Friday, July 27, 2007

I'm very Tired.

The sun takes a lot out of you....
after 8 hours, I'm slowly counting down the last 2 hours from now until i have to go back to the mill for another 8. The Friday day/graveyard double I do.... why? Because I can.

I had an idea on what to write about, but it's completely escaped my mind! This is unfortunate.

Well... I'll write some random fun facts.

Currently listening to : Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Currently Relying on: Spell check.

Currently running on: the last ounces of energy a coffee gave me a while ago.

My surroundings at the moment are a computer in front of me, an empty nalgine bottle (1L) to my right, also to my right, guitar (and boomerang haha woah! random, this just got fun) To my left? various books on the desk, few of which are mine.

What did I do today? Well, my Fathers Father and Mother showed up in the country today, So my house is now filled with a very British presence. After work I talked with my Granny, she saw a deer and then we went out for dinner. Those are the highlights. Whilst at dinner I was wondering if anything was going to happen that night (Plans with friends wise) Nothing did.

I just yawned, suggesting I should do something to try to relief myself of this sleep... issue.
Tiredness puts much to much on your mind... but takes away rational process of thought.
Strange unfortunate conclusions which then make for MORE food for thought the next day.
Yikes.

(I think the Quail from the other post was watching me today as I drove by... Quail Stalker)
I wouldn't mind a stalker.... wouldn't it be interesting? having someone So enfatuated by you that that want to know your every move? I guess... I wouldn't mind a stalker for a limited amount of time, once they started getting annoying I'd send them away. "shoo" I'd say.

Last night, I was explaining to Danny and Amanda that it's just as logical for people to, instead of shortening Jonathan to Jon, call me Nathan. joNathan. I don't think I'm a Nathan.
My parents were going to name me "Aiden"

There we go.

Todays Resolution? Think an idea through before trying to write a Blog.
(oh, but in the last post i had a little shout out that no one really caught... the "wheel of morality", Animaniacs? anyone? the end of every episode had the "Wheel of morality" to give the episodes random moral? no? thats okay.)

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Survival Tip.

Well, here it is, some much awaited advice on how to survive in the hot summer.

Don't run across the road in front of cars.

Let me explain.

I'm on my way home on a balmy July afternoon after completing a full day of work. Whilst driving up my road I am suddenly shocked to see a little brown ball of feathers dart out in front of my car, not even 1 foot away from my tires. I see feathers fly everywhere (literally... it was almost funny how many feathers there seemed to be), and then a little body in the rear view mirror crumpled in a ball in the middle of the road. My very first roadkill. (If my memory serves me correctly... which means, it could just be the first one in the past week...)

Nonetheless, I feel bad. I've always wondered when one of these suicidal birds we call "Quails" would do just this, make a dart in front of the car when there is no possible chance of survival. Usually they are SLIGHTLY smarted than starting to run a foot away from a moving vehicle, but I guess this one was just unlucky... or didn't have a very acute sense of logic, timing, or depth perception.
I back up the tank back so that the little...fat bird was now in front of me.. when all of a sudden this thing starts to kind of flail around!
"Oh no... I've broken it's neck or something" So I get out of the car and go to pick it up. I was wearing my work gloves, so I wasn't touching some bloody mangled corpse, actually even if I hadn't been wearing my gloves, there was no blood on the bird. It's neck seemed crooked though... kind of in the same way that you see a bird that has just hit a window. I pick this quail up and realise... it's still alive. I'm going to look after it.
So I got back in the car with the bird cradled in my hand, and I drive home. I then sit on my lawn with it while it slowly recoups, and watch it as it goes from "dazed.... to frightened... to calmer... to falling asleep?".
This attention I was giving this bird made my dog very jealous, as he would actually nuzzle his nose under my arm when i was petting the bird, to try to make me pay attention to him. He would shoot dirty looks at the quail before pawing at me to pay attention. aw.





Anyways, the Bird looked like it had eyelashes, so I decided I'm going to refer to her as a she. I named her Susan because that was the first name that came to my head (??) and when she finally seemed to have enough consciousness, i drove back down my road to where I had hit her, and put her back in the bushes on the side of the road from whence she came. She wasn't moving much... she just sat, but I'm sure thats becuase she was still terrified. By this time she was chirping and her chest looked like it was constantly vibrating becuase of her heartbeat. The only place she was obviously hurt was one of her toes which was slightly bleeding, that and lots of feathers still lose.


