So It Begins...

This picture is taken from the guest room of Rolston's Retreat, the B&B Derek and I will be staying at this weekend.

Today and tomorrow I am going to be doing last minute clean-up before leaving for Kelowna and Williams Lake for the next week. I expect I will also be doing my best to run around outside as much as possible in this GORGEOUS weather! :)

I can hardly wait to leave town for the week. Derek says that the weather in Williams Lake will most likely be HOT HOT HOT! I only hope that I don't come home looking like a lobster. :) We are going to be staying at a bed and breakfast while in Williams Lake (which I am SO going to enjoy). The place we have booked looks lovely (from the online pictures). It is a lake-view room in a house up on a hill. The B&B has a recreation room and a hot tub outside. Should be nice star-gazing out there.
I am also going to enjoy spending time with Derek's extended family. Coming from a small family myself I find it a strange process being in a room with a bunch of people whose main point of commonality is blood. In my experience, the largest family event I have had (with my immediate and extended family) was early Christmases with my mom, my stepdad (Ted), my dad, my aunt Marilee and my uncle Rick. That was it! Six people in all! And _most_ of the time the holidays/special events involved just my mom, Ted and I.
Now I am going to family gatherings where relatives have to wrack their brains at times to remember peoples names (let alone HOW they are related). It is both a daunting experience and a fun one. I get a little shy just because I don't know how people at these events interact. In a way I treat it like a gig (which... actually in this case it will also be), after I play music I generally mingle and meet people and chat. I guess the only difference is that because it is Derek's family I really want them to have a good feeling for me and so I spend a lot of time just hoping that I don't offend them (which is easy to do in a large gathering of diverse personalities).
But one of the most reassuring things I have found about Derek's family is that they are nothing if not open, welcoming and friendly. I know in my heart that this weekend will be thoroughly enjoyable but I am still a little nervous.

But on to other things... in addition to this weekends festivities for Derek's grandparents, it is also Derek's 26th birthday on Sunday. I expect that we will probably try to have some kind of gathering once we get back from our journeys to celebrate Derek's b-day in Vancouver with friends and I will get in touch with people when we have an idea of what the plan is.

I have been pondering the past few days and am going to throw this question out there:
What are some of the best ways of showing someone that you love them? A few thoughts that I have come up with (some with Derek's help) are:

Going out of your way to do something/help do something for another person that you wouldn't normally do.
Telling the person how you feel about them.
Creating/doing something inspired by that person to express how much they mean to you.
Taking time out of your schedule just to be with that person.

Please feel free to add to this list. I am still thinking about it but want to hear what others think too.

My mom is going to be visiting next week and I am _quite_ happy about that. It is funny but even though visiting them is no more difficult or expensive now than it was when I lived on the island, I just don't make it over to visit very often any more. I suppose that is a growing up kind of thing. Nonetheless, it makes visits with my mom, Ted and my dad more special for the distance and travel involved (on either side).

I can hardly wait for my massage course to begin in two weeks. It is going to be a great time and I am SO looking forward to learning some new techniques. I keep thinking that I would like to go back to school (if my parents are reading this they are probably groaning right now) to study to become an RMT (registered massage therapist). There are a few obstacles I would need to overcome in order to achieve this and a few reasons why I hesitate to attack those. The first and foremost reason for me _not_ to follow that path is my music... I specifically went to music school and have been limiting my "real life job" opportunities because I want to focus on pushing my music career forward and do not want to take away from that focus by spending years of my life away from that aspect of my life. The time and money are the major stumbling blocks for acutally getting the training. The RMT program in BC is a minimum three year program and costs in the vicinity of $30,000. If I had not already done so much schooling (and gone so far into debt with it) I might feel a little safer doing that, however...
One of the other reasons for my questioning whether or not it is a good idea is tht fact that right now I am earning almost as much as an RMT without having the training and the debt involved. There is also a VERY high incidence of burn-out from the intensity of the RMT program (and having known both teachers and students of various schools I am fairly certain this is NOT just a rumour).
But I do love doing massage. I think that I will give it another year of thought. Derek and I have discussed the possibility of him finding a job in Victoria and us moving there sometime in the next two years or so (and Victoria now has a massage school that I could go to). In the meantime, I will market my cd, play gigs, do chair and table massage in my down time and just generally enjoy my life and the fact that I have two career paths that I love and a loving partner who is supportive of them (even if they are not insanely lucrative YET).

It is interesting how complimentary music and massage are. When I think about it, the music I most love to perform tends to be relaxing and (I would like to think) healing in a way. The same is true for massage. I am beginning to think that what a person chooses to do as a career (if it is one that they love) is not so much chosen for the specific JOB (i.e. computer programming, medicine, art, etc.) but rather is chosen because the job allows the person to indulge in expressing his or her passions through their work (and in some cases allows a person to leave a legacy behind). And I suppose if that is the case then a mid-life crisis is not so much a change of careers (unless the jobs are diametrically opposed) as a morphing of one's passions. Hmmm... I'll have to hang onto that reasoning as a jusification for my mid-life crisis when I get there... or am I already in the middle of it? More to think about I guess...

Well, I think that is enough rambling from me for now. I hope that everyone has a great week. I will post when I get home next week and let all know how my weekend went. :)