jstpierre

Walking back down along the road of Knox Mountain the other day I ran into this.

The Police were at the top of the cliff and I kind of wondered what the heck they were doing (the road is closed this time of year). Apparently someone got on the road and tumbled over the edge.

It looks a bit like a City of Kelowna truck, so it may have been workers that couldn't stop on the *very* ice road... Or it could have been someone joy riding. Either way, I hope they're okay.

Earlier I blogged about stopping in front of a tree with Jer to take pictures one day when we were on a hike.

Today I hiked the same trail, Okanagan Mountain Park, and found the same tree. It's a little worse for wear since the Great Fires, but it still stands.

It looks even better if you view it larger. Didn't realize Blogger did that.

I went for a long walk today. It was very steep and sketchy with all the snow and ice. When in doubt, follow the deer tracks. They know the safest way. Just keep it in the back of your mind that deer hooves have better grip than your shoes.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

I'm finding it really difficult to get going these days. I did some work this morning, averted a crisis with the books, but after that... I can't seem to do anything. Karen has been home the last two days and when she's here I use her as motivation to get out of the house and go for a walk (as seen on my Flickr set). But today, when she's not here, I just don't know what to do with myself. And if I did, it would take me forever to get there.

Maybe I should think about setting a schedule for myself. Since becoming my own boss I haven't really had one. Sure, there are deadlines, and I have to go to work every day... But we sort of decide at what time and for how long. If you don't feel like working more than 3 hours, don't. That simple. Maybe it's catching up with me in the off season.

January has been black and white month. It wasn't quite the 1st when I decided that, but I haven't taken my camera out of BW mode since I made the decision.

This is probably a good time of year to do it. Everything around me is brown and dead, disgusting and unappealing, and it just feels right. Of course the beautiful white snow covers everything, but it's white also, so what's the point in the colour? Now that the snow is melting the slush has taken over, and that beautiful white snow has turned to brown mush. It's dreadful to look at.

I've been very disappointed with my pictures lately. I've voiced this to my cousin Jer... although I've tried to hold back a little. It seems my composure (yes, that's a new term I'm bringing to the world... composition and exposure) just isn't there. Or I'm just unhappy with it. Or maybe it does suck. I don't know.

Anyway, it should be interesting to switch back to colour after the month is over. It will be interesting to see if there's any difference in technique that I've grown in the month.

13 years ago (yesterday), Karen and I got married in our tiny apartment in New Westminster. The first years were pretty rocky, but we've seemed to settle in to a groove.

I love her with all my heart, and couldn't ask for a better person to spend my life with.

Happy Anniversary, honey.

Mantra for the day:



Quit being so damn lazy. You can call yourself a procrastinator all you want, but the simple fact remains that you're just too damn lazy. Get off your fat ass, loser.

For the umpteenth time I'm trying to quit smoking. I think it's disgusting, it will kill me, but I absolutely love it. It's my favourite thing in the entire world. What a conundrum!

The thing is... I kind of like life. Why would I continue to do something when every single cigarette makes me think about lung cancer? That's not smart.

So I continue on. I'm hoping this time it sticks. Last time it lasted 3 months and my brain convinced itself that all it needed was one. Just one, that's all... yeah, right.

I remember hiking in Okanagan Mountain Park with my cousin, Jeremy, a whole bunch of years ago. He had this camera... it must have been film. No, wait, it could have been digital, but I doubt it. Anyway, Jer and I went on a couple of hikes in the park. It's a beautiful walk if it's not oven-hot out.



On the way back from where we had decided to stop as the end point, Jer pulled out this camera, before people were camera crazy (on phones, small enough to be in your back pocket, etc), and started taking pictures of tree bark. I couldn't understand why he was doing that.






Of course I had to ask, and he said that the patterns were really cool. I took another look at the tree, and yeah, sure they were neat, but neat enough to take a half a dozen pictures of?



It's interesting to me that only years later I would come to appreciate what he was doing and why he found it interesting.

I remember the day that Shmuh first played Eruption for me. It was amazing. How could anyone move their fingers so fast and not have the sound just come out as noise? Both fingers flying so fast they were blurred. I was a completely ignorant as far as how a guitar was played, but to me, it was a work of magic.














I listen to old songs these days and they bring back memories like these. I would never remember them if it weren't for the songs. Why would I remember a barn(?) in Rosenort, MB? I remember under the bridge, I remember school, somewhat... It makes you wonder what wild and crazy things someone like Shmuh (Marsh) went on to do with all that magic he had in his hands.

In the tradition of uploading horrible pictures, the worst reserved of myself, here is what will too quickly become a classic.

Christmas has come and gone, and I am officially declaring it a success.

