Had a really good weekend. My body is aching in places I didn't think were possible!

Friday I had to stay late at work. We got word from the TV Dept. that they want to stream the upcoming Rolling Stones concert live on the internet. Derek was busy with Akamai trying to get pricing from them.. while I was working with Kyle on getting some server issues fixed (stupid CSS). Didn't end up getting home until around 7:20. The rest of the gang was playing hockey, then heading up to the cottage. I ended up going home. Mark called me and said that Damon was back from Europe.. so we decided to visit him.

It was great listening to the stories from Damon's latest travels. Naturally it made me want to travel again. He had a great time.

Saturday we (Mark and I) packed the car with our surf gear, tents, sleeping bags, etc.. and headed for Port Colborne. The drive down was pretty easy (whoops! went on the 403 instead of the QEW.. no biggie) and we arrived on the beach at around 2pm. It had just finished raining and we were heading out on the water. They were the biggest lake waves i'd ever seen (that nothing, wait until I tell you about Sunday!). We spent about 4 hours on the beach, pure riding. Whether it was surfing or skimboarding, our wet suits kept us warm the whole time. Come 7pm we were DEAD.

We booked into the camp ground and set up our tent and emptied out the car. Food was to be had in St. Catherine's - East Side Marios! I tried to call Laura to see if she wanted to join us.. no dice :(

On our way back from dinner guess who calls! Laura! I'm driving down the 406, talking on the phone when all of a sudden I hear this odd noise. I hang up the phone and pull over to the side of the road. Getting out of the car revealed that I had a flat tire. Damn! I called the road-side assistance guys and mark decided to "disappear" for a few minutes. Thirty minutes later, new tire on and we're back on the road.. Smoother than ever! I guess thats what you get when you drive on a misaligned, warped rim for a few thousand kms. The tire was destroyed. Now, my car is driving straight as an arrow :) Thank God for full sized spares.

Sunday was insane. I was awoken by the tent buckling in the 50 km/h winds. After dismantling our camp site and some tasty brekky at a local place we hit the beach. On our way from the car we met up with some other fellow surfers who confirmed what my blackberry was telling me - 5.6 foot waves! I was nervous and excited at the same time. After letting out food digest (and stretching this time) we hit the water. The first wave hit me like a brick wall. This was no repeat of the day before. Looking around I see the shore disappearing behind a wall of water... back up I go and I see everyone below me. "Holy Shit!" this is going to be great! Imagine.. a rip current, in a lake! hah!

Two or so hours pass and i'm beat. After being tossed around like a soaked rag doll, I had enough and needed to get dry. We said good bye to the rest of the guys and headed home.. hurting and satisfied.

I bought a Game Cube! Yay for Zelda, Mario Kart, 1080 Snowboarding, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros. Nintendo was having a sale, so I took this opportunity to snag a console. Ever since using my mac for my primary machine, I haven't really played any games. Plus there are some pretty cool games coming out for the GC. I'd rather have a PS2, but it was out of my budget. It's cool, only the second best console out there :)

I also went condo hunting today (was quiet at work). Found three places that I could afford, but only liked one. DNA Lofts (www.dnalofts.com) is (so far) the place I want to live. There are a few 1 bedroom suites that I found in phase two. However.. I did find a 1 bedroom + den in phase 1 that might be in my budget. The den is only 6'x6' so it may be a tad too small for a bedroom (sorry Gord) :P All in all, the places i'm looking at are around 500-600 sq feet. I'm trying to arrange a weekend to hit the sales centres to talk to people and get some more info on these places (like maintenance fees, move in dates, etc..). All my weekends are booked up until the end of August :(

Gord posted a before and after pictures of him losing 70lbs. Take a peek at www.burntring.com. It's amazing how different he looks, just in his face!

I went to the gym today! Yay! Spent 40 min there. I know i'm going to be sore tomorrow. I also noticed I got quite a bit weaker since the last time I went (2 weeks ago). Must get back into the groove.

I decided to log into my LavaLife account, for the first time in like 6 months, just to see if there was anything new. Turns out I have 3 smiles (a smile is like.. uhmm.. when you are interested in someone, you send them a smile). Too bad none of them really interested me.

*yawn* back to playing Zelda! :)

I was looking at some of the SUVs that I might want to buy when I win the lottery and came up with these two. Just for fun, I did a comparison!

Hummer Vs. Touareg:

Engine


Hummer: V8 6.5L Diesel (4 speed Automatic)


Touareg: v8 4.1L Gas (6 speed Triptronic)

Power


Hummer: 195Hp (430 lb.-ft. torque)


Touareg: 310Hp (302 lb.-ft. torque)

Suspension


Hummer: Independent double A frame with open-end coil springs and hydraulic shock absorbers


Touareg: Front double wishbone independent 4-Corner adjustable air suspension with six adjustable ride heights and Continuous Damping Control - three adjustable damping settings.

