NC

So i have spent the last several days in NC with leslie and her family and a good chunk of her dads side of the family, and i have to say that it was nice to get away from north virginia for a while becuase while it is good to be home home per se can be very hetic and not relaxing, although i guess one could say that i traded one world of chaous for another because leslie's family is a lot lot mine not too big but very lout and crazy. there was fifteen of us in total and most of the time the guys were out golfing and the girls were out shooping around, since neither les or i enjoy eother one of thes things we got to stay at the condo and watch the youngest play video games for the entire day while he downed coke after coke and yelled as loud as he could at the big screan tv. what can i say he is only 11 years old but still, so is liam and he dosent act that way. it was nice to have the down time though becuase the second that i get back i am goign to have to start getting ready to go back to school and i have to admit i am not really looking forward to the whole school thing, the hard part about being away for a semeser doing what you really want to be doing is that when it time to go back to college sometime you find it hard to find the logic in that choice. but the good thing is right now i am not worrying about that just spending time with les and relaxing, well the most you can with the ammount of noise in the back ground.
int eh morning we are goign to head back to leslie's parents house and as of the now the plan is that i am goign to stick around for the rest of the day and enjoy in some maryment so we will have to see how that goes but form there it is back to nova and on to maine, it seems like it was a blink of an eye ago i was steping on a bus for the end of my nols semester and heading for the airport, i ahve to say thats it is very weird. the other dya i tried to find the woods in my parents neighborhood and lets just say that didnt go so well, that whole part of the world is just one long loud smear of humanity and i cant say that i enjoy it in the least, the closest thign that i could find was the drive going don to the rec center it was lined with the trees that were put there a few years ago. here i was looking for alone and peace and all i found was strip malls and parking lots, but then again i knew that was going to happen so who am i kidding " i can not rest from travle, i will drink life to the lees, all times i have enjoyed greatly, suffered greatly"... to say the least that is ... i feel that it is time to be putting back on a pack back i am going nuts here in the void that is inbetween what was and what is soon to be. my one small hope was that i would get a job for unity leading a week long trip at the start of jan and they didnt give it to me because they had to cancle one of the trips... not enough people there to go on them, i think that at this point i would have done the work for free simple because i want t get back out there, even if there is a cabin with car camping
things simply are not the same
so now i suspect i will head to unity early because i want to get there and start on things, if i can make it up there i would like to go to the monthly meeting at the unity ambulance, the rescue squad that i work for, the way i figure it has been too long sonce i have listened to the radio go off int he middle of the night and i have gotten to do somehting about it. i feel like siting here doing nothign is a shame i want to do somehting, anything, its time to go back to being an emt and a student...time to go back to the life of an emt

x mas time

So i am finally home, or some of the places that my bills go to at least, after finishing my nols semester about ten days ago i thn started the long and hard process of making my way back to what soem people like to call the real world and what i often like to think of as my own personal verson of hell. i flew from riverton wy to devener then to o hare and then finally into portland maine. i had to admit it was very nice to see leslie again after al of that time we had spent apart, she is admitly the only person that i really wanted to se and more so the only part of my transation back to the "real world" that i was looking forward to in the least. but there she was and from there the two of us started the long and hard process of making our way home by way of car. there was a bit of a debate of whose car we would take for our long roadtrips but in the end i won and we left the big beast at school and hopped in my gas sipping sentra 40mpg baby! i spent several as in two days in maine up at unity getting a few thigns in order things like fixing my car so it was able to make the road trip home and helping les fix her car as well. once that wasa taken care of we were able to pack up and leave. since les cant drive a five speed we decided to take two days and get to ohio where we would stay with my my family ther for several days. once we got to good old burton we had several days of relaxed enjoyment before we had to head across the state to get my brother from his school four hours back in the car and then another ten to north va. are you seeing a trend here ? lots of time in the car thats right. so we finally rool into my parents house at somehting like three o clock in the morning and all of us fall stright into bed. we spent the day with my parents and then it was time to get les home so her parents didnt kill me for keeping her longer then was needed. it was indeed nice of them to let me steal her for the week ...... more later ...