I really can't complain about the weather these days. Kelowna has finally caught up to the rest of the Southern Okanagan. The snow is gone, the clouds have finally taken flight, and I'm back to work.

Sure, it's cold in the mornings. Way below zero on most days, but by the afternoon I've had to shed most of my layers and every so often I wish I had shorts on instead of pants.

After doing some paper work yesterday (because it never ends) I was able to get out with the family for a walk around the bird sanctuary just down the street from the hospital. It must be too cold for the birds because there was a total lack of anything but ducks and gulls. More on Flickr and more coming as soon as the birds decide to return to the sanctuary (even the turtles were no where to be seen).

For Nikki and Jer... This could be painful (I haven't cleaned out my iPod in a while and tend to just add crap and compilations to see what they're like).



1. What does next year have in store for you? A: Join the Army (Live) (Suicidal Tendencies) That's not a good start.



2. What does your love life look like next year? A: Invisible Kid (Metallica) Apparently non-existant?



3. What do you say when life gets hard? A: Come As You Are (Nirvana) I guess that makes sense.



4. Song that reminds you of good times? A: Bulls on Parade (Rage Against the Machine) Most definitely! Living in Vancouver, hanging out with Mel, Andy, Jeff, Chris, and screaming these lyrics at the top of our lungs.



5. What do you think when you get up in the morning? A: Quart is in Session (NOFX) Is life like an impending judgement (Nothin' seems much fun anymore to me)?



6. What song will you dance to at your wedding? A: Jeff Wears Birkenstocks (NOFX) I have a lot of NOFX on here... I have a feeling we're not done.



7. Song that reminds you of your first kiss? A: Boring (Blink 182) It could be close. I was listening to Blink 182 shortly after Karen and I met.



8. Your favorite saying? A: Swallowed (Bush) Errrrrr...



9. Favorite place? A: Rape Me (Nirvana) That doesn't even make sense.



10. Most Missed Memory? A: Satan (Lodger) This is one album I never really listened to. It's pretty good, though. Think I'll give it another shot. Satan is my missed memory? Sure, why not?



11. What song describes your best friend? A: Pledge Your Allegiance (Suicidal Tendencies) Apparently I require a lot out of a best friend.



12. What song describes your ex? A: 3-Minute Rule (Beastie Boys) HAHA! I don't even know how to take that.



13. Where would you go on a first date? A: Adelleda (Alexis on Fire) Is that a real place?



14. Drug of choice? A: Rogues (Incubus) I disliked "Light Grenades" a whole bunch and need to take this off, but not until I'm done snorting my Rogues.



15. What song describes you? A: Screwdriver (The White Stripes) Philips or Robertson? I dunno.



16. What is the thing you like doing most? A: Freedom (Rage Against the Machine) Maybe that means 'nothing' - I truly enjoy that.



17. The song that best describes the president? A: Stay Together for the Kids (Blink 182) President or Prime Minister? Because if it's President then maybe this means everyone's trying not to lose their mind when they have to hear the stupidity that is their president.



18. Where will you be in 10 years? A: Reptile (Nine Inch Nails) The seedy underbelly of humanity?



19. Your love life right now? A: Friday Night (Lily Allen) Does that imply once a week? Ha! I'm married.



20. What is your state of mind like at the moment? A: Triple Trouble (Beastie Boys) That can't be good either.



21. How will you die? A: Fuck Tha Police (N.W.A.) No, seriously, that was what came up when I hit next... I may be in trouble.

After nearly 4 years with our first ever brand new car, we decided to give it up and get an Element.

Our lease was nearly up and it was time to decide whether we were going to buy it out, give it back, or sell it privately. We decided on just giving it back (though it was worth more than we owed, so we got some money back). It was a great car and served us well, but as our kids get bigger we need more and more room, and we just couldn't justify buying out the Civic and being cramped for more years.

Karen decided a couple of weeks ago to stop her business and come and work for me and Les instead, so starting in the beginning of April she'll be our go to girl, or our maintenance person, or whatever. And Les and I have been driving the 3/4 ton Dodge with the V10 for the last year, which is horribly bad for the environment and the bank account when you use it to run around all day...

So instead of just buying one Element, we went ahead and bought two. It's hard to swallow those initial costs, but it was the smart thing to do. We'll be plastering the business name all over them (hopefully it won't look ridiculous) so I'll get a picture up of both of them once that's happened.

We had a great time with the kids up at Big White this last Saturday. People in Motion, an adaptive skiing program, holds this event once a year and we were able to go up and have Kai (and Evan) try out the equipment. They had a blast and Karen and I froze our butts off while watching.

