Well, just an ordinary Sunday night. Nothing at all gnawing at the back of my brain driving me crazy. Nothing at all really...... ALRIGHT! GOD DAMNIT!!
REX WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?
I am sitting here thinking 'who do I know that is that witty and funny?'
Despite the low grades, it seems fate has made you a Man of Mystery after all, Rex. It's gotta be Smokie. Smokie is witty and funny and makes me chuckle. Well I am just glad that there are actually people visiting my site.
Ones that I am not paying I mean.
Besides all this, it's been a good weekend. Riding ledge seems simple now after Nelson. Going out for coffee now with Derek and James whom I haven't seen in a year. I can't believe how time flies.
We saw Signs today. Great movie. Sorry for all you people out there who wanted an aliens invading earth movie. It's about faith. Very cool movie.
Not feeling especially brilliant tonight (after 2 glasses of wine) so I am going to stop now and finish tomorrow morning. Bye for now.
PS I think I may add our vacation photos tomorrow. Seeing as our camera is broken and we took none, they will be appearing in the sketches section. Just as soon as I sketch them.

Well our vacation is over and Derek and I have come to the decision that we are never going to camp again.
Camping sucks.
It isn't a vacation, it's hard work without showers or clean toilets. Its cleaning greasy blackened pans in a bucket of cold water. It's having your raw marinating steak bites leak blood all over your bread and cold cuts in the cooler. It's having to make constant ice runs to keep your food eddible. It's having your intestines grind to a standstill at the first whiff of the outhouse. It's stepping on a slug right outside your tent at three in the morning when you have to get up to pee at the outhouse a mile away through the forest when this is the third trip you have made to the bathroom in one night because your tent is beside a constantly tricking stream. Arrgh! It is like a brilliantly devised form of torture. Thank God for beer. And friends.
This Christmas we are having another vacation. We are going to stay home.
I can't wait.
We visited my Sis, bro-in-law and kids in Grand Forks.
That was fun except for the constant screaming and being forced to watch Fantasia 2000 over and over until our eyes bled. Or was that caused by darling 3 year old Henrys trick of head bashing you in the face that caused our eyeballs to hemorage. Tough to say. Ahhh you cannot know the joy it brings me to know that we are not having children. Listen!.....it's 9 in the morning and it's quiet. It was fun though.
We rode in Nelson. I love it there. I want to go back. Speaking of riding, I found this photo of me riding a jump on Little Mountain. I am getting huge air! I would say maybe 6 feet off the ground! This type of thing is normal for me. 6 feet is nothing!
What? Me use photoshop? Never! Okay okay, I may have added a foot or two.....or three. But you can imagine that I am that cool okay? Well, I gotta get back to workies. Last note; I am starting to feel super creative again. I can't wait to finish the last couple of work projects we have so I can start painting again. Later.

I envy people with the ability to retain volumes of information easily. In a world where our 'volumes of information' are growing at an exponential rate, this is a useful ability to have. Most of our schooling is tautological and completely ineffective for people like me. I forget things unless they are linked with an emotional or visual experience. Personally I can't wait for nanotech or whatever method they use to increase our learning capabilities. Plug in Matrix style….I know Kung Fu! But for now I am stuck with my sieve brain reading physics textbooks with a nosebleed. It's gotta happen and I think it's going to happen soon. Artificial evolution, structured evolution, designed evolution. Human ethics are a funny thing. They are totally unique to us. Due to advancements in medicine, tech and our wonderful human ethics we have almost brought human evolution through natural selection to a grinding halt. Our next step in evolution has to be designed. Technology. The new and improved human being. Now I don't mean to sound like I am down on human ethics. Human ethics are generally a very good thing. The things we're reading about science and tech right now are so exciting that it is tempting to just throw ethics out the window. Don't stop to ask if or why just show us what it can do! Our world is changing so fast. The way we think, what we believe, the way we perceive our universe. Ancient religions are changing, crumbling, Jews and Catholics are agreeing. It's a great time to be alive! I have rambled a lot here and I haven't made much sense but my point is basically this, I can't wait to learn Kung Fu in an hour.
Derek and I are going camping soon! Yay! This is why I haven't written in here much. Life always gets busier before vacation. So many things to do. Makes you appreciate the vacation more. So needless to say, next week there wont be any updates. But if I am good and journal on my vacation, and if I remember how to use a pen, there should be lots when I get back. Later.

Well Derek is giving me a hard time about neglecting my blog so I guess I need to update it. He actually said "Look you only have one photo of Emma from before she loved us."
Well that did it. I guess I need to add more pics. I have been busy this week trying to come up with a new routine for my days. Dogs are a lot of work!
We have actually had a really good week. Smokie and TK visited with Capone X and TK's bro' Matt. After 2 years of talking with them on ICQ it was awesome to finally meet them.
TK is WAY more talkative than I imagined, and Smokie is way less talkative than I imagined. But they are all really great guys. Funny thing about Smokie though is, whenever he does open his mouth, you have to be really sure you don't have a full bladder.
The thing I am very excited about though is that they
told me that if they find green twizzelators in the states, they will send me some. Oh could you just imagine....... Incase anyone reads this and doesn't know how I feel about green twizzelators,
you can read my haikus on my poetry page. I will put all the letters that I sent to Hershey up one day soon. I sent them letters because they took the lime green splendor off the shelves in BC.
2 long years ago. Tragic. I mean the heroine addicts who get off heroine have methodone clinics, but what do we have? nothing! Pizza and beer help. Oh yes....they help a lot...hang on...just got to get another slice.
Anyhow, check out the new cute Emma pics on my PHOTO PAGE. Okay, it's almost bedtime so I will have to finish of here. G'night.

