the leckblog

Re: this space

2007-05-07T18:51:00.000-07:00

it's spring cleaning time. might keep this space, might find a new one. i'll let you know.

kenny vs spenny

2007-04-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

The best show ever.

forgot

2007-03-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, I forgot, I have a blog that needs my attention...

Um...

Caitlin and I got back together, FOR GOOD THIS TIME, and last weekend we got another hotel room and fucked up the neighbourhood by throwing ice cubes at kids and swimming drunk with little chinese boys. She still has crazy ADD and sometimes screams for no reason but it keeps things interesting. We went shopping and I ended up spending $300 on new running shoes with jaw-dropping new iPod technologies (probably made by some jaw-dropping starving children) and I spent a bit on new underwear for Caitlin. She got a pair that is extra-small and they don't cover her ass (nothing to do with ass size, just underwear size), but they're a really nice colour. Here for pictures.

Yeah, and I'm addicted to Facebook but don't add me cause I want to keep blog friends away from real friends, okay?

suffer

2007-03-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

it's nice to pretend.
sometimes we pretend to be different people and sometimes we pretend to be okay when we're not.
we can pretend so well that other people don't even know we're pretending too.
but the thing with pretending is we know we're just pretending.
and when we pretend, we're being something that we're not.
so we can only pretend for so long.

yeah, so?

2007-03-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is only 44 days away. I'm really excited for the entire experience. The drive, the camping, and of course the actual fesitval itself. There's something like a 100 bands playing- some of which have been my among my favorites for years. I know that this will be one of those things I'll remember for the rest of my life.

Really trying to buy a VW Westfalia before the festival too. As it stands now, there's four of us driving down in one little car. The drive is something like 2000 miles down the westcoast of North America (Victoria to Southern California) and it'd suck to be really cramped. The van would be cool to camp in this summer too.

Another thing that's going on is I've started to look for a place in Victoria to live. Right now I'm living with my mom and it's starting to piss me off again. I figure since I can afford to get a place by myself (with no room mates), I may as well 'cause this town is bullshit. There's no night life, no 'trendy' places to hang out, no bars, and I have to live with my past here. The target was April 1st but all the places available were shit so I've bumped it to May 1st. I'll stick to that and get a nice fresh start to the summer this year.

you'll be given...

2007-03-12T20:18:00.000-07:00

An old bicycle near the place by the water.
A reliable tent, backpack, friends, and dusty twigs.
Flooded campsites on remote islands.
The sand, the forest.

Or, hardwood floors.
A living room with cedar pillars.
Casual drinks, drawings, and fancy robotics.
A breath of fresh air.
With neighbours, and never room mates.

So sick of this town. So tired of the people.
Day in day out day in day out
With spring comes the anticipation-
For meaning, for something new.
And like every year, the search is on.

Click.

we were getting high

2007-03-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

Sticky brick walls, hardwood floors, and a curtain.
"Five-seventy-five." Five times five. A glass with ice.
A charge I'm happy to pay.
To say it's over.

300

2007-03-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

I went to see 300 last night. It was 2 amazing hours of gory spartan violence, blood, spears, and giant rhinos- pretty much everything I wanted. When people tell you that the entire movie is just one large battle scene, they're not lying. It's basically about 300 spartans that take on this massive army of persians. I highly recommend it to everyone.

This trailer says it all...

today i...

2007-03-06T20:25:00.000-08:00

...put on a presentation and facilitated an interactive exercise for a crowd of over a hundred of my fellow managers and bosses of my bosses bosses boss, later to be congratulated by my peers and executives for a job well done.

Almost didn't go to work today in anticipation of this. I went anyway though, and I'm glad I did. This may have been the first time in my life that I was actually proud of myself.

Challenges suck until they're over. You can quote that.

Peace.

t dot

2007-03-04T13:05:00.000-08:00

Toronto was a lot of fun. Got to meet tons of new people, made some new friends, and saw some new things. The massive freak winter storm was sort of fun cause it shut down parts of the city and everyone was freaking out about it. The CN tower froze and then it was dropping ice down on people and cars below, smashing everything up. It was cool to watch on TV.

Went to a sushi bar one night and tried almost every type they had. Ate this squid, baby octopus, and snails. Some other stuff too but I don't know what it was.

Saturday was nice cause I just walked around Toronto by myself and took pictures. Went up the CN Tower, gave some bums some change, and bought a new tripod and camera case for my camera. The guy at Blacks Photography was really nice and gave me a sweet deal... and when I was paying he said that one of my $20's was counterfeit but he didn't care and took it anyways.