Spin the wheel of morality.

Today's moral is, don't run out in front of cars, especially on my road, becuase you might not be as lucky as Susan the Quail was.


The End.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Today

Today at work, it rained.

Alot.

And it was the best thing ever.

I liked today because I like the rain

I like the rain when it pours hard, and there is thunder.

Today was one of my favorite days of the past little while, because it was my job to be walking

through knee deep water on the road.

I "surfed" on floating logs down the road.

My Dogs name is Champ.

I wish It was more acceptable to write like a 4rth grader all the time.

But in all seriousness, this weather was awesome today. At one point (at the mill at least) there was hail, which was sweet. My jeans got completely soaked to the point that I felt like i had jumped in the lake, and thats not even mentioning my boots. As I'm typing this however, the sun is shining through the window, and is brighter than usual because of the shining on the wet leaves. grr.
Awesome, rain is the best. I want to sit somewhere and watch it, yes yes I know that sounds lame, but I don't want to do it alone pfft, so it's not THAT bad. One of these days I'll be able to enjoy the monsoon without having to work in it. I'll have company and hopefully be dry, although once completely wet? you don't care anymore.

haha, imagine that, ridonkulous.

Friday, July 13, 2007

List

I'm a big fan of my job for 2.5 reasons
- It's fun, it's doing something and I feel like I've worked afterwards.
- When you have something on your mind, you can think about it, you just get into a zone, a rhythm, and just... think about it over.. and over
-(.5) at the same time, when you have something on your mind that you DON"T want to be thinking about, you can just start to work hard and completely preoccupy your mind.

I want to see the Transformers movie again

At the same time that I like my job...
I like having days off, Because I play ALOT of guitar during that time. I realized this the other day, because when I came back from Aus. I had a week of no work, (week and a half?). Everyday, guitar guitar guitar until the evening when I would maybe meet up with Danny.

Coming back from the travels this time, it was only 3-4 days before I went back to work, but it was the same deal, hours of guitar. Which I enjoyed.

Oops, I lost the "list" format I was going for.

But then again, I've also forgotten what it was I was going to write about in the first place, the guitar thing came because I started listening to some songs I have learned to play.

I've finally found something that can take my music focus away from Joshua Radin, the new Iron and Wine song. Here "Boy with a coin"
Such a good song, I've been listening to that
Also, the odd Evermore since I finally got ahold of it.

After work this morning I went to the docks and jumped in to clean myself off, met this interesting guy.

Graveyard shifts + Jetlag make for strange emotions and thought process's

I think God speaks to me most when I'm at work... I think thats when I Speak to him most as well.

This list has more work related topics than anything else...

*Survival question - Lets say you were stuck in the desert, and you had a water bottle. Now, I'm assuming most people would wait till they absolutely had to before drinking that water as to stay alive longer. Now... what is the wiser thing to do? Drink the water all at once? to completely rehydrate, OR would it be wiser to slowly drink the water, maybe over a few days, so that your constantly dehydrated... but "hydrating" longer and more often.
Don't ask why

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

No real topic, just musing.

All I really listen to is Joshua Radin now haha I took a decisive break from Brooke. I need to break this JR habit though... BUT at least I have his songs memorized, which makes it easier to remember on guitar.
My favorite song by him is called Winter... and it's making me really really look forward to wintertime. The song actually has nothing to do with winter... in the slightest really, BUT it is called "winter", and as a result makes me look forward to winter every time I see it. Cold weather is the best, and snow is even better. I entirely missed last winter, no snow whatsoever, so this one will be welcomed.
(And I recognize that for the Alberta readers of this blog of mine that your winter is not looked upon quite as fondly.. but bear with me Amanda)

Not to say that summer isn't nice, it was commented to me just yesterday by a friend how nice it is that 9:00 or 10:00pm can roll around, and it'll still be light outside, which is nice, I've gained a really large fondness to spending time outside. It's all been in my slow venture to rid myself of what I see as a slow cancer, this being MSN and Facebook. And I've actually really enjoyed it, it's had me playing more guitar, spending more time with friends, and making an effort to be active aside from sitting listening to music in front of a fluorescent screen.

