Freedom of Having Your Driving License

Recently, I signed up for my road test for my G2 (in Ontario, thats the license that allows you to drive on your own) and successfully completed it. I chose an early time, figuring the instructors would be in their best moods and hit the road. Luckily, I snagged a nice guy who did his job well but also had a sense of humor. I was told to drive around to the back (by a very energetic employee...I don't think she would know the meaning of the word smile if it hit her in the face but then again, I guess I can see where she's coming from) and wait for an instructor; I was probably only waiting alongside the other eager/nervous drivers for about 2 minutes. It was a very straightforward test, just simply had to follow his instructions on what to do (turn here, change lanes when safe, parallel park) and the test took no longer than 15 minutes at most.

Of course, I was extremely nervous the whole time, but we managed to joke about one thing which eased the test a little; as I was coming up to a set of lights, a guy was literally 5 steps from the intersection and was "J-walking" and happened to do so right in front of us. He said "I guess coffee makes him feel all powerful" and I added "Yah, and who uses crosswalks anymore really?" The moment definitely made me feel a little more comfortable inside although the test was practically over.

Overall, I passed. After I went back to the parking lot he gave me back my original license and congratulated me on successfully passing. My only error was not sufficiently checking intersections but everything else was executed perfectly he said. And me, happy as clam said thank you and drove the car back to the front, hugged my dad and handed in my form to the "eager" employee and was off.

And now, I can drive freely wherever whether it be down my street or on the speedy highway. AND I can give my friends all those rides I owed them from them driving me around. Feels good, thats for sure! But of course, I will be driving safe and all...maybe :)

Tie-dying is the new BEST thing

in the big, old deep river, the chaput/hedden family tried out tie dying for fun. with amy and mike's wedding coming up, the family wanted to have some fun and aunt heather showed us some cool styles and tricks and after the unravelling of the first shirt, we were hooked. some people may think of the typical hippie neon colours with crazy sun-shaped patterns but i can assure you that they are MUCH cooler when you do them yourself. and the possibilities are endless; you can make horizontal/vertical stripes, bullseye, plain circle. The designs are left to your imagination. And the best part is definitely taking off all the elastics and seeing your own design. The only part is to not dip your bare hands into the die because most likely, the die WILL stain your clothes.

human powers we wish we had

imagine if you were superman, or wonder women? the green lantern or hulk? imagine you could slip through walls or jump 20 ft into the air? most people feel like it would be the coolest thing in the world to have, a super power, but is it really worth it? taking that special part of reality away?
maybe it was your first time driving by yourself, after just passing your drivers test. your parents trust you with the car and ask you to go down to the grocery store to pick up a few things; you can probably guess what's going to happen next. you arrive home with the grocery's in hand but now you have to tell them about the mysterious dent on the side of the car. and at this moment, you might want the power to vanish into thin air or reverse time; be a little more careful next time you drive.
or maybe your at track practice and this one girl is just going on and on about how she just beat your PB by a whole 20 milliseconds(let's say the event is 100m). you probably just want to practice again and beat her time by a whole second now. the nifty super power of speed. but then again, it may just drive you to train that much harder and beat her new time with your own determined speed.
i'm not saying having super powers wouldn't be cool. i mean, it would be the coolest thing in the world; any possible super power in the world wether it be the ability to see into the future or turn back time. but then again, reality is so full of surprises that even though you may not be superman, you sometimes feel like you have the greatest human power; maybe love or beauty. think about it.

highschool doesn't get enough credit

recently, i was thinking to myself just how great highschool really is. Well at least my highschool that is. halfway through my grade 11 year at Bell Highschool with majority of my close friends in grade 12, i have thought how tough it will be for me to leave highschool. i feel like if i were to leave right now, this year, i would have a tough time in university. not education wise, but security and comfort wise.

i feel like bell highschool offers its students that safety factor that many highschools lack. it may be due to the fact that it only hosts about 1500 students a year, but its very welcoming. in many ways bell is like your second home. yes, students do(or should) spend on average 40 hours a week at school(9:05AM-3:15PM) but i dont feel at all uncomfortable stepping into school every morning. infact, i love walking in the front doors and having the sun shining in through the large windows that scan the perimeter of our E-shaped highschool.