out of the woods

so thats it, its over, three months have gone by and i am done with nols it was an amazing experience now i have t go home... more later
td

wilderness first responder

i am about 20 dyas into my nols course and i have another seventy five to go and so far it has been a blast. at the moment we are getting a bit of a break fomr the outdoors and for the last week we have been at three peaks ranch which nols owns. it is a decently cool place it is a working horse ranch and all of the courses that nols runs in this area get re rattinied fomr the horses at the ranch here. they also run several horse packing courses a year out of the place. but for the moment it is the home of the oesf kids for the next few days. so far i have really been liking the class a lot of it is a big review for me since i of course already have my emt. it is nice not to be in a state of panic over most of the metrical like the rest of the kids that are in the class, and just likek i was when i was taking my emt. when i am done with the wilderness first esponder i will then walk away with my wilderness emt, which is a great hing to have since this is what i am trying to do with my life work in the woods. most of the people out there only want a wfr so anything over that you have is great for them. it is really cool to know most of theis stuff already and get the review i am going to be getting a lot of the coutining education that i need for my emt out of this class and that is a good thing. sine thos are hard to come by out in unity.. while i do like the class a lot and i really like the instructors that i have sometimes it is really hard for me because i know what i woulddo if i was working out of my truck, and what i would do and what they want me to do is so very differ=nert i understand that i am not going to have a rig at my call but it is still hard because some of this stuff i would never dream of doing in the front country. at the same time as i am having those feeling learning to make a traction splint out of a trecking pole and a few other things that you would find in your bag is really cool a lot of this is making stuff up as you go along and i like it a lot it is cool to see how it works out of nothing.
i should probly go and study while i think i am not going to have any sort of problem i dont want to get cocky and take chances
intill later
peace
td

summers over off to the woods

the summer iis officl over, i have not worked at cam for about a week now and i have to say that i do miss it a little bit but am glad to be geting on witht eh rest of my life, the trasaction back into the real world was not as hard as i had thought it would be, and lets face it my idea of the real world is not too bad. i spent a week at unity hanging out with friends and staying with leslie while getting ready for my treck into the the mountains and woods. and finally yester day was the day i had to get on the plane and head off. it was hard leaving les but i think that in the end this distance andd time apart will make s stronger that of course dose not make it any easier. so i spent most of the day yesterday in the airports f this country and on planes next to screaming children and people that cold use a shower. i finally got to riverton whoyming about five oclock yesterday it was a long dy consindering that i had to be up at four to get on the plane to leave maine.

if i needed anyreminder of what i was getting my self into when i hoped off the plane yesterday i almost froze befor e i got to the ground, it was about forty degrees here yesterday and they were calling for a possiblity of snow! im used tot hecold living in centerl maine but im not useed to it in the first week of sept. luck was on my side and through out the three diffenert planes i took my bag managed to follow me ( for the extra 125$ i paid to get it her it better have !) anyways i was able to wip out a sweat shirt at the first chance and put it on and save my self from frostbite. i think that the cold is really going to be the challange on this seme4ster and i cant say that it dosent have me a little bit worried.

i met severl other students that were going on diffenert nols course on the plan and in the airport and we shared the same shuttle bus to lander together, it was nice to get to know some of the pople but at the same time odd because i am still several days early.
i amnaged to get a good nights sleep in the nols hotel which is really cool and no i am off to see the town
perhaps more later
peace
td