We had a chance to go for a sleigh ride and do some tubing as well, you can see all of the photos on my Flickr page. Definitely something I'm looking forward to for next year.

It can't melt fast enough :( It rained yesterday for quite a while, but there's still a few inches on the South side of the house and 8 or more inches on the North side.

Last year we had 10 weeks of snow and I thought that was crazy. I think we've surpassed that now. This winter seems to be dragging on.

I believe I have pictures of us golfing on Feb.23/07. Feb. 23rd! That's less than 2 weeks away. It better get real warm between now and then.

I've spent the last few days working on a couple of websites for Dean's business and Karen's business. It's tough, since I haven't really done any sort of coding in a long time, and downloading the trial version of Dreamweaver means there also a very large learning curve, but it's been... something.



What I don't understand is why Mozilla and Microsoft can't stick to some standards. If there's a sidebar with a table in it and I want the top of that to match the height of the main column, and in Dreamweaver it does, then why when I open it in Internet Explorer does it not match up? And in Firefox it does... It's a huge pain in my ass. Does there have to be IE specific code for everything? I still haven't figured out that problem and it's only one of many.



There are standards out there, just make your product stick to them. Sheesh.

After a brief 3+ month lapse, I thought maybe I'd finally update this thing.

I had an extremely busy fall. It is crazy how much work you have to do when you own your own business. I finished work near the beginning of December, yet still didn't write anything.

I'm guessing that spending every free moment on Drawball.com didn't help the creative writing process. That's pretty much over now... I'm just not feeling it. Instead I've been taking a babillion pictures. Flickr has been updated more often, and I've turned jasonstpierre.com into a photoblog. I wanted to put my favourites up there, just to have a place where others, as well as myself, could view the better ones of the babillion. When I was getting my theme in place and configuring everything, though, I didn't realize that there are very few that I absolutely love. I suppose everyone is their own worst critic.

Highlights of the last 3 months and a bit? Not really. :P That's silly. There must've been something.

Christmas - good.
Time off - meh... bored (the fact that I'm not making any money is driving me nuts for the first time in my life).
Karen and Kai and Evan - good.
Lack of golf - bad.
New Plasma TV - good.

I can't think of anything. Isn't that sad? Pathetic, almost.

I decided to have www.jasonstpierre.com go to it's own site instead of forward to this blog. I don't know if I'll post there, or here, but I'll let you know when I do.

I took a lot of pictures at Predator. I won't bore you with them, if you want you can go to my Flickr and check them out.

I will say that Predator is absolutely the hardest golf course I have played, and probably ever will.

Next year I think we're going to go somewhere in the Eastern Kootneys and try something different. 2 nights and 2 games, also, was not enough, so we'll have to go for a little longer next time.

Recommending music is even harder than recommending food. At least with food you can like it a little, or even tolerate it, but with music it seems that when someone recommends something, I either hate it or love it. There's no happy medium.

I was talking with Dean yesterday about new music. Where is the *good* new music? His conclusion? There is none. It's all crap. I have to admit that the only new-ish band that I've been able to tolerate is Fallout Boy. I don't like to admit it, but it's about the only thing I can listen to that's been released in the last while.

So even though it's stupid to ask, I must anyway... Know of any good new music that I might like? It's gotta be fast, hard, loud, and all of that other stuff. Something like NOFX, System of a Down, Suicidal Tendencies, old Metallica and Megadeth, or even Anthrax. The only thing that came close was Chevelle, but that was just too Top 40 for me.

Or it's gotta be something like Lily Allen's album, which I listened to over and over again and thought was brilliant. Jer's recommendation of the new Tegan & Sara was good, but that album sucks. I wish they wouldn't have tried to make another So Jealous.

What a difficult question to ask. Am I just stuck in the late 80's Metal scene? No, because even the Rap that I listen to from this year sucks. Rap music was so much better even 5 years ago. Where did Eminem go? TuPac (wasn't ever a big fan, but he was good)? Biggie? Mase (His last album sucked)? <sigh>

If anybody can spare an extra $5,000 or so, I'd love to try this out:

http://www.nikon.ca/en/Product.aspx?m=17009

I bought another lens today. The Nikkor 18-135mm. The kit 18-55 is okay (not really), and the 55-200 that I bought a while back is great. The only problem is that I have to carry both around, even at work, to get the shots I want.

The kit lens is fairly wide but has no zoom to speak of, and the 200 has a good zoom, but doesn't get those wide shots I need. So, I had to get something that went wide but could still zoom. I think the lens I want would be a 30 to 600. Do they make that lens? ;) Probably not.

This is what I had to settle for:

No, this isn't a reprise to the post I did about going South for Nick's wedding... A couple of weeks ago we decided that we're going to move to The Island - Vancouver Island.

