Hoppin' around in a lion suit.

We're learning Lion Dancing right now.

And when I tell people about it, you'd be surprised how many people confuse it with "Line Dancing." The looks on their faces are really quite classic. It's as if they expect me to suddenly sprout giant shitkickers and a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate.

But I digress.

Actually, all told, I'm quite happy with the way things have gone so far. I'm learning more than I ever thought possible in Kung Fu. I'm becoming a half-decent dancer. Quite impressive, considering that I currently buy my shoes in left pairs.

And, of course, having to stare at a young woman's butt for the duration of the dance is not exactly something that I find problematic.

All in all, I'm quite happy with the way things are turning out.

I'm really wracking my brain to see if I can remember the last time that my life was this good, and to be honest, I can't. Everything seems pretty much perfect for me right now. My career is starting to take off, my life is in some kind of order, I'm happy, I'm healthy...

April and I will be hiking the West Coast trail in August; just after we hit the two-year mark. My dad says that may make or break the relationship. Frankly, I don't think that it's something we really need to worry about. Seven days, 75 km. We've hiked trails that had roughly the same "miles per day" factor, and were much more strenuous. A friend of ours said that "if you can hike Three Isle Lake, then the West Coast Trail should be no problem." Three Isle was the first trail April and I ever hiked.

Suffice it to say that it's going to be something of an adventure; and I, for one, am really looking forward to it.

We're going to do a lot of weekender hikes this coming summer, once all the snow melts and we can get our butts out of town. I want to hit Three Isle again, just so that we can both see how much easier that trail is now than it was for us when we were just starting. I'd also like to hit Turbine Canyon. That's a little more grueling, but I think that we can manage that one pretty easily.

And April's a good hiking partner to have. I tell ya, that girl is tough with a capital "T." With all the things that went wrong on our first jaunt, I was shocked to find out that she wanted to go out and do it again, but go out we did, and we slowly escalated the level of difficulty until we were hiking Yoho at the end of the summer. Next summer's climax, methinks, is going to be the West Coast Trail.

The only problem is: what the hell are we going to do to top that!?