Matt planned a surprise for me a few days ago. He gave me three clues as to what it was, and none of them gave it away. He got me into the car, told me to bring sandals (instead of heels) and the camera, and off we went. The surprise? He took me to the ocean! I love living on the ocean. We’ve been to Peggy’s Cove a few times, but I do like going a place with a beach from time to time to just soak it all in. Here’s a few shots from our trip to Lawrencetown Beach, and there are a few more in the flickr set.

One of my twitter friends linked to her photo time capsule, and I was intrigued. I signed up for my own, and it’s incredible! Photos from a year ago, sent directly to your email, with a message (if you want) from the year before!

It’s so funny that it’s been a year since I took my favourite photo of Mew Mew. The year goes quickly, hey?

Go sign up for your own! Then, share them with me! Have you improved in your photography? Have you went through any major life changes? Find out!

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!

I really really failed. After so many days of doing 365 shots, I forgot yesterday. But I have a reason, and wonder if I can’t just pick up from today and keep going since technically this year has an extra day anyway. What do you think? I think I’ll do it, why not, right? Ugh. Still makes me feel like a bit of a failure though. On to the reason…

I intended to take the shot after I had my blood work done - a photo of my little band-aid on my arm saying that I finally had my immigration medical and there weren’t many steps left for me to do. Except I didn’t have all of it. As it turns out, the physical is done one place, and the place where they’re going to do the other tests (blood test, urine test, chest x-ray) is the hospital, and they’re only open from 8:30 - 2. Matt’s going to have to take a morning off to take me in for those. I suppose he could take me in early in the morning, have some lunch with me if it takes too long, and then drop me off at the bus station and go over the bridge to work. I just feel bad that I have to inconvenience him for it. There’s no way I’m going alone, though. No way at all.

The physical went well, though. It was good to have a doctor NOT mention my weight. Usually they do, and say “Oh, well you know you’re obese” and give you a hard time while you try to tell them that you have tried to lose weight and that it’s just going slower than you’d like. Not this guy, he didn’t say a thing! He was really friendly and we were cracking jokes back and forth. Like when he listened to my heart, he said “Sounds good!” and I looked at Matt and said “Hey, I have a heart!” The doctor responded with “Oh, and here I’d thought you’d given it to this young man!” Cracked me up, I tell you.

Oh, and I fasted yesterday, because I thought I had to, and nope. Even if the blood test had to be done, it’s a non-fasting blood test. They’re apparently testing for TB and… er… something else that I can’t think of. Oh, well. I know I don’t have any infectious diseases and since they don’t care about things that aren’t going to put the Canadian public at risk, I’m good to go. Plus he said he’d get ahold of me if anything was seriously wrong. It’s very weird that they don’t send the results TO me, though. They courier them over to the physical doctor guy, and he couriers them over to immigration in Ottawa,

I’m very hungry right now, so I think I’m going to have some toast and if I can find the stuff, maybe a cup of tea. Watching shows where they drink a lot of tea has gotten to me! Maybe some orange juice instead though, who knows. And I might boil an egg - a boiled egg sounds good! I’m craving such weird things lately. And no, before you wonder, I’m not pregnant. Though just about everyone else is!

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.