I guess it may have even been a couple more weeks than a couple of weeks, because we talked about it for a couple of weeks. Maybe I could say a couple of weeks one more time to round it out nicely. I'm the one that brought it up, and after it had left my head Karen obsessed about it for a while before bringing back up to me.

Looking online, it's difficult to say where we'd live. Saanich seems to be the obvious choice, but we were pretty dead set on Duncan for a while. Duncan might be nice, if I could stand to live in a town with less than 10,000 people in it again.

Why move from the sunny Okanagan? Why in the world would anyone move from the best place on Earth? Well, because of the 'sunny' part of that slogan. I can't take the heat. I hate it. I'm outside in it all day, and any time it's above 30C I get heatstroke. Heatstroke, if you didn't know, isn't fun. When we first moved here I could take the heat. It was okay. I never loved it like Nick and my Mom do, but I could stand it, but over the last 10 years I've grown to despise it. It's so draining.

Eventually, just less than 2 weeks ago, I convinced Karen that it wouldn't be the best move right now. She was ready to start packing the house. Crazy! It will happen, though. I'm just not sure how when. 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? No, not 10 years. It'll be before that. Saanich has some of the lowest crime rates in Canada (did I forget to mention I'm sick of all the Meth addicts and Crack-heads that hang out by my house?). Far less rain than in Vancouver, and a perfect median temperature for the year of somewhere around 23C.

That, I can live with.

I know I've talked about it before, but it's kind of flooding back again. Facebook has let me connect with so many people from my past and helped me remember a lot of things that I otherwise would not have, and it's great, don't get me wrong... but each time I talk to a new person from my past I learn a little more about who I was. Even Karen, who reads almost everything, is having a hard time understanding the person I was because she's so used to the person I am. I've talked about memory retention with Jeremy before, and how we both find it so strange that other people know what they were wearing the day they saw so-and-so at this obscure place. Why would you remember that?




Why wouldn't you remember 3 months that you hung out with a person? Why can't you remember more than tidbits or flashes of Andrew the whole time he lived in Vernon? Or Vancouver?




Wedding day? A little, but not a lot. Pictures of that day help, but don't bring everything back. Where I was when Kennedy died... Oh, wait, I wasn't born yet for that one.




Do we really block out all the bad times, the mediocre times, and only remember the significant good or horrible times? Maybe we do. I sure don't like it. I know others who have gone through drastic, traumatic things and have completely blocked them out for years and years, only to remember them later. Was there something excruciating in my life that made me block out so much? I don't think so. In fact, I think there would be a tickle of it left in the back of my brain that would make me think that maybe there was. But with the images jumping around from one image one year to another image another year, I really can't say what happened in between. My guess is that nothing significant happened in between the great times and the horrible times, and that there was nothing noteworthy to remember.




Other people tell me how bad they feel for me. For all the things I had to go through. It really wasn't that bad. It may sound horrible, but it was life. Isn't life just a series of trials? Those were mine and the allow me to be the person I am today. Because today, I'm happy, and all of those experiences I had to live through allow me to be just that. Of course, for those who know me well enough will know that I have serious ups and downs, which used to border on the manic level, but overall life is good, and I should stop worrying about this shit and just be happy that I am where I am.

My week of golf started out last Saturday at Sunset Ranch behind the airport. I enjoy Sunset. It's a nice course, not too tough, not too easy, just sort of in the middle. I played with Dean (pictured above), Nick (my brother), and Bob (my landlord).

There were some good shots out there, but there were also some terrible ones. I can't seem to be consistent on the golf course. As has been said by many others before me, it takes at least 5 holes to warm up, and then by 14 or 15 I'm so tired and out of energy that I can't seem to connect to the ball. Maybe a 14 hole course, where you only score the last 9, might be ideal.

The weather was pretty good, from what I remember. Not too hot... thank goodness. The rest of the week was spotty, though, which didn't bode well with me.

I love the difference in the two photos at impact. You can tell just by looking that Nick might be a little closer to Scratch than Bob.

I'm finally done (even though it went by super fast) my vacation. Four days of Golf in 6 days, Sunset Ranch, Predator Ridge, and Fairview Mountain in Oliver. A great time, and of course I have a lot of pictures. I'll get some up later.


I've archived all of the old posts... there were a lot of them, and have sort of started from scratch.

I've been reading blogs for some time now. My cousin Jer's mostly because I'm too lazy to pick up a phone, Chisaki's only recently after finding out she had one, and a few others. I figured it's about time I tried it out. I may not have much to say, but being part of the blogunity seems like the right thing to do (did that even make sense?). More pointless ramblings to come.

Jay