Mystic Vale

After sleeping in, I decided to go for a walk in Mystic Vale as the weather was just great today. Just like the last time I has been here, I was awed by the beauty of this forest, which was located just next to the University. Especially the tall, majestic trees impressed me as they made me feel so small and insignificant in comparison. I enjoyed the sounds of nature around me a lot. There weren't many other sounds as there weren't many other people around. After about 30 minutes there were two people walking a dog with a big stick in his mouth. He was running happily in my direction and as he was willing to give his stick up, I took and threw it away for him to fetch.
Just about a minute later, something suddenly bit me in my arm. My guess was that it might have been a wasp, as I could see a yellow and black insect flying nearby. The spot where I got the bite hurt immediately and it pretty much kept hurting all day long, although there wasn't much to see apart from a little red dot.
As the little bite ruined my enthusiasm for the walk, I soon went back to the bus stop. Instead of going home, I took a bus Downtown in order to buy a few groceries. Just when I got off the bus, I saw that there was something going on at Centennial Square. Apparently there was another First Nations Festival or something. Nevertheless, I still wasn't impressed by their dancing and their music. Thus I went on to the store where I bought some vegetables and other things.

Back at home, I escalloped some zucchini and potatoes with cheese for a late lunch.
I already had to leave just past 5 PM in order to go to work. Before my shift, I returned some pyjama pants which I had bought the day before and which were just too long for me. I kind of felt bad for having to return them now since Grace had told me yesterday that I should try them on first but I had been too lazy to do it.
My shift at work seemed to take forever, even though we were quite busy. I had one customer who felt insulted because I had asked him for ID with his credit card. I explained to him that this was for his safety as well as ours and that it was our store's policy to ask for ID. He still wasn't happy and demanded to speak to the manager. From what I heard from Grace later on, she had told him exactly the same thing that I has told him before. I really didn't understand why some people make such a scene because of little things like that.
After my shift, I was lucky to catch a bus home right away, which was nice since I was feeling quite exhausted.

Split shift and pizza

Today was just another rather quiet day at work. I had a split shift, which meant that I was working from 11 to 2:30 to cover my coworkers' lunch breaks and from 6 to 10:30PM to cover their dinner breaks. In the 3.5 hour break in between my two shifts, I went home in order to eat some lunch / dinner and relax / read. I didn't want to cook anything too exhausting so I just put some tuna fish on a frozen cheese pizza and baked it in the oven. This seemed to be the only way for me to get some tuna pizza, as pizza with this topping apparently wasn't sold anywhere in North America. As I only had one big break which theoretically covered two meals, I ended up eating the whole pizza, which was a bit too much for me. Consequently, I was feeling too full when I was at work.
Before my evening shift started, I also bought a few little things at the gift store. As I was feeling very exhausted due to eating too much before work, I was glad that it wasn't extremely busy tonight. However, when my shift was over I was actually feeling a bit more energetic and didn't want to go home. I still took the next bus home, though, as it was already too late to do anything.

Walking... a lot

Just like the last two days, I got up at 7 AM and started working at 9 AM.
We were quite busy restocking food in the morning. Around noon, I volunteered to bring some boxes filled with pocket knives over to 'Overboard' as I thought that the rather long walk there would be nice. It was in fact a very nice walk due to the weather being surprisingly good - the sun was shining, we had a clear blue sky, and it was rather warm outside. The only downside was having to bring all of the boxes over with me. I didn't have to carry them but pushing the boxes around in a cart wasn't much better since they were quite bulky.
After lunch I spent the whole afternoon folding and putting t-shirts away. The store was very busy around that time and it only calmed down just before my shift was over. Thus I barely managed to clean most of the mess in the store up.
I had planned to take the bus number '14' today and I thought that I had caught it. However, somewhere along the way I started wondering if the bus took another route today and a few minutes later I realized that I was actually sitting in a wrong bus. I got off the bus at Quadra and Bay street and decided to just try and walk home. The walk was about 2.5 km, which was a lot considering that I was exhausted from my shift at work. Consequently I was very happy when I arrived home. Nevertheless, walking all the way home wasn't too bad thanks to the weather.

