Birthday's, Bands and...Other stuff

I have been putting off updating this for way to long and now I've forgotten most of the stuff that has happened since the last time I wrote! So bear with me on this one, I'll try my best to remember everything.
So back in October my parents came down with my bro to celebrate my birthday. They bought tickets for the family and Lennea to go see David Copperfield downtown, but before they got here Lennea decided to give me the presents she got me. She got me some pretty rad stuff, I got Little Big Planet for ps3 which is tons of fun and I would suggest everyone to get it so we can play online together, and she got me some super pricey looking Armani cologne so now I always smell super good. Thanks Lennea :) A couple days after she gave me her presents was the day that my family was coming to stay, but before I could see them I had to write a Chem midterm. I was super sketched out about this test because out of all my classes at school Chem is wrecking me the hardest. I studied my ass off for the test and still pretty much knew nothing when I was writing it. Shit was haaaaaaaaaaaaard. After the test I was psyched though cause I had a sweet weekend ahead of me. I got home and shortly after my parents arrived. We greeted each other, unloaded all their gear and then I was given some birthday presents from Connor and a couple from my Grandparents. My bro got me the new Fucked Up album, a box of Capt'n Crunch and a $25 dollar gas card, all good stuff. Thanks Old Bendy. I also ratted Connor out for getting a new tattoo which Sid and Karen were non to pleased with.
After I opened the gifts we headed out to get some dinner and then went to the magic show. The show was awesome and David Cop did some mindfreak shit. I'm not gonna write about all the tricks he did cause most of them were super long and without seeing them I'm sure they would sound hella boring. Just go see the show for yourself...or get Old Bendy to fill you in.
The next day was pretty chill. We just went downtown and did some shopping. After that we came back home and my mom cooked up a big turkey dinner for us. Clayton came over and enjoyed the meal with us and helped cook and clean since Connor was way to lazy to do anything and just sat on the floor the whole time.
The next day my family left and it was back to just being me and Lennea. Things got pretty busy after that cause I had more Midterms and quizzes coming up and Jessica and Ramsay were coming to stay with us for awhile. So I was again stuck into the vicious cycle of going to school and studying while having no time to hang out, ugh.
Jessica and Ramsay got here a weekend or two after my parents left. It was good having them here. I'm always hyped to have company. We got up to the usual over the weekend, shopped it up, saw a movie, went out for dinner. It was good fun. I also ruined Ramsay at MLB and made him look like a wuss in front of his girlfriend. Burn.
On Monday Ramsay, Sean, Hunter and I all made a trip down to Tacoma to see Have Heart, Ceremony, Blacklisted and Letdown. There was a bit of mis-communication on who was going to drive but I was under the influence that Sean was going to take his car but apparently he didn't know and was a bit miffed at us for just assuming he was going to drive. To make it up for him I bought him 20 Hersey chocolate bars. I thought that would be enough but apparently (according to my bro) he is still complaining about the situation, so if you are reading this, sorry Sean and thanks for driving, the world is not going to end over it. Anyways, the show was crazy and kids were going nuts to Have Heart and Ceremony. I was singing along to HH the entire time and got headbutted in the face by some stupid green shirted kid like 3 times, so I "accidentally" elbowed him in the chops during one of the sing alongs. Yea, it was some serious pit beef. Ramsay was gettin slimey to Ceremony the entire set. I wasn't really that hyped to see Blacklisted so we headed to 7-11 in between Ceremony and their set. We ended up staying in 7-11 for about 45 mins looking at all the wild chocolate bars that the USA has. Once we got back we only saw about 1 and a half Blacklisted songs. Didn't look like we missed much though as it looked like the band didn't even care they were playing a show, all of them just stood on stage and put in little to no effort. Boooooooooooring, that band's old stuff is cool but I dunno how people are into the new jams, ugh. I forgot to mention this but on the way to Tacoma we stopped at Taco Bell and me and Hunter both got a Big Box meal. The thing was massive and you got all sorts of food. I couldn't even finish mine. So on the way home, Sean and Ramsay were feeling left out and we decided to stop there again. They both got the Big Box and me and Hunter also got some more food, I got a chulupa and Hunter got a couple burritos. Good stuff. The rest of the trip home was pretty chill and we got to Hunter's place around 2am. Hunter then gave us the worst directions ever on how to get back to the Highway and we ended up getting lost for another hour and didn't end up getting to my place until 3:30 in the morning. Damn you Hunter. Hunter also has the sweetest diet ever, we picked the kid up around 4pm and dropped him off at around 2am and in that period he ate, 2 chocolate bars, an ice cream bar, 3 burritos, a taco, a crunchwrap supreme, a few Arizona ice tea's, and the other stuff that the big box meal came with. Mmm Mmm! The next day I missed my morning class since I was hella tired but managed to man up and make my other 2 classes that day. I stayed late after school too cause I had a math midterm the next morning and couldn't really study with Ramsay and Jess there. I did as much as I could and just went for the test in the morning. Probably wasn't the best choice as I only got 65% on the test, weak. The rest of the week I had 2 more tests I had to write, one in Chem and one Bio one. I got them all back now and did pretty dece on them. The only one I really fucked up on was that Chem midterm I talked about back in the beginning of this blog. I got about 55% on that one. OUCH. My marks have been on the steady decline since the midterms were written. I'll have to step it up once finals start.
After the week ended I was hyped cause I got to fly home for the weekend to visit my family for my dad's 50th birthday party. I got there on Saturday and was expecting the party to be a little family get together but when I got in the house it was all decked out with balloons, banners, pictues and all sorts of other stuff. My mom also spent the entire day making loads of food for the evening. Later in the night people started showing up and everyone brought even more food. There was probably about 30-40 people there and it was alot of fun. Talking and catching up with family was a good time and hanging with friends (some of Connor and I's friends came to the party) was a fun time as well. We pretty much just hung out around the food all night and munched. The highlight of night was def when me and my Uncle Rick jammed out in the spare bedroom for awhile. He played drums while I was on the bass. Rick is the sweetest dude ever and has a rad beard. He was also gettin the munchies during the party if you know what I mean...(smokin weeed). The next night we went to a super metal show at MoeJoes. The bands that were playing were Toxic Holocaust, Kingdom of Sorrow and 3 Inches of Blood. It was actually pretty fun cause there was some gnar metal mosh going on and it was funny to watch all the drunk people losing their minds. The Vernon ski team was LOVING it, but even they couldn't step up to the undeniable stomp of King Cobra. Dude is haaard. On the last day in Vernon we went on a family hike up to Cougar Canyon which was kinda weird, but ended up being quite a bit of fun. Connor took a couple of funny spills and got out-hiked hard cause he doesn't have enough NP. That night I flew back to Van and Lennea was nice to pick me up from the Airport.

So yea...I'm pretty sure that is all that happened over the past few weeks...I can't really remember anything else right now, maybe I'll remember later. I'm back at school now but I'm kinda having trouble with it because I just don't feel motivated. I'm really burnt out on school right now. I been at it for a bunch of years now and since I didn't really have a plan when I started I still have a ways to go before I get my degree. I am also kinda bummed on my switch from Arts to Sciences. The Science stuff definetly has a brighter light at the end of the tunnel but I really hate all the classes I am in. I also don't see myself wanting to do something in the Science field once I'm done school. I would switch back into the Arts but I have already done that and didn't like it which is why I switched in the first place! Ugh I'm in a bad spot school wise right now. I have been looking into a 2-d animation program at Vanarts so maybe I will do that next year, art has always been more fun for me than writing and I dont know why I didn't pursue a career in art earlier. It's only a 1 year program and I get a diploma at the end of it, so I figure it's worth a shot to take it. Still have alot to figure out before I jump into a whole different school though. Hopefully things will work out!

Anyways, thanks for reading. I hope I didn't but you to sleep!

-Dan

Fuck Bj Upton

I am mainly writing this as a way of putting off studying for my chemistry midterm. I was gettin' super pissed off cause I wasn't understanding some of the stuff I should so I decided to take a breather.