Well we have had Emma for 2 days here now and she is really good. It's funny but now that we have her I am terrified at the idea of taking her into the trails.
I am worried about coyotes or a cougar getting her. But we got her for a trail dog so I have to get over it.
It's my over protective motherly instinct kicking in again!
You know what I hate? I hate it when you get an animal and you are a girl, people automatically assume that this means you will want to have children soon.

We found a puppy!! I am so excited! We have been pretty busy lately trying to puppy proof the house and I have been neglecting writing. Already I have a backlog of things I want to write about. We are bringing the puppy home tomorrow. I will write more then. It is amazing though, just the little bit of writing, just making myself jot down my thoughts once in a while, is making a diference. I am thinking more creatively again. It's not like I am saying anything brilliant, I think it's just the act of slowing down to think for a bit each day.

Damn, summer always passes too quickly, it's August already! I can't believe it. Well all this talk about having kids over the last few days has been for a reason. Derek and I have made a very important decision. We are going to take the plunge. We have decided to become parents.....to two cute little Jack Russell terriers!! I am so excited! WEEEEEE! Seeing as I am alergic to children and not having any, I have all this excess nurturing energy to pour out onto some helpless creature, and Derek is getting sick of me wrapping him in a blanket and burping him on my knee.

July 25, 2002

Hello everyone, welcome to my first Blog page.
The name Ex Animo means from the heart and I hope to always write that way.
I have been thinking a lot about writing lately. I used to write a lot more than I do now. I loved putting words together
in the same way that I love mixing oil paints together. I am so out of practice now that I feel like I am chewing dry oatmeal.
My plan with this blog and my other recent endeavors, is to unjam the river of my creativity. It feels strange writing a journal that i know friends and family will read.
It is hard to tell the truth when you don't know who's listening. Nor how they will perceive your version of it. That's why I called it Ex Animo.
To remind myself. So here is my warning to anyone out there who wishes to read more; you might not like what you find out about me in here, I may say things
that offend you, I may have differing opinions, I may write things that I sorely regret, I may say something stupid or foolish, so please read with an open mind, be willing to forget what you read, and if you can't, please click on the following link now.

escape

Wow how was that for a run on sentence?

Now as for the rest of you....

uh....duh...my boogers are green...

There, that covers sounding stupid and foolish, saying things I regret and saying something that may offend you so if you still have an open mind, you may continue on...

July 25, 2002...evening

Good night everyone who visited today.

I have now added, pictures, not a lot, just a few. My camera is broken so at the time being I can't add anymore.
Now it's sleepytime and I am off to bed. Big day riding tomorrow. Seymore!!!

July 27, 2002

Riding again today. Weather's great for it, it is a bit cloudy so it isn't too hot for an uphill climb.
But then, do we really care about the uphill climb? When we can shuttle and do downhill all day?
Last night we watched Total Recall again. I haven't seen that movie in about 10 years.
It made me think about a few interesting things about our society.
First of all, when this movie first came out, big 80's hair on Sharon Stone was cool and angular boxy cars were the way of the future. Ergonomics? what is that? Karim Rashid wasn't even in design school yet....etc etc. You get the point.
The special effects at the time were amazing and the action was fast and suspenseful. Watching it now, the effects seem cheezy, the tech is dated, and everyone seems to be reacting in slow motion.
Makes you realize that we will be laughing at the "futuristic" cars in Minority report 15 years from now. Matrix effects will seem cheezy. But I think the pre-cogs will still be cool.
It is interesting how action films move a lot faster now. But the most significant difference that stood out to me was the lack in surveilance technology. Movies in the 80's about the future lack the big brother element.
Most movies now have some sort of surveilance tech. The first that spring to mind of course are, Matrix, Gattica and Minority Report. I think we have all become a bit desensitized to the myriad forms of surveilance. Cameras with face recognition software,
Infrared cameras that allow cops to basically search your house without a warrant....or watch you having sex, software that monitors your activity, tracking devices in cel phones and in KFC chicken that remain in your body forever and you can never escape, well not really but almost.
It's interesting (and disturbing) how 1984 is not required reading in schools anymore. It's also interesting (and disturbing) to note the indifference in too many Americans toward the violations to their rights and freedoms. It is also interesting (and disturbing) to note that Japanese Pizza parlours feature pizza with black squid ink instead of tomato sauce and nothing....not a god damn thing, is done about it. Now that's just wrong.

Gotta go, my bike's calling me. Later.

July 27, 2002....later

I want to eventually have comments and forums in here. That way I can KNOW that nobody ever reads this page instead of just believing it.

July 27, 2002....later

correction to below.... the site is getting forums as we speak..ummm..as I speak...as you will be speaking...soon....whatever

July 29, 2002

As you may have read previously, Derek and I don't want to have kids. We are going to have robots and puppies instead.
Here is another reason to have robots instead of babies: an R2-D2 robot
that you can train to bring you beer. You couldn't do that with your kids without serious ethical hangups. Sure kids can recognize more than
40 phrases but as soon as it hits the teen years it wont recognize ANY from you, and my lovable robot will still be bringing me beer.
Snif.... I feel my motherly instinct stirring inside.

July 29, 2002....more on baby alternatives

To add to my comments earlier (below) about wanting robots and puppies instead of kids, here is another reason incase you needed one. human babies vs. puppies

July 29, 2002....late night addition

BOONDOCK SAINTS TWOOOOOOOO!!!! YAY!!!! read about it here. This is
one of the best movies of all time. If you haven't watched it go out right now and rent it.