Back Alley Kissing

Well, this sort of passes for an alley in Tumbler Ridge.  Amanda and I took this photo while she walked me to work this morning.  It's taken in the walkway behind my apartment building that is my shortcut to work.


Amanda and I woke up early this morning, and ended up having some quality couch time together which included playing Plants vs. Zombies.  The zombies are still maintaining their ridiculous winning streak.  It's either that neither Amanda nor I know how to play as plants properly or that the game is a little unbalanced so far.


So we left to walk to the library along the path.  It was sunny and warm, and Amanda's hair was shining a coppery-gold, and it seemed like the perfect time for a kiss and a photo.  And it was!

So far this weekend we've only taken one more photo of the two of us together, which I'll be posting later in the week.  However, I have a fun story to tell and some individual photos of the two of us to go along with it.  With any luck, I'll be posting them tomorrow night (Amanda is sending me the photos from her iPhone as I type this).


Thanks for reading!

Uncertainty Answered!

I wasn't sure what was going to happen this weekend.  Things have been busy at Amanda's job, and she had to work part of last Saturday, and thought she might have to work Saturday again.


So when we were talking at the end of last weekend, she talked about coming out to Tumbler Ridge, but not being sure if she had to work on Saturday or not.  So we decided that if she didn't work Saturday, she'd drive out to Tumbler Ridge on Friday night, and that if she did have to work Saturday, I'd drive out to Grande Prairie on Saturday night after work.


When I chatted with Amanda last night, she still wasn't sure what was happening on the weekend.  So we waited for today to find out.  I got home from work, had supper, and when I checked my phone at around 6:45, saw that Amanda had sent me a text message saying she was on her way!

I didn't expect that.  My place was a mess, I was low on a few crucial supplies (coffee cream and powdered iced tea), and I was thinking ahead to driving out to Grande Prairie tomorrow night.  So in a flash, I switched into "Panic-Cleanup-SuperJake Mode", did up my dishes, swept, cleaned up my living room, scrubbed my toilet, changed my sheets, and grabbed a few groceries.

But it's all done, my place looks reasonably decent, and Amanda is on her way.  Life is good.  :-)

Sandbox Shenanigans

Hi everyone!


This is the final photo Amanda and I took together last weekend.  On our way back to her apartment from the mall, I suggested we take a quick detour.  There's a school playground reasonably close to where Amanda lives, and I suggested that we could get a picture of the two of us on the swings.


So we detoured off of the main road to Amanda's place, walked to the playground, and then found that the playground didn't have swings.  We improvised and sat on a mini climbing wall for this photo.


The sun was getting lower in the sky, but it was still sunny and warm, and the lighting was great to attempt this photo.


...so of course I thoroughly messed up my first attempts.  For whatever reason, sitting down made the reach to my normal photo distance feel kind of weird.  I ended up with a half dozen photos of the side/back of my head with Amanda barely in the photo.


We looked through those photos, agreed they were horrible, and decided to try again.  I don't think either of us minded.  :-)


As a side note, I think our hair is interesting in this photo.  I've gotten annoyed with Amanda when she calls my hair black or nearly black, but I've finally figured out that it's probably the yellowish light from the washrooms in my life that makes my hair look more brown to me.


The angle of the photo also makes Amanda's hair look much shorter.  I really like Amanda's long hair and start pouting when she says that it's time for a haircut, but she looks pretty cute in this photo!  Maybe someday (a loooooong time from now) if Amanda cuts her hair to shoulder length, my head *won't* explode in horror.

The Pink Link

Sunday was nice enough for Amanda and I to walk to the Prairie Mall and back, and on the way I encouraged her to stop in front of OMG Cupcakes for a photo.  I've never gone there to buy anything, but they have a pink logo, and I was wearing my pink hoodie.  It seemed like a natural fit!


So we took the photo, and I commented something about feeling like a marshmallow.  It occurs to me that I should've made a joke about feeling like Kirby.  I was wearing pink, Amanda thinks I'm cute, and when we made it to the mall I nearly inhaled my lunch.

Thoughts on gift-giving

In less than a month, it'll be Amanda's birthday.  I've made it through Christmas and Valentine's Day in good shape, and she seems to have liked everything I got her.  Her birthday worries me a little bit though.


I've had lots of ideas, but I wonder what they say about me.

Amanda's a knitter, so neat yarn or knitting needles would seem like an obvious choice.  But I got her needles for Christmas, some yarn from a store in Toronto in February, and a skein of sock yarn this weekend, so I've gone that route before.  I really don't want to make Amanda think that all I've learned about her in the past eight months is that she enjoys knitting.


