Annual checkup

Another year has passed and what have I done?

Well, if I remember correctly, about this time last year I was nearing the end of a relaxing summer of part time work and a tad bit overeager to go to university. Kathy and I made a couple of mainly uneventful forays up to the university in search of textbooks and the locations of all our classes.

Then the full brunt of the school year was upon us and we discovered that your first year of university kind of sucks, not only because you are new and don't really know anyone, but because social life on campus revolves around the pub, and you can't get into it. I watched with some surprise as many people who I thought wouldn't survive did, and more surprise as a couple people I knew would make it dropped out. The year was decent to me though. I managed to drag myself out the other end with a gpa of 3.35. Not as good as it should be, but okay.

I became friends with some really great people who subsiquently moved away to Japan, France and Malaysia, though I plan to keep in touch. I dropped practically all the extracurricular activities that I had previously engaged in, except for dance. I began to regret this after a while though, so I joined Oxfam. I intend to do more this coming year.

Near the end of 2004, we were evicted from the house I had lived in for nearly 14 years. Within days of leaving, the house was demolished. It ranks as the second worst Christmas I have ever had. Now I find myself living in a suburb that feels like it is lightyears away from where I had previously lived, physically and socially. It is an unrenovated basement suite, which lacks a proper kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. I can safely say that mentally I do not live here, and I never will, though I suppose it could always be worse.

Even after eight months, I am still living out of boxes. I could not even begin to guess at the locations of many of my posessions, so out of boredom I turned to gardening. At first the neighbours were happy that my front yard didn't look like crap anymore. Now they complain that it makes their yards look bad. I can't please everyone.

Aside from gardening, I spent way too much on a camera last month and I am glad to say that I am not tired of it yet. I must have taken nearly a million pictures since then. I also bought a laptop, and now I can safely say that I won't be buying anything else for a while.

No longer tethered by the popularity crap in the small pond that was my high school, I broadened my musical taste a lot. I discovered a strange Norwegian polka/gypsy/rock band called Kaizers Orchestra, which in turn led toward the discoveries of Skambankt, Cloroform, Zeromancer, and Seigmen, among others. I also discovered some homegrown talent that had previously eluded me: Death From Above 1979, Do Make Say Think, Les Sequelles and Matt Mays and El Torpedo. Then somehow or other, I gained a newfound appreciation for a lot of things I used to listen to.

Somehow or other I had managed to not row for almost an entire year. Withdrawal finally got the better of me a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't be happier about it. In June I had vowed to get myself down to coxswain weight by the end of the summer so I could row competitively again. So far I haven't made much progress, and the prospect of losing 18 lbs in the next three weeks is very unattractive to me. I'll do it by December.

After a rough and depressing start to the summer, I am gainfully employed full time, coaching a sport that I know little about. I don't mind the challenge, but I'm quickly becoming tired of it. I've begun to read all my textbooks for the next semester. I'm sure that in time I will be tired of school again too, but not yet.

Who knows what next year has in store.