another week gone

another week has managed to slip by here at kingsley pines camp, it sems that every time i blink time flys by in a way thaty i am not ok with! i guess that on one side it is a good thing but on the other it is not becuase i want to be here longer and i need to me making money for my bills this summer. what i get per week is barely making it. and i still have a large ammount of money to pay off. today i spant a good chunkj of time moving aorund in portland maine and recalling how much i hate the city for many many reasons. i managed to go to the bank and cash my small tiny tax retun, it paied for lunch and not a lot more. i am meeting up with lix and xander for dinner tonigh back in portland i have to say that i am looking forward to seeing them but at the same time i am not looking forward to the drive again. when i got back form the twon i was looking forward to going on the lake but there was another major storm going on here at panther pond no surprise there at all. well i think i wil keep this short as i feel that i need to do a lot more with my day off here

peace
td

work and such

i have now been at kingsley pines for about three weeks with one of them haveing been training and the others haveing been with campers, it is almost the end of the first session, which has been going on for the last two weeks. the kids that i have will start going home in the morning.
i think that while my cabin is finally starting to run smoothly and the way that it should things need to move on and the kids ned to go home. for the most part the kids that i have are all great ... you know your typical 12 and 13 year ild boys, they think that they can do anythign and that they know everytthing. and they all happen to be very stubborn so naturaly there will be soem clashes that happen when you have these people living in close quters fopr two weeks in a row.. my goal for the whole thing is for these kids to come away from this saying wow that was the best summer of my life and i had a blast, i want to com back next year. who knbows if that will happen or not but i hyope that they can walk away form this being friends with all of the othyer boys that are in their cabin

on anohter note this week was the first week that i got to really dive in a teach high ropes course, it is nice to be out of the training and see all that we learned ap[ply first hand, and i tell you what it is nice to see hoe some of the stuf that i learned in school at unity is applying to the kids here at camp... the best moments of my day are when the kids who are really afarid or hesitant to go up do and meet their goals and do it with a smaile on my face, we had two kids like that today and it was totaly worth while to stand there in the rain and belay them throguh the whole thing, to talk to them and let them ,mnow that they can do it...



well i must go as it is almost dinner and free time is almsot over i need to go and find all of my kids and make sure that they get to dinner

peace
td

Its early moday morning

i am finaly back in maine after being away for almost a month, i think i have travled enough fr a while and i am ready to settle down and start work. i arrived at the camp i will be working at around 12 30 this morning and currently i am sitting in the next town over taking advantage of the free wifi that seemes to be coming from the vip car shop that is next door.

why am i not asleep you may ask? well fist of all i really dont have anywere to sleep and i am not looking forward to spending the night in my car which is what it is gonna have to be, well that or pitching a tent somewhere. i think i will gor for a car becuase i managed to find a small parking lot with other cars in it at the camp that is no where nead the main part of the camp... or is it ? i dont know it is way out int he middle of nowhere and i didnt want to poke around too much since it is private propty and i am not due there intill the morning, of course if i had been thinking i would have just let them know that i was coming in today, but who does that kind of thing, i mean reall thinking in advance like that.

anways, i am excited to start work, it is looking lke i will have a week of staff training before the first of the kids arrive, and while i am looking forward to that i am very nevrous, i have to do this job well, this really is my foot in the door, this is what i can put down when they ask of i have any outdoor work experience. i dont know if ropes course instructor is goign to count but i figure it is a great shot of making a bit of a name for my self.

the camp its self looks nice, well from what i can see of it in the dark, and what i did se of it, i went abotu half a mile down their little road, perhaps a bit more before i puled off, lots of space and lots of trees, and i already managed to get my first bug bite of the summer season, just by pulling on to camp proptry. its sheer luck that i even found the place becuase i wasent bright enough to get good directions once i got to the town of raymound maine. which by the way is barely on the map but it seems nice enought, i guess only time will tell with that one. right now i am in whidam, just about ten miles and about as many mins from the camp, i am thinking that if i can manage getting all of my days off at the same day every week then i will be able to trvle into this town and perhaps get a second job, surely ther is somthign that needs some one once a week for somthign, it looks like there is a few place that are open 24 7, mainly that i can see two gas stations and a tim hortons, i guess i wouldnt mind working in either of thos if it ment an extra fifty bucks a week or so


i dont know, its late and i have so many thoughts at the moment, i am sorta thinking of pulling an all nighter, but i am not so sure that is wise i want to make a good impression on my boss tomorrow, i need to be up early enugh to get out of there, there being the camp, sice it is looking like i am going to be spending the night there i dont want to be caught asleep ont he propterty, so i guess if i am up by six then i can get a bit to eat and perhaps go in early.

cheers for now its late
peace
td

Canada eh?

