HAPPY NEW YEARS !!!

I got to celebrate New Years with my godson this year and we had a wonderful weekend!

We had a game-a-thon and have almost finished the Urbs for Game Cube in only two days!. Avery also kicked butt on Rise of Nation more than once in the last 48 hours!

We turned off the games at 11:30 and rocked into the new years with Lenny Kravitz... we kept on jumping back and forth from watching the ball drop in the US and rocking it up with the Niagra Falls celebration from Canada!

Happy New Year and welcome to 2005 :)

The New Games Room

Jordan and Avery did very well at Christmas and ended up getting set up with a fuse ball AND an air hockey table!

They are both set up in the new games room...

All I can say is... let the games begin!

Just Sitting Here Reading... And Remembering

Well for the last two days I have been sitting here on the computer pretty much reading blogs... I like reading about what everyone else is doing and thinking about... I am fascinated by other people's stories.

I have a new favorite on the list called HeroineGirl which is a really good read. It is a lady in Australia who was abused sexually and emotionally as a child, ran away at fifteen and then found herself prostituting and addicted to Heroin before she hit her twenties. She is writing a memoire that is going to be published and her blog is a mix of memories from the past and her life now. She is off the heroin and is doing great... but still working through the demons. I have almost read every one of her posts! I do that when I find a really good blog with a really good story.

I am reminded of a girl I once knew who was pretty much lost to drugs and prostitution when she was only twelve years old. Lisa was the daughter of one of my mom's best friends, me and my sister used to go over and play in the basement with Lisa, and her siblings... until things turned really bad for both her and her family. I got the full story in my last year of college when I was doing a documentary film on child prostitution in Calgary and we interviewed her mother for the film.

Lisa was approached by a group of teenagers while hanging out with her friend in the mall. The older guys befriended them, and started to hang out with them daily buying them gifts that their parents would never be able to afford. They also supplied them with booze, pot and probably some coke as well... at least at the beginning. After about a month Lisa was presented with a bill "she didn't think that all of that stuff was free did she...". Lisa was only twelve years old and petrified that they would tell her parents about her debt or even worse that they would hurt her family so she took the other option presented and decided to pay off the debt on her back. Things got worse... a lot worse as Lisa spiraled into the world of drugs, gangs, violence and prostitution.

Her parents tried everything they could but they could not get their daughter back, she was addicted to the drugs and the money... and the lifestyle became the only life she knew. Her family's life as they knew it fell apart behind her... they were not able to cope with what had happened to their life, her parents divorced and tried to move on, and her siblings got lost in the shuffle and just tried to cope, but I have to say one thing... they never gave up on trying to get her back.

Lisa was locked up repeatedly between twelve and eighteen. Her mother told me that the crown prosecutor told her when Lisa was seventeen that they were just waiting for her to become an adult so they could lock her up for good. Well it happened... In November 1994, Lisa became the second woman in Canada to be labelled a dangerous offender (a label that even Karla Hamulka does not have) and sentenced to an indeterminate sentence. Lisa was sitting in a jail cell while I was interviewing her mother. The last I heard Lisa was out of jail and living with her mother, but she was not doing that well. After being institutionalized for more than half her life and living in a sub-culture with rules and norms very different from the rest of society she was having real hard time coping with life in the real world. The lack of structure, and not having someone to tell her when to eat, sleep, and brush her teeth was too much for her, she was lost... that was a few years ago and I really wonder how she is doing today.

Thanks go to HeroineGirl for sharing her story... and good thoughts and wishes go out to Lisa and her family. I really do hope that things are going good for all of you these days...

The documentary was completed before PCHIP (Protection of Children Involved In Prostitution) legislation was passed in Alberta, Canada. We interviewed young prostitutes aged eleven to eighteen and parents of prostitutes who were fighting to change the laws and be able to protect their daughters. These were the pioneers of PCHIP. I was told by an eleven year old I was interviewing that when her mother would come and drag her off the streets she would simply call the police to have her mother charged with unlawful confinement. The pimps would move the kids from city to city across Canada if the parents became a hassle, and if the girls were picked up and said they did not want to go home they were given twenty bucks and sent back onto the street. I am really happy to be able to say that law enforcement and social agencies are now trying to work together and are doing A LOT more to protect young girls from themselves... it hasn't changed things too much, but at least it helps a bit.

A Visit To The Shadbolt's

We headed over to the Shadbolt's to visit Phil and Phyllis today. It was a really nice visit and Grandma and Grandad got to meet Payten for the first time.

I took the video card out of my camera and did not get many shots but I did get grandad to pose for one photo. I didn't get a really nice picture of Grandma and I thought it would devistate her if I posted a "not so good" one of her on the internet so I am only going to post Phil :)

Oh yes and I have to post Ren and Craig as well because they are posing in front of the monster flowers... I really like these flowers!

Boxing Day At The Kimble's

My cousin Melissa and her husband James hosted a shrimp fest at their home tonight for boxing day. The shrimp was to die for and it was another really nice day visiting with the family!

We also opened even MORE presents at Melissa's... I got this really cool clock that is also a rotating globe... it is really cool!