I could get Amanda a game for her 3DS.  She bought it a few weeks back, and is enjoying playing around with it.  I have some idea of the kinds of games she enjoys, but I don't want to get her something that's too similar to what she already plays (which could be boring and show that I pigeonhole her likes too narrowly) or too far away (which could be uninteresting and show that I don't pay attention to the kind of games she plays).


She could use a new frying pan, but I like giving gifts that are generally more fun than functional.  Besides, it could be taken as a hint that she needs to cook more often for me.


I also thought of making something for Amanda, but I kind of doubt I'll do that.  My knitting skills, while improving, are still a far cry from hers, and it could be taken as a "look how talented I am" moment.


Now, I've thought about all of these things, and I've reached one conclusion.




I'm an idiot.



Amanda will like whatever I give her, as long as I put some thought into it and give it to her out of love, rather than a general obligation to do so.  I don't think for a minute that she'd use my gift to her as a litmus test of my view of her.


...and that's why I love her!  <3

Funny moment of recognition?

Hi everyone!

Yesterday Amanda and I went for a walk from her apartment over to the Prairie Mall to pick up a few things and to go for a late lunch.  Once we finished our shopping and having lunch, we started walking back to her apartment, where we had to stop and wait at a traffic signal.

A truck driving through the intersection had a passenger in it with his window rolled down.  I'd never seen him before and neither had Amanda, but he called out to us on the way by.  He didn't say anything specific or call us by name, but he seemed to recognize the two of us!

...so of course our egos kicked into high gear, and we started talking about how that guy was going to drive home saying "I can't believe I saw the Kissing Couple of Grande Prairie!"

I hope that was the case, and I hope that passenger is reading this blog post now.  If you are, thanks for the recognition!

Snowflakes keep falling on our heads

Hi everyone!

Thanks for indulging me with my 4:50am blog post this morning.  I hope it was interesting to a few folks.

I'm back with our final photo from last weekend, taken outside my building in Tumbler Ridge.  Amanda and I were just returning from supper at the Tumbler Ridge golf course when we stopped to take a quick photo in the snow.  It only piled up a few inches over the course of the night, but it was enough to provide some nice scenery for this photo.

Amanda and I didn't manage many photos this weekend, so I may be making more posts this week with my thoughts on stuff than normal.  Alternatively, I may show progress on my knitting (though there really isn't much to show).

Please stick with us folks, and hopefully we'll have more opportunities to take photos next weekend.

Nightmares

I woke up just under an hour ago.  I was standing in Amanda's bedroom, my back to the closet, pillows strewn on the floor, and Amanda trying to talk me down.  Finally I calmed down and realized where I was, and who I was with.

I'd been dreaming -- dreaming about something shapeless and horrible that scared me beyond words, and something that I was trying very hard to get away from.

Once Amanda calmed me down, checked to see if I'd been having a seizure or something similar, and made me feel safe again, we started talking.  She told me that she'd been woken up by me screaming and that when she tried to calm me down and get me back to bed, I had yelled and sworn at her, and that she'd never seen me so angry.

I couldn't articulate it very well then or now, but I'd been caught somewhere between dreaming and being awake, where something nameless I fear was in bed, and I couldn't believe that Amanda been trying to induce me to stop running from it.  It was like I felt she'd betrayed me, or that she just didn't understand the danger I was in.

Was my fear a stand-in for something less tangible?  Was it my subconscious mind giving physical form to a fear of losing Amanda, or that somehow I don't deserve her?  I don't know.

So here I at 4:55am, nearly an hour later, sitting on Amanda's couch with the lights on, my knitting project and origami paper -- comforting things -- nearby.  After Amanda calmed me down and I went to the washroom to compose myself again, I did return to bed with her.  She'd already fallen back asleep (for which I'm grateful -- I'm hoping it meant she wasn't still worrying about me), and I turned out the light and tried to join her.

I couldn't.  I honestly tried to return to sleep but my mind was whirling.  It could've been the caffeine I had earlier in the evening, but my thoughts kept wandering to old arguments with random people.  It could be that I just have trouble letting issues like that go, but I think it's more likely that part of me just didn't want to return to sleep -- didn't want to return to dreamland where I'd be at the mercy of the nightmare again.

...such is the power of a bad dream.

I know this isn't the sort of thing you come here to read, folks.  It's certainly not what I intended this blog to be about.  But even after talking with Amanda I needed to sort through it further and get it out somehow.

Thanks for listening.

Later on today I should be on here again with an upbeat post about kissing Amanda somewhere, and you'll be back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Playing Post Office

During our wander this weekend, Amanda and I stopped in at the TR post office so I could pick up my mail.  It seemed like kind of a weird place to take a photo of the two of us, so I went ahead and got one!


I've got to be honest though -- the photo and the joke in the post title is all I've really got to say about this one.


...for the record, the lights stayed on.

