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

I am back on Canadian soil.  Unfortunately, I am also back in Canadian weather.  After spending the last 9 days in shorts and flip flops and I pretty pissed off about having to wear a jacket.  Damn it’s cold up here!  I am happy to be back in my own bed though.  Below is a nice sample of some of the pics I got while I was down there.  Some of them are pretty random.  The last few show how I took a private jet for my flight back to Toronto.  I have to tell you, this is the only way to fly.  On a normal commercial flight you have to show up 3 hours before the departure in order to get through the anal probes that the new security rules require.  For the flight home, we showed up 15 minutes before take off!  No security steps.  The flight was faster and smoother…not to mention more comfortable.  Upon arrival, all I did was walk 10 feet from the jet to the limo.  No dealing with immigration or customs.  I think this is the way I will have to travel from now on.  Firefighters make enough to pay for private jets, right? 

Sorry, I can’t upload photos just yet.  I forgot that Sony uses a little bastardized adapter for their cameras instead of standard USB.  So, you can’t actually see anything I have done yet.  Oh well.  I will post some pics once I am back.  Yesterday we went to Disney World for a day of fun.  We hit up Epcot Center because…well…you can drink there!  You walk around this man-made lake and they have little areas setup that represent Canada, England, China, Japan, Norway, Germany, France, etc.  I was pretty disappointed with the Canada setup.  They had a fake version of the parliament buildings and some native stuff, that was OK.  All the Employees working the Canada section wore lumberjack shirts!  Is that how they think we dress?  Like we all shop at Eddie Bauer about 15 years ago?  Weird.  Oh well, they did have Moosehead on tap!  Can’t argue with that.  We checked out some of the rides in the different countries.  The “American Adventure” was probably the most boring animatronic show I have ever seen.  Damn thing might as well have been a history lecture.  The Norway ride started out cool as you enter a viking ship that travels on the water.  It just got weird though with all kinds of trolls and stuff.  We were a little confused at the end.  Some of the rides were pretty cool though.  One of the space rides actually make you feel some serious G forces.  The GM Test Track was pretty fun too.  We were lucky that we never really had to wait in much of a line for anything.  So today we are off to Miami!  This is where the real fun begins.  Our trip is about 3.5 hours south of where we are right now.  So, it should be even warmer.  After leaving a bitterly cold Toronto, it feels so nice to be out walking around in shorts, t shirts and flip flops!  I won’t rub that in too much for those of you back home :)  I will do my best to throw up a post or two during the week.  When I get back I will take upload some of the better pics.  If I make a good powerpoint then I will throw it up and make it available for download.