Growing

I began streaming to mixer in April to play some party games with my friends. It was convenient to be able to stream it straight from my console to the internet with basically no set up. After some encouragement from a friend I started streaming on a schedule at the beginning of May. By the time Mixer announced that they were ditching us to Facebook Gaming, I had nearly reached 100 followers and it really felt like a slam in the face.

Feeling like had to start all over, I went to check out FBG. I had a page with nearly all of the requirements met for monetization. To complete it, all I had to do was, actually stream to it. I did a few and realized that the base of friends and fans I'd built there did not give a lick of shit to me or my stream. I'm monetized, and to keep it, I must continue to stream to that platform. It doesn't feel like it's very discoverable, that's for sure. I will keep working on it I suppose.

I had previously signed up for twitch in hopes of getting my username - I did not. Yet again I've lost my name to someone who signed up to have the name and not actually use the account. I have spent much more time streaming to Twitch now, because I'm growing faster there. This present moment, I've grown faster on Twitch than I did on Mixer even. I am at nearly 80 followers and it hasn't even been 1 month. Although, some people did follow me from Mixer.

I had YouTube already, but I'm still not sure about that. I know I should, I just don't know what to do about it lol. I tried the YT thing last summer with the garden but I guess that content was terrible lol.

Speaking about the garden, it's looking quite nice and bearing fruit (cucumbers and lettuce so far). It's starting to fill up and I've already made my plan for next year and how I'm going to do things better. I believe I have 8 tomato plants and close to 20 cucumber plants. I plan on making ALL of the pickles and ALL of the tomato sauce. I really want to step up my canning this year.

That's it, that's all. Thanks for stopping in!

My First CJ

For over a year now our scouts have been fundraising for a week long Canadian Jamboree that is held every 4 years in different locations across Canada. This year was held at Camp Nedooea, Nova Scotia. This was an excellent opportunity for our group (many of us anyawy) to visit the east coast of Canada for the first time. We planned a 15 day adventure for our group to visit New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, with 7 of those days at the Jamboree.

As a Rover Advisor, I went to camp as an Offer Of Service and worked with the Transportation team. The Minions went in two separate patrol units of our scout troop. We left on the Monday before the Jamboree and flew into Fredericton, NB. We rented 4 vans for the 26 of us to tour around. The OOS left the group and drove to camp on the Thursday before camp.

I began my work detail on Friday and helped over 2000 scouts and scouters arrive at camp via, plane, train or automobile. On Saturday the remaining 3000 (approx) people arrived at camp. We had many long days and nights trying to get everyone to their subcamp (close to 1000 people in each of the 7 subcamps) as best we could and as safely as possible.

Programming for troops began Sunday afternoon and included many fun things. I saw/heard of archery, mud pit, drones, giant bubble balls, bmx course and many things I can't remember but every kid I saw seemed to be having an adventure. Unfortunately it rained pretty good on the Friday and into Saturday morning so the rest of the week the campsites were pure mud.

On Wednesday of the Jamboree I had my day off and a couple of friends I met at camp and I went to Halifax. We had a nice meal, visited the harbour and boats, and the Citadel. Another long day of walking around on tired feet but lots of fun nonetheless. The time difference is only one hour, but I'll tell you something. When your body clock is used to getting up a certain time, it is very hard to change that, especially when its 5am Ontario time that you're trying to change it to!

I feel as though I now have a new addiction. I want to go to more camps, more jamborees and overall more travelling our beautiful country. I had such an amazing time not only in the maritimes but at camp, I miss all the people I met/spent time with. I miss the great times we had with the people I worked with. I miss the ocean. It calls to me. I can't wait for our next adventure!

I also felt like I came home with new eyes. I just spent 15 days living out of a backpack. I spent 9 of those days sleeping in a tent. I now see all this junk in my home that I just don't need. I want to clean out so much stuff right now it's insane.

McCrea - Spring 2016 Edition

**Photo post**

Well we did it. We went up to McCrea just like we wanted to. We went on the may long weekend. We decided two nights was enough and we'd take the third day to relax at home.

2nd Portage

Giant frying pan

1st Portage

We arrived pretty late on Friday, but I caught a good one of the sunset as we canoed into the lake to find a site.

 

The view from the site we chose.

It was a hot and sunny weekend. We chose well, and both got quite a bit of sun. We canoed around the entire lake, visited the site we were at last year to see if anyone had made any changes. We also added a little table to the site we picked. I always like to try to do something to make a site better when we go.

Pike - 2ft long

The biggest of the four fish I caught. I caught two the first day and two the second day. The Ole Man sacrificed his own fishing so he could paddle the canoe at the correct speed for trolling.

The waterfall at the portage on our way out.

I was very happy to use my new camping set. I also had gotten a seal for the little two burner. That did not make us pack light though. We took much more than needed for sure, but we were comfortable and had a good weekend together.