Everyone really enjoyed their gifts!

Christmas Day

I kind of screwed up and did not check my downloaded pictures before I erased my memory card... and I lost most of my Christmas Day pictures... My sister and parents tooks some great pictures though that I will have to get ahold of and post later.

I did salvage two pictures from the day one of my Dad and Uncle Jan opening gifts and the other is of the whole Koomen family playing tops (minus me cause I'm taking the picture).

It was a really nice day... we opened gifts in the morning, my Uncle Neil, Aunt Cathy, and cousins came for a visit in the afternoon and we had a wonderful dinner.

I got a Tungsten C Palm One which was my favorite gift this year... I am now busy downloading new games and programs for it!

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Eve

I got new school pictures of my babies tonight and that was one great gift!

It was the first Christamas eve that the "Koomen's" were able to spend as a family and it was a nice one!

My Uncle Neil, Aunt Cathy, cousins James, Joel, Melissa and her husband James all showed up as well which was super cool!

The boys really enjoyed the Lord Of The Rings board game I got them. They were very happy being able to open present after present as guests arrived!

I had fun ripping open the kids gifts and especially watching then rip open my gifts!

Twenty Plus Years of "Simming"

I spend a lot of time playing sims... I get to make different people, play out different scenarios and design different kinds of homes for them to live in. Sometimes my sim is rich, sometimes poor, sometimes they want huge families, and sometimes they live alone. Sometimes I make them very successful, and sometimes I let them fail and have tragedy just to see what happens then...

I was thinking about it and I have actually been "simming" most of my life! When I was a toddler my mother tells me that I would spend hours and hours playing with my little people. I remember my little people but can't remember what their story was and what I was imagining them doing for all those hours!

I moved on from the little people and began to actually cut all the people out of the Sears catalogue. I would organize them into families, find them a suitable house out of my pile of home designs, and the different scenarios in my mind would begin.

As I got older I got more interested in drawing up different home designs. I designed the perfect house one time and loved it so much that my mom bought me a huge piece of construction paper and I spent WEEKS transferring the small design to a large version on the construction paper.

I would then have the paper people live in the house and would move them from room to room on the construction paper. It was truly a manual version of the sims!

I decided that I wanted to be an architect when I grew up and that I wanted to design and build houses. I especially wanted to design my home from the construction paper and live there forever. I took my first and only architect drawing course in grade ten... and it was in that class that I first played a new computer game they had installed on the computer at the back of the class it was 1990 and the game was SimCity by Maxis.

I don't remember ever drawing up any more house plans after that class... but while my architect dreams dwindled away I see now that my simming days were just about to begin.

The Wrapping Is Done

For those who missed the last post... too bad... it's gone... I guess I didn't sound too Merry in it!

It is Christmas Eve and I am planning on heading over to Ronaye's tonight for some festivities... pictures of the fun to follow in the next few days :)

Merry Christmas Eve!

More X-Mas Visiting!!!

Genitta, Tavis, and I went over to Bruce and Patty's for a Christmas visit last night. It was great to get over there and visit with them and the cats once again. Genitta got Reba and Mittens (the cats) a few honeysuckle toys and the new video catnip so it was good to watch teh cats reaction to the new toys.

Bruce and Patty will be flying out to spend Christmas with my Grandma Lil in a few days so I wish them a safe flight and a great visit with Grandma Lil!

My Sims Disaster

I updated the new patch for Sims 2 and it totally screwed up the graphics for the game (which totally pissed me off!)...

I downloaded the new driver from nVidia and that made it even WORSE with everything on the screen that was previously white actually disappearing from the screen...

I then tried to unload Sims 2 with out erasing the saved games in order to fix and but that did not work...

so I tried erasing the install and erasing the saved games in hopes of getting rid of the patch.... that STILL didn't work since I still had no white objects...

I finally found my old start up disk... unloaded Sims 2 entirely, unloaded the all of the graphic drivers from the computer and then spent a little over an hour reinstalling the OLD graphic drivers from my start up disk and reinstalling the Sims 2.

I now have it back up and running but I have lost all of my new content... all the music files on my computer (I forgot I moved my music folder to the game directory so I could listen to music thru sims), and about a million hours of game play...

Oh well here we go again!

Day With The Doc

I had a bad night and then morning with most of it spent in the bathroom so I headed down to the medical clinic AGAIN this afternoon and spent most of my afternoon there. I was wondering why the line was not going down at all for over an hour and then found out that there wasn't even a doctor in the building... they called in and were going to be late.

I was the first one seen when the doctor finally arrived but by that time my stomach was in full spasm again and I was just about crying (okay I'll admit I did a little bit when the doctor decided they needed to push around right where it was killing me!) Final result is that I got some new medication that stops internal muscles from spasms and I have to go for more bloodwork and an ultrasound later this week... I just hope they find out what the hell is causing this cause it can be pretty painful :(

Great Visiting

I stayed up really late again last night and did not end up going to bed until 9am. I woke up at noon but wasn't too tired so I decided to get up... it was a good thing because about for minutes later I heard feet coming up the back steps and my good ole' cousins smiling mug was at the door.

