Quickly– before I finally recycle the last of these letters, check out my high school’s awesome reward for achieving Honour Roll status:

It’s a tough call– which is better: My photo on the wall or a big juicy BUCK to spend at the cafeteria? Hmm….

Luckily we didn’t have to choose between the two. That would have been a pretty painstaking decision. (Ed. note: ONE DOLLAR, BABY, ALL THE WAY!)

PS: Because I am an incurable NERD, I had kept all 12 of these letters (one for each report card!) for OVER TEN YEARS, in a special binder, with each of them in their own special plastic sleeve… to keep them protected? (I guess?) And watch, now that I have finally disposed of them, the report card police will show up at my door and demand proof of my high school honour roll status… which I will no longer be able to supply. Knowing my luck.

I have to confess to being a bit of a hermit most times. I can be interactive, outgoing, and cheerful when the situation requires it, but my personal preference is to stay at home and fester in my own (and Marty’s) company. (It’s a wonder I even ventured out long enough to meet Marty in the first place. I really am content to stay inside my shell 24/7. It simply rejuvenates me.)

This tendency to hibernate isn’t my family’s favourite quality of mine, even though they have grudgingly learned to deal with it. My parents wonder why I hardly ever call and fret that something is wrong, my sisters feel out of the loop at the best of times, and even my two year old niece is probably like “Auntie Dana? Who the eff is that?”

I can’t help it. I just need to be wrapped up in my own cocoon sometimes to feel like I am gaining back the energy I’ve spent. And after a whole summer of smiling and chatting nonstop with people from every corner of the world, I’ve really needed to shut myself in and do what I do best: be a Cancer.

Anyway, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, when I finally ventured out this past weekend for lunch with one of my aunts, that a certain announcement was expected of me. (After all, my aunt knows how reclusive I usually am, and so naturally, she would have suspected that really big news was the prime factor motivating this rare meeting over lunch.)

I should have seen it coming.

My aunt was so sure that I was going to tell her I was pregnant. In fact, she was so completely convinced of this news that she announced it to a handful of my uncles and cousins before she left for lunch!! She was even going to phone my mother and congratulate her as well, but she decided at the last minute to wait until after lunch to do so, lest she be late for our meeting and miss hearing the great news herself.

I, of course, was totally oblivious when we met up, and I aimlessly chatted about soup while we waited for a table. Blah blah blah I was totally craving yams lately and blah blah blah I was so glad that they were serving the African Peanut Yam soup that day and blah blah blah soup blah blah blah! We were informed that there was a 20 minute wait before we could sit down, so I suggested that we check out the toy store across the road while we waited.

My aunt couldn’t stand it anymore. The spontanoues meeting, the yam cravings, the toy store, the 8 or so extra pounds on my body– they all clearly pointed to one thing. “Dana, are you pregnant?” she blurted, so excited to have guessed the truth before it came out.

She was met with my blank stare and the faint sound of my slow 80s brain trying to process what she was suggesting.

“Um, no”, I answered, forgetting all about my family and our crazy family grapevine. You see, if you ever have urgent news that you want to spread AROUND THE WORLD in about 30 minutes or so, just tell one of my aunts and then sit back. Relax! At least eleven hundred people will hear your news in the next few minutes, which will still leave about 25 minutes for the rest of the world’s population to find out. Don’t worry: it will happen.

My aunt was crushed. “I thought for sure you were pregnant!”, she moaned. “I even told your uncle and cousin Michael about it!”

Click! I began to register what she was saying. Uh oh. The Fraser family had been put on amber alert. And the problem with the Fraser grapevine is that it’s nearly impossible to cancel or change a message once it has been put down the tubes…

Luckily, the message had only been spread to a handful of male family members to start. The Fraser males are more slow burning than the females– like ashes that smolder silently inside a couch cushion before suddenly engulfing the couch in flames. The females, on the other hand: watch out. Had word of my pregnancy reached any of the key Fraser females in those first key stages, I would have just had to fake a pregnancy for the next 9 months. Seriously. The news would have spread so fast, and there would have been no convincing anybody of anything to the contrary once that fire was burning.

So no: I am officially not pregnant. Despite my affinity for yams and those pesky extra pounds on my ass… And can I just say THANK GOD my aunt decided not to call my mom before she left for lunch? I can’t even imagine what that would have been like, trying to explain to my mom that no, I wasn’t pregnant and no, of course I would have told her about it before I told Auntie C.!! Thank. God.