Unflattering Camping Trip

Last weekend while my parents and Amanda were here, we set up the tent I'd received for Christmas in my living room.  We did it to see if an air mattress my parents gave me for my birthday would fit inside the tent.


So we set up the tent, and Amanda and I crawled inside to see how roomy it was.  She cuddled up to me, and my mom joked about taking a photo for our blog.  I agreed that it sounded like a great idea, and we had our first photo taken by a photographer that wasn't Amanda or myself.


We're both dressed in green for St. Patrick's Day, and I think it's actually a fairly cute photo of the two of us.  ...just not a particularly flattering one.

Paradise by the Streetside Lights

Greetings, friendy readers!


Last Friday night, Amanda and I went for a walk after supper with my parents.  It was a little chillier than expected, so Amanda borrowed the outer layer of my winter coat, and we continued our walk on the lower bench of Tumbler Ridge.


We were talking as we walked, and it hit me how much I'd missed her that week.  So I stopped her under a streetlight for a long embrace.  ...Then it occurred to me that it might be a place for an interesting photo.  So I pulled out my phone, Amanda obliged me, and we ended up with a fairly neat photo taken at twilight!


I think I may need to take more photos like this.  For one thing, my hair looks *amazing*.

Gifts from Girlfriend :-)

Just thought I'd share two things with you today:  two of the gifts Amanda got me for my birthday.

First off, Amanda bought me flowers!  It's an assorted bouquet of 16 roses, and they look pretty spiffy.  I buy Amanda flowers occasionally, and it was sort of neat to be on the receiving end.  When I found out she originally intended to give them to me at work, I told her that I would've grabbed them, grabbed her, and dragged both around to brag to every one of my co-workers that my girlfriend drove three hours out to Tumbler Ridge to be here for my birthday, and bought me flowers and a mylar balloon on top of it!

A little later on, I got to open Amanda's other gifts to me.  She bought me Plants vs. Zombies for my DS, which has been lots of fun so far, especially when playing against Amanda, and is knitting something for me!

It's going to be a bag to hold the knitting projects I'm working on!  My birthday arrived a little soon for her to have time to finish, but Amanda is plugging away on it, and it means a lot to me that she's putting so much time into a gift for me!


Anyway, I should be back tomorrow evening with the sort of photos you're used to seeing -- Amanda and me sharing a kiss somewhere.

The Wrong Way...

I know this may surprise some people, but I was wrong!


While getting ready to post one of the new photos Amanda and I took this weekend while she was in Tumbler Ridge, I took a quick look through my photo directory and found one more I hadn't posted last weekend.


We took this photo on one of the bridges in Muskoseepi Park last Sunday on our way to Michael's.  It was a little chilly and windy, but it was really nice getting out and about rather than staying inside for the entire weekend.  That said, when I look at that photo it makes me think it was taken in the dead of winter, rather than just a few weeks before spring...

The Right Way

My apologies for the lack of posts the last few days.  Today's my birthday, and I've had company since Wednesday night.  My parents came to visit on Wednesday, and Amanda arrived earlier than expected on Friday afternoon, which made me extremely happy!


We took a few photos this weekend, including photos of my birthday gifts from her, but I still had one remaining photo from last weekend.  We took this photo on our walk, and thought it would be funny to take it directly under the "Wrong Way" sign.  I like to think we're kissing the right way though -- in public, and in front of a photo lens!

Anyway, I should be back later tonight with the first of the photos we took this weekend, so please stay tuned!

 

The Sound of water falling

On Sunday afternoon, Amanda and I went for a fairly lengthy walk.  I had to visit Michael's to pick up some more origami paper for a program at the library, so we walked over from Amanda's place.  We walked through Muskoseepi Park on the way, and stopped to watch the river flow down over the concrete embankment.


It was really neat to see the unbroken ice and snow above, and the free-flowing river below.  Amanda and I hadn't walked through the park for a few months, and we stopped for a photo while watching the river.

As a side note, it looks much colder in the photo than it actually was.  We both ended up pink cheeked by the time we made it home again, but we really enjoyed getting out, and hope that the warm weather continues so we can get out more often.

Stove Shopping

Good evening, everyone!

My stove recently decided that its control panel would no longer cooperate with the rest of the stove.  The replacement cost of the control panel itself is nearly the cost of a new stove, so Amanda and I spent a little bit of time looking at new stoves on Saturday.

We took this photo outside of the Brick just before looking inside.  As you can probably tell from the photo, the weather at the time was amazing.  It was sunny, clear, and warm, and I'm *very* happy that we'll shortly be taking photos of the two of that won't always contain heavy jackets and hoodies.