This being said.... if you read this little online semi journal of mine, then please get ahold of me, because I want to spend time with you.

For serious.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Holy Cow!

Something that I find really funny about Nepal is that becuase of the strong hindu influence, Cows are revered so much to the point that they can stop traffic. We'll be speeding along in one of these insane taxi's, and then have to slow down all of a sudden to take a wide turn around a Cow that decides to take a nap in the middle of the road. (I also like seeing monkeys just walking around down sidewalks, doing all sorts of buisness.. ha)

A story:

So, two days ago we met up with this friend of ours who took us out of the Kathmandu city into the hills to a small village out there. In this landcruiser of his we took a very very bumpy ride up into the hills on these small one car roads that due to the heavy rain that had started were muddy and awesome. The rain took a well timed break just as we reached the bottom of this hill that we then walked up, on the way we saw this church that he was building and heard some awesome stories about the changes happening in the village. On our way down, it started to rain again, and some of the members in our fellowship had a revelation... rain brings out leeches.
There was quite a few funny moments as the girls in our group panicked becuase of leeches crawling up their shoes, and one incident on the leg, eventually (most of us) were calm with the belief that there was no longer a leech threat.
myself included,
Now, I'm going to give a short history for anybody reading this who has not seen me really since I came back to Canada. I came back with some amazing shoes. At one point they were all brown Converse Allstars. They are the same shoes that I left to ywam with... except they no longer look like the same shoes, they are so ripped up and in pieces that some could technically refer to them as being "sandals". (Now for those of you who may know me even better than that... i don't frequently buy new clothes... so my socks? didn't look much better... they hardly have bottoms anymore the holes are so big. (Also... in Kathmandu there are many people on the streets who "fix and shine" shoes....you should see their faces when I walk by, my sister has seen some actually turn around and drop their jaws... I refer to my shoes as "dead" when i talk to them"

Back to the story
So, 30 min after the leech fiasco, we are just arriving on the outer rim road of Kathmandu, when all of a sudden.... I can feel something. In my shoes. No... In my socks. Crawling? no Slithering in between my toes.
"I think there's something in my shoe"
"WHAT? Jon thats not funny"
"hahah no seriously"
I then proceed to take off my shoe... to see that the tip of my sock is darkened with blood, I then start to take off my sock, but it is unecessary to completly remove the sock becuase what should drop out of the gaping hole? But this leech, already fat on my blood. It had crawled through the gateways that were my socks and shoes.
I'm loving it, laughing away becuase I thought it made a good story, however it started an entirely new panic between the girls about leeches, and it turns out there was actually another one on one of our members backs that had stuck on. fun fun.

We then drove to the "transition home" and hung out with the people there, which was awesome. Last night was actually our goodbye with all the kids from the homes, as today we start our journey home (there are overnight layoversk, and we are going through Cambodia on our way back, so we're staying there a day etc.) But it was really sad to say goodbye. Even though it was such a short time, we really got connected with these guys, there was Lots of guitar on my part on the roof of the home with the boys, haha I taught them Saosin and how "metal music" in North america is played (drop D heh). They loved it, and especially liked "Out of the mud" by Stutterfly hahah. There was also sing alongs for well known songs like "American Pie" and old faithful, "knocking on heavens door". To be honest, I think it was one of the (if not THE) first times I've ever sung and played Guitar (together) in front of people, (usually I'm too self concious) which was cool becuase they were all into it. One of them then showed me a song that he and his friends wrote, which was awesome, All in Nepali, really cool.

There was another funny story... when it happened I thought to myself "write this in the blog", but now I can't remember it.

But thats life. Quite a few days back we went to the zoo with the youngest kids, which was really cool, They all refer to me as "Jon Uncle", which is really cute. The zoo was small, but still was really cool, the first zoo I'd ever been to. The kids love monkeys, but arn't so fascinated by the tiger they had. Suprising.

BUT! I have to run now, catch a flight. Thank you for reading! It really does make my day when I hear that someone has been.