’t look as bad as I used to!” Though I think they may have magically-flattering mirrors or something. Who knows! Anyway, I’m doing more than I ever thought I could. Now, on a normal day, I can walk to the gym, work out, and walk home. I’m lifting crazy amounts of weights when I do my weight circuit. I walk up and down stairs without wanting to pass out. It’s exciting!

I have been trying to figure out a version of a song that they use in my Body Attack class, and I can’t find it anywhere! It seems to be a cover of Wham!’s “Freedom” but it’s a female singing it and it’s much more upbeat and modern. It’s driving me bananas!