I wrote my first midterm last week, and I am kinda weary about how I did on it. When I started writing it I thought it was a breeze and ripped through the first few questions with relative ease, after that was a multiple choice section that I was kindy sketchy about, I knew the answers to probably about 3/4 of the questions but the teacher worded the questions very oddly so it was hard to choose the right answer, even if you knew the shit that the question was asking...if that makes sense. So I finished the test feeling pretty good and had a bunch of time to look over my test, which is a good thing because upon rechecking it I found that the first question was asking something completly different from what I answered (if you want to know, the question was to draw the molecular make up of a trans fat, I had drawn an unsaturated fat). I had no idea what the actual answer was and tried to make it up but I doubt I will get any marks on it which sucks since the question was outta 10. After that fiasco I scoped the rest of my answers and started to get sketched out about it cause when I reread the questions I started 2nd guessing some of my answers which is never good. I didn't change to many cause you always gotta go with your gut but I will still be weary until I get my test back. Also, I had no idea what the trans fat drawing was supposed to look like so when I got home from writing the test I checked the text to see and it wasn't even in the book! I checked my notes as well and there was nothing and seeing since I haven't missed any classes I don't know how I was supposed to know the answer to that question...weird.

After my midterm was done I had the rest of the day to hang out, which I did. That evening a show was going on downtown Van. Vanguard was playing with Slingshot, Life in Hand and Bodyguard, so I was planning on heading to that. Before the show Hoontaar (Hunter) invited me to Bo Khang with him and some others and that place rules so there was no way I was gonna turn him down. I made my way down there and a big group of us went to the restaurant and enjoyed an excellent (although expensive) meal and then rolled to the show.

Bodyguard was setting up when we got there (we missed some other band that I can't remember) so I took some time to say hi to a bunch of friends that were already there. It was kinda weird at the show since all the people that I knew dispersed into groups with like 3 people I didn't know so I was kinda left without anyone to talk to or trying to join a group of people that I didn't know. It was kinda a bummer but whatever. Bodyguard played a good thrashy set, some people were moshin to them and gettin into it, which I liked cause usually people don't feel this band. Life in Hand set up after them and I was excited to see them since I hadn't really listened to them before and a bunch of people had hyped them up to me. They played a rad set, lots of energy and they sounded real good. Vanguard played 3rd and people really got into them, kids were moshin'. I missed a couple of their songs cause I was waiting outside/walking to meet Lennea who had just got off her shift at Red Robin. When we got back we watched a couple more songs before they finished. I forgot to mention but the show was at The Sweatshop, which is a skatepark in the basement of a skateshop so in between sets we could watch kids skate the mini ramp they had down there. Dylan tried to get me to try it but I declined since I suck at skating and would just make a fool of myself and probably get hurt, not worth it. Slingshot took awhile to set up so me and Lennea mingled around and talked to some people while we were waiting. Mike Jakes and Shane told us a pretty wild story that involved a friend of Shane's, Amsterdam and a couple dead girls. You can ask about it if you want the full story (it's worth it). After the story Slingshot started playing and I decided to sit this one out and not sing-along due to the fact that the Bo Khang was not sittin stellar in my gut so I just found a place to stand and watch. The guys played pretty much all their material including a few new songs which sounded awesome and a cover. It was a good set and everyone was happy. After the show me and Lennea headed home pretty quick as it was getting late and Lennea hadn't eaten anything all day.

Saturday Lennea went to Abbotsford to hang with her family so I just hung out at home all day solo. I pretty much did nothing but laze around and watch the UFC and baseball. I actually started to feel super gross so I decided to go for a run and get some exercise. I actually surprised myself on the run and went for way longer than I thought I would be able to. I paid for it when I got home though and felt super sick and had to lay down for like an hour.
Sunday was pretty much heart break central for me since the Red Sox lost in game 7 after having the crazy comeback in game 5 and narrowly winning game 6. I fucking hate Tampa Bay, especially BJ Upton and Evan Longoria, seriously fuck those dudes. Also, I can't stand all these douchebags that are cheering on Tampa and talking like they have been pulling for them all season cause they are the "underdogs." Give me a break, the team has had no support all season and even when they were 1st in the division they couldn't sell out at their home field. Now all of a sudden that they are playing good in the post season they just have all these band wagoner fans that had no idea who 1 player on the team was before the beginning of the series with the Red Sox. Seriously, go watch soccer you band wagon fucks. Anyways, I never thought I would cheer for an NL team but I hope Philly wipes the grin off all you idiot Tampa "fans."
Next year Sox will win it.

Pretty much that sums up everything exciting that has happened in between updates. I guess I should get back to studying now, ugh. Wish me luck on my chem midterm.

-Dan

October Spawned A Monster

So the Through the Noise tour which I was waiting on for awhile now just rolled though Van a few days ago and I must say it was pretty goddam wild. For those of you that don't know the tour is currently making its way across Canada and the lineup is stacked! Grave Maker, Outbreak, Shai Hulud and Bane are all on the roster so if you dont make it out to one of the stops you are really missing out! (Misery Signals and Comeback Kid are on the lineup as well...if you are into that kinda thing.) The Vancouver show was at a venue called the Plaza, which is more of a club than a venue for a hardcore show but I guess since it was a big tour the promoters wanted it at a big popular venue. Me and Lennea headed to the show and had to wait in a real long line to get in. Once we got to the front we had to shell out 22 bucks to get in, which is pretty pricey if you ask me but whatever, I get to see some rad bands. Once we got inside, Grave Maker set up pretty quickly. Their set was hog wild. Dudes were mashin' hard and the guys had alot of energy on stage which was alot of fun to watch. That band is quickly becoming one of the bigger sets in hardcore. I figure I should put this in now, but Grave Maker got in a pretty hefty van accident on their way to one of the stops after their Kelowna show and probably won't be on the rest of the tour, and if they do make it back to play some of the later shows then they are some tough mofo's. If you want more info on it I'm sure you can read about it on their myspace (http://www.myspace.com/gravemaker). Hope all the guys can make a speedy recovery!
Back to the show. After Grave Maker played Outbreak set up, I was super jacked on seeing them as they are one of my more liked bands and they definetly delivered a fun set. Lots of kids singing along and having fun. Although they didn't have their regular guitarist and the guy filling in didn't rep the solos as hard which was kind of a bummer. Shai Hulud played 3rd and alot of the Vancouver kids weren't into it which is kind of odd to me. Hulud has been around for a long time and lots of bands that came up after them were influenced alot by them and I don't think Hulud gets the credit they deserve. Granted, their latest album was kinda meh...but their old shit with Chad and Geert on the mic is minters. That shit is some of the stuff that got me into hardcore back when I was in grade 8 and it is definetly still a good jam. If you disagree, stop reading now.
The 4th band to play was Bane and they were the band that I was most jacked on seeing, no doubt about it. I've been listening to Bane for a long ass time (back before I even knew what hardcore was and I just considered them an ill punk band) but I had never gotten a chance to see them before. So I was super jacked on that. They played the craziest set of the night by far. Kids were going off, singing along and stage diving everywhere. They closed their set out by playing "Can we start again" and right at the beginning of the song I was up on stage attempting to get the mic, but I got mobbed by tons of kids in the process and fell off the stage with everyone ontop of me while I was still holding the mic. The mic chord got wrapped around my legs and I was on the ground with a bunch of kids on me and more kids stage diving on top of them which was pretty scary. Eventually everyone got off of me and some people were trying to help me up but I couldn't even stand cause the mic chord was still around my ankles and people were pulling on it trying to find where the mic went. It was pretty sketchy laying on the ground trying to get a mic chord unwrapped from my ankles while kids were stage diving and moshing all around me but I finally got that shit off me and continued to enjoy the last bit of the song. After Bane finished me and Lennea decided to head back home. I kinda wanted to stay for Comeback Kid cause I do enjoy Turn it Around and I'm sure they would have played a bunch of songs from that album but I didn't wanna wait through Misery Signals, so we just packed it in.