I normally don’t touch Christmas with a stick until at least December 1st, but I stumbled across something X-masy yesterday and just couldn’t help myself. OK: Remember my brilliant plan to host an ugly Christmas sweater party last year? (You know, the plan that was excellently thought out but very poorly executed? ‘Poorly executed’ in the sense that it didn’t happen at all? Yeah, that plan!)

Not actually overweight... just swimming in a sweater 10 times too big. (Actually blurry, though-- no need to adjust your screen settings.)

Well, my friends, I have discovered a way to resume the quest for the Holy Grail of ugly Christmas sweaters while simultaneously bypassing the two main reasons the party never happened (i.e. 1. I might not have enough friends to attend a real live party here in Victoria and 2. Most of my self-respecting local friends wouldn’t exactly want to invest more than $5… if that… on a tragically ugly Christmas sweater).

In any case, I give you:

An ebay seller devoted to hawking the most nasty and gloriously overdone Christmas sweaters EVAR!!!

It’s true, ebay really does have everything! The seller even has a category called “Holy Grail of Ugly“, so we’re definitely on to something here. One stop shopping!

Part of me would still really love to host an in-person Ugly Christmas Sweater party. (The mere thought of it still gives me the giggles after all this time.) I think I would be diving head-first into the “Couples Matching!” sweater category and selecting the most gruesome pair of Christmas Sweaters that Paypal could buy (to Marty’s delight, I’m sure).

This is precisely what I had pictured so long ago!

However, I’m also a realistic person when I have to be, so I’d like to extend an invitation for everybody to join me at my Virtual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party. The concept is simple: just scan through the wide assortment of Ugly Christmas Sweaters (and sweater dresses!), choose your favourite one, and ‘wear’ it to the comments section below!! Give us the name of the sweater or a tantalizing description of how ugly your sweater really is. You can also (if you’re smart and technologically savvy) put a link to your sweater in the comments, too. That way we can all sear our retinas with the visual glory of your chosen sweater. This party’s gonna last all the way until Xmas, so let’s really PARTY!!

A word of warning, though: these ugly Christmas Sweaters actually sell and they sell fast. (Indeed, the matching sweaters I was going to post a photo of here– 2 giant light up candy cane sweaters!!– actually sold before I had the chance to save the low-res jpeg… ach.)  Don’t let it deter you, though– money is no object, so find your personal Holy Grail of sweaters and join the online party now! YAHOO!!

I was woken up stupidly early this morning by the fierce sound of wind and rain slapping against our bedroom window. ‘Stupidly early’ as in ‘it was barely past 5 in the morning’. (I can no longer claim to be an early bird. At all.) Normally I would have been able to fall back asleep again and wait for my alarm to ring an hour-ish later, but this morning I have to be at work really early so I didn’t have that luxury. Bah.

So now I am awake and listening to the sound of heavy rain drops splashing outside. (It sounds like they are hitting the ground hard, ricocheting up off the pavement, and then splashing back down again. Double splashage.) I am crafting a strategy to get to work with minimal hair frizzing and my pant hems still reasonably dry, but it sounds like my retro umbrella and even my high-tech rain jacket will be pretty helpless against this wind and heavy duty precipitation…

Still– even though it is early, and it is a Monday, and it is raining like a cold monsoon outside, I’m pretty happy. All of this still beats the alternative: trudging home from a graduate Theory course at 10 pm on a Thursday night in the freezing cold until my thighs resemble frozen hams swinging slowly back and forth from a hook in a meat cooler. (Note: this actually happened to me every Thursday night one fateful semester. Ah, the horrible memories!) I love living in Victoria.

Yesterday was not only Remembrance/Veterans Day, it was also the day when Czechs jubilantly celebrate everyone with the name Martin! (I love those Czechs and their abundance of excuses legitimate reasons to party.)

Name Days are traditionally celebrated by showering the day’s auspiciously-named people with gifts and treats. However, seeing as we’ve been sorting through our crap and getting rid of a lot of it lately, I decided that it would be best not to go all consumer-like on Marty’s (Other) Special Day. Instead, we ended up celebrating the Day of Martin by getting in trouble with the law.

