"CHIP AWAY PETE"

Disaster on the homefront, in the aftermath of another visit back to Saskatchewan.



Another one of these, huh.

Welcome back.

I'll try to avoid getting overly verbose with everything that has happened since Christmas. I'm still in school, am still partially employed, and have succeeded in not flunking out for another term. I'll be in Victoria for the summer, doing classes.

Despite the ongoing beef with my previous landlord, I have since moved places to somewhere a little nicer. I pay less rent, and in turn have a way nicer space to occupy. There are no cockroaches here. For now.

Alexander of Leyssac and yours truly.

The big thing of note that I absolutely have to mention is that I may not be joining the army after all. This is the "disaster on the homefront" I spoke of in the little TLDR at the top. Shame on you if you didn't catch that.

Anyways, the deal there is that I had an allergy test (an "oral food challenge") while I was back in Saskatchewan. I was basically totally dependent on this test going well, so that I could resubmit my application to the CAF and hopefully start making meaningful progress towards the one thing that I wanted to do with myself.

When I say I wanted to do this, I wanted to do it bad. I did it, and the results are still unknown. Depending on assessment from my allergist, it means I will either be able to enlist, or I will face the greatest disappointment so far in my professional career. I have no idea how it will go, but I hope you can sense my frustration in writing this.

In the worst case: something completely irrelevant and out of my control will stop me from doing that which I have dreamed about literally every single day since I graduated high school. I will be the first to say that university was never my dream, so if this goes the other way... I am prepared to grit my teeth and try everything at my disposal to make this happen. Be the change you want to see in the world, and all that.

Other than that, home was fine. I enjoyed a brief respite from Victoria, but again, I knew I wouldn't stay in Regina. There is something about being there that makes me totally sick to my stomach. It was good to see my friends, good to see my family, good to see my lover (you know who you are :3) but it gets to me. I'm glad to be back in Victoria, despite all of its faults.

I feel kind of as if all the wind has been knocked out of my sails. Nevertheless, I continue to chip away. Woe is me. My life about the same as usual, with dreadful amounts of monotony separated by moments of extreme and problematic emotion. I lived, laughed, and loved back in Sask. Now I am alone, typing a blog post in my room.

Because I didn't write a retrospective for the last term, you (my dear reader) have no deets on what transpired. Again, to spare you the details: I took four classes, failed one, engineering failed (got <60%) another in one that I was repeating, and finished the two others with an A-. Although I usually take accountability for my mistakes and shortcomings as an individual, I am also prepared to admit that my circumstances were less than ideal. My wicked witch of a landlord put me through hell for those 4-ish months, which motivated me to expedite my move-out process. Her actions are worthy of a separate project post, if I ever get around to finishing any of those.

I'm getting a little bored of writing this, so I think I'm going to end things here.

Keep your powder dry.

- Peter (peter@peten.ca)