There is one thing I am certain hasn’t changed about me - I can be absolutely cold about throwing things out. I hold almost no sentimental value in anything. I throw away mementos, photos, girlfriends, etc. I do all of these with little thought or care. I just am not the kind of person who spends much time looking back. I still care about all the things in my past, I just see no reason to keep it around. I do make an exception for a few things in my life. When something truly proves its worth in my life, I feel it has earned it’s place in my life. Below are two of the longest serving items in my possession.

This is an old Hockey Hall of Fame T-shirt that is now about 14 years old. You can barely call it a T-shirt now. It is too fragile to be worn. The material is worn so thin it is pretty much transparent. I don’t wear it because it would disintegrate into nothing if I tried to wash it. This T-shirt managed the almost impossible feat in a dudes life. It went from a T-shirt I could wear to school, to one that only got chillin’ duty, to one that was worn to bed, to being relegated to under hockey equipment! It survived all that to come back to being worn to bed! A rare accomplishment that deserves praise! Hockey Hall of Fame T-shirt, your place in my hall of fame is secure. My mom once threatened to throw it away when I was 21 years old. I threatened to burn the house down. That pretty much summed up my passion for this piece of clothing. It will spend the rest of it’s life in my closet, unless I finally decide to frame it.

Next up is Pajamas, my stuffed dog. Don’t laugh, this is for real! I have had this thing for damn near 3 decades! This is the only childhood toy I still have. Everything else has been purged through the many moves in my life. Somehow, through it all, Pajamas still gets a spot at the end of my bed on some days. He spent many years guarding the top shelf of my closet but found a new purpose at the start of 2009. My baby bulldog, Chubbs, would snuggle up to Pajamas when he was sleeping on my bed. I assumed Chubbs would just tear eat him. I guess he knew how to respect his elders! Pajamas kept me safe through many bad dreams and I guess he will be around long enough to do the same if I ever have kids!

It’s a Friday and I am tired!  I had a late hockey game last night and didn’t get much sleep.  I tried a little experiment by downing a couple of beers before the game, assuming I would play better when drunk.  This is the strategy I use for golf.  It really doesn’t translate well to hockey.  My game continues to be in the toilet.  I scored in my first game back this season but have been snake-bitten since.  At this point I am just completely out of it.  I desperately need to bag a goal to get some confidence back.  Oh well.  One more regular season game and then the playoffs.  Thankfully I am still playing effective in the defensive zone so at least I am not costing our team goals!  I am writing this post at work, which really means I am slacking a little bit.  Speaking of slacking, here are some fun stats you might enjoy…

Via: Online Schools

Sorry for the lack of posting frequency.  Once again, I find myself extremely busy.  Between work and my social schedule I don’t get home until around midnight every night.  Tough life, I know.  This Saturday was an event so amazing that I really felt was something to blog about.  An old friend of mine threw up a party invite on Facebook that caught me off guard.  It turns out this was his going-away party as he is headed from Toronto to Vancouver.  He is part of a group of friends I have from way back in elementary school.  Seriously, I remember being out for recess with this gang!  We somehow stayed close through our teens and even into our 20’s.  We were even groomsmen at one of the guys weddings.  As the years went on, we drifted.  It isn’t like we had a problem with each other - we just seemed to fade.  The phone calls dropped off.  We stopped trying to make plans.  Our own lives just kept us busy.  It’s amazing how life can come around through the strangest of events though.  Late in 2009 we lost one of our friends to an illness.  That was a serious slap to all of us.  Life can happen without any warning.  It’s important to make time.  Last night was just such an opportunity.  A party to celebrate a friend and wish him well in his new adventure!  Walking through the door of the apartment was a shocking experience.  A blast from the past.  Faces that got older but still looked so familiar.  Things got a little emotional as the hugs went around.  I won’t admit that men were crying, that would be a violation of the bro code.  I will say that I noticed some clear, non-alcoholic fluid flowing from some of our eyes.  The best part about the whole night was that we all just picked up right where we left off.  We had a quick little catch up session and then got right back into complaining about our favorite sports teams and making fun of each other.  I couldn’t have designed a more perfect evening.  We all have very different lives and are in very different places.  But once in a while we can have a beer and be exactly the same as when we were young.  We just get to enjoy timeless friendships.  Awesome!

This pic is from about 10 years ago.  George is on the left and is headed to Vancouver.  James is in the red shirt and lives in Brampton.  Big John in back is living in Kitchener with his wife and kid.  Ben is on the right and is no longer with us.  Yours truly is in the middle.  Hopefully I can get some pics from last night and show you all of us in 2010.

Last Friday I went out to a bar with my new co-workers.  This was an exciting thing for me, as I almost never got to do that at previous jobs.  So, we all went out to a pub that is their regular spot.  It turned out to be one helluva evening.  Things definitely cranked up when a “stuntman” challenge was issued to me.  Apparently this is part of my initiation into this company.  Now, I agreed to this with absolutely no idea as to what a stuntman is.  A couple of people demonstrated this shot for me and my first reaction was to tell them to go fuck themselves and walk out the door.  I reconsidered and decided to give it a go.  Below is what it involves.  It starts with a standard tequila shot.  Things get crazy after that.

Step 1:  Setup a line of salt and snort it.  That’s right.  Don’t lick.  SNORT.  Right up in your nose.  Sounds nuts?  It is!  It burns through your sinuses as if it was drain cleaner.