It started off as a regular Name Day: we slept in (thank you, stat holiday!), I made breakfast, and we called up our friend to see if our pup was available to come hiking with us. Robertine’s schedule was checked and it was confirmed that she could come out to play. Hooray! So we merrily skipped down to Matheson Lake/Roche Cove Park and proceeded to hike and hike and hike.

The weather was overcast but not raining, and the lush greens and yellows of the trail were completely dazzling and enthralling to us. Yes, we might have hiked a little more slowly in some spots, because we were occupied taking photos and taking in the scenery, but we still managed to clip off 10km in a reasonable 3 hours or so. On the final leg of our hike, the sun was starting to set. We picked up the pace, not wanting to get stuck on the trail in the dark.

It was then that I remembered that all CRD parks lock their parking lot gates at sundown.

We booted it back to our vehicle as fast as our legs would take us. As you’re all well aware, with daylight savings time ending and all, it’s starting to get dark pretty damn early these days, and when you’re in the middle of a forest, the sun literally seems to drop out of the sky with no warning whatsoever. That’s what happened to us: one minute it was getting a little dark and then POW- it was totally dark and we could barely see where we were going. (And it was only 5 pm!)

We made it back to the vehicle at 5:17 pm, jumped in, and raced out of the parking lot towards the gate, which (as I’m sure you’ve already guessed by now) was indeed locked. It started to rain. Our cell phone (!) couldn’t pick up a signal to phone anybody. The stars fell out of alignment. And Martins around the world let out a troubled sigh…

We weren’t sure what to do, but we hoped our evening wouldn’t involve sleeping in our van at the Matheson Lake parking lot. I briefly entertained the crazy-ass idea of driving onto the nearby Galloping Goose trail (which is a strict cyclist and pedestrian-only walkway), but my hopes were dashed when I remembered that all trails leading to the Goose have special narrow gates so only people and cyclists can pass through. (Duh.)

Then I saw the emergency phone.

I picked it up and it started dialing automatically. (I had no idea where I was calling, but I figured it was a start.)

Turns out I called 9-1-1. Heh.

The woman on the other end urgently asked if I needed an ambulance, the fire department, or the police. God, I felt horrible. A bit stunned, I lamely told her that I didn’t need any of those things: I just needed to be let out of the park where we were locked in.

‘Oh’, she said. ‘Hold on.’

Guilt. Shame. Avoiding all eye contact.

A few moments later, she was back on the line.

‘Is your last name Maysek?’, she inquired. Another random butchering of our Eastern European last name.

‘Yes’, I replied, not bothering to correct the pronunciation.

‘And are you the owner of a Mitsubishi Delica van?’

Oh god, yes- they know who we are and where we live!

‘Yes’, I responded, totally sullen and guilt-ridden.

‘Okay’, she continued. ‘I’m going to phone the RCMP and they’ll come let you out, okay?’

No, no, no!! Not the effin’ RCMP!!

‘That’s great!’, I lied. ‘We’d really appreciate that!’

So we sat in our van and waited like two year old kids for the police to come and let us out of our playpen. They arrived within a few minutes (in the dark and in the rain) and silently unlocked the gate. I felt terrible.

I’m not certain if we’re going to be fined for this misdemeanor or not, but the RCMP obviously know where to find us if they want to pass on a bill for the inconvenience of it all. Thank goodness we didn’t have to sleep in a random parking lot, and thank goodness the Galloping Goose trail is gated so we couldn’t have tried out my awesome plan to drive on it and get in even more trouble with the law.

At least Marty’s name day will be a memorable one, though!

 

Sweet mother of crap, we have a lot of stuff. I have always known this on some level, but to tell the honest-to-god truth: up until recently, I had also made the rather unfair assumption that most of ‘our’ stuff was actually  Marty’s. Heh.

Judging by the horrid state of our tiny apartment, it would seem on the surface that most of the things, indeed, belong to Marty. There are canvases, wooden frames, paints, bicycles and bike parts, leftover harbour inventory, and an extensive photo album collection, all of which are definitely Marty’s. However, as I have just discovered (slow learner, ahem), I have a lot of stuff here too; mine just seems to lie festering beneath the surface until I gather up enough bravery to sit down and go through it all.