but what i really love is the dedication of each and every teacher at bell highschool. i feel like they all put in a tremendous amount of effort whether it is recognized by students or not to help students achieve greatness and a positive outlook on life.

tell me about your highschool or school and how you feel about it.

rain rain go away, come again another day.

ever  wish rain never occurred? and that it was always sunny and warm out? well thats exactly how i feel right now. it hasn't stopped raining since ive gotten here and chances of tanning on the beach seemed to diminish more and more every day. so today, alanna and i got fed up with all the rain and when the satellite began to "pop" on and off we decided to ditch the tube and go for a swim in the rain. we got our bikinis on and ran down into the water; it was colder than expected and we were only in there for about 2 minutes...it was fun while it lasted.

we ran back up, dried off and then challenged the hedden parents for a little game of catch phrase...alanna and i won 2-1. although i have to say, uncle doug and aunt christine put up a good fight. looking forward to the family dinner tonight with the deep river fam.

cherry-red nail polish and a brisk morning run.

alanna hedden always has these amazing ideas to do, but in turn never actually follows through. so two nights ago, she suggested that her and i go for a morning run at 9 o'clock. it was a great idea, i mean what beats jogging in the morning right? but as always, i figured when it was time to wake up and get ready she would just turn off her alarm, flip the covers over her head, fall back asleep and then tell me that we would do it another morning...i was wrong. 

we originally changed our 9AM time to 930 but i just kept swearing under my breath at this annoying alarm and falling back asleep. but alanna eventually woke me up and told me we were gonna go. so we climbed down the ladder, got on our running gear and ipods and headed out. it went well for the first part until the cramps started to hit. after that, running was a little sore. we ran past the tennis courts, past mackenzie high school into town, past the twins house(stopped for a glass of water which was a bad idea) and then into the river for a refreshing swim. 

shortly after we decided to paint our nails. i chose a faint, pink "bubble bath" colour by OPI while lan chose a cherry red OPI polish. it went successful until alanna got some "fluff" on her nails while i was watching gran torino in the cottage with aunt christine and uncle doug and i had to re-do them which wasn't really a problem. there also was a little accident on a white blanket and after drenching it with nail polish remover, tonic water and water for an hour, we gave up. it was, after all, an accident and we didn't have the right cleaning products for the job. but we did kick back after, ate some 5 times re-heated chinese food and drank some pop and then went to bed. it was a complete night for the deep in the end. 

my minds playing tricks on me

so yesterday i arrived in deep river for the second time this year(was previously up to celebrate my aunts 50th). the heddens picked me up from my town, ottawa. and my cousins friend, michelle, departed to edmonton after spending a week up here. after leaving the airport, we headed back to deep river-a two hour trek...stopping off in arnprior for some good old macdonalds(cheeseburger, 6-piece chicken nuggets, fries and a coke). when i arrived at the hedden's cottage i explored the newly renovated garage; now called the bunky or the "second cottage". and we were soon entertaining our lovely twin cousins aidin and breena...or the other way around. we asked(alanna and i) for some quiet time; aidin somewhat cooperated by turning on his DS while breena told us people were boring and played with the garbage cans. after our "not-so-quiet" time in the new bunky, we decided to catch up on our weekly shows. a heartbreaker SYTYCD and a bikini-model-gets-evicted-8-votes-to-1 big brother 11.

then came the idea of going down to pine-point for a midnight swim. with a flashlight in hand, we slowly walked along the wet sand filled with all the night-crawlers, shining the flashing on pretty much anything we "thought we saw" move. after making it all the way to the point we discovered an object that appeared to be a person coloured orange and green that alanna swore wasn't there the day before. so shining the light on it to see if it was moving, we let our imaginations get to us and headed back. but after debating about going back to the point or not, we decided to try again. the "person" was still there. and with all of our courage and bravery, alanna and i approached the "object" and found out it was a garbage can. figures eh? so instead of taking the plunge into the cold ottawa river, we decided to just lie on the sand and talk staring up at the cloudy sky covering the lovely stars.