Simply put:

July: Working a co-op placement (Free labour in exchange for “education”) I did learn a lot about editing sound files and recording. I also learned how dull 9-5 really is, oh god. Ended the month with a trip to Montreal for Otakuthon with a whole ton of people to promote our own convention, Con Bravo. It was half awesome, half stressful. The convention itself is great but I think everybody was a bit on edge and after a couple days that ended in fights and stress and horrible things. (Too many people in too little rooms, travelling too far, on too low of a budget. Ah!) In the end I did get to see Montreal which is such a beautiful city. We went to old downtown in pouring, pouring rain, but I did get some photos. (Yet to put up…) I would love to live there even for just a few months, even with my complete lack of French.

August: We get back from Montreal at around 4:30am, and in the morning I’m due to start a week of paid work! Now this is sounding good, money is nice, work is nice. We’re setting up for a week long sound art festival for my co-op place. Full days of cabling, hauling stuff, and more cabling. I didn’t do anything else that week, it was wake up, work, wake up, work. Which also sucks because there was no balance. Lots of tylenol was devoured that week. On Saturday the 8th I finished work around midnight and went out for the night! I had just turned 17! Awesome. Sunday morning I picked up various friends from around and took them to a fancy all you can eat sushi place. They have good prices, great sushi, and good service. ($18-$25 a person, depending.) Then we headed back to my place on the subway, and once we got off we looked up the road to my house and only saw dark clouds. Starting raining like mad! Had to hide my amazing Scott Pilgrim painting under my shirt as we ran home. I don’t really have birthday parties, so chilling with my friends playing Nintendo 64 in the basement was the greatest thing. That week I had the most amazing luck with everything, it was awesome.

I also went draining for the first time in August. After lots of deciding and walking and injuries aside we braved our feet into a muddy little thing in Rosedale. So here I am, crappy fabric shoes, jeans rolled up, wading through ankle deep mud, garbage and whatever else in a little drain guiding a creek under majors roads into the Don Valley. That’s were we got out, and found ourselves near the big subway bridge. We walked along the train tracks until we got back to the entrance of the drain. We went to another one, a clean water one thankfully, so I could wash out my dirt filled shoes. This one was a long walk, kind of chilly, but big and dark. A few … “interesting” catwalks. (No floors!) and finally we were heading out through a manhole cover. (Dirtiest part of the drain) Right out onto a small street of Yonge street, in front of a huge group of kids. Oops! “Stop swearing, there’s kids!!” All 8 of us jumped out and headed towards somewhere to dry off. The night finished with more walking, a huge basket of onion rings, and me heading home in wet shoes. (”Why am I wet mom? I was in uh… a river.” Hey, it’s close to the truth.) It was fun! More than a little claustrophobic but I’ve been looking up more and I can’t wait till the next one. Just need to be better prepared.

This week I’ve been preparing for Fan Expo. My friend has a table and I’ve been recruited to help him color some of his work. These past two weeks I’ve been up till 3, 4, 6, 7am etc. We finally finished everything, I just need to print out my business cards to cut out. (Ak!) Then it’s a crazy weekend of Fan Expo, and I’m kind of excited because it really is one of the best dealers rooms in Toronto, and all the great at AA! Going to spend all that work money, damn.

And then on Monday, after all this crap, I’m heading to school a week earlier for an assembly. The grade 9 orientation people emailed me and asked me if lighting crew was going to be there. We’re not lighting crew until school starts! Guess not. Also schedule pickup, looking forward to that. (I kind of want to change into World History though, I have a feeling me and animation are not going to co-operate…)

And that’s summer! I did some stuff downtown, I explored, I went to conventions, I worked! I stayed up really, really late.

Oh, also, remember this? I’m sitting at it. It’s pretty close to my diagram, has a tiny slide out drawer for my scanner, and it’s a lot more than I ever though it could be. I wish my dad could live off the work he does, because he has the skill!

See the top of the page? Where it says “if only I had a monitor to match…” I finally gave up on my tiny crappy monitor (16″ ?) and bought a 22″ wide screen monitor. It’s so choice. Working with Adobe products is just lovely now.

As always, pictures are upcoming. Here’s to the two last weeks, to being one year older, and the last time I have to go back to highschool after what always seems too short of a summer break. Later~