In the still of the night

It is 3am, I have class in 5 hours and I can't sleep. As good a time as any for my first entry in what seems like a million years.
So what did you miss? In the "whirlwind" that has become my life: not much.
School is back and running: ick, yuck, boo.
I did go and see Phantom of the Opera here in Edmonton with Jess & Co. It was an entertaining show, and I was mightily impressed. Jess & Co. are also both an entertaining show and mightily impressive. As my Compton friends say, "props yo'!".
And a big 'congrats!' go out to best friend 1b Tyler, and his wife Dusty, on the birth of their first baby: little Kyra who was born at a whopping 8 pounds, 6 ounces. Hoping I can make it back home sometime soon to see her.
Hoping you all have well cut jibs and are currently walking with a swagger.
And to bed......

My Best Man Speech

I just flew in last night from the wedding of my best friend. It was an amazing time.
I was quite nervous for the best man speech/toast, but it went over fabulously. Here is the speech that I gave as I had it written down on the paper (read: not grammatically correct), in its entirety:

Good Evening everyone, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is _________. I want to thank Graham for giving me the honour of being his best man. And I was quite excited after Graham asked me to be his best man, but then excitement turned to horror as I realized I would have to give a speech. But then the horror turned to excitement again after I was told that the point of a best man speech is to embarrass the groom.
But still I wasn’t really sure what to talk about in my speech, so I asked around and got advice from a few people. And one wise man gave me some good advice. He told me that the length of the best man's speech should be no longer than the time it takes the groom to make love ...(pause)...(Look at watch) oh, it looks like I’ve already gone about 30 seconds over…. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. (sit down)
In all seriousness folks…back to the job at hand, like I said my job today is to embarrass Graham. Now this is where my dilemma starts. It’s not that I don’t have any stories to tell, I’ve been best friends with Graham since we were in grade 7 so I’ve got tons of good stories. But I have a dilemma because: A: When I started writing down stories, most of them I had to edit, throw away, burn, or hand over to the police to help them with their enquiries. And what little that was left over may not be suitable for the dinner table, and B: Graham is going to be my best man one day and also has too much dirt on me!!
So I decided that I won’t tell any embarrassing stories…Nope, I’m not going to say anything. So I wont’ even mention all of those nights at 3am stealing garden gnomes off of peoples lawns or driving over people’s garbage cans in Graham’s Chevette.
Or how we got the bright idea one night of “borrowing” detour signs and pilons from a construction site and completely blocking off the entrance to our friend Jamie’s cul-de-sac.
And I probably shouldn’t tell you about the time that Graham lost the sunroof to his first car only a day or two after having it installed…how we were taking the car over some big jumps, and after one particular jump we looked up and noticed that the sky looked that much clearer, and then we realized that was because there was no sunroof in the way…it had flown off the car during the jump and was lying in a million pieces on the ground behind us. For months after that Graham drove around in his Chevette with a black garbage bag taped to the roof where the sunroof used to be.
And I surely won’t bring up the fact that Graham holds the eating record out of anyone I know, having eaten 7 Burger King burgers in the space of one hour. Incidentally, if anyone here didn’t get enough food to eat tonight, we all know who to blame for that.
And I’m sure that Graham would be completely embarrassed if I told you about what happened the one night several years ago that we both were working as cooks at Smitty’s restaurant. Graham got bored, so he decided to go and snoop around the attic in the restaurant to see what was up there. Well, he missed a step on one of the attic beams and ended up falling through the roof. And leave it to Graham to not only fall through the attic, but to fall through the attic and land in the boss’s office, right on top of his desk. Luckily, the boss wasn’t there, and we were able to call a friend in and patch the roof up, and Graham was able to live another day.
So I won’t mention any of these stories. So Graham, just remember when it comes time to talk about me one day, just remember how easy I went on you, and how I kept all those stories a secret okay?
One other thing I was told about the best man speech is that in my speech I should include somewhere how the bride has supposedly tamed the groom from his past youthful indiscretions and settled him down…and you know, in this case I think that is totally true. Jen has done a great job so far: as far as I know since Graham and Jen have been together Graham has yet to fall through a roof, block off a cul-de-sac, or smash any sunroofs. They are still working on his eating thing though.
In all seriousness, Graham has been a great friend to me and I’m very lucky that I’ve got to know Jenn over the last few years – and I just hope they know that I’ve always been extremely proud of both of them and honoured to call them my friends.Having got to know both of them I know they’ll always be happy together. And I look forward to the days well in the future when we all have kids and I can bring mine over to the Wood’s for a Barbecue and we can watch them play in the backyard together.
And so the last thing I was told about my best man speech is to finish it off with a quote. Someone has usually already said it, and probably said it better. So I will go out with the words of the philosopher Aristotle, who said simply "Love is a single soul inhabiting two bodies".
Graham and Jen....I wish you all the best on your journey together.
To Graham and Jen.