Saturday night I was supposed to go see Horizons and Ill Intent play but I totally pulled a weak ass move and stayed home to watch the Red Sox game. I thought it would be done by the time Horizons/Ill Intent played but it ended up going into extra innings and being hella long, and I couldn't just walk away and turn my back on my team! So if any of the Horizons dudes are reading this....which I highly doubt, I am sorry for not making it out. The Red Sox ended up losing by the way, total bummer.

In other news, I have been studying pretty hard lately since I have midterms next week. Hopefully I can manage to do fairly well on them. Also, my birthday is coming up in a couple weeks which I am psyched on since my family is coming down and me and Lennea are going with them to David Copperfield, its gonna be all magical n' shit. Wicked. Halloween is also coming up which is gonna be rad (I hope) so you people from Vernon should plan a trip to Van so we can all party together!

Anyways, that's all for now. October has been good so far and after my midterms it only gets better!

- Dan Slay the Rays!

ps. everyone should scope this band, im hyped on them latley. http://www.myspace.com/badfuckingmouth

Octobrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Ok so the shittiest thing just happened...I spent like the last hour of my life writing a blog and I accidentally clicked a link and it went to that page and erased everything I had written. I'm choked right now that I have to redo this, ARGH. Anyways, this will probably be quite a bit shorter than it was going to be originally but oh well.
So I haven't been doing much lately other than study tons and going to school. I had a math final today which was sketchy. I have to have at least a B- in the class to move onto the 2nd half of the class which should be easy but I SUCK at math so I'm sketchin. Lennea is super bummed on my always studyin too cause we never get to hang out anymore which bums me out also :( The study factor has also been hampering my gaming and comic book reading which is seriously weak. Hopefully things will slow down soon...which I know they won't cause midterms are comin up, ugh. I hate school, it's so shitty.
In other shitty news my bank account got hacked and some skid jacked nearly 1000 bucks from me and I had to go through a big ordeal with the bank to cancel my card and get my money back. Things are squared away now but it pisses me off that some fucker just got a grand from me and gets away with it. Some people are super shitty and I hope they die.
One thing I am hyped on is the fact that it is now October. It is by far my favorite month out of the year. It has evvvvvverything that is great. First of all, the weather is amazing and I can wear a T-shirt and short combo or a hoody and pants and be comfortable while wearing either, minters. The MLB playoffs have also just started which I love because I get to watch the Bo Sox do their thing. They are going to win it again easily this year (even though they are losing to the LA Angels right now) and if you dont think they are...bring it up with Ramsay and he'll fight you. The NHL season also starts in October and I'm psyched on that cause I have missed hockey over the summer, hopefully the Canucks can do good this season with all the changes they have made, I am planning on making it to a game or 2 this year so if anyone would wanna join let me know. October is also rad because it has my birthday on the 23rd, so feel free to send me some gifts. Halloween is at the end of the month which is the 2nd best holiday of the year (1st is obviously christmas) and im excited for that cause I want free candy and to party. Anyways, for those reasons, October is the best month of the year and if you don't agree take a long hard look at this picture.
In my original post which got deleted because I clicked the link above and went to the pic I had a big write up here about NHL 09 and MLB 08 The Show. It talked about how rad both games are, I discussed my characters I made in the Be A Pro modes, and I pretty much spent a bunch of time hyping both games but I really don't want to write it all out again cause it is not really important and super nerdy, but I will say that the main reason I wrote it was to hype it up so my friends would get the game and get PS3 online and play against me (Ramsay and Kyle) so yea, you 2 should get on that ASAP.

JASON BAY JUST HIT A HOMERUN!! 2-1 RED SOX!!

Anyways, I didn't have much to say this time because I haven't been doing much other than playing a bit of video games, studying tons, going to school and trying my best to spend time with Lennea that doesn't involve me doing school work in one room and her hanging out in another. So yea, hopefully shit will slow down soon and I can have some more free time to do stuff outside of the house. Also, I am planning on taking a trip to Vernon sometime soon, so Cam and Ramsay get ready to hang! Thats about it for now and thanks for reading even though this blog wasn't the most exciting.

GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX! GO SOX!

- Dan

Vancouver

Living in Van is going good so far. I'm likin school and keeping busy. Ramsay came and stayed with me and Lennea for the past week or so. He got here around the 13th or so and just left yesterday. I can't really remember what we did the day he got here, I'm pretty sure we just hung out at our place in North Van and played video games or somethin. I can't really remember the order of the things we did but one of the early days we went downtown and met up with Hunter and Alex (randomly). We bought some CD's at scratch and comics at Golden Age, then went to Uncle F's for pizza. Delicious. Hunter came back with us to North Van and we hung out for a bit and Hunter was probably being a big jerk the whole time. The 15th was me and Lennea's 2 year so we went out to dinner that night to a fancy restaurant which was good. Ramsay was a good guy and just chilled at our place while we were gone. The next week included me going to school while Lennea went to work and Ramsay hung out at our place reading comics, playing video games and sleeping alot. We also managed to fit in a trip to foundation in there and a bunch of gaming. Me and Ramsay were pretty evenly matched at MLB 08 and both one every other time but I straight up whooped his trick at NHL 09, he has 0 skills. Saturday we went to Dylan's birthday at the Cambie which was alot of fun cause I got to see all my Vancouver friends that I hadn't got to see since I've been back. Pretty much everyone was there and I enjoyed it even though it was at a bar (fuck bars). Cam Brown was also down for the weekend and I was hyped to hang out with him, such a loveable guy. The next day we got up early and went downtown to meet everyone we partied with the night before for breakfast at some place called Bon's which served hella cheap breakfast. You could get a whole meal for like 4 bucks. The food was super slimey though. Ramsay didn't get anything even though he had a long trip back to Vernon that day and would most likely be hungry...weird. Anyways, after the breakfast Ramsay headed out back to Vernon and I went back to North Van to study for some quizzes that I got comin up this week and am super sketched about.

Van is good and I like living here although I do miss being home from time to time. Vernon is just so much easier than here and living in North Van makes it kinda difficult to get out and see everyone since they are far away. Whatever though, I have Lennea to keep me company. Having Ramsay stay here was fun and I wish he would get his shit together and actually move here instead of just talkin about it. Also, as surprising as this may sound with all the hanging out we did and free time we had we didn't even watch 1 episode of Pimp My Ride...

Thanks for readin, bye.

- Dan

Fishing Trip

I am getting super behind in these posts, I need to get on it or else I am going to forget everything that happens to me.