Case in point: the other evening, I decided I would go through an old Rubbermaid of binders and notes from school. I had originally kept all of these notes in case I chose to pursue a Ph.D. (ha!), but then I got tired of having the box around and figured there was no real point in keeping handwritten class notes from 2004 and articles that date back to the mid-90s. Even if I ever do go back to school, chances are my notes from a second-year Human Sexuality class won’t really help me out, anyway. (After all, I don’t exactly plan on writing a doctorate dissertation about the anatomy and physiology of the scrotum.)

So I dusted off the Rubbermaid and sat myself down for an intense session of sorting. I prepared 3 spots on the floor: one for recycling, one for confidential papers to be shredded, and one for things I would actually keep. Imagine my surprise when I opened the box and discovered not just my university papers, but class notes from junior high and high school. I had kept and stored papers from the early 1990s! Even more pathetic than that, these papers weren’t just shoved into a box when I was 12 and promptly forgotten about. No, no. I had actually sorted through all of these papers at different intervals in the past. Each time, I had recycled whatever had been deemed not worthy of storage. But all of these papers, still, had made the cut.  Yes, I’ll say it again: At some point, I had made the conscious decision to keep all of these things ‘just in case’. (Perhaps for when A & E biography comes a-knocking?) And now I was wondering what the hell sort of crack I was smoking when I chose to keep all of this crap…

The ‘to be recycled’ and ‘to be shredded’ piles grew quickly and exponentially, until they looked somewhat like the pile of pallets we saw for the Oak Bay bonfire. Seriously, they were huge. Had some university student took their recycling out at the same time we did, they would have been treated to a mass of well-written university essays on a wide range of topics: the feminist movement in communist Hungary, the pros and cons of comprehensive sexuality education in schools, the deeper meanings of works by Emile Zola and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and a nuanced analysis of in vitro fertilization techniques. An undergraduate degree’s worth of ‘A’ and “A-” papers, all free for the taking! Have at ‘em!

Mixed in to the recycling pile was a whole other assortment of random papers, ranging from my Grade 8 career fair notes to my hilariously bad application essay for the 1993-1995 Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council. (In it, I argued that mazes were ’safe’ and ‘fun’ places for the youth of Calgary to hang out… and this essay is what prompted the review committee to accept me onto the youth council! Suckers.) One Rubbermaid of papers later, my piles looked like this:

I managed to whittle the whole box down to one small binder of things to keep. (Plus my yearbooks… which I don’t really want to keep but feel bad about tossing. Thoughts?) I might look back on this binder in the future and wonder what the hell possessed me to keep it, but for now, I think it’s pretty safe to store its contents indefinitely. If not for A & E biography, then what?

Marty carved us a jack-o-lantern last night! It was our first carved pumpkin as a couple, my first pumpkin since… Grade 9?, and Marty’s first pumpkin in about a decade. (We’re so hip to Halloween this year, it hurts! So what if it’s already November?)

Check it out!

Marty even wore orange for the occasion!

Alas, given the wimpy state of my wimpy-ass arms, Marty was left to do all of the carving himself.

It's a jack-o-lantern!!

Our new evening lamp (until it gets all smooshy and gross). I love it!!

Ah, Victoria…

I’m continually amazed by this city. There is always something going on (surprisingly more so than in a bigger city like Calgary), and there are always more reasons to be(come) enamoured with it! Take this past weekend, for instance. Full confession: I have never been much of a Halloween person. For one thing, I abhor being scared. Absolutely hate it. And another thing: while I admire elaborate and clever costumes on other people, I just don’t have the motivation to invest a lot of time into dressing up myself. Because of this, I have a disappointing history of wearing supremely lame Halloween costumes, up until the point where I decided to just screw it and not dress up at all. Halloween just isn’t my thing.

That said, this weekend I was excited to discover a number of reasons to actually start liking Halloween in Victoria.

Reason #1: The Annual Zombie March

Friendly neighbourhood zombie man

There were, in fact, two different zombie marches this weekend, but the organizers of the real march were quick to point out that their tradition had been co-opted (and corrupted) by the Olympic protesters the night before. (So sad, that protest.) The actual zombie march in Victoria is what you would expect from a city like this: fun for the whole family, non-violent and non-disruptive, and more funny than spooky. We had a blast watching hundreds of moaning undeads take to the streets and slowly make their way to the legislature building (not to protest of course- just to wrap things up.)