The shirt I'm wearing is officially my new favorite shirt.  I have a yellow/brown shirt which is laid out the same way, but it's starting to get pretty old.  So a month or so ago when Amanda and I were in Mark's Work Wearhouse, she pointed out this shirt and commented that it was a variant of my favorite shirt.  I agreed, found one that would fit me, and it quickly leapt to the top of my clothing preference list.


As for the stove, we saw a few that would do the trick for me.  I'll wait a few weeks for my income tax refund to come in, and then we'll go stove shopping for real!

Kissing Couple Restaurant Review - Chopped Leaf

Amanda and I took this photo earlier this afternoon, just after we'd finished eating lunch at the Chopped Leaf.  While we were eating, I joked that all the people outside who saw the *world-famous* Kissing Couple of Grande Prairie eating there would mob the restaurant from then on.  From there, we talked briefly about how it might be interesting to review restaurants we visit on the blog.

We'd never eaten at the Chopped Leaf before, but were both impressed with the place.  My chicken caesar wrap was very good -- hot chicken, fresh lettuce, and it tasted amazing.  Amanda tried the BBQ chicken quesadilla and really enjoyed it.  Just about everything on the menu sounded great -- I stood there for five or six minutes after Amanda had already decided on her lunch, and I didn't even consider the option of designing my own salad/wrap.

The Chopped Leaf is near Michael's, so it'll be handy whenever Amanda and I need more yarn for our knitting projects, and best of all, for the two of us it only cost four or five dollars more than it would've to go to a fast food place.  In short, we're definitely planning a trip back there on a future weekend when I'm in Grande Prairie!

Now, I don't know that we'll be doing many of these restaurant reviews...  What's more, they won't ever be insulting, negative reviews.  If there's a place we enjoy eating, we might bring it to your attention -- that's all.

We're all done our running around for the weekend, but we took a handful of photos, and I'll be posting them over the course of the next week, so please check back!

Frozen Sunday

Good evening, everyone!


This is the final photo Amanda and I took two weekends ago.  We had a fairly lazy Sunday and were continuing our 80's weekend (we watched Flashdance and Footloose) when the urge for frozen yogurt overtook us.


So we hopped in my car and drove across town to Menchie's.  We both love the place, but we try not to overdo it.  Both my wallet and my scale would be swearing at me if we went there every weekend.


Before we wandered in, we stopped for a quick kiss and photo in the parking lot.  It was really sunny, though still cold, and Amanda was looking cute in her sunglasses.  We've joked that she actually needs a pair of purple, heart-shaped sunglasses, but we haven't seen them around for sale.


In any case, mine was a mix of cake batter, vanilla strawberry, caramel apple (a mistake), and yogurt chips.  Amanda's was red velvet cake, chocolate something-or-other, and green apple (if I remember right).


With that, I've finally uploaded all the photos from the last time Amanda and I spent together.  After work tomorrow, I'll be on my way to Grande Prairie (roads and other conditions permitting), and hopefully I'll have new photos to upload soon!

Three O'Clock

After we finished having fun at the birthday party the weekend before last, Amanda took me on a lengthy tour of the high school.  Now, I didn't meet Amanda until last July which was more than ten years after either of us was in high school.  So it was really neat to wander around the halls and learn about this time of her life.


I got to see where she took her classes, hear about her old teachers (both good and bad), and we wound up in front of her old locker.  Neither of us did much dating in school, so we made up for it by sharing a lengthy kiss and a photo in front of her former locker.


It was the best deserted school hallway kiss shared by us ever!

Tuna Surprise

Hi folks,


I didn't get a hold of Amanda early enough today to try for the surprise I had hoped for.  As a result, you're getting a different surprise:

...yup, that's the surprise.


I spent a little bit of time today in Minecraft's creative mode making this sign to send to Amanda.  I debated creating an image of pixelated versions of us kissing, but decided that it would take a lot of planning and a lot more time than I planned spending on it.


Perhaps another day...

Consequences of Illness

Good evening, patient blog readers!


On Wednesday, I thought I was well on the road to recovery and that I'd be posting new photos of Amanda and I together from last weekend on Thursday and Friday, then driving to Grande Prairie tonight to see her in person.  Sadly, none of that happened.


My illness became worse again on Thursday, and I spent the last two days lying around recovering.  Amanda and I texted each other briefly last night, and made the (very disappointing) decision that we wouldn't be seeing each other this weekend.  It wasn't practical for her to drive out to Tumbler Ridge due to work, and I couldn't count on feeling well enough to make the drive on Sunday morning.


That's enough about me though.  What does this mean for you blog readers?  Well, new photos of Amanda and me will be in short supply over the next week.  I've got two more from last weekend, and I'll fill in the gaps with longer written posts or updates on knitting progress.

...and if I'm really motivated tomorrow, I might come up with a surprise!

Stay tuned!