So, although summer is over now and I am already in the cold, evil grip of school I have one more tale from the last few days of freedom I had before having to come back to the harshness of learning and homework.
Sid came up with an idea for the family to go camping/fishing in late July and everyone in the family was down but it took us quite awhile to organize everything due to work and such. So our trip didn't materialize until the last days of summer but I was glad that we got our shit together and actually went. The lake we decided to go to was Postill which is located up in the mountains somewhere between Winfield and Kelowna, I thought it was going to be lame fishing and camping out in a place where we technically didn't even need to camp since we could have drove home in about 45 mins, but once we were up at the fishing lodge it felt like I was miles and miles away from home. I had thought that we were going to be out in the bush camping and just fishing at some random lake but I guess that wasn't the plan at all. Postill isn't actually just a lake it is a whole fishing resort and there was no actual camping going down as we stayed in a small cabin, and the lake we were fishing in was there especially for fishing, it kinda bummed me out at first cause the whole thing didn't seem as legit to me but I decided not to let that bug me as long as I got to catch some trout.
Anyways, we got to the resort, unloaded our shit, and got ready to wrangle some salmon or whatever kinda fish were in the lake. The only problem was that the weather decided to flair up in attempt to ruin the Hutchinson families fun. So we spent the first while in the cabin waiting for the wind and rain to die down. After an hour or two it cleared up enough for us to hit the lake. Connor had been boasting the whole trip that he was going to outfish all of us and catch "somewhere between 100-200 fish" (direct quote). Once we were out on the water though it was apparent he would not be catching anywhere near his estimated numbers. We had been out there for about an hour and hadn't even gotten a bite yet. Me and Connor started questioning Sid's fishing know-how and blamed the no-fish-catching on his choice of equipment. We were trolling behind a boat and for some reason Sid thought it was all good to use fly fishing rod's with fly's called "Doc Spratley's", and the Doc's just weren't gettin it done. We did have one regular rod though with regular tackle hooked up to it and believe it or not this was the rod that got the most action. The first day we went out for a couple hours and only caught 2 fish. The first one was a minnow that Sid reeled in a the 2nd was one that I caught which was bigger but not by much, we deemed it a keeper however since we were planning on heading in shortly after it was caught. Also of note, when we brought the fish in and decided to keep it we realized we didn't have a club to kill the fish so Sid "The Axe Murderer" Hutchinson decided to use an oar to smack it to death. He started beating the fish with the oar about 20 feet from the shoreline with people watching but the fish wouldn't die. It took him about 5 hits with the oar and then 2 or 3 with the butt end of the fishing net to finally finish the job.
That night we played some games that my Mom had brought along. The biggest hit was "Slang Teasers." It involves slag terms and people having to guess what they mean. Connor found a term in the game and has apparently adopted it as his nickname..."Old Bendy." The next day we rented another regular rod with regular tackle and left one of the fly rods at the cabin. We caught a bunch more fish on our first trip on the water that day with Sid, Karen and Me and getting in on the action. I even caught one using the ol' Doc Spratley. Connor still hadn't caught a fish, dude is brutal at fishing. We went out on a drive around the resort and did a bit of exploring and off-roading after the first fishing excursion that day. We found a pretty swampy swamp and played with some frogs and Connor got warts. After the offroading we hit up the lake again and Connor fiiiiiinnnalllly caught a fish. I should mention that all the fish we had been catching were puny and we hadn't got 1 keeper aside from the one I caught on the first day, I'm pretty sure it was the biggest fish in the lake. I did manage to catch one more that we deemed a keeper though and I whooped that fishes trick with the butt end of the fishing net, killing it in about 2 hits rather than Smasher Sid's 135 or whatever it was. The weather started to pick up again after awhile so we packed it in. The next morning we packed up and headed back for home.
The fishing trip was pretty short and a bit hindered by the weather but I really enjoyed it. It was good to spend some time with the family before having to leave home and get back to school. After the trip I had 2 more days left in Vernon. I spent them hanging with friends and saying goodbye to people. I enjoyed it and am sad that I had to leave all my friends :(. I'll be back to see everyone again real soon though!

Anyways, I am back in Vancouver now living in my place with Lennea. Things are going good so far, school is tough since I'm in Sciences now and am having to do things I haven't done since grade 11. I never thought I would have to use "Moles" again in my life. Hopefully I don't fail everything.

Well that was pretty much what happened this summer and I'll have to find a way to keep this thing interesting now that I'm in school again and nothing exciting happens. I'll probably just start making up stories or adopting other peoples experiences and passing them off as my own. So I guess that's all for now, thanks for reading (Ramsay). PEACE!

- Dan

Also, the final fish tally for the trip was:
Me - 6
Dad - 4(or 5)
Mom - 3

Con - 2 (somewhere between 100-200...)

Trapped Under Ice, Edmo Females, Brownfest and Hunter!

Alrighty, so I haven't updated this mofo' in ages so this blog is gonna be hella haggard cause I can't remember much that has happened since I got back from Cali but I'll give'r a go anyways.

First thing I'll start out on is the Trapped Under Ice show that went down at Jesse Neul's house in Kelowna. The show was super hype and the kids basement was pretty much built to have shows in. I was surprised at the turnout cause there was actually quite a few kids there which is rare for Kelowna and house shows. For some reason Trapped Under Ice played first much to the dismay of Cam Brown and Jesse Pretty who had gone to 7-11 and missed their entire set. They played real good and everyone had a good time moshin and singing along in the little basement. The dudes in the band were all cool as well and hung out with everyone after the set. CDC played 2nd and to be honest I am not into that band at all I don't even know if they are a serious band or a joke (CDC if your reading this i'm sorry but i'm not down), regardless their set was still fun because everyone was jokingly bro moshin' super hard and being funny. Except Sean Cromie of course who was lovin' the band and showing us all how real bro mosh is done. Horizons played last and had a good set, I would love to see 100% more Cole "Knightrider" Young guitar solos though. After the show the Vernon crew and some Kelowna dudes all went to Kelly O's for some food and it was revealed to us that Connor had sustained a concussion at the hands (or should I say fists...yuk yuk yuk) of the bro mosh king Cromie. He was out of it and we all had a lark at his expense.

Ok, so I'm a little hazy on the next events that happened in the summer but the next big thing that I can recall are Katt and her friends from Edmonton coming to Vernon to visit. They came to Vernon and camped at some random ass campsite I hadn't even heard of in the middle of the woods. We didn't really hang much but we did assemble a large crew and make our way out to Enderby to float down the river. The people that came included me, Connor, Ramsay, Derrek, Katt, Jessica, Danyell, Nikki, Grant, James, Damian and Ryan. Dave and Haley were also supposed to come but pulled a real wuss move and backed out last minute, weeeeeeeeeak. The float was good and after we all went for ice cream which was delicious. We then went back to Vernon (ditching some Kelowna guy no one knew in the process, smooth driving Con!) and Connor, Ramsay and I went to hang with the Edmonton girls at their campsite. In the morning we met up with them again and went to the good ol' Waddy's restaurant for breakfast, and if you haven't I would highly encourage you to go have a meal at the 5 star establishment that Waddy's has set up in Vernon. Minters is all I can say. After the meal we said our goodbyes and that was the last we saw of Edmonton females.
On a very important side note, I did NOT have the hairiest chest out of the river float crew. That title belongs to the fine gentlemen known as Derrek Traxel.

The next thing I am going to talk about is Brownfest 2008 because I remember it quite well and everything in between is a bit hazy. I'm sure some rad stuff happened I just can't remember it at the moment.

Brownfest 08 was a show put on by non other than Cam Brown himself. The bands that were playing were Scarab, Crusades, Vile Style and Foul Play. Poops Brown really outdid himself when searching for a venue and found a dancehall in Westbank that is perfect for shows, although it is a bit of a drive from Vernon. We got to the show and spent a good hour waiting around for some of the Kelowna dudes to go back to their place and get a bass cab. Once they got back we found out that Scarab wasn't actually going to play cause they didn't have their shit on lock so instead Crusades set up their stuff. They let everyone know that it would most likely be their last show as a band for awhile and I expected Kelowna to be super down and mosh hard since it was their last time being able to see them and unsurprisingly, I was let down. The only kid(s) moshing were Connor, Lindsay and me which I thought was pretty weak (a hefty Kelowna fellow also moshed for a bit near the end, props to him). After they finished Vile Style set up. The Vile Style set was a blast, Mark their guitarist is one rowdy dude and had a bunch of props for the set. They ranged from zombie masks, to blow up guitars, to giant foam peaches. The set was fun and everyone was playing around hitting each other with all the props. Foul Play played last and all doned full soccer uni's for the set. Ill. Mark also played guitar for them and had more zany ideas which resulted in everyone playing with more props and having more fun. Once they finished everyone sang happy birthday to Harry, the drummer from Vile Style and Mark brought out a bag full of donuts he found in the dumpster of a Surrey Krispy Kreme. It doesn't get more hood than that folks. We all went to Boston Pizza after the show and enjoyed a meal. Everyone hates on BP for some reason but I think it is wonderful and would eat their all the time if it didn't make me so fat.

After we finished with that we headed back to Vernon and Hunter came along for the ride and stayed with us for the next couple days. Having him around was a very minty time and we got up to quite a bit. We went out to my cabin and hung out with my cousin and her friends who I don't know and roasted hot dogs. I took on the first ever Mississauga Mauler that night (a hot dog with an entire can of pop poured on it) and did not enjoy it what so ever. Other highlights of Hunter's stay included Cam Brown hyping Date Rape, watching Nick Gibson peform on his acoustic (http://www.myspace.com/wesaynever MINTERS!), hanging in Kelowna and singing BRO-O-CO! TA-A-CO! It was a good time to say the least.