Katrina came home just a few minutes after me and the two of us watched the last few episodes of 'Stranger Things' together.

Working and walking along Willow's Beach

Just like yesterday, I had to get up at 7 AM in order to be at work around 9 AM. Even though I had an 8 hour work day, my shift didn't feel that long to me since I was very busy all day long. After opening the store, I had some key chains to process. Before I was done with those items, we got five boxes full of name program pocket knives to restock. This actually took less time than I would have expected - I was already done with the boxes by lunchtime. After lunch I had a lot of softgood restock (t-shirts etc.) to take care of. When that was done, I only had a little bit of time left to start delinting some caps.
As my coworker Kathy went into the backroom just when my shift was over, I had to stay a few minutes longer at work. Then I quickly walked to the bakery to get the bread I had ordered before the bakery closed at 6 PM.

I was very hungry when I arrived at home so the first thing I did was to reheat and to eat some 'Labskaus'. Katrina was just about to go on a walk with Jakki and since I still wanted to do something nice this evening, I was happy that she waited for me and then took me along for her walk along Willow's Beach.
We were quite lucky with the weather this evening. Even though it had rained a lot this afternoon, it was only cloudy now in the evening. Thus we had a nice walk at the beach.

Back at home I took a shower and later, Katrina, Margo and I watched two more episodes of 'Stranger Things'.

Keys or Cookies?

Today I had another shift at the warehouse, from 9 AM to 4 PM. Even though I was just standing and folding t-shirts most of the time, the shift wasn't that bad as I was chatting a bit and listening to my coworkers in the warehouse. After my shift, my manager Grace had asked me to come to the store and when I met her there, she told me that she had something for me. To me, it sounded like she said 'Keys', so I thought that I was supposed to get a key in order to lock 'Royal Garden', too. However, I didn't find any key in the area she had pointed me to - there were just two tiny cakes. As Grace had just gone out, I was talking about it with one of my coworkers and we concluded that she must have said 'cakes' or something like that. Just when I was about to grab those two tiny ckaes, Grace came along to clarify that she had said 'cookies'. In addition to the cookies from Grace, my coworker Kathy also gave me some chocolates and a really nice Goodbye-letter, as this was her last week working at the store.
On the way home I still picked up some milk and went to the bakery in order to order some bread for tomorrow - it was already out today and this way I could make sure that I would at least get some bread tomorrow.
At home I cooked some 'Labskaus' for dinner and when Margo got home, all of us watched some more 'Stranger Things'.

Labour Day

When I wanted to eat some bread this morning, I discovered that my bread had gone bad. Thus, I ended up eating some reheated and sweetened rice with milk.
Around noon, I decided to go to the bakery to buy some fresh bread. As today was a national holiday, I wasn't sure when the next bus would leave. So when I left the house to go to the bus stop, I just saw the bus drive by. Fortunately, it only took about 15 minutes for the next bus to come.
When I arrived at the bakery, I found out that it was closed due to the holiday. I guess I could have known that but since every shop here in Canada was usually open every day of the week, I didn't really expect it to be closed today.
I ended up walking a bit around the Downtown area. When I arrived at the harbour I checked out a market at ship point as well as the 'Blues Bash' which was still going on in the inner harbour area. Even though the weather wasn't too nice, there were people dancing to the music, which was fun to watch. So far, it hadn't rained yet, it was just very cloudy.
Just when I was about to leave, I saw that there was something going on in front of the parliament building. Thus, I went there to check it out. There was actually a band playing mostly songs from the 90's and a few newer songs in order to celebrate Labour Day. They sounded quite good so I stayed a while to listen to them. A coworker of mine, Debbie, was also at the festivities and we chatted for a few minutes before she went on to meet up with a few other people.
It was slowly starting to rain and as I felt like the concert was about to come to an end, I left a little earlier.
Before catching a bus home, I went to the little supermarket on Johnson Street to buy some buns and a few other things.

Back at home, I finally cleaned the bathroom after eating a small snack.
Next, I watched the end of 'White Collar' with Katrina. It was kind of sad to watch the last two episodes after about three months of watching this show.
In the evening I read a little while cooking some potatoes for dinner.
After I was finished eating, Katrina, Margo, Tuulia and I watched the first two episodes of a show called 'Stranger Things', which seemed to be quite popular lately. It was actually a lot more interesting than I had expected.