Step 2:  TEQUILA!  This part is pretty straight forward.  You down your shot of tequila.  This was the only standard part of this operation.  Having just snorted the salt, you lose all sense of smell.  So it actually makes the shot pretty painless.  Things go downhill from here.

Step 3: Now, this is where your average alcoholic would bite that lemon wedge to kill that tequila taste.  Your average stuntman has another way of dealing with it.  You squeeze that piece of citrus fruit right into your eye!  I shit you not.  Right into your damn eye!  After doing that, you almost completely forget about having had anything to drink.  All you have is a burning eye and a hole in your sinuses.

**Optional 4th step involves either getting slapped in the face by your waitress or having someone punch you.  I’m not even kidding about that.  Seriously, look at steps 1 and 3, are you surprised?

So there you have it.  The Stuntman.  I can say very proudly that I survived it.  Not only survived, I thrived!  I went on to drink more pints than I can count and I barely remember the end of the night.  I crashed at someones place that night and woke up without much memory.  Thankfully, I remember the stuntman.  My only regret is that we weren’t able to get a shot of me doing it.  Since I am a glutton for punishment, I am sure that opportunity will present itself in the near future.

Thank god Friday is here!  This has been my first week back in reality and I am desperate for the weekend.  I need to make this clear - I love my new job!  My co-workers are awesome and the work itself is fun.  It has just been tough adjusting to a normal schedule.  I have also been very busy with my social life.  Big problem, I know!  I need some “Mike” time.  A day that I dedicate to relaxing.  Maybe next week.  Tonight I had a hockey game.  Hockey has been a frustrating experience for quite a while.  I was never great at it.  As a younger man, my greatest skill came with my ability to hit people in open ice.  I would consider that a skill as it takes some serious timing.  Before I took a couple of years off, I was the kind of guy who scored goals.  I knew that if I got the puck that there was a good chance it was going in the net.  I was so confident in my abilities.  These days I have crawled into some kind of shell that I just can’t bust out of.  I seem to get more hesitant with each game.  I am so screwed up that my body just freaks out when I am near the puck.  I know I need to just slow things down and take the puck and take my time and look for opportunities.  Knowing and doing and very different things.  Amazing what confidence can do!  I have it in all other aspects of my life.  None on the ice anymore.  I am thinking I should get drunk before my next game.  I am always a little more ballsy when I have had a few.  Let’s see what happens!  Happy Friday everyone.  If you are in Canada then I know what you will be watching tonight  As usual, here is an SMBC comic that has nothing to do with anything.

One day in and I already miss life as a bum.  For the first time since December of 2008, I am back in the ranks of the working class.  I actually had an excellent day at the office.  Everyone was very nice and it seems like it will be a fun group to be around.  I will get to satisfy my geeky nature while I continue to pursue my ultimate goal of being a firefighter.  It really is the perfect situation.  Hell, my new boss even bought me lunch today!  Not bad at all.  Everything was great right up until 5:30 when I left the office.  In case you don’t live in Toronto, we got hit with a bit of a snow storm.  This wasn’t exactly unexpected, it was on pretty much every weather report you could find.  Somehow this managed to cripple the commute home.  my hour long drive took 2.5 hours to get home!  I needed over an hour and a half just to get to the highway.  On my drive I saw people in ditches, people who had smashed into each other and people who almost ran over pedestrians.  Seriously, we live in freakin’ Canada.  This is freakin’ February.  Why the fuck are we so unprepared for this?!?!?!  It’s snow.  You have seen it before!  Make your dumb ass familiar with it’s properties and it’s affect on your vehicle.  This will come up again in the near future.  Unless you have the memory retention of an eggplant this knowledge will be applicable repeatedly.  Just a tip from your favorite smart-ass!  Now, as is tradition, a web comic that has nothing to do with anything I just talked about.  This is just about how awesome engineers are.  Enjoy!

Just Awesome.

I haven’t posted an SMBC comic on here in a while.  So, I was able to go through quite a few to pick one I really liked.  I figured you would get a kick out of this one.  This week has been a little crazy for me.  Even though I am done school I still have some major exams coming up.  Tomorrow I write 4 different tests.  It is pretty much a summary of everything I have learned this past year.  I enjoy a challenge so I have yet to really start studying!  I have been putting it off for a lot of days now.  I really am a master at procrastination.  When I have to study I find that absolutely any other activity is fun.  Yesterday I found laundry and cleaning the floors to be an absolute blast!  Today I have about 5 guys coming over and hopefully they will kick my ass into gear.  My only break from studying today will be to feed those animals when they get here.  As a result of my schedule, I probably won’t post anything tomorrow.  I will let you all know how it went on Friday.

Here is that SMBC comic…

I love it when people I know start blogs!  It usually means that a little bit of my awesomeness has rubbed off on them.  Thankfully, none of my randomness rubbed off.  Their blogs always seem to have a specific purpose.  That brings us to my buddy, Grant.  He moved from Toronto to the left coast quite a while back.  Recently he has found that he orgasms quite easily while taking pictures.  Although I don’t quite share his fetish, I must admit to being impressed by his shots.  Check out his blog HERE.  Below are a few samples of some of his pics.  If you are like Grant then I suggest you…ummm…aim away from the computer!

You know, it’s time to be a little more positive about things.  I often post fails (courtesy of FailBlog) on this site.  It’s funny.  We all laugh at the stupidity.  Everyone goes home happy.  I figured that we could stand to see some awesome pics as well.  Moments caught that are complete wins!  Thanks to EpicWinFTW I am able to bring you a little sample.  Sorry for the infrequency of posting recently.  I will be more attentive to helping cure your bores going forward