Up in stratford seeing some plays what can i say i cant complain, we other then the fact that it is a bit cold and i am basicaly out of touch with the rest of the world, i finally found some wireless severice by hanging out of the window of my room and even now it is very spotty
the next few days are full of plays, so it should be interasting to sat the least i really enjoy canada even if there is not a lot to do.
i am looking forward to getting back to maine
and i miss leslie a lot
its late
peace
td

Things are a bit better

down here in VA
i do have to say that it is very hot and humid so i cant say that i do not miss maine
the good news is that thigns are a little bit better becuase for the moment my car is running better better as in the way it is supposed to be
as well as that i am no longer in the madness that is north va
at the moment i am in the small town of zuni which is where leslie
its a nice little town much like burton and unity
out in the middle of nowhere,
i have to go home tomorrow sadly and i have to make it early becuase i have to go and pick up my glasses by 2 cant wait... kidding of course
i dont really want glasses but what ever
must go and enjoy my self while i still can
mom and pop are in cali
brian and patrick are at home and i am heading in that direction
td

interstate roads take me home...

NOT!
I, leslie and two others left Unity maine on wendsday heading for jersey wehre we would stop and crash, and then the three of us would head on towards VA.
by the way school is out, and while i am not sure how grads went lets just say that i am now onto my second year of college.

anways on to the subject at hand, for those of you who do not know i retired my little red car just about a month ago, with a 170,000 miles she had a good life and was passed on to some yong eager driver. hope that she will give them some great years i know the four that i had her were all good.
the point is that i had to go out and get a new car because i was not sure the little red on would make it the whole way back down to va and then back up to maine in june when i had o be at work.
i poked aroud a little bit and bought a car that was five years newer and had fifty thousand less miles on it, a little four door nissian sentra and the whole point of gettting it was so that i could make it home.

for the first montht that i had the new car which leslie has named Ellie things seemed to be going ok, there was a few litle higns wrong with her but i though thtat i had gotten them all taken car of


well that was before i had left maine heading for VA

on witht he post eh ?

i had the car packed down very nicely, bike on the rack and roof bag up top, it was a lot of weight but i though tthat she would be ok, well i though wrong

we had barely made it half way through connincuite (i really need to take a spelling course) when the shit really hit the fan, the cars gas milage was droppin like a rock ( the whole reason i got the car is that when she is running right it is supposed to get near 40 mpg )
and the oil light was on...
the car was goign throguh two quarts of oil ever twenty miles or so, and that was no good at all, it cost 12 dollars for three quarts of oil, and she was leaking it right out.

at this point it is close to five o clock in the morning and we are all at the end of our ropes
i decided to limp off the highway and gram a hotel for the night and seek help in the morning, leslie said that she would stay with me (best girlfriend ever) and so off we went, we managed to find a place that was open at five in the morning and got a room fr the night, when i say night i mean we got a room for six hours.

we got up a few hours later and went in search of a garage, the only one that people could point us to was one that was a garage for truckers ( big rigs) so i limped my car along to there and they said that they would take a look at it but it was going to cost at least 250.00 just to tell me what was wrong.