Customer service at its best.

Speaking of customer service, the plane ride home with Air Canada was cool too. They have these new "on-demand entertainment centres" built into the seat in front of you. They're touch screen and give you access to tons of new movies (play and stop when you want), TV channels, a library of albums, and XM radio. There's something about knowing that a satellite is beaming music down to you while you're flying across Canada that feels so good. Really, a 100 years ago planes were made out of sticks and paper... Now we have satellites orbiting the Earth sending music down to our planes just so we can have a better customer experience. I'm all for it.

So the trip was a lot of fun. I like Toronto more than Vancouver and would consider moving there if there was a reason to do so.

Later.

housekeeping

2007-02-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

Caitlin and I broke up so instead of being an ass by posting retarded shit to make her jealous, I think I'll shut this place down for awhile until the dust clears.

For anyone that cares, I'll keep an eye on the comments. Also, I'll be in Toronto February 28th - March 3rd doing absolutely nothing so if you're not a creep and want to party, let's get 'er done.

Later.

don't know why

2007-02-18T10:13:00.000-08:00

i miss those days
i miss those times
i miss the twists
i miss the sun
the splash
the stumble.
a realization
another picture
yet to be developed
sits in limbo.

digital slr

2007-02-17T14:10:00.000-08:00

So yesterday was great because my new Sony digital SLR camera was delivered by Purolator. I spent most of the day reading the manuals, playing around with it, and taking "practice shots." Caitlin got me this Lonely Planet book called Travel Photography - a Guide to Taking Better Pictures for Valentine's Day, so I've been reading that to further experience. One of the things that the author wrote was that "camera's don't take good pictures, people do," and I can see how that's true- You can own the best camera in the world but if you don't know shit about taking pictures, it's worthless.

I based my reasoning for this purchase on two criteria:
- the anticipation and ultimate goal of becoming a successful photo-journalist; and,
- my desire to develop a real hobby and talent.

Therefore, my mission is to "know shit about taking pictures" so I can give worth to my purchase and fufill my expectations.

On Flickr, I've created a seperate set called DSLR where any pictures taken on the new camera will be housed. As of yet, there are none.

coachella

2007-02-14T21:37:00.000-08:00

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival...
very, very excited.

broken entered

2007-02-11T13:08:00.000-08:00

So at 21 I've now just started to think about some type of post-secondary education. Of course, I missed the fall start dates on a lot of programs but at least now the thought process is there. By the looks of it, post-secondary seems okay- I don't really understand degrees and how you get one in a certain area so maybe an information night or councilor would be helpful. Then there's this thing called an associates degree, which looks good, but sounds like it's not a full degree? An associates degree in english or history looks like a nice start, or maybe applied communications which includes photography, and video.

It's confusing, and I'm sure I'm sounding as smart as Ricky from Trailer Park Boys.

toronto

2007-02-05T20:13:00.000-08:00

Giddy up, I'll be in the T dot O dot for 4 days at the end of the month. The only place I've ever gone to for work has been Vancouver. Somewhere else, i.e. Toronto, is really exciting for someone like me. Plus, I've never been there and it's a free trip. Chances are I won't do anything at all but maybe I'll try to get out of my hotel room this time.

camera

2007-02-03T13:26:00.000-08:00

...I want it.

I wake up with headaches all the time. They're more like migraines but either way it's becoming a real problem. It's because my body is addicted to caffine and when it goes a long period without any, it hurts my brain. But how the fuck am I suppose to drink coffee in my sleep!?

massive attack

2007-01-30T19:26:00.000-08:00

Went to Vancouver again on the weekend. This time it was with Caitlin so it didn't feel like work and was a lot of fun. Bought shit at IKEA, checked out Science World, did some shopping at MetroTown- got a sweater that I've been looking for since pre-Christmas (only 65% cheaper). The hotel room was huge and we drank a bunch of 50% vodka and hit up the rooftop pool/hot tub a couple times.

Mo' money mo' problems.

The main thing I want to buy right now is a VW Westfalia Van. It was a mistake for me to sell my last van but I've learnt and I'm on to new and better things such as the VW. One of the guys I work with knows tons about them and highly recommends any year of Westfalia. Much like my plans for the last van I owned, I want to buy a Westfalia sooner than later, spend the spring fixing it up/adding larger tires to it/pimping it out, and have it all ready for the summer when it can be used for weekly camping trips.

