Alaska, Painting Houses - I hate stucko

Do you know how to get rock hard abbadabbas?

Well now you can! With big Jake's abdominal workout thingy!!

The time has come (and gone) for an email update, so here tis.

This is going to be really short because I am in the process of packing up some things for a trip I am going on tomorrow.. and by "in the process of" what I really mean is that I have thought about being in the process of packing. I haven't packed a thing yet and it is about 7pm Sunday night so id best get cracking.

Anyway, to fill in those of you who aren't aware, my last few weeks have consisted of painting the exterior of houses. Although my technique has improved greatly over the time I was doing it, I realised that painting house exteriors is not exactly what I would call my "calling" in life. The hours are way too long, the ladders you have to climb up are way too long and the pay is terrible. I'm pretty bad at it too which doesn't help. (On the plus side its a good workout (wax on, wax off anyone?) and the time in the sun has given me an incredible shirt tan)

Anyway, my last day was on Thursday last week which was nice, because it was stressing me out and there is absolutely no reason for me to stress while I am on holidays, especially over no stinking, crappy, good for nuthin job! (Extra especially because I didn't really stress in any real job ive had before.. except when it involved Project Management materials.. but let's not go into that (/me laughs in Val's general direction))

Here is a photo of one of the houses I painted.. notice how awesome it looks, thats all because of me.



This dog's name is Coco. He was annoying because he barked continuously.. but he was cute and looked like the thing out of Never Ending Story.. whatever that thing was supposed to be.. Coco's owner would constantly say, "No Coco! No!" Coco's owner/house owner was slightly annoying. Thanks for the memories Kelly.



Outside of this amazing pursuit of cash, life has been quiet the last week, most of my time has been devoted to looking up Ski Resorts in Canada that I can apply for Winter work with and continuously procrastinating over the assembly of my extensive resume. To fill in this time I decided I would book a trip up to Alaska, which I did and that is where I am going tomorrow. I had similarly been putting this off for well over a month or so thanks to a wonderful distraction or two, so it is good to be finally going.

Here is a run down of my planned trip

10 hour bus ride to Bum-f&%* Idaho
14 hour ferry ride to Bum-f&%* Idaho II
24 hour ferry ride to Juneau (Alaska)
2 hour plane ride to Anchorage (Alaska)
Plane ride back to Vancouver. Dunno how long that will take. Not so interested.

The real run down goes something like this.

Bus trip to a place called Port Hardy. My bus leaves early tomorrow morning, at 5:30, and it will go over the water (its a magical bus..) and then up to the top of Victoria Island to a place called Port Hardy.

The next morning I hop on a ferry that does the "inside passage" (hehehe..) for 14 hours (It will be tired). Then I arrive in a place called Prince Rupert, a small place.. I think, but I will be spending 4 or so days there...I didn't really want to but that is the way it worked out.. so meh, what can you do.

My next ferry leaves on the 17th up to Juneau (the Capital of Alaska). Ill be there for a few days, then im getting a plane up to Anchorage (the largest city in Alaska). After that, ill be flying back to Vancouver via Seattle.

Here is a map of the journey



I just realised you can't actually read the places on the map. Tough titties.

Over-all the trip will be around 12 days, so it should be expensive.

Cha-Ching $$

Just a couple of short messages,

Congrats to Kylie & Nathan on their big day.
Happy Birthday to Mum and Niki (Ill try to call you Mum)
Rigby, photos are on their way... sometime tonight.

Quote(s) of the day - "Covered, covered, not covered.." House owner upon inspection of the wall.
"This doesn't look beautiful.." House owner upon inspection of the door frame/door/stairs/gutters.
"Cameray..not finished yet.." House owner upon inspection of