The trip to the Fisgard Lighthouse

As there is a picture of the Fisgard Lighthouse in the calender of Victoria which I had bought a while ago, I definitely wanted to go and check it out. Since it was Margo's and Tuulia's day off, too, I asked the two of them to join me on my trip.
We took a bus just before noon and after a bus ride that took us almost an hour, we got off about two kilometres from the National Hitoric Site. Right after getting off the bus, I discovered a race course for toy cars where three (or later four) of those toy cars were racing each other. It was quite interesting to watch how fast those tiny cars could drive.

We walked for a while along the street until I saw a pathway three the woods that looked nice to walk through. This way, we got off the main road and to an area which looked like a very small and typically American town far away from the big city. The houses were all wooden and looked rather simple.
It didn't take too long to reach the park with the lighthouse from here. The whole area was enclosed and we did have to pay an entrance fee to get into the area of the National Historic Site. The fee of 3.90 CAD was definitely worth it, because there wasn't only the lighthouse but also a big fort - Fort Rodd Hill.
After checking out the first structure of the fort, which included an underground magazine for ammunition and a big cannon, we could watch a short explanation and demonstration of different guns. Especially the shotgun and the machine gun were surprisingly loud. After the demonstration, everyone who wanted it got the cartridge case of one of the blanks they had fired.
The next structure of the fort which we checked out offered a magnificient view of the ocean and the lighthouse. While we sat there and enjoyed the view for a while, there were two children climbing up a huge rock just below where we were sitting. Climbing on that rock kind of appealed to me and I really wanted to try that, too. However, when we reached the rock, it was actually a lot bigger than I had anticipated. I tried climbing it for a second but then felt like it would be too hard for me as I would be worried about falling. Thus I didn't climb it. However, by that time, Tuulia had already climbed the rock and was looking down on us from above. Margo quickly joined her. I decided to stay down on the ground, though, and discovered a huge shell while the two others were enjoying the view from above.
On the way to the lighthouse there was a guy painting an image of a building. We went over there and started chatting with him and his female companion. The painting looked really great, although I didn't realy get why he was painting the building and not the beautiful landscape all around it.
The Fisgard Lighthouse looked really nice up close and it was even possible to go inside. There was also a small exhibit inside and you could play some kind of steering wheel game, which Margo tried.
Next, we could see a bomb-proof bunker and a small exhibition on the Canadian women who were recruited during the war.
Before leaving the historic site, we walked along a Historic Nature Trail and checked out the Garry Oak Learning Meadow. Due to the season, there wasn't too much blooming right now.
The walk back to the bus stop seemed quite long this time, but we were lucky and caught a bus right away.

We got off the bus in Downtown Victoria. Since the busstop was right at Centennial Square, where the Social Salsa Sunday was currently taking place, I wanted to go and check that out for a moment. After watching the other people dance for a few minutes, an older guy asked me to dance, which turned out to be really fun. Margo took the chance to take a lot of pictures of me dancing.

After that, we felt like going out and drinking something so we walked to the 'Irish Times'. We got a nice sport outside, where we could watch the street while still listening to the music that was playing in the pub. Margo and Tuulia both had some beer while I ordered a cider. The two of them also shared a plate of nachos while I ordered a lamb burger. The burger was good apart from the apple chutney, which I just didn't like in combination with all the other food. As it was getting a bit cool and there was some nice Irish music playing, I ended up dancing Jumpstyle on the spot in order to feel warm again.
Next, we walked along the harbour in the direction of the Empress Hotel. The 'Blues Bash' was still on and we could see some band playing a level below where we were walking. There was also a nice sunset, although this wasn't the best spot to watch it. A few meters further down in the inner harbour, we could see some of the classic boats that belonged to the 'Classic Boat Festival'. Furthermore, as they were really close, I showed Margo and Tuulia several statues of the 'Hands of Time'.
Finally, we took a bus back home, where we arrived around 8:30 PM.