Ground Clearence


Hummer: 406 mm


Touareg: 300 mm

Climbing


Hummer: Approach Angle: 72 Degrees (max incline 60 degrees)


Touareg: Approach Angle: 33 Degrees (max incline: 45 degrees)

Base Price


Hummer: $100,000


Touareg: $40,700

Which would you drive?

so lazy.. oh man. its your typical lazy Sunday afternoon. The weather has been odd as well. Raining one minute, sunny the next, then raining again. Really calm, no wind.

BBQ was a hit. Pictures are online of course (www.blakecrosby.com/pics/). Everyone had a good time. Thanks to Brian for helping with the cooking. Of course thanks goes to Rachelle too, who was giving non-stop massages. After some necessary drinking (and the food of course) we all headed over to Katrina's place. Spent an hour or so there, then headed over to Gords place for a movie and pizza. By this time it was about 2:30am or so. By the time I got home it was 3:45am. Sleepy time for me

I think the BBQ went over good.. everyone had a good time. It was also nice to see some people I hadn't seen in a while (like Michelle! :D). She's working really hard now... hasn't even had time to hop online either. Hopefully we can get together again sometime this week :)

Countdown to Virginia Beach! 2 weeks :)

In an effort to save money....comes wanting to spend it. heh. .thats always the case.

I'm so tired.. I'm going to bed as soon as i'm done writing this journal entry.. (yeah, around 10:30 :(). Exhausted is an understatement. Mark dragged me to the gym (which was a good thing), but that just tired me out even more.

It's been a money day today. I came up with my budget.. trying not to spend more than $40 a week (down from $50/wk. I came up with this morning). So I'm going to try to stick to that. The main reason is that I need to start saving up for my car. The lease is up in 2 years and I plan on buying it. I also found out today that the credit limit on my Visa was upped to $2,800. Not only that, I got an email back from the bank telling me that I was pre-approved for a $150,000 mortgage. So now its condo/loft/house shopping time! I'm excited (for more reasons than just that).

I just got off the phone with my friend Andrew from Australia.

I'm hoping to get thursday and friday off, because I worked on the weekend.... Not sure if thats going to happen. I would like it to though :P

Things are looking good for this weekends BBQ! Going to see Pirates of the Caribbean tomorrow.

I'm going to pass out now.

I sent out invitations to my BBQ tonight. If you didn't get one let me know and I will hook you up. I'm still at work right now, bleh.I haven't gone once to the gym this week either. I've been so busy :(

This past week has been really good, especially last weekend. Saw the Lion King (broadway show). EXCELLENT! The costumes were amazing, acting was great (except the kid simba was pissing me off). We had great seats too. To our delight, Kara and Bryan joined us for dinner after the show in the beaches with Eric. Sunday was fun too! Spent the whole day at Wasaga! Yay! It was the usual crowd plus Rachelle and Steve. Spent a lot of time in the water, but not as much skimboarding as I had hoped. Still fun by all.

I am really feeling guilty for not going to the gym at all this week. I am going to have to make up for it next week :)

Nothing really new to report. Looks like it's just going to be Mark and I at Virginia Beach. It's going to be fun nonetheless. Of course we would love it for our friends to come.

Short entry.. but I want to go home :P

A rare journal entry written while i'm at work! I'm bored :( I really don't want to be at work today. Although I spent 8 hours here, it's one of those days where I felt like nothing got done. The morning was pretty busy, with the Vancouver 2010 olympic bid.

We broke some new records with this 3 hour event :) We pushed over 1.3Gbit/s of traffic (both streaming and http). 5671 concurrent streaming users and over 2600 hits/second on the website. Of course this wouldn't have been possible without Akamai. It was fun seeing the managers freaking out wondering how much its going to cost.

I had an amazing weekend. Pictures will be posted up as soon as we get them developed (no digi cam on the rapids). I really want to tell everyone how it went day-to-day but i'm a lazy fuck. White Water Rafting is something I now love to do. I have a feeling its going to be an annual event. Hopefully this time Mark, Kara, and Bryan are going to come :D

Last night was good. We all got together after our long weekend to celebrate Canada Day. Nobody outside if my local friends know about the situation around Bonnie. However I just felt uncomfertable last night. Bryan and her are probably going to hook up. She keeps on emailing me, and out of politness I reply. I'm tempted to just go incommunicado with her all together.

This weekend is turning out to be good. Lion King on Saturday, than Wasaga beach on Sunday. This time I am going to bring my camera so that we can take some pics of everyone. It's going to be the usual gang plus a few others... swimming, skimboarding, sun, hacky sack. It's all good.

The planning our trip to Virginia Beach is in the initial stages. I sent out a mass-email today seeing who will be interested in going. Mark, Arden, and my self are 100% a go for the trip. We want to get a few others to come along (Kara, Bryan?). Gord and Bryna might come too. Regardless of who else comes I know its going to be a great trip. I am borrowing my friend's (Fab is his name) surf board. So Mark and I are going to have boards.