The boys scanned the neighborhood and quickly gathered the old gang for some fun and games! Avery and Jordan stayed all afternoon out in the back playing tag and setting up games in the fort and me, Genitta, and Ronaye basically hung out inside and hid from the kids.

Kent even dropped by for a bit with Ryan so the whole fam dam was here for a little while. That is the nice part of Christmas... just having people on holidays and popping by just because they are in the neighborhood!

It was great to hear the kids out playing in the back and catching up on what all the neighborhood kids are up to... I miss them!

Some Days I Think I'm Dying

Believe me I know this is really not a very attractive picture at all but I keep getting bad stomach aches that get so bad that I go this gross pasty yellowish white color and sometimes pass out...

It has been happening on and off for a few years now but lately it's happening about once a month. It just happened now and I felt compelled to share my ill looking complextion with you! I've been to the doctor many times ... and they have run many test that all come back saying that I am perfectly healthy so it is really quite the mystery what strange illness or disease I have... It may be IBS and what may be causing it is my intestines going into spasms (sounds nice doesn't it)

The bright side is that I should be in the clear of "passing out and dying of stomach pains danger" until sometime after Christmas now!

Just Me And The Cats Again

Yep... it wa basically just me hanging out with the cats again today. I stayed up on the computer until like 5am so I slept in until noon and then let the cats out to get some sun.

Maxx was around on and of...f but he was on a bird hunting mission... he showed up after catching one so that he could share the gory site with me and leave the carcass on the walkway for me to clean up later ( I took a picture of the dead bird but have resisted posting it for you since it is pretty much just guts and is pretty gross).

Jaike stuck around but came home pretty dirty since he spend a good portion of the morning rolling around in the dirt under his favorite bush...

Both Maxx and Jaike went by to visit Charlie and Wes who are my sisters cats next door. The neighbor cats got to watch Maxx kill the bird as well so it was quite an entertaining afternoon for them...

Oh the fun I miss while I am at work everyday!!!

Bankhead, Alberta

Have you ever been to Bankhead, Alberta?

It is a small little ghost town just outside of Banff... and a place that for some reason became a very special place in my life.

I can't tell you when we began to go to Bankhead but I remember that we started driving out there a couple of times a month. I was about fifteen/sixteen when we began going out there and by the time me, Julie, and Patsy got our own cars it was not uncommon for us to drive out there more than once a week...

We would always head out when it was already getting late... it was a few months before I even saw the little ghost town in the light... we would decide to drive out to Banff and by the time we got out there everything was closed (and we couldn't get into any clubs) so we would drive up to Bankhead, park the car, and walk down into the tourist site... we would slide into and explore the foundations of the old buildings, crawl thru the foundation tunnels, and then have coal fights in the hills of coal... then we would crawl back up the hill to the car, pull the blankets from the trunk and head to sleep.

It was creepy some night when we were sleeping in the deserted parking lots. It was sometimes just me and Patsy, or Julie and sometimes on the weekends Jason, Doug, or Steve would tell their parents they were sleeping at each others houses and join us as well. Two creepy nights I distinctly remember are...

1. We were all just falling asleep but had the car running (to heat up the car, we would turn it on for a bit, turn it off so we wouldn't die, start to get cold and turn the car on again), I was in the drivers seat will the seat reclined backwards and my legs spread to the passenger side, Steve and Patsy in the back and I think Doug was in the passenger seat... all of a sudden the car is in drive (without anyone going neat the gear shift near the steering wheel) and we are heading towards the cliff at the end of the parking lot... I got my feet untangled and hit the brake before we fell off the cliff into the ghost town!

2. One night we drove out there on a night when it was snowing pretty heavy... we drove up the winding roadway to get to the ghost town and could see that ours were the only tire tracks that had headed up there in a while (there is only one road up the hill to Bankhead)... when we got up there we decided it was too cold so we just pulled out the blanket from the back seat and started to crash. After about ten minutes we started to hear rustling and "stuff outside" and decided it might be a bear or something so we got kind of nervous. Steve decided to be the big tough guy and headed out to investigate... there were footprints near and around the car that went about ten feet away and then disappeared... but still only OUR tire tracks coming into the parking lot... we jumped in the car and drove to Banff... our tracks were the only ones on the road all the way back to the main road... we drove to Banff and decided to sleep in the parking lot by the CIBC building.

I still love Bankhead, and thru the years I am sure that we found special tunnels and places that have been lost for a long time... everytime I am in the Banff area I have a strong urge to go and visit my ghost town!

Sasha's Reality Dial On The Net

Cool... I just came to see what my new color scheme looked like and I just had my 1001st visitor!

Christmas Concert

It was the boys Christmas concert tonight so the whole fam dam came out for some Christmas entertainment!

Jordan and the grade one's were up first...

And then it was Avery and the grade five's turn to shine!!!

Me and Kent picked the boys up from their classrooms and had a good time walking thru our old elementary school... it is kind of neat that Genitta, Me, Kent, and now Avery and Jordan have all gone to the same elementary school...

who'd of thunk...