lets just keep in mind that i have no money and that i havent had a job since last augest because i wanted to focous on school

i told them to do it and leslie and i took off in her car for a few hours when we came back the news was not good, i need two new belts a new oil pan and a new crank case seal... car not drivable

this was it
i could see my self headin into poverty at a young age

i told them to fix it and them re arranged all of the money that i have to my name i had saved all of the cash that i had gotten from my old car (800.00 ) and i also had a few more dollare lying around. it wasent looking good since they told me it would be at least 660.00 with out tax

what ever
i needed to get home

even more so
i needed to get back to maine in a month

leslie and i headed off to find a hotel for the night ( again) and let me tell you that is a lot harder then it looks

we decided that even though my dad offered to pay for the room we would try to get then best deal e could since we had time to mess around, we went to five or six hotels

guess what?

no rooms to any one who is under 21

bulshit

i had had just about enough of every thing when we finally found a room and rashed for the night

we got up the next day (friday)
an headed to the garage , oh by the way the place happened to be named haliorious
interasting name for a garage

they said it was done and then i got the bill 733.00!!!!!
well its offical im broke

i handed over the money and we headed off to jersey to meet up with amanda and head the rest of the way home
when we got to jersey we waited intill rush hour died down, and it was about seven thirty when we left
we were all ready to get home and despite the traffic and the bad weather we made good time coming home

and at least my car was fixed
i made it fomr centrel jersey to north va on half a tank of gas thats 275 miles on six gallons

aka 45 mpg
its sweet... except for the fact that my check motor light is now on

oh well
td

My school year

is quickly coming to a close, and when i mean quickly i mean fast, as in a day or so. i find that i am slightly un-easy about heading home even though it is for a short time. in fact i dont really want to go home at all, yet at the same time i do not want to stay here any longer, i am geting ready to leave here (unity for six months) and i am not so sure how i will handle it. right now i know one thing, and that is that i want to be done. i want to be done with school, i have only been here for a year an already i am tired of it, in fact i have been tired of it fort he last semester. i am eger to get out and be independent, surely every one feel the same way, so i suppose i will not complain

i will admit that the feature directly ahead is looking like a bit of a challange
what does one do? i dont know it 2 11 in the morning

off on a compleatly diffenert tangent
i went to the book buy back thing that the school book store put on today and got a wopping 110 dollars back, i would just like to point out that this is more then any one else who did it. but ont he other hand i got a hundred ten back for seven hundred dollars of books. excample my bio book cost me 115 used at the start of the semester, and i only got fifty back for it, they will turn around and sell it for 100, what a rip off

at least now i have a little bit of money to get me home and to last me intill i need to come back up to maine

intill later
td

its now thursday

and i feel like i have gotten nothing that i need to do done, i have class in a few hours and there will most likely be a small tes, wait i take that back there will be a test. there is still so much to do and not enough time to do it in, and of course i find myself with the same problem as normal, massive ammounts of stress lots to do and little motovation, i am however trying. on the top of my worries is my BIO class. the final is this friday and i have been studying constantly for the last few weeks
i find that i am starting to slowly but surely understnad some of the stuff that i have to know, but that dosent make it any better, i know what is going on in class but that dosent mean that i will know what is going on when it comes time to actualy take the test. i find it stupid that my whole years has coem down to this one test in that class, i have to say that i am slightly pissed off at the least, and annoyed at the best. dont even get me started on the rest of the things that i have to do between now and wendsday
i know i can do it
that does not mean i am not going nuts over it
peace
td

This weekend

Has been of note.
on friday my friend Jackie called me and said that she was heading up to visit, Jackie lives on cape cod which is about five hours away, i had given up hope of even seeing her this year due to many problems that have popped up. so it was very good to have her come up for a little while. Yesterday, we went kyacking, and that was a lot of fun Leslie, Amanda, Jackie and i all went down to unity pond, and for those of you who have never seen Unity pond, it is very large, and in fact i think that it would be fairly safe to call it a lake, it takes up a large part of Unity, as well as the next town over, the thing much be close to a thousand acares.
there was a nice wind that was wipping around town so going out on th epond was a but hair raising with the waves that were out there but it was still a lot of fun, we went back in to the swamp in town and you can go all over the place becuase it is flooded from all of the snow melt that we have gotten since spring has been upon us
we all got soaked but it was worth it, from there we headed out to red robin for dinner, the food was great but sadly we could not finish all of it since they serv such large quantities, and of course i frogo to put what was left in the freezer when we got back so it was a little funk by the time we wanted it this after noon

