One year ago today I posted about going to Calgary to look for work and a place to live. This post was a result of hasty decision making that would become a theme for the next year of my life.

At the time of that post I had a decent job in the software industry working for Emergis. For the most part I was happy there, with a few minor exceptions, however, after eight months I was growing disenchanted with my position in life. I was bored in Saskatoon, and was growing bored with my job. After a rather bad day at the office I decided I was moving out of Saskatoon and that was the end of it. Immediately after getting home from work I called up a couple of friends and recruited them to move to Calgary with me. That task was surprisingly easy to accomplish. It took two phone calls.

There was almost exactly one month in between my deciding to move and the day we moved into our duplex in Calgary. Finding work was easy, but the jobs I was getting were pretty lame compared to what I was doing in Saskatoon so I never stuck with any of them for long. There were a couple of warehouse gigs, a stint as a (new) car salesman (which was fun, but just not for me) and a few other things. By October I was growing restless again and needed a big change.

While visiting family in Saskatoon that month I was having a discussion with my father about what my plans were. I made another hasty decision and applied to Mount Royal College for the winter semester. At the time I applied just to have the option of going, not really sure whether I would enroll or not.

When I got back to Calgary and received an acceptance letter I decided I would actually go through with it and enroll. Five months later and I'm through my first month of my first semester, and I actually feel like I'm accomplishing something, albeit five or six years later than I would have liked.

Unfortunately things are not exactly copasetic. The winters in Saskatchewan are excruciating, harsh, inhumane and undesirable. Protected by the mountains and graced sporadically with chinooks, Calgary offers a milder winter than I've been used to in Saskatchewan, but it is by no means warm. I hate cold weather. I can't emphasize enough how much I hate cold weather. While I've put up with it out of need (based on my location), I've always loathed winter. I've been toying with the idea of moving to Vancouver or Whistler since sometime around my birthday.

While the weather is the driving reason for my contemplating a move to the west coast, there are other factors that have me considering another relocation. First and foremost is the ocean, followed closely by beaches. I've always loved the ocean, and that's all there is to that. Also, I love big cities. I would like to live in New York City, or London, or Berlin, or any other world city, but Vancouver is as close as I can get at the moment. Toronto and Montreal don't fit the weather bill.

I do know that Vancouver will be more expensive, but am not clear on exactly how much more. Calgary's real estate market caught and passed Toronto last year, and is inching closer to Victoria and Vancouver every day. I haven't looked into the differences in living expenses that closely yet but it's on my list of things to do.

Anyway, there's a general look at my life for the past year, and a glimpse of what might happen in the next.

My younger brother Brent took an oath swearing himself into the Canadian Army yesterday afternoon, thus marking his exit from civilian life for (at least) the next couple of years. I asked him what he was going to do on his last day as a civilian (Wednesday) and he didn't have much to say. I'm not sure what I would be doing, but I'm sure it would involve a party of some sort.

He ships off to Montreal tomorrow to begin Basic Training, then it's off to an (as yet) undisclosed location for Boot Camp in a couple of months. I could never see myself joining the military and I'm proud that he has.

Good luck Brent. Support Our Troops.

UPDATE: I have a picture of him taken after his swearing in....

When this week started there were three midterms staring me in the face in the latter part of the week. One each on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I wrote my Microeconomics midterm yesterday and believe I did remarkably better than I thought I would, same goes for my Macroeconomics exam today. Tomorrow I'll be writing History, which is going to simply be one essay... and we were told the topic, so it shouldn't be that tough. I'm pretty stoked for reading week, which like most of the country is next week.

In other news, I have a post up at Too Real about why you should switch to Gmail, go check it out.

My buddy Stefan had to put together a video for broadcasting class, and this was the result... starring two of my buddies. Ignore the blackness and the color lines, but check it out:

Here is a picture outlining why it is a terrible idea to get out of line in our house. Ryan spoke out of turn one too many times.