Admit One Mistake Volume II

My mistake was signing up this semester for the craptastic course known as Legal History. Taught by a professor who is a meat-headed, maladroit, misanthropic malcontent made of merde.
Fortunately, this is one mistake that I CAN rectify, and I have, by dropping it like a bad habit. Today.

Embarrassment x2

Not once but twice this week I was incredibly close to exposing myself. Not the most socially acceptable act out there. Here is the story...

First I was at the gym doing squats. For the lazy asses out there, a squat is when you place a weighted barbell on the back of your neck/upper back and bend at the knees, lowering your torso to a 'squatting' position, then reversing the direction to stand up again. So I'm performing a few sets of these, and then I see something in the mirror. Yes, on the descent portion of one of the repetitions of my squats I had managed to split my shorts on the inside upper thigh. The rip didn't go all the way around, but it was sufficient to see my undergarments. And as luck would have it, that was the day I chose to wear decidedly unfashionable white grandpa briefs. Fantastic.
Since the rip was on the inside of the leg, if I walked with my legs pretty close together you couldn't see it. So that is how I walked on out of the gym, and the rest of the way home to change into new shorts. It might have looked funny, but much less funny than the alternative of showing off my tighty-whitey's to the world.

So you would think that would be enough embarrassment for at least a month? Nope, not even enough for that week.

Two days later I'm heading to class and due to too much water-drinking I head to the bathroom to relieve myself. I go to zip up afterwards, and the G.D. zipper gets stuck on the material of my shorts! I try to yank it up, and the sucker won't budge. Luckily, the bathroom was unoccupied at the time, so no one saw me vigorously tugging at my crotch-region. Anyhow, I'm contemplating how I am going to go to class with my zipper all the way down (though this time, I had much more fashionable light-blue boxers on). By this time I'm pretty flustered and frustrated. So I figure I'll give it one Herculean effort to see if the bastard won't come unstuck. I grab the zipper as hard as I can, and give it the hardest yank I can, and...YIPEE! it comes unstuck. Then I look down at my index finger, which had been tightly grasping the metal zipper, and it is now cut and bleeding from pulling on the zipper so hard. Again, fantastic.
Though I quickly decide that going to class with a bloody finger always outweighs going to class with an undone zipper, so I wrap up my digit with some paper towel and stroll off to class.
I tell you, some days!

Lunch

Today's installment of "What I had for lunch":


Grilled chicken, sweet potatoes, asparagus, brown rice, salad and sunflower seeds. Nutritious and delicious? You bet.

The land of the free

So the last week has been a crazy one filled with bachelor party frolicking in another city, and then back to school shenanigans. As such my poor little blog was feeling left out, so I'm here for a quick update.
......................................

Getting something for free is always a bonus. Getting two things for free is a really good day. And getting three things without paying for them means that people are starting to realize my God-like status, and as such are giving their offerings to me.
First, after getting off the plane in Kelowna and retrieving my luggage I head to the airport parking lot with the person who was picking me up. The driver hands the parking stub to the airport parking attendant as we are leaving, and I reach for my wallet to grab some money to pay the fare. Amazingly, the parking attendant says "Oh, you haven't been here that long, don't worry about it". I was quite astonished as it is usual practice to rape the wallets of patrons parking at airport parking lots. freebie #1!
So then an hour later I am in the grocery store picking up a few groceries for dinner that night. I've got less than the required amount to go through the express lane, so I proceed to that line up. The lady ringing my items through at the register comes upon a package of vegetables that appear to have no price on them. She looks over the bag and can't see any tag or bar code, so she gives me a quick wink, and says "I guess they are free today" and throws them in the bag. freebie #2!
Then later that evening I head to the gym for a workout. The usual drop-in fee is $10. I take out my interac card and go to hand it to the lady at the front desk. Even though they have an interac machine there, she waves her hand at my card and says "you know what? Don't worry about it today". freebie #3!
Afterwards, I was fully planning on heading to an exotic car dealership and test driving a brand new Ferrari, to see how far my luck would extend, but I just didn't get around to it. The next morning my spell was broken, and I was back to the status of the regular peons out there: paying for things. How unfair!

.............................................

I will post a few (PG) pictures shortly from the crazy bachelor party weekend in Kelowna.