That is all for now, I also went on a fishing trip but I am going to cover that in a later blog. Which will probably happen later today. HURRAY!

- Dan

California Part 2 - The Sound & The Fury

After we hit up 6 Flags we spent another night in Anaheim and then headed out to Hollywood. We got there fairly early, checked into our hotel and went and rented a car. We drove around Hollywood for a bit and through Beverly Hills which was pretty crazy. It wasn't like I imagined it but some areas were super nice. We hit up In-n-Out Burger and headed to Venice Beach. We got to the beach area and parked our car to walk along the shore, we spent about an hour walking in the wrong direction and had to turn back to find the well known area of Venice Beach (the level from Tony Hawk). We made it there and looked at a bunch of the shops which all had pretty much the exact same shit. There was also a bunch of graffiti on the walls there that we checked out, some of it was pretty wild. We headed back to Hollywood and once we were there Lennea and Connor got in a bit of a tustle so Lennea and I walked down Hollywood Blvd together while Connor grumped it up in the hotel room (we later found he actually pulled a solo mission and walked around Hollywood). Me and Lennea saw some weird ass people walking around, there were bands playing in the street, break dancers, people dressed up in all sorts of costumes like Jack Sparrow, Spiderman, Jimi Hendrix, KISS, etc. and there were also hella bums cruisin around, one of them was super sketch wearing nothing but socks and pulled a sidewalk lay down cigarette smoke. It was pretty much just a big party with bums hangin. On the way home we got some sleazy pizza and almost saw two dykes fight in the middle of the street. Tight.
The next morning we returned the car and cruised Hollywood a bit more. In the evening we had to make it back to LA and catch the Amtrak to Santa Barbara. The ride was pretty cool cause we went past the LA river and got to see all the crazy graff. There was tooons of it, just non-stop and most of the stuff was amazing.
We got into Santa Barbara pretty late and made it to our hotel room where they scammed us out of another 100 bucks, but it was the only place we had to stay so we had to suck it up and pay. Californians are sleazy. We hit the hay and at about 5:30am we got a knock at the door, it was Lindsey, Grant and Cole from Kelowna/Calgary who were going to stay with us for the weekend. They set up their sleeping bags and we talked for a bit before goin to bed for a couple more hours. We checked out Santa B a bit in the morning and went to a mall that was way out of any of our price range and ate pop-tarts (We left Grant sleeping in the hotel room while we did this). After getting breakfast we headed back to get Grant and found him still sleeping. We dragged his large red-headed ass out of bed and went to the venue.
Day 1 of Sound and Fury was super fun, I probably enjoyed it the most out of all the days. I was super excited instantly because me and Connor found/reunited with Clarke (you readers may remember him from our Rainfest adventure as our crazy red-headed American friend), we talked to him for a bit and watched a few bands. I can't remember the exact order of the bands so I am just going to do a highlight list of the bands I was diggin.

Highlights of Day 1:
- Seeing Swamp Thing, they put on a wild live show with tons of energy. Their guitarists were givin'r hard. I was bummed though because I bought some Kayne West sunnies at Venice Beach and they were in my pocket and got moshed into a few different pieces, but whatever it was worth it.
- Sabertooth Zombie played a super fun set, such a unique band that does whatever they want. A kid got really hurt during their set though which sucks and they had to end their set early. Hope that dude is ok.
- Trash Talk was crazy, I feared for my life the entire time, especially when their roadie got the mic and just started ruining people. I remember him from Rainfest though and knew to steer clear. I also got KO'd during their last song. Apparently some kid stage dived feet first and I got it right to the dome and the next thing I knew a bunch of peoople were around me picking me up off the ground.
- Have Heart was awesome as always. I love this band. Kids were going nuts and didn't stop stage diving the entire time.

After the show was done for the day we headed to In-n-Out with Clarke and his buddies. There were tons of people from the show there and we ran into one of the dudes we met on the Amtrak(I didn't mention this earlier but his name was Phil and was from Toronto, he also had a sweet moustache). Once we finished our meal we just headed back to the Hotel, hung out for a bit and then fell asleep.
On Day 2 we all got up and went downtown Santa Barbara in the morning. Grant and Cole were fighting non-stop which was hilarious for the entire trip. Cole got mad at me and Connor because we called Grant a "day-walker" (a red-head that isn't super pale and can go out with being a noticeable ginger), but we said Cole was to red-headed and pale to be a day-walker. He then freaked and called himself "the night rider". Grant then told Cole that he acted like no one had ever been nice to him in his life and that he had a black soul. During our downtown excursion we saw the sweetest thing on the whole trip. A bum walking around with a dog and standing on top of the dog riding it was a cat and on top of the cat was a rat. They were all walking around riding each other like a pyramid. So fucking rad. We also hit up Fatburger and Grant pussed out of doing the King challenge. Day 2 of S&F was the weakest in my opinion but there was still some good stuff.

Highlights of Day 2:
- Trapped Under Ice was rad I hadn't really gotten into them much before but they really impressed me with their set. So heavy and tons of gnar mosh. Including a naked dude moshing the whole time.
- Colin Of Arabia played a good set, not as many people were into it as I would have thought but they were still good.
- Paint It Black had a really fun set. It was cool cause they came on right after Death Before Dishonor and played like the complete opposite style of hardcore and totally burned the DBD singer for using the word "Faggot".
- Guns Up! was by far the wildest set of the whole weekend. Kids were going off! Lindsey got caught in a mosh and got a wicked shiner + bloody nose + bloody mouth.

After the show we were goin to go party but everyone was hella tired so we just went back to the hotel and hit up 711. Everyone was trying to sleep while me and Grant kept them up talking about baseball all night. Grant is ill.
Day 3 we went back downtown to hang/do some shopping and we ran into cat-rat-dog again which was awesome because I could never get tired of seeing that. At one point the cat got off of the dog and the rat hucked the gap from the cats back to the dogs back. It was super epic. Day 3 of S&F had a crazy amount of good bands but I was so tired that day that I don't think I enjoyed it to it's full potential.

Highlights of Day 3:
- Lewd Acts brought the slime and kids were getting grimey. Their singer was also going nuts and jumping waaaay into the crowd and bashing his head with both the mic and the stage.
- New Lows, I am so hyped on this band. So heavy and kids were moshing hard. Clarke was givin it his all during their set. I love Clarke.
- Shipwreck was really cool. I was never super into this band before but I listened to them a bunch before the show and actually listened to their lyrics and they are amazing, the dude can write. Their live show was also alot of fun.
- Sinking Ships played an amazing last set. Lots of jokes and funnyness, kids were also going pretty wild and piling up on the stage to sing along for the last time.
- Ceremony, I had super high hopes for their set and was actually a bit dissappointed. Don't get me wrong it was still gnarly as fuck and Ceremony is just good so you can't go wrong but everyone was hyping their set saying it would be the gnarest of the weekend and it definitely wasn't, although they do get the craziest circle pit award.

After that was over we went back to our hotel room and had pizza with Clarke and his buds. We then went to bed and got up hella early to catch out Amtrak back to LA where we had to catch our plane back to Seattle. That part of the trip went smooth but once we got to Seattle we found that the 7pm greyhound was sold out and we would have to wait till 11. Luckily I asked at 7 if we could get on and the driver said yes so we didn't have to wait an extra 4 hours. The ride home was good except for the border, the guy we got was a dick and was trying to be sneaky and trick us into admitting something but it ended up just being really awkward and taking a long time but we made it through easy enough.

We made it back home to Vernon the next day and I was actually kinda bummed to be back. I had so much fun in Cali with Con and Lennea and I wished the trip was alot longer. Hanging with Lindsey, Grant and Cole was also alot of fun, those dudes are hilarious and I now consider them all super good buds. Seeing Clarke again was also rad, I can't stress enough how amazing this man is. If any single girls are reading this I would highly recommend getting your freak on with Clarke Holland.

