imovie

my laptop is basically a very expensive facebook machine.
recently i have wanted to start fiddling around with it and learn more about what it can do.
after watching countless travel documentary series, i knew i wanted to incorporate video into my next trip somehow.
so while looking through my pictures from christmas break, i noticed that there were some video clips. some accidentally, some real ones. so with my first attempt at imovie (an application on mac computer's that enables you to edit film) i was able to mash up what little video clips i had. so this is my first go at it.
hopefully more to come!

book of the week

so this weeks, actually this months book has been 'the long way round' by ewan mcgregor and charley boorman. charley and ewan write the book so that you follow them from planning process, to the road, on  trip of their dreams.
before i started reading it i knew it had been made into a documentary series. and last night i found it on youtube and i haven't been able to stop watching. i want to do something like that! i want a room of my own, walls lined with maps of countries i've dreamed of exploring. so i guess i just need a producer and a network to back me. that's my only hurdle in this otherwise flawless plan...right?

polar bear dip CHECK!

on january first this year i checked off another item from my bucket list.
the polar dip!
i completed this one with my best friend margaret!
check out the video above and read the attached article below!

kings county advertiser article

clean up make up

ever since i was little, whenever it was time to clean my room (which usually came on a sunday, although it  needed to happen everyday) i would start out strong and quickly get distracted. i would sort piles. dirty clothes, rugby gear, archie comics and makeup. it was when the makeup pile started to grow in size that i experienced problems. it would start innocent enough, with a little root beer flavoured lip gloss. but then as soon as i found some eye liner or moms reject mango coloured lip stick it went steadily down hill. before i knew it i was sitting in the middle of piles of sorted junk covered in a horrible combo of colours.
i became reminded of this when tonight i accidentally drank three cups of coffee and then decided to tidy my bathroom. so now i am sitting alone in my bedroom, jacked up on caffeine thanks to an instant coffee scooping miscalculation, covered in so much eyeliner that i could give a racoon a run for its money. 

travel journals

i have started to copy all the entries from the journals i wrote while traveling onto my computer. in hopes that one day, when it is all copied i can get it printed. i really want to do this as a safety measure. my journals from that trip are one of my most prized possessions. they mean more to me than the pictures i took.
it's going to be a long process, so i usually just try to do an entry or two every night.
tonight i wrote out the entries that took me from ennis, ireland to the aran islands.
this was my favourite entry i came across tonight.

june 22 2010

inis mor, aran islands

7:05p.m.

i’ll give you a bigger update later, but for now, as i write these words i am sitting a top a stone wall at the highest point on inis mor. it’s a cold overcast evening, but it can’t help but still be beautiful. i love this island and it’s 800 inhabitants.

countdown

brooke is four. brooke is the youngest daughter in the family i work for. her birthday is on december 12th. she talks about it non-stop. she talks about what she wants. she talks about what she will wear. she talks about who is coming. about what food there will be. about how she will do her hair. loot bags, music, party hats, singing happy birthday, not sleeping the night before. every time she talks about her birthday all i hear is december 12th. the date, december 12th. december 12th equals nine sleeps. nine sleeps until i see my family.
every morning i see the orange juice in the fridge. best before december 19th, two sleeps away from utter bliss. the oldest girl has a synchro meet on december 10th, eleven sleeps till i'm home.
everything with a date on it is a taunting reminder of how long i have to wait until my christmas can start. how long i have to wait until i can wake up and smell my mom's christmas spice's mulling on the stove. until i am home with the christmas calendar hung in the hallway with the christmas mouse that moves over one square each morning. until i can cuddle with my dad on the couch when he gets home from work. until i can meet mom at work with my dog and walk home with her. until i get to belt out joy to the world with my dad at the end of christmas eve mass, not because we love hymns, but because joy to the world marks the last song of the mass. and to us signifies that we will soon be on our way home to nana and papa's where my aunts have made mounds of delicious food, that is waiting to be gobbled up and washed down with holiday themed martinis. until i get to walk down main street and know every other person i walk past. until i get to be surrounded by friends i've known since i was five, friends who are like family.
today is november 29th. twenty-two sleeps. 

back on track

i finished the colin angus book on monday and was able to pound back a refreshingly humourous handler book since then. so i am happy to report that i am back on track. and today i am starting to read we need to talk about kevin, winner of the orange prize for fiction in 2005 by lionel shriver.
last night i stumbled upon a mini-series that national geographic produced from the footage rob lilwall got from his cycling home from siberia adventure. i've only watched the first two parts, but it is so cool to have read the book and created images in my head for where he had been, and now to see them and him in on film is amazing!