Wow, all kinds o' stuff has happened since my last post.

First off, my Mom got married on June 4th. It was a small ceremony at her house and it was very nice. I was the one who gave her away, and her sister was her maid of honor. They wanted to get married before my Mom started her radiation (she started last week), so it was very last minute. Because of that, Toby wasn't able to be there. All in all though I thought it was a beautiful wedding, and when I do get married I think I want a small wedding too.

Last Thursday I convocated, finally completing the degree I started in September 1999(!). For now I'll just continue working where I am, because I enjoy it. I would like to go back to school someday if I can afford it. I'm not sure what I'll do but I've considered Social Work, Education, Counselling, or teaching English as a second language.

This Thursday/Friday/Saturday saw the Wild Rose Foundation holding its Vitalize conference in Calgary. Our organization was tasked with coordinating the youth component, and it was a lot of work. On the Thursday we had the 'Networking Event' that was pretty much all fun and games. We had video games (2 DDR machines, 1 GameCube, 1 Xbox), a DJ, a tattoo artist, hair and makeup people, and other stuff. It was a blast, but it was a lot of work to do. For me it was a 13 hour day on nothing but 2 slices of pizza. I was absolutely beat by the end of it, but I'm happy with the way it went.

On Friday we had the 4 youth sessions, 2 of which were my responsibility. The first one was about fundraising, but it didn't go so well. You see, we designed this board game that was supposed to teach about philanthropy. Unfortunately the cards took a long time to get made, so we didn't have much time to proof them. We quickly found out that they were shuffled wrong, and that each stack had 10 identical copies of each card. Oy! My staff really saved the day, 'cause I was clueless as to what to do. Looking at the feedback afterwards, people either really liked it or really hated it.

My second session on the Friday was about approaching the media and how youth are portrayed in the media. I had Lisha from CBC, Lindsay from CJSW, Darr from A-Channel, Krista from Youth One, and 3 of our Kids Critic volunteers. This session went awesome, and the only bad part was that I had to cut it off early because one of our speakers had to leave. The Kids Critic volunteers really impressed me with their knowledge, and I'm glad I took the suggestion of inviting them. I'd really like to do this one again sometime.

So for the rest of the weekend I slept a lot and spent some time with my Mom. Things have slowed down at work now, and although I have plenty to do still, the slower pace is welcomed.

Edit:

Posting pictures of my volunteers on my blog would result in a ride on the fired express, destination unemploymentville. However, if they want to take pictures of themselves with their camera phones and post them on their blogs, that's just peachy-keen.

So, checkout some pictures from the Thursday event I was talking about. My hands even have a cameo in one of them. I would like to note that while I did get blue hair and play DDR, I did not get my make-up done. I'm still a man.