Sometimes I want to just say fuck it and live in a van with my girlfriend. Drive across the country, drive down to South America, swim in some awesome lakes, dive off some sweet cliffs, drink a lot of good beer, make new friends, not worry, not stress, not anything.

2007-01-26T07:58:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a dream that Caitlin met a guy that she knows from the internet and they made this scrap book with pictures of me and comments like 'g-unnnnit fag' and I showed up and found it and the guy kicked my ass then killed her in front of me. It was one of those dreams that happen right before you wake up so even after you wake up you're still thinking about it for hours. To make matters worse, I took the day off work and my big plan was to play final fantasy 12 and nothing else. Too bad my brother took the playstation to his crackhead friend's house in victoria so now I don't have anything to do except think about the shitty dream I had.

helijet

2007-01-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

Back in Vancouver until Thursday night. Cya.

drinking gold and hot johnny rooke

2007-01-22T18:26:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I was in Vancouver tied up in a hotel room at a conference on how to effectively manage risk in your organization. Actually, that's a lie, it wasn't Vancouver- it was more Richmond, which is a hole, which doesn't matter cause I only left my hotel room twice, hence the tied up part, and when I left all I did was look for food other than Chinese food. Didn't find any except for Wendy's one time and this other time I couldn't resist getting this amazing Chinese deal where they gave me 5 items plus tea for $3.99. I was shitting noodles the whole next day but it was worth it.

K then what?

Caitlin picked me up from the airport in Victoria and we couldn't decide what to do so we bought some Goldschlager which is my new favorite drink because it has REAL GOLD flakes in it. Rumour says that the gold cuts your insides so the alcohol gets into your blood stream faster. Faster blood stream intake = more wasted. Why didn't I think of this before!?

Yeah so we drank that with my little brothers and I ended up throwing some girl's shoes out of my window because I found them in my room and they sure as hell didn't belong there.

Next day we slept too much then woke up and watched a nature show about birds. It was really interesting and there was this asshole bird named Johnny Rooke that would attack the camera people and eat baby penguins. He was such a dick but Caitlin said she thought he was hot.

I guess girls really do go for the bad guys.
Bad birds though?

By absolute coincidence, PG saw the Johnny Rooke nature show too. And I did a Google search on Johnny Rooke and it turns out there's a song about him by a band called Elliot Brood...

Ambassador is rich with stories. References range from typical Americana (civil war heroes) to Canadian history (Louis Riel, the Ambassador Bridge) and Mark's own made-up tales. (The evil character "Johnny Rooke" is actually a bird.)

I really need to hear that.

sweet

2007-01-15T18:25:00.000-08:00

This guy fixed my blog/commenting features. He's a template wizard. Thanks.

Anyways, for anyone that actually cares, I haven't written shit on this blog for awhile cause I've been busy doing other things like seeing my gf and working a lot. I'm happy with this new template. It's suppose to be for wordpress so if you notice, the sidebar animates and stuff so play around with it. Don't judge me but I stole it from somewhere, by no means could I create such a beast.

So what's up with my life you might ask? The usual stuff. I got a nice $200 piece of luggage from The Bay for $90. That made me happy. I'm excited to pack it and use it on some of the trips I'm going on for work. Wednesday-Friday = Vancouver; next Wednesday/Thursday = Vancouver; February = Everywhere in BC; sometime in April = maybe Texas; sometime in August = San Diego.

I've been mixin' traxxxx on Virtual DJ- pretending I'm good.
Saw Beerfest with Caitlin the other night- probably the best movie ever.

Annnd... My back hurts so fucking much so I'm going to lye down.

Later.

help

2007-01-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

Don't know if I'm on Blogger Beta or normal Blogger but I can't get Haloscan to work. Their 'new Blogger auto-install wizard' suggests that the template should have a 'save template function' where I would just save the template, upload it to Haloscan, and I'm done. Except there isn't a 'save template function' or 'layouts' but it's using xml and tells me I'm on the new Blogger.

Anyone want to help?

leckblog@hotmail.com
or try to use the comments below.

Thanks.

Template and comments

2007-01-08T21:50:00.000-08:00

New template (again) and I'm trying to get haloscan back on this so hang tight.

2007-01-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

I don't know what to post about except I'll say that the weather is fucked and that my favorite book, The Beach, got wet and half ruined so in it's place I bought 3 others. They were:
- An Inconvenient Truth
- Thailand, A Lonely Planet's Guide
- Thailand's Islands and Beaches, A Lonely Planet's Guide