I'm pretty much the worst blogger ever. I just don't seem to be able to write about the daily stuff on a regular basis. I'm shocked and appalled whenever I realize how rarely I do actually write. My excuse du jour is that I'm crazy busy trying to get everything together to open my own clinic. Once I'm done with that, I'm sure I'll come up with something else.

I just got back from a fabulous trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I visited my friend Jessica and her fiancé Rob. It was a great trip and I was able to see a part of the country that I have never been to before. Well, considering I've never been East of Winnipeg, Manitoba, (which I considered Eastern Canada) it's not saying much. The day I flew over was incredibly clear so I got to have a good look at the country and the varied landscape from the air. The grandeur of the Rockies, the little boxes of the prairies, the rugged rockiness of the Canadian Shield and the Great Lakes. They're some damn big lakes. I mean, I knew they were big but they're BIG. By the time the plane hit Toronto it was getting dark so I didn't get to see the rest of the country but I sure enjoyed the first half - or 3/4 or whatever.

There are a lot of Tim Hortons in Halifax. I couldn't leave without having a doughnut and while I was there I got to hear my first person order a double-double. Tee hee. In the West, we put our own sugar and cream in our coffee. I love doughnuts but I had to scrape the chocolate frosting off chocolate dip because it was so absurdly sweet.

We had a great time wandering around the city. It's a lovely place. We saw the Queen Mary II cruise ship outside their living room window for a day (HUGE!). We wandered their seawall, saw very fat pigeons eating fries, went to the Citadel, saw relics from the Titanic and the Halifax explosion in the maritime museum, strolled through a gorgeous cemetary with gravestones from 1775, saw the Pastor's silhouette in St. Paul's church window, drank beer, drank more beer, enjoyed "Barret's Privateers" performed live (see previous mention of beer), drove to Peggy's cove and saw no waves, drove to Mahone Bay and hung out with Annelise's dad for the day and made silver rings with him in his workshop, and finally drank too much blueberry ale the night before returning to BC on an early morning flight. There was plenty more stuff but that's enough for now.

So, big thanks to Jess and Rob for being great hosts and tour guides. Hooray! But if I never hear another train making steam noises, it will be too soon.

We went camping this past weekend to Uceulet (West coast Vancouver Island) with 2 other couples and all their kids. It was super-fun. I was a little nervous about the group camp thing because I'd never done it before but it worked really well. The largest problem with the whole thing was that I drank too much wine on Saturday night and didn't want to hydrate properly before bed because I didn't want to have to get up to pee in the middle of the night. Especially since there had been an ursine visitor (i.e. black bear) to the camp earlier in the day.

On the Saturday our fabulous host Paul - camp at Surf Junction if you're in the Tofino/Uceulet area! - took us surfing. It was awesome! Totally! Dude! We wore full wetsuits with gloves and booties and I was completely warm. I completely sucked at surfing and drank a fair bit of sea water (as well as the stuff that went up my nose) but I haven't had that much fun in the water since, well, ever. I am totally pumped about trying it again. The advantage of the water at Long beach being so cold in the summer is that it stays the same all year so we could go back and surf some other time over the winter. Yay! Surfing without risk of shark attack. If it wasn't for the necessary ferry ride to get there, I think I'd be heading over once a month or so. Thanks to the ferry ride, maybe twice a year.

The fact that medical helicopters aren't able to land due to armed groups on landing pads and nursing home buses are being held-up at gunpoint is one of the strongest arguments for gun control in the US I've ever heard. I'm not saying there wouldn't be thugs in this kind of emergency in Canada but it certainly wouldn't be this out-of-hand because the majority of us aren't armed.

We had a great time at Jeff and Tea's wedding on Saturday in Chilliwack. The weather was great. The food was great. The company was great. The karaoke was great - well, the neighbours didn't think so and they sent the cops to shut us down at 7:30pm. LAME! I can see that they might not want to be listening to Pantera and Slayer all afternoon sung karaoke style, but come on! It was a freaking wedding, folks. Plus, my "Goodbye, Earl" is always a highlight. Okay, maybe a lowlight, but I like singing it.

You may notice the RCMP officers in the background when Theo and Jeff are singing. Apparently it takes 4 officers to shut down a heavy metal karaoke wedding.

If you'd like to see photos from our Australia trip without any pesky explanations about where we are and what you're looking at, there's a gallery up here http://www.vertigogirl.com/australia_gallery/. I'm still hoping to do a more detailed gallery with explanations but it takes a long time. So, don't lose hope, but don't hold your breath either.

I spent Saturday up in the attic replacing more insulation. Now we just have to get some of those pull-down attic stairs to make access a lot easier. Insulation is gross stuff. Even with a respirator, I was coughing up some scary stuff later. Plus, my butt bones got all bruised from sitting on plywood all day - it's too low to stand up there. I would have thought I had plenty of my own padding, but I guess not.