Anyways, thanks for reading this I know it was alot. Hopefully you enjoyed it! Until next time, BYE!

- Dan

California - Part 1: Rides and Stuff

I have decided to do this trip in two different posts because I don't really feel like writing tons of stuff all at once and it will be much easier to read instead of just jumbling everything in as one.

This trip to California was originally going to be myself, Ramsay and his girlfriend Jessica and my girlfriend Lennea. However, Ramsay and Jess both had other deals so they couldn't go anymore and my bro Connor decided to step in and come along and I am hyped he did.
We headed out of Vernon on the 17th and went to Vancouver to stay the night with Lennea. The drive was pretty quick and when we got to Vancouver, Justen was at my place hanging with Lennea and had a pretty sweet gun that shot both plastics discs and plastic bb's at the same time. Tight. We turned in pretty soon after we got there but not before Connor got hot soup spilt all over his hand due to Justen being a meathead. In the morning we made the trek to the greyhound and had to bus about 5 hours to Seattle. Once we got to Seattle we had to find our hotel and had quite the ordeal locating it. We spent one night in Seattle and caught our plane to LA in the morning.
The plane ride was actually alot of fun. We flew with Virgin America and they had these crazy touch screens in the backs of their seats so you could watch tv, movies, listen to music and play video games. Me and Connor spent some time playing Doom until I managed to freeze my screen and it would no longer work. Anyways, the flight was short and we got into LA in the early afternoon. We caught a bus and made our way to our hotel on Disney Way which was about a five minute walk from Disneyland. Since it was already kinda later in the afternoon we just went shopping at this shopping center by our hotel where we all got some pretty rad sunnies and Connor got a Hollister necklace...which he actually wears. After shopping we made our way to Downtown Disney and looked at all the shops there, some of them had some pretty crazy stuff, namely the store that had the Arnold Palmer memorabilia for nearly 500 bucks. We ate at the Rainforest Cafe that night which was fun but I thought the food wasn't very great. Once our dinner was done we headed back to the hotel and watched the Disneyland fireworks from the porch of our hotel room. Me and Lennea then walked to a grocery store to get some food and see if they had cheaper passes for Disneyland. We went through some pretty hood ass areas to get there and once we did we found that the Disney passes were the same price as they were at Disneyland. Lennea ended up stealing one after sketching about it for half an hour.
We woke up early to get to Disneyland before the rush the next day. Me and Con got into the park easy because we already had passes with Lindsey Allen had given us (thanks a bunch Lindsey) but Lennea's pass totally got iced at the gate because it hadn't been activated due to it being stolen. She ended up having to buy a pass. I had a blast at Disney, we hit all the good rides numerous times and stayed there all day. It wasn't as busy as I thought it would be, but I definitely noticed that there were toooons of shady/scummy looking characters there. I never noticed that when I had been there before, I guess when your young you don't noticed that typed of thing. The highlights of the day for me were Indiana Jones, Space and Splash Mountain, Fantasmic, spending 9 dollars on churros and obviously The Enchanted Tiki Room. Connor also got ruined by a bee in Toon Town and his finger swelled up to the size of one of his legs (which is huge) and spent 20 bucks of a piece of the cursed Aztec gold from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Day three in Cali we went to California Adventure, which is the other Disneyland park for all you nooblets. We got there hella early so we could beat the rush like at Disneyland but we found California opens alot later than Disney (I'm sick of writing California Adventure and Disneyland so now they will be referred to as CA and DL) but they did let us into the small shopping area of the park. To beat the rush we decided to wait near the area where the rest of the park was roped off so right when they unroped it we could hit the roller coaster. The park opened and we pretty much speed walked to the coaster area with about a thousand people speed walking behind us. We got there and found that there was already tons of people there waiting in line for the rides, so that was super wack. We got in the line which we assumed was the line for the coaster and waited in it for about an hour before we noticed that they were giving out 3-D glasses to everyone in line, we then realized we weren't even in line for the coaster which sucked, but the ride we actually went on was fun. It was a Toy Story one where you got to shoot guns. The day at CA was fun but not as fun as DL, there just aren't as many good rides at CA. The highlights of the day were the roller coaster, Maliboomer, Big Grizzly Rapids, Tower of Terror and Soarin' Over California.
On day four we rented a car and drove out to Valencia to hit up 6 Flags. The drive was kinda long but it was cool so see some California desert-ish landscape. We got there and it was crazy hot and for some reason Connor thought it would be a good idea to wear a dark blue shirt and pants. So the first thing we did once we got in the park was find a store buy Con some cooler clothes, he ended up buying a yellow Homer Simpson shirt for like 20 boneyays. We tricked Lennea into hitting X-2 as the first ride of the day (which is the gnarliest ride) and she actually enjoyed it so I thought she would be able to do all the rest of the rides but she still wussed out hard for some of them. 6 Flags was fun and we hit all the rides but the lines were so damn long it totally hindered the fun. I also lost my phone on one of the rides so now I am phoneless which is really wack. The highlights of 6 Flags were X-2, Goliath, Scream, Superman, the super sick Batman play they put on and seeing the cop in it almost eat shit really hard trying a jump on a dirtbike, and meeting Pimp Masta Pimp who was some 8 year old black kid who tried to set up a long distance relationship with Lennea.

This is all I am going to write for now, I'll finish the trip in my next post. It will have all the info on Sound and Fury and some stuff about the trip to Hollywood. All the theme parks were super fun and I had a good time at all of them and I'm glad I went even though they cost me tons of money. I would suggest that everyone hits Disneyland up sometime. Thanks for readin!

Van City (pic)

Whoops I was gonna post this in the "blog" but forgot, so here it is!

Van City

This past weekend my brother and I made the trek down to Vancouver to see Have Heart and Verse play. It originally started out as just being us two making the trip but all of our friends also decided to drive down and spend the weekend hanging in Van, and I was happy with that. In our car it was me, Connor and Steve, but Ramsay, Jessica, Sean, Joe and Dave also came down in seperate cars.

Me and Con split the driving on the way there (Steve drove for like 20 mins but claimed he was too tired to drive and just napped the whole time...weak) and I was the unlucky one who had to drive into Vancouver. We got stuck in traffic for about an hour and finally made it to my/Lennea's place around 6:30. Justen got to our place around the same time as us and after we dropped our shit off we headed to the show.

The show was rad, I was hyped to see Verse and Have Heart, but was bummed on the fact that not many people I knew showed up for it. I guess Vancouver isn't into those bands. Shits wack. Conrad and Tyler did show up though, I was down for seeing those guys again since I hadn't in a long time. Anyways, onto the show review! Bodyguard played first and it was actually kind of awkward. All off the kids just stood at the back and I just felt really odd being in that room. Circles played next and it was pretty decent, I'm not huge into that band but they put on a good live show. Verse was up third and their front man was hasslin everyone cause they were hidin in the back and he pretty much forced them to move up, which was good. They played a pretty good set but you could tell they weren't that hyped cause not many people were getting into them. Oh well though I enjoyed myself. Have Heart headlined the show and alot more people got into them than any of the other bands. I was super pumped on seeing them and me and Con were up front singin along the whole time. It was alot of fun and they played pretty much all the songs I wanted to hear.

After the show we all headed to Foundation for Nachos and we met up with Ramsay, Sean, Jess, Dave and Joe there. As always the Nachos were delicious. Everyone parted ways after the meal and once we got back to my place we just headed to bed.

Saturday we went downtown Van and got breakfast/lunch at Cafe Crepe. I got a 12 inch hot dog that had the gnarliest mustard ever. It pretty much destroyed my nasal cavity for life. My parents called a bit later to tell me that they were almost to my place with a bunch of furniture I had asked them to bring down so me and Lennea rushed back to my house to meet them. We had a super rough time getting the furniture down the stairs and into my house, namely the couch. I have no idea how we are getting that thing out of there once I move out. Once we got everything in and organized my parents told me that they were heading back to Vernon (I thought they were staying the night) and I was really happy with them for driving all that stuff down for me. Thanks mom and dad! They left and me and Lennea headed back downtown to watch my bro and his friends get SBF tattoos.