There was one point during the portage that a group was coming in and one guy was right pissed off yelling at a girl for not helping (it did seem that she had come in earlier in the day and was meeting them at the portage so I'm sure she already carried her own gear in). I looked at The Ole Man and smiled, "we made it in without a fight" I said and we were both grateful that we get along so well.

Cuba!

Be forewarned that this post is probably going to contain a lot of pictures. Also, blogger and I don't really get along so they might be all over the place depending on what blogger decides to do with them.

plane

My sister and her fiancé decided to get married in Cuba. I wasn't going to miss my sisters big day, so we hopped on a plane and went to freaking CUBA.

looking at planes

Once we arrived in Cuba we had to find our luggage and then get on a bus for an hour drive in the dark to our resort. We got there and were pretty tired from the flight and all that so we didn't do too much the first night. But here's a gecko thing. They were everywhere at night, every corner you'd walk around, one would be scurrying away.

He doesn't like paparazzi

towel art

We would leave gifts for the maid every day. Things like crayons, clothes, soaps because we were told they don't get a lot of that stuff or it was really expensive for them. So the maid would leave works of art on the bed for us.

Pictures of the resort:

Lounging on the beach:

Everywhere you go there, they drive old cars from the 50's because they haven't been trading with the states since then so there isn't many newer vehicles. We were told that many Cubans know how to fix cars because they'd have no car to drive otherwise.

We went on an excursion, horseback riding. It rained pretty much the entire time we were there. Everything got soaked, so I ended up trying to lay out all my money to dry.

R: CUC L: USD

Every night there was a performance of some kind. This one is water acrobatics.

more towel art

I found that the sand was quite different there. It was definitely softer, finer than our sand. Also going swimming in the ocean once you've been horseback riding and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes is very refreshing and cleansing feeling as the salt water sears your wounds.

horse drawn carts everywhere

huts with no glass windows

more huts

We went to the Pasquera market that was walking distance from the resort a few of the days we were there. One day we took a double decker bus into Guardalavaca to a bigger market.

more old cars

On our last day there we took a tour of the city of Holguin (pronounced HOLE-GEEN CITY).

City of Holguin

Hill of the Cross looking up

Hill of the Cross looking down

The Hill Of The Cross was a place Pope Frances (if I remember correctly lol) visited recently.

It really is a spectacular view of the whole city.

We also got to walk around downtown Holguin and visit some shops, see the locals.

And here we are on our last day, walking out to our plane.

Goodbye Cuba

It really was an experience none of us had ever done before, and who knows when/if we will ever do something like this again.

When we arrived back in Canada it was about 1:30am. We waited for all our luggage, and I got my Gramma situated to catch her shuttle, then we got on ours. Normally it would be about two hours to get home from the airport, we got home about 5am as it was the first snowstorm of the season. Welcome back to Canada! lol

A Discovery

My ex husband was a "hunter". I say that in quotations because he always said he liked to hunt, and talked about having guns handed down from his grandfather, but didn't actually do a lot of hunting.

The Boyfriend started out kind of the same way. It did seem that in his youth he did more hunting, and just didn't have quite as much time for it anymore. He also had another big hobby to fill a lot of his time. The hobby that just so happened to bring us together. The reason we met.

Now that he doesn't have his car anymore, it seems things have shifted. He is now full-out hunter. I think it's a bit overboard. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the new hunting craze coming to life with gigantic amounts of new Reality TV shows...

My whole life, I have never thought of hunting as "cool" or something I ever wanted to do. I think guns are dangerous and that way too many people have them, that shouldn't. This craze is beyond me. I did, live on a farm, and did know the life and death of many animals.

The other day I watched a video of a child, perhaps of 10 years old, and her father investigating a deer they shot. This child was literally vibrating with excitement. It then dawned on me, why all these years I have felt the way I do about hunting. The hunters close to me have disclosed that they take joy in hunting.

This child was so excited about killing something. The fact that they had shot and killed this deer.

Now, just wait a minute you may say. Killing is the natural thing we humans have done for hundreds of years. You would be completely right. I'm not saying that humans shouldn't kill things. I'm not against the death of animals for the sake of food, this is what we have done for hundreds of thousands of years to survive. It happens not only with our species but many, many others.

My problem is the fact that people take joy in killing. I don't think I will ever get that concept. I think that killing something for the sake of fun is disgusting and sadistic. I think now, that most people, hunt as a sport. I doubt that the majority of hunters are actually hunting for good reasons. I think that farmers have good reason to hunt the creatures that kill their livestock, and I think that there are a very few others that hunt solely to help feed their family (at least in the area I live in).

So there it is, my discovery of why all these years I have never liked hunting. One video made me realize this, after all this time. I'm pretty sure I've finally figured it out.