There hasn’t been a lot go right for the Lions this year. In fact almost everything has gone wrong. It’s great to see them snap their losing streak but even in the best case, with nine games to go, I can’t imagine the Lions winning more than half of those games. In that unlikely event, the Lions could finish at 6-12; not exactly their worst season ever but hardly what was expected out of them. However because the CFL is so zany, six of eight teams make the playoffs, so 6-12 could conceivably be good enough to get into the post-season. I’m not holding my breath though. I’d settle for seeing at least a couple wins at home before the season is out.

So the last six weeks or so I’ve been going to the gym on a regular basis. If you’ve read this blog long enough, you’ll know I go through gym phases that start and stop, so whether this current workout behavior continues is still to be determined. I haven’t really seen any change in the shirt-off department, but I have been able to increase the weight I lift, so I guess some progress is being made. I’m not measuring my weight or limb circumference, because obsessive measuring only leads to disappointment when it plateaus (or simply remains flatlined, something that may very well be the case). The objective is really just to regain some lost muscle, restore some better posture, and feel better about myself. If I can hit even one of those it’ll be a success.

I’ve worked in front of a computer for the last six years doing interface design, and it’s started to settle in that I’ve got a limited amount of time left to keep doing that before I completely lose my mind. There’s a lot of aspects of my line of work that I enjoy, but cubicle and computer monitor life isn’t a way of life. At least I don’t feel that way much anymore.

I’m sure I’ve had a lot of hare-brained schemes over the years - I seem to remember at age 18 making ‘plans’ with my cousin to spend a year in Australia - but over the last few months I’ve tried to take stock of ‘careers’ and think of what else I’d want to do before it’s curtains on the whole computer-graphic-design racket. The two directions that stick in my mind the most are either running a food cart or becoming an arbourist. In the case of the former, I’d need to learn how to run a small business, and probably invest some of my own money to get something started, but the benefit would be being my own boss and being successful or a failure under my own power. In the case of the latter, I’d need to take some schooling and become certified but would get to work outdoors around trees and possibly land a civic union job. In both cases, it’s a completely different direction and isn’t something I can just start doing, because I don’t really know anything.

Whatever crazy dreams I have right now, I am becoming more sure that I’ll need to make a change of some sort in the next couple years. I can’t quite call it Freedom 35, but age 35 is probably a good target to set as a best-before date on the design job stuff. Or maybe, as the title says, I’m just having a crisis and should just get a mani-pedi and deal with it, girlfriend.

So after some phone-calling panic, we found a spot at nearby Old Orchard Park, which still offered some cool water to swim in (albeit the less-than-pristine but still-not-gonna-kill-you Burrard Inlet) and we didn’t lose any attendees along the way. It was fun to see Ian and Allana, our friends from PG along with their 10 month old son, along with our usual suspects. I also managed to get a friend from work and her hubby to join us, although I’m sure after seeing how we party (you know, that sitting around and blabbing about nothing important, while drinking water) I doubt I manage to fool them a second time into joining our Mundane Parade. After two-thirds of the group left at about 3pm, the rest of us headed to our apartment for a swim in the pool. Strange but true: mid afternoon on a hot day, our pool was totally empty.

Regardless, we had a great day. Overall this has been a pretty good summer. I’m still sporting a fantastic farmer’s tan, but I doubt that will ever change. Also, since it’s Monday, I’m including the greatest song ever recorded that involves the word Party.

When I joined Zip, I probably watched 7 or 8 movies a month. I’m pretty positive that when movies weren’t $13 per show I saw more in the theatre as well. On that note, remember when movies were $2.50 on Tuesdays? I remember seeing all kinds of crap in theatres back then: Demolition Man, Bordell of Blood, The Specialist … I’d rather eat a spoonful of broken glass than pay to see movies like that today. Theatres just aren’t impulse activities anymore. Anyway, I’m even not much of a movie downloader. For whatever reason the thought of sitting down for 90 to 120 minutes to watch a story just doesn’t grab me these days.

I hope I learn to like movie-watching again. Movies was one of the deciding factors in buying a widescreen HDTV, but the lack of movie interest has been one of the reasons I haven’t jumped on the Blu-Ray bandwagon. Well, I also don’t believe in the long-term life of Blu-Ray, but that’s another story. I rarely buy DVDs anymore either; I’ve probably added maybe one-tenth of my DVD collection in the last two years, and I haven’t been buying DVDs for much longer than the last six or seven years.

From Salt Spring we went on to Victoria for a night in the Royal Scot, a hotel I’d stayed in countless times with my mother and brother in summers during my childhood. Part of the stay included a sizable discount on a whale-watching tour, another west-coast thing we’d never done. We saw four adult killer whales off the Juan de Fuca islands, zipping around in the front seat of a zodiac. On the return trip to the harbour, our tour guide took the zodiac through some extremely choppy water for some bucked-outta-your-seat fun. After that it was a walk around downtown Victoria, with a stop at a new soda and sundae shop that’s totally awesome.

So now there’s less than two days left in our vacation week and I’m not sure what’s next. We’d planned to go to Dinotown in Chilliwack - formerly known as Flintstone Park, if you’re old enough to remember - and we may still do that despite not having anyone want to join us. Today I spent half the day scrubbing mildew and dirt off our patio. Not vacationy, is it? Well, it needed to be done, and I always like the end result of major cleaning. It’s satisfying to have a clean section of home, and equally satisfying when I get to pitch stuff in the trash.

So that’s our summer vacation (this part, anyway … not sure when our next big break will be). Didn’t end up going to Montreal after all, but I’m not complaining. In fact now I’m not sure where I want to end up some day: Ucluelet/Tofino or the Gulf Islands.