They all got tattoos on their wrist at Adernaline downtown. The tattoo was SBF in a font called "The pooper" riding a skateboard. After the tattoos were finished we headed to Alex's house for a party.

The party that night was pretty wild. Alex and his roomates rented out 13 bongo drums and tons of maracas and other instruments for it. So at any given time there was 10+ people playing music that sounded like it came out of Jumanji. I was having alot of fun at the party until buzz kill Lennea said she had to work and made us leave since she was the one driving.

On Sunday we hit up Metrotown for a bit, did some shopping and got lost trying to leave which caused us to be trapped in the mall for an extra hour. Finally we made it out and headed for home. Steve wimped out again on the driving and only drove to the toll booth before claiming he was too tired to drive. So I drove the rest of the way home.

The trip was alot of fun and I was super pumped to see Have Heart and hang with the buds all weekend. This week of work has been pretty good as well, the house we are painting has a pool so me, my bro and Michael have been takin some mid-day swims. Today I jumped from the roof of the house into the pool, it was pretty badass...and I hope Agi doesn't read this.

Anyways, thats it for now.

Thanks for reading about my life...bye!

Canada Day Weekend

Lennea and her friends came up from Vancouver on Friday to party at Funtastics this weekend. When they got to Vernon we headed to the beach with my brother and his friends. All us Vernon boys enjoyed the water and Lennea and her friends sat in the hot sun while wearing black sweaters, weird. We went to see Wall-e later that night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was barely any dialogue in the movie but Pixar still managed to make it really funny and entertaining. I would def recommend going and checking it out.

Saturday me, Lennea, my bro, Sean, Ryan and Jess all went to the beach together. We swam for a bit and played a game of soccer. Me and Con got worked by Sean and Jess and didn't even get a goal (I later found out that both of them played Rep soccer). Later that night we headed up to Funtastics to party and watch Kim Mitchell (I don't know who he is either). Lennea and her friends all got shittered and partied hard. Lennea fell down and barely remembered the night. It was fun to see a bunch of people up there that I hadn't seen in a loooong ass time. We got home pretty late and Lennea's friend Andrea got in a big argument with Ryan Baker, which was both funny, annoying and awkward. Ryan ended up going home as a result.

Lennea and her friend's left on Sunday and I headed over to Sean Cromies house for a BBQ. It was a good time except the hot dog I ate was not sittin stellar and made me feel sick for the rest of the day. Later on me and my friends all headed up to Funtastics again to watch BC/DC (AC/DC cover band). I had fun again and people were going wild for BC/DC which I thought was hilarious because seriously...they are a cover band. Vernon is hick. The highlights of that night was the mosh pit during BC/DC and super drunk Steve getting super into it and two-stepping to them. Hilarious. Some dude also got beat up because he tried to attack Sean and apparently Connor busted the dudes nose.

The weekend was super fun and I really enjoyed seeing people up at Funtastics but so far this week has sucked. Were painting a house out in Armstrong so I have to get up super early and drive out there so I can work on a roof in the blazing heat. So bogus. Tuesday night was fun though, I went out to Kelowna with some people to watch the Canada day fireworks which were good and I'm sure blew the Vernon ones outta the water.

I am really looking forward to this weekend when I head to Van to see Have Heart and Verse and start moving my stuff into my place there. Maybe I will write about that once I get home.

Thanks again for reading...if anyone even is.

- Dan

Been Awhile

I haven't written on this thing in awhile, I guess nothing to exciting has been going on but I figure I should try and write some stuff just so I don't forget everything I have been doing.

My bro, Steve and me all went painting last Thursday. It was the first time I had gone in a loooong time so I was kinda nervous about doing a shitty piece. Things turned out alright though and I was happy with what I came up with, I still got smoked by Con and Steve though (pics at bottom). That weekend we went out to Lumby on Saturday to watch Clayton in a skateboard comp. It was a good time, and Clayton did real well. He ended up getting 2nd place, props. Sunday we went out wakeboarding and I got shown up real bad by both my bro and Clayton, which sucked. We took Sid out for dinner at the blue heron that night for fathers day.

During the week I saw Cory and Kenzie since they were in town. I hadn't seen Cory in a long ass time so it was good to see my bud. We went to see Kung Fu Panda Friday which was awesome and I would recommend anyone reading this to go see it.

That's pretty much all I've been doing for the past couple weeks, it's been fun but I don't think it makes for very exciting blogs. Hopefully next time I will have some wilder/funnier stories for the 2 or 3 of you that read this.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

- Dan

(Mine is red)

Vanguard + Weekend

Thursday night me, my brother, Steve, Clayton and Sean all drove down to Kelowna to see Vanguard play with Crusades, Horizons and a new band from Calgary called Voices. Steve drove us down and we were all crammed in the back of his car. I am 100% convinced he could have moved his seat up to give us more room but he refused saying he was "too tall," that shit was annoying but whatever.

We got to the show and said Hi to all our Kelowna buds and ran into some out of towners that I hadn't seen in awhile. I saw Vango who is always a nice guy and Hunter who was goin on the "tour" (it is only like 3 dates) with Vanguard, it was good to see those dudes. The show was kinda last minute so there wasn't as many kids there as the last Kelowna show but it was a pretty decent turnout. Voices started it off and were pretty solid even though not many kids were getting into them, I'm guessing this is because no one had really heard them before. Crusades played second and played a solid set. People were gettin into them and moving around and Ramsay hit his head with the mic several times and started bleeding (very Ceremony-esque). Horizons played next and had another solid set, I am not even entirely sure who the actual "official" members of this band are. The last band to play was Vanguard and their set was alot of fun. People were moshing and singing along alot. I am liking Kelowna shows way more these days than a few years ago cause kids actually get into bands now.

On Friday, Lennea came up from Vancouver. She got in around 8ish and we gave Connor a pretty slick haircut when she got here. It was short on the sides and slicked right back on top with Brylcream, super greasy. That night we went to see "The Strangers" which is not a very good movie. I don't recommend seeing it.

Saturday was my cousin Jessica's wedding. So we all had to get dressed up and head out to Kelowna for the ceremony/reception. I usually don't enjoy weddings but I had fun at this one. I got to see all my family and some of them that I rarely see these days. The reception was a good time cause we got lots of free food, (although lots of it was gross "fancy" food) and my cousin Lance who I hadn't seen for 4 years was there gettin boozed and being really funny. My uncle Rick is also growing a sweet pony tail and a badass beard which was sweet to see.

That night we went to Clayton Lanoue's house for a party and a game of "Dog Pong." Dog Pong is a game that they invented that is like beer pong except you throw hot dogs into buns instead of balls into beer.

The rules were:
- If you landed your dog in a bun then the other team had to eat that hot dog.
- If the dog flew off the table and a member of the other team caught it in their mouth then the opposing team had to eat 2 dogs.
- You went until one teams buns were all gone and then the losing team had to eat all the other teams remaining hot dogs.

Our team was me, Clayton and Connor. We got worked really bad in the only game we played and all of us ended up having to eat 4 hot dogs each. I scored 2 dogs into the other team's buns and so did Connor, Clayton was held pointless and was the obvious weak link on the team. The rest of the party was a pretty good time, I saw Brittany Tegert who I hadn't seen in about a year and Ian was being his usual hilarious self and making everyone laugh.

That was pretty much everything exciting that happened this weekend. I was happy Lennea came up and I got to spend time with her. Next weekend I am heading to Van to see her and hopefully some friends as well.

Thanks for reading!

- Dan

Rainfest

Recap Time! This is going to be a super long blog with lots of writing...if you don't read it all I won't be bummed.

Me, my bro (Connor), Sean Cromie and Ryan Ramsay just got back from Tacoma last night and I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say it was by far the best weekend of summer so far.

