Les P'tits Canards, Part 2

Good news!

While Downtown T.O. burns to the ground, there was a small victory in my hometown on Friday. Syncrude was found guilty for the deaths of 1,600 ducks that took a dip in one of their tailings ponds! Now, the company could face $800,000 in fines (chump change for any oil conglomerate) OR 6 months in prison for company executives.

Personally, I think the second option sounds fairly attractive!

Shit in Gear, Part 2

Now that my trip is done and my job is growing monotonous, my summer is slowly starting to settle down. I genuinely miss running around all the time and being super busy, so I've decided I need a creative outlet to keep me entertained for the rest of the summer. My original plan was to become an advocate for more affordable transit, but my Mom thinks that would be a "bad career move."

Seeing as I'm not a novelist, that pretty much limits me to Scrapbooking. Yes, I've decided to make a scrapbook. But, I'm not just making your average everyday scrapbook for a trip to Calgary or my first baby (*shudders*), I've decided to make a scrapbook for the first 20 years of my life! I'm obsessed with self-reflection and self-improvement, or any other motivational word with the prefix "self," and I figured that this would be a fun way to put my self-love into action!

On top of that, I sorta made a mini-to do list for the rest of the summer:
1) Finish my GRE for Dummies.
2) Save $10,000 (this one's gonna be a bitch...I may have to start blow-counting again)
3) Lose 2 pounds.
4) Go to Vegas!!!!!!!!11
5) Plan a trip to NYC for September! This one is my favourite! I originally wanted to slip off for a week to wash oil off of shorebirds on the Mississippi Delta, but figured it wouldn't be as glamourous as I had imagined, so I've decided that I'm going to treat myself to a mini-vacation in the Big Apple before school starts. Originally, I had to stay home because of other commitments and miss Frosh Week, but now I have the whole week to myself! So I figured, why not spend some of that $10,000 I saved? =)
And finally, 6) Find lodging in Brisbane (that's what Australian people call housing ;) )

OMG Beach Party Playset?!

TGIF

It's Friday! Only 8 more hours of work until I'm unleashed from my tiny cubicle. I'm definitely looking forward to getting out of the city this weekend and getting shit-faced on an empty beach up North. Meanwhile, my parents are going to some Alberta PC Party "Lobster Boil Fundraiser" tonight. I told them not to bother going, seeing as they'll probably be the only people there. My Mom looked confused and said, "Of course there's gonna be other people, who doesn't like lobster?"

My summer is starting to pan out into something not-so-shitty. I found out yesterday that one of my closest friends at school will be joining me for drunken shenanigans in Las Vegas in August, which brings the total number of people in my wolfpack to 7! On top of that, I found out that I will most likely be volunteering at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, which means free tickets to Ben Harper, Van Morrison, Dala, Colin Hay and tons of other bands! Finally, I actually had no clue that Eclipse, the next Twilight movie, is actually coming out in a month! IN IMAX!!!!!111 I know I probably sound like the biggest tool right now, but Twilight is actually my biggest guilty pleasure. I think I watched the first movie at least a dozen times. If you haven't seen the movies or read the books, just watch the first 15 minutes of Twilight. It plays with your emotions and insecurities and you'll seriously be hooked.

Can you say midnight screening with a theatre full of 12-year olds?

If you're bored and need a good laugh, I strongly suggest you check out Hyperbole and a Half and their "Sneaky Hate Spiral." It's probably one of the funniest things I've read all week.

Mac Attack

On Monday, my boss randomly surprised with an overnight business trip....

....to Fort McMurray.

Seriously though, my company operates in Europe, the U.S., and Asia, and I get to travel to the exotic oilsands city.

Fort Mac is in the Athabasca River valley, which is actually a really beautiful area. Its too bad that they've reworked or destroyed most of it to get at the most dirty form of oil on Earth. On top of that, the whole Wood Buffalo region is a vegan's worst nightmare. In a sprawly city of 100,000, the only places we could eat at were McDonald's, Burger King, or Tim Horton's. Oh, and it was Camp Day, so Tim Horton's was just out of the question...

Before leaving, the biologist I was working with decided to show me the Syncrude Mildred Lake operation, one of the biggest in the region. I even got to see the infamous tailings ponds that were responsible for killing all those ducks! Those things are the size of lakes. Someone might actually think they look kinda cool if they didn't know they were full of toxic chemical effluent.

I would have just loved to go kayaking on this.

Otherwise, my week has been oh so lame. Work has been awful and it still feels like January outside. However, I'm getting a much needed break from the cesspool that is St. Albert this weekend and heading up to my friend's cabin. Weeooo!