Brains....

Brains!

There were bride and groom zombies, golfer zombies, flight attendant zombies, Little Red Riding Hood zombies, pop and tot zombies, Jesus zombies, and just regular zombies. The police, bless their smaller city job descriptions, drove behind the march slowly in their van and occasionally used the megaphone to deadpan: “Zombies. Please stay on the sidewalks”, much to the delight of law-abiding zombies everywhere. What a great event!

BRAINS!!

Reason #2: The Oak Bay Bonfire!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There ain’t no party like an Oak Bay party. Seriously. As lame as some of the events are (Tea Party, anyone?), they really bring the community together and tug at my smaller-municipality heart strings. The bonfire was no exception.

Prepared and maintained by the good people at the Oak Bay Fire Department (who apparently have nothing better to do on Halloween night, especially with the Zombie March having already finished for the day, le sigh) the bonfire is effin’ huge!!! When we walked by the bonfire pit, pre-torched, we couldn’t believe how many pallets were there for the burning. Sanctioned burning!! It was like walking around a semi truck full of wood. It was GIANT!

Now, imagine all of this BURNING!

At first, everyone was crowded near the front to see the bonfire begin, but once that thing was burning, man– we all cleared the hell back. I thought my eyeballs were going to melt right out. Plus, there were 25+km/hour winds, making for some sketchy sparks headed in the direction of nearby homes. All in all, though: IT WAS AWESOME. Hooray for Oak Bay.

Face... melting. I actually had to take off my glasses, lest the protective (and expensive) lens coating get ruined. It's OK, though-- despite my shortfalls in seeing things at a distance, I could still make out that EFFIN' HUGE BONFIRE!!

A truly huge bonfire. Burn, baby, burn!

So yes, my faith in Halloween has been restored. I might even attempt to dress up next year (as a zombie!!). But we’ll see… In the meantime, I just can’t wait to see what shenanigans our city cooks up for our entertainment pleasure next!

 

We started our Harbour whirlwind in mid-April.  It is now late October.

Six months have passed.

Those were six lo-o-o-ong months of eating mostly take out food. (I don’t think I can eat another edamame tacone from Red Fish Blue Fish. Ever again. What a shame.) Before the Harbour era, we were horrified with ourselves for indulging in what we called “Sushi Fridays”; a once-a-week treat to some cucumber rolls after work (ooooh- so badass! Clearly, we were eating the devil’s fruit right out of the palm of his hand.) Little did we know then that we would hardly even get one home cooked meal a week during our summer at the Harbour. Seriously– when the Harbour came a-calling, the Healthy Eating wagon bolted fast, and we fell off of it hard. It was bad. Super bad…

Not to mention we didn’t exercise at all during that time period (dodgy box lifting techniques aside). Judging by how my clothes fit then and now, I went from being moderately buff to being rather… Buddha-esque. Ahem. And yet… no closer to enlightenment. This is not good news!!

I was dreading taking my measurements again and stepping on the scale. (Disclaimer: I do not base my sense of self-worth on my measurements or my weight, but I generally prefer to feel good in my skin, which usually means eating well and engaging in physical activity. Let’s be honest here.) I knew I had made some, ahem, gains since the last time I checked things out, and I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the verdict.

Sure enough, I put on a few pounds as well as a few inches over the summer months (8 lbs and a combined 3 inches). The pounds don’t bother me at all (because I usually weigh even more when I am uber-muscular, and let’s face it, I thought a summer of chipotle mayonnaise was going to have more of an impact), but the overall feelings of lethargy, sluggishness, and being squeezed into my outfits are more than disconcerting. Something has to give.

And so I’ll be embarking on the long and slow road back to well-being. This time around, I’ve decided to proceed with caution. (As opposed to my usual plan of cracking the whip, cutting out everything bad all at once, getting cranky, abandoning plans, and inevitably returning to my slovenly (slothenly?)  ways.) No, no. This time, I’m going to start out by adding in ‘good’ things until the ‘bad’ things have no choice but to be dropped from my lifestyle. (E.g. I’ll incorporate my herbal teas again until there’s no room left for my sugar-with-coffee-and-cream. And gradually, the steamed kale– which I love and actually miss terribly– will overtake the starchy vegetables and hopefully the cheese, too. Go, Team Kale!)