on another note leslie and i took her car in to get her brakes looked at and to see why it is over heating, they said that the brakes are fine despite the fact that they are not, and the fixed the other problems, in theory. it cost a pretty penny so i really hope that her car is good now. today is saturday, and jackie needs to go home some time today becuase she has to be back early tomorrow morning, im not sure when she will be going back because she has spent most of her time up here visiting another friend, not sure how i feel about that one...
well its getting late and i think i wnt to go for another ride so i guess i should go and do that
td

Its amazing outside

And im stuck indoors. as i type my state and local goverment teacher is talking away, it really is a shame that he chose to teach such a boring class, keith is a cool guy but this class really blows.
i managed to get some thigns done today that i have needed to do for a while now, i took my car into the shop and i was intheory goign to replace a knock sensor. well i got a call saying that there was no need to do that bcause the knock sensor is fine. i theory there is somehting wrong with the population sensor that is wrong with the car? what ever i dont know.

very much looking forward to getting out this weekend and doing a litle bit of caming down by the ocean, i think it is going to be a blast the weather should be great who know i might even be forced to go swiming, ok so its not goin to be that warm.

keith is still going on and on and class is almost over, it hink the whole class is holding its breath so we can get out of here and go play in the maine sunshine. speaking of sunshine camping and being outside, i just realized last night that i really need to get my self together because before i know it my NOLS course is goign to be upon me, i have to say i am very muc looking forward to to it. but now i need to go gear shopping. that should be fairly exciting, everyone likes t get new gear. well this class is officaly over and he is still talking so intill next time
peace

Can you say lack of motovation?

I can
i have two major papers left of the year and i dont want to do either one of them at the moment i have to say school bores me, but i guess we all have those moments. i spent a good part of today trying people to come and join the rescue squad in town, i really didn't know that this was goign to be up to me in till a short time ago, so in a last ditch effort my buddy chris and i put some stuff and got a bit of a program.
apperntly he schoo has been planing a wellness fair for sometime now, so this was our plan, go in set up a sweet table and try like hell to get people to join our ranks, well thos worked fine and dandy intoll we had to go and do a fire stand by. which by the way was a major cluster. no one really knew what was going on so there was people all over the place

so here i find my self back in my room trying to do one of these papers
guess what?
not happening

on a lighter not i just had some amazing tea, and i might be forced to have another cup
i just turned around and got a good look at the back of my room, i realized that all of my camping stuff is still there for the other weekend, really need to clean this is starting to get out of control

today was crazy
at least the weather was nice
intill next time
tim

Do you know what burn out is?

Have you ever felt that you cant move? All you want to do is sleep and nothing really matters becuase your so tired all of the time? welcome to my life. i find my self facing less then a month of school left, and i also find my burned out. i dont know if i have any more to give sometimes, but then the radio goes off, and i some how get my self out of bed and go on another call, this is the life of an emt.

on a lighter note today was amazing, the weather was perfect and it is supposed to keep being nice like it has been for the last few days, as of right now leslie and i have plans to go camping for half og the weekend, it should be nice as long as the weather holds. I think i can say with out much doubt that we are both ready for a little bit of a break, ready for a little time away fomr campus. I am not going to lie it will be nice to turn off the radio for a while and get some peace. right now it is looking like we are going to head to the coast and camp down by Aciaida (Sp) it should be very nice.

today we had the student goverment elections, and i have to say i am happy with the way things turned out, Rachel Mestas won the president, which is good consindering that the other guy running is a bit of an ass who is fairly closed minded.
i find it to be getting late and tomorrow is my early class so i guess i should be heading for bed
(thanks to tybor for the blog idea )
td