I hate abusing the right not to use complete paragraphs, but too much fun stuff happened this past weekend for me to obey the rules of grammar. You’d be here reading until next Thursday if I wrote it all out in story form, so you just get bulleted lists of delight:

• Big group breakfast at the Tomahawk. Almost everyone was hung over; I skipped the previous night’s festivities but due to my vertigo I was as unstable as the rest
• The weekend weather promised to be gorgeous, and there were no set plans made. Hey, let’s go camping! Everyone agreed to go home and get ready for an afternoon departure
• Ed and I had errands to run at the mall so we scooted there after breakfast
• I got my phone fixed, and a “fun bundle” added on – yay for mobile browsing!
• A post-apocalyptic sweater was purchased
• Ed was a witness as I was asked to produce my Status Card at the drug store. This has only happened to me once before, at a gas station in Duncan in 1994 and none of my current crew were around then. It was the stuff of legends, because to my friends and most people I am very clearly some sort of Asian and not Native Canadian – but I was vindicated; some people DO think I look Native! I relayed the story to others, and for the rest of the weekend “my people” were brought up at every opportunity. Sadly, I still had to pay tax on my razor blades and chewing gum.
• I opted out of the camping trip because I still wasn’t feeling very good and I didn’t want to potentially pass out from the Verts and have my friends not know what to do with me
• I pretty quickly changed my mind; I didn’t want to be left out. Ed wasn’t able to come because of his hot date with Mike at the hockey game, which meant I would have been left all alone while everyone else was out having fun. I got my stuff ready and was picked up on the way to the ferry for some camping goodness
• We hopped the boat to Gibsons and drove through Sechelt, where I want to scoot and stay one weekend I am not even kidding.
• We were stuck behind a large truck carrying two trailers worth of Emergency Hay – we arrived to the other ferry just as it was pulling away from the terminal
• Josh spun the Delica around as we were going to go with Plan B – camping somewhere on that side of the water – when a Ferry Man stopped us; the boat was COMING BACK FOR US
• Anyone who’s ever dealt with BC Ferries – the omnipresent cold impersonal corporate monopoly that makes people pay through the ass to get around the BC coast when there are no other options – would know some inkling of the shock we felt. BC Ferries don’t just turn around because someone missed the boat. Any anger we felt towards Emergency Hay Man was quickly turned to reverence; although he definitely made us miss the boat he is probably also the only reason the boat opted to come back and gather him and the four other vehicles trapped behind him as he drove very slowly through the one-lane winded roads along the coast line
• My personal theory was that we were allowed on the boat because there was a horror movie being filmed and we were to be the next hapless victims of the Sunshine Coast Slasher – the boat was eerily deserted, and it was fucking creepy
• Five nerds are harder to take out than you might think, and we all made it to Powell River in one piece
• We stopped for weenies and marshmallows and other camping necessities in the oldest grocery store known to man
• After following sketchy directions – “go 15.6km from the Petro Canada that DOES NOT EXIST” – we found our desired campgrounds at Dinner Rock
• We set up camp – roasted weenies – roasted marshmallows – enjoyed the fire – and went to bed around 1am; Miranda and Reilly in a tent (they are hardcore) and Josh, Shan and I in the Delica (slightly less hardcore)
• Up at the crack of dawn, made a quality breakfast, then went exploring
• The town of Lund is the most awesome place ever – it’s the furthest point along the Sunshine Coast and is a small quirky harbour town
• I stopped to take some pictures of some dahlias growing in the wild – they’re my favourite flower, and I’d never seen wild ones before
• I turned the giant flower around for a better shot
• And there’s a snail cozily sleeping in the center of the flower
• I just about peed myself
• I LOVE SNAILS !!!!
• I snapped many pictures, then realized that Lund had snails EVERYWHERE – tiny ones, big ones, gorgeous ones with shell patterns and colours I’d never seen before
• I am going to buy this house and move to Lund and buy a pug and take pictures of snails all day long and it will be super
• SNAILS!!!!
• I was eventually pried away from the snails
• We explored more of the coast, then got on the 3:30 boat to head back to Gibsons where we had to get on another boat to get back to home
• We saw some yurts!
• And a man-child wearing dragon-themed bling – he was freshly shaved, but you cannot hide the Neck Beard
• After dropping Miranda and Reilly off downtown and unloading the Delica, I was home and showered and clean with cats and Ed at 9pm last night, exhausted but giddy coz I want camping for the first time in about three decades, I saw snails, and I was home which was super

Um, that’s about it. I took about 400 pictures but helpfully only uploaded 53 of them – go see my snails! And other stuff too, but SNAILS !!