I don’t think it will be a particularly easy or pleasant process at first (especially because my body thinks it’s a bear during autumn and consequently insists on turning up the heat and packing on the pounds!), but in the long run, it will all be worth it. Any suggestions?

Recently, Jabba posted a mini photo diary of a regular, unassuming day and suggested that we do the same! God knows I am not a professional (or even remotely good) photographer, but it was a lot of fun snapping shots from dawn to dusk and assembling them here for your viewing pleasure. (My retinas!) Without further adieu:

October 22, 2009

Just like any other weekday morning, I start my day off by waking up painfully early (by my standards), showering, and seeing how the internet is doing:

Image shown in actual crappy lighting-- we have the nastiest chandelier in our apartment 'common space'.

I rummage through my assortment of eyeglass accessories and choose a clip to match my planned outfit for the day.

Even though the woman at the glasses store told me disdainfully that it was "totally 80s" to match my glasses to my outfits, I do it whenever I can. Hey, I was born in the 80s. It's all good.

I eat a wholesome breakfast of oatmeal with dried cranberries and freshly ground flax seeds. This is pretty much what I eat for breakfast every day, except I switch up the fruits every now and then.

Once again, image shown in actual crappy lighting. Bonus random fact: my best friend and I purchased matching sets of this Ikea cutlery set when we were about 18 years old. We put them in respective hope chests and saved them to use "when we got married". I am not kidding. I can assure you, Marty is touched and loves our $1 forks and knives.

I live close enough to work to walk each day. On the way, I pass by these mysterious Ladies of the Evening mannequins. If living in Oak Bay means I should go to bed decked out in a cotton nightgown and my Lawrence of Arabia head scarf, I suppose I’ll never quite fit in.

She's thinking snobby thoughts about my Keen shoes, I just know it.

I carry my work clothes with me in a backpack, so they don’t get dirty or wet en route. I definitely look like a typical UVic student on my daily commute, with my MEC backpack, puffy autumn vest and ubiquitous Keen shoes.

The entrance to my workplace. Don’t worry, it only looks like I work in a high security prison.

My office space, with bonus Emergency Preparedness sign in window!

Notice hard hat and neon Fire Marshall vest.

To the outside world, I'm all "Everything is OK", but on the inside... I'm crying out for help

In a bathroom with horrifically crappy lighting, I change from my UVic student disguise into my semi-professional work attire. Today, I am wearing tall boots (which I love).

Unbelievably crappy lighting.

After a strenuous morning of work, I make it a habit to go to a little café for lunch. I eat wholesome food and read for a precious half hour every weekday afternoon.

Today, I indulge in vegetarian chili and savour the book "Frida".

After lunch: more work. This part of my job is about as fun as it looks (i.e. the best part of this task is using the highlighter.)

On my way home, I am undercover again in my UVic student attire. Leaves are falling!

I notice with fake surprise that the price of gas has gone up almost 6 cents a litre since the morning. This always seems to happen right before the weekend. (Not like it matters to me, because I don’t even drive. And not like it matters to our cool van, either, because it runs on diesel and the price of diesel hardly ever changes.) I just take notice of the price increase and shake a silent fist of rage at The Man.

Finally, I see the Oak Bay sign and know that I am nearly Home Safe. Nothing bad ever happens behind the magical Oak Bay shield, am I right or am I right?

In Oak Bay, land of the wealthy 65+ crowd, it is considered a ‘hike’ to walk 10 minutes to the library or to the local seniors’ centre. That’s why they have the little men with walking sticks in the pictures.

I love it!

Once inside the safety of my apartment, I start preparing dinner.

Despite visual evidence to the contrary, I am not whipping up a wholesome dinner of Yellow Dye #5.

Tonight, I make a quick veggie stir fry and serve it over brown rice with turmeric, cumin, cloves, and cardamon.

Floral dish set courtesy of my grandmother who couldn't resist purchasing 6 bowls for every relative in our huge family. They were only 50 cents each!

After dinner, we decide to tackle the task of organizing our Harbour rubbermaids for winter storage.

Then we settle down, catch a few hockey highlights, and enjoy a movie.

I challenge thee to post your own photo diary! Do it, and let us all know about it by posting a link in the comments! GO!