Sean and Ramsay came over Thursday night and we all woke up early on Friday to head to Tacoma. The trip was poorly planned from the get go, we didn't even have a map or any idea how to get to Tacoma until midnight the night before and a place to stay once we got there was non-existent. We didn't care though everyone was just hyped for the show.

We opted to drive through Osoyoos rather than going through Vancouver cause we thought it was save us some time since it was the U.S. long weekend and we figured the border would be super busy. The drive was a good time, Lyrical C (Connor) was spittin' some hard freestyle raps and the Wasp crew came into existence. We got to the border and the officer there seemed to be pretty down with us and I thought it was gonna be easy going getting through the border but he turned on us and made us pull over so some other border guards could search our car. While they were searching our car we were taken inside and searched which was pretty sketchy even though we hadn't done anything wrong. They made us sit there for like an hour while they searched our shit. Finally they let us go and now I hate all those border cocksuckers forever. After that experience the drive seriously took a turn for the worse. The road signs in the U.S. suck tons of dick and we got mixed up a bunch and didn't ever know if we were going the right way. About two hours away from Tacoma we started running out of gas on some stupid road in the middle of the goddam forest and had to take a detour so we could find a gas station. We ended up in some small hick ass town which was about 45 mins out of the way. The car got filled up and we hit the road again taking a different route to Tacoma than we originally planned. Once we near Tacoma we hit tons of traffic and it took us about an hour and a half to move 10 miles and finally get into Tacoma. I fucking hate driving in the States.

So after about 10 and a half hours of driving we finally made it to the Viaduct (venue where Rainfest was at) and headed in. We only missed one band (Sean bought one of this bands shirts even though we didn't see them or know who they were...weird). Friday's highlights were Cruel Hand's set which kids went off too and moshed super hard, Owen Hart being super metal and having a gnarly ass singer, Sinking Ships set was nuts as it was one of their last, Outbreak played a crazy set and everyone was into them. Stage diving and singing along during them was mega fun. Verse headlined the first night and got a super crazy reaction, it was definitely the best set I have ever seen them play.

During the show Sean, (being the super smooth dude that he is) talked to a female who hooked us up with Josh who is one of the guys that runs the Viaduct. He told us he had a place with 2 of the other Viaduct guys (Ryan and Donny who are brothers) and that they would be down for us staying there, which was rad and everyone was hyped. So we stayed after the show ended and helped clean up with the guys, met another one of the Viaduct dudes named Scott who is an awesome guy, and then headed back to their place to sleep. This was also when we first met Clarke.

Clarke is a legit Wasp. He trooped it from Salt Lake city solo with some random ass people from Salt Lake who were going to a different concert. He didn't have place to stay either and is much more of a man than any of us Vernon kids. We got set up for bed in the guy's garage, which they had turned into a bedroom. The sleep was super comfy and in the morning we befriended Clarke and he joined us in getting breakfast.

Saturday was fun, a bunch of friends from Vancouver showed up and a bunch of good bands played. Set Foot played early in the day which I thought was kinda wack since they were better than most of the bands there but what can ya do. Their set was fun even though it got cut mega short. Other Saturday highlights included Pressvre, Shook Ones and definitely Trash Talk who played the craziest set of the fest by far. I was scared for my life the entire time and some kid got KO'd by a fat kid in a tie dye shirt. That shit was badass. After the show ended we went out for dinner with a bunch of guys from the Viaduct, some very legit dudes from Bremerton and a couple members of the band Knucklepuck. They all stayed the night in the garage with us, which was cool but also sucky cause one of them was pretty much a Snorlax and kept everyone up.

Sunday was the best day of the fest for sure. So many good bands. I was hyped on seeing Life Long Tragedy, Killing The Dream, Dangers, Vanguard, Sabertooth Zombie, and of course Ceremony. All those bands had wild sets, especially Dangers and Ceremony. I'm pretty sure the entire venue knew the lyrics to Dangers and was singing along, Connor is apparently a closet Dangers fan as he was singing along the entire time. Ceremony headlined the last day and that was the band that we were all the most hyped to see. It was crazy, they played a couple new songs with sounded wicked and at one point during their set us kids from Vernon plus Clarke were the only ones moshing, it was cool.

After the show ended we said goodbye to a bunch of Vancouver people and the people we met and headed back to Ryan and Donny's place to have a hot tub and hit the hay. I give lots of props to Clarke for coming up with the hot tub idea. In the morning we said goodbye to Ryan and headed out. We dropped Clarke off in Seattle and had a sad goodbye. Then we hit the road and took about 8 and a half hours to get home. Highlights of the trip home were: Applebee's + the Cowboy Burger, Sean and Connor drinking the biggest Monster energy drinks ever and Connor trying to pee in a bottle and failing miserably.

That was alot of typing, but I believe it all needed to be said. The trip was super fun and I can't wait to do it again next year. I give alot of thanks to the dudes who run the Viaduct for putting the fest on and a super special thanks to Josh, Ryan, Donny for letting us stay with them and Scott for being a rad dude. Also, Clarke is the best ever.

Thanks for reading! Maybe some more exciting stuff will happen and I can write another blog.


Ps. Tickets for Haustfest 2009 are on sale now.

Summer So Far

So my friend Cam recently created a blog and he convinced me that it was a good way to remember things so I can look back and "reflect" on it later. It may sound lame to some people but I'm pretty hyped on the idea, I don't think anyone but me is going to read this anyway.

Now that I am done explaining myself I'll get to the first post aka blog entry. I recently moved back to Vernon after spending the year in Vancouver going to school. I'm pretty excited to be back home cause summers in Vernon are rad and I missed my family and friends here while I was gone. That being said, I am already starting to miss Van. I met alot of cool people there and made some good friends. Hanging with Lennea everyday and having shows to go to all the time was also a plus. When I got back in Vernon I bummed around for a few weeks, hung out with friends and skated a bit while being super poor. Eventually I found a job cutting down trees and worked a couple days but it was super wack and they made me shave every morning so I decided to quit and told them I got a new job. Another couple weeks of doing nothing and being broke was the result. I ended up getting the same job I worked last summer painting houses. It's not bad, I get to listen to tunes all day with no stress.

We had the show in my garage on the 11th, lots of kids came out and it ended up being really fun. Bodyguard started it off and played a fun, fast paced set. Leave It Behind played next which was fun. I always love having the Edmonton dudes come play shows in Vernon because those guys are awesome! Crusades/Nick Gibson played next and ripped it, you can watch a video of their set on their myspace (http://www.myspace.com/crusadeshc). Slingshot played fourth and as always they were super fun, lots of kids were singing along and getting into it which was good to see. Set Foot played last and it got pretty rowdy. A couple kids got banged up but nothing serious. It is stressful puttin together shows and having them at your house but they always end up being fun, hopefully me and Connor can set up some more.

On to the second show review of the blog entry. Last night I headed out to Kelowna with Connor, Ramsay, Sean and Steve to go see Grave Maker, ACG, Horizons and Saints. The new venue in Kelowna is sweet, props to Lindsay for getting it. I was pretty surprised to see how many kids were at the show. Usually at the Vernon/Kelowna shows its the same handful of kids but it seems like there is a bunch of young kids who are starting to come out now which I'm hyped on. Saints was playing when I got there and sounded pretty decent, some kids were getting into it and having fun which is always good. Horizons played their first show and it was awesome, I'm hyped on this band, I know they will put out some good stuff. ACG's set was fun and heavy, kids were moshing. Grave Maker is super sick and lots of kids were getting into them and moshing. It was a fun time and Sean Cromie mosh is the best ever.

Vernon has been a good time so far I guess and I think it will get better as the summer progesses. I'm looking forward to swimming, wakeboarding and hangin with my friends here. Next on my agenda is Rainfest. Ramsay, Sean, My brother and I are heading out to Tacoma on Friday for it and I am so hyped for it. I know it will be one of the best weekends of the year.

Thats it for now I guess, my life isn't that interesting so this thing will probably get updated like once a year so...yea, see ya!

- Dan