One step closer to Mr. X
There are many in my life that I admire and respect. Notable examples include Hulk Hogan, for teaching me to say my prayers and eat my vitamins. Spiderman, for teaching me that with great power comes great responsibility. And Chuck Norris, for teaching me that a roundhouse kick to the head will shut a man up fast.
But despite all of these legends, they all pale in comparison to the one, the only, Mr. X.
(This blog post has been edited as Mr. X is sensitive of having his real name associated in this blog post. Something about "job prospects" and what not).
As many of you who read this blog already know the legend that it is Mr. X, I shan't repeat his numerous qualities and character traits that make him the single greatest human being on the face of the planet. Nor will I recall the tales of adventure and wonderlust that comprise this prodigy's life to date. Indeed, my fingers could scarcely type an description equal to 1/10th the power and the glory of him. And I daresay that all 7 of the World's Muses living high upon Mount Parnassus would struggle mightily to contain Mr. X. to the confines of mere pen and paper.
Many try to emulate this legend. While we realize the futility of this endeavour, we nonetheless attempt to relive his experiences so that we may yet understand what it is like to be him.
But, just as blindfolding yourself and wearing ear plugs doesn't make you Helen Keller, neither will any lame attempt on your part measure up to the magnificence of his life.
That doesn't mean we don't try...
Last night, I went to Koutouki Restaurant on the West end of Edmonton. It is a nice Greek restaurant that feeds you more than you could possibly hope to consume in one evening. We were there to meet some of Cori's friends for dinner who had made the trek from as far north as Fort Mac and as far south of Calgary. Call it a get together / reunion if you will.
Anyhow, I ordered some lamb souvlaki kebaps and was waiting for the food to be delivered. All of a sudden, the lights go down real low and they pipe in really loud greek music. In the distance, the sounds of finger cymbals start softly, but slowly build in pitch and intensity...as the belly dancer emerges from the back room!
If you've never been to a restaurant with a belly dancer, the idea is that you slip a $5 or more into their hip strap. In order to convince you to tip them, they shake their bodies suggestively right in front of your face (which, don't get me wrong, I don't really mind) but they ALSO try to get you dance with them (which, if you're not drunk, is TERRIFYING...I mean, HULLO! most of the people in that eatery were white!)
Slowly but surely, the belly dancer made her way to our table. And there was no hiding me from plain view. Hell, I was sitting right next to the open portion of the restaurant where she was dancing! One by one, this subtle temptress was luring men into dancing with her by throwing her scarf all willy-nilly and making the guy who caught it (either by choice or by chance) to dance with her.
The closer she got to our table...the more afraid I became that I was going to have to dance. But fortunately, help arrived in the nick of time...our food came! Surely to god she wouldn't bug us while we were eating!
But no... Food did not grant us any reprieve. Sigh...let's just get this over with!
Oh...but it gets better. And I'm NOT DRUNK here, either.
Can't you just SEE how much I'm enjoying the "
dry off with a towel" (TM) move???
In the end, did I manage to pull off "dancing with a belly dancer" with as much grace and class as Jay did? Well, you can all be the judge of that!
The other interesting event from the restaurant was this guy. How in sweet jesus did he do this?
Any ways, after dinner we went bowling. Some people, like Corinna, actually tried (and did well) at bowling. Here is Cori celebrating after a strike!
I, on the other hand, lick donkey balls when it comes to bowling. Hence, me and Mike "strongest arms in the west" Syndenham had a competition to see who could throw the ball the fastest down the lane. Mike started off with a 50.21 kmph blast that impressed us all. Not to be outdone, I managed to throw a 51.32 kmph, thereby dethroning the champ and taking back the championship belt.
But my celebration was not unlike the French upon completion of the Maginot Line...Mike countered with a BLISTERING 53+ kmph shot that I just could not match, though I did try as evidenced below. Mike's camera has a shutter speed that measures in the 1oooths of a second and it's STILL blurry...that gives you some idea of the force we were whipping these balls down the aisle!
Realizing that we couldn't beat Mike, we instead concentrated on a second game of bowling. Problem was that we only had 15 minutes to play an entire game -- and there were 11 of us! Rather than turning in our shoes, we played a game of speed bowling which involved us throwing balls as fast as we could down the lane -- sometimes not even waiting for the gate to lift!
Yeah...bad idea. We got EVERY SINGLE BALL in our two lanes jammed into the hopper. Uh...and then we made it worse by throwing every single ball in the lanes on either side of us down our lane as well... Needless to say, those balls were ALSO jammed. Gulp!
Fearing expulsion...or worse, having to pay for damages....Cori went and got a lane attendant. Before he went to fix the problem, he chided us somewhat. "
Jesus, you kids...what is wrong with you. That's 21 balls in a lane that you jammed up there!"
I can only imagine the GASKET he blew to find out that instead of 21 balls...there were actually around
60 bowling balls at the end of our lanes. He started shovelling them back at us by using a broom to push the balls into the hopper to roll back to the front of the lane. But upon their arrival, we threw 'em right back at the guy! Lets just say that his broom took a beating! I still don't know how we didn't get kicked out!
Here is a picture of the balls coming back, regrettably it's blurry...but by my count, there are about 8 balls being sent back at once.
All in all a good night, I'd have to say!
The MONEY PIT
I ain't sending an email update for this blog entry...for those of you that happen to visit my blog from time to time, I'd like to send a big CONGRATS for coming here without prompting. Besides, if you aren't a HOMOwner, then this likely doesn't make any sense to you anyways.
In 1986, Tom Hanks and Shelley Long starred in a mildly well reviewed movie about the pit falls of renovating a "first home". That movie was called MONEY PIT.
Well, today we had ATCO perform an "energy audit" of our house -- to highlight areas of improvement to reduce our gas and electrical bills and improve the overall quality of life, re-sale value, and comfortability of our first home.
Needless to say, our house appears to be it's own money pit...and suddenly, that Tom Hanks movie is a LOT more relevant and funny than it was when I first saw it.
Here is what we found out.
1. We have around a 55% - 60% efficient furnace that should be replaced. Luckily, we already knew about this and have already decided to purchase a $4,500 (installed cost) 94%, two speed, variable furnace in February.
2. We have only wood chip insulation in our attic, giving us an R-value of R-10. For Edmonton climate, it is recommended that you have an R-51 valued attic...meaning that we need to blow in fiberglass insulation PDQ. That is, of course, once we get the bathroom fan and stove fan installed and running!
Estimated cost of around $1,000...although we should be able to do most of this ourselves.
3. We have NO FREAKING INSULATION IN OUR BASEMENT WALLS!!! For the love of Christ, who puts up a basement without insulating? Thus, as Mike Holmes would proclaim on his hit HGTV Show Holmes on Homes, "It's ALL gotta come down".
Okay...so we were planning on redoing the basement anyways...but I never expected this!
Cost: an arm
4. We could look at insulating behind the vinyl siding. Granted, this was yet another home improvement we planned for later...but to have all of this stuff thrown at you in less than 2 hours hurts.
Cost: the leg.
Sigh...while I'm glad to own a home, and we actually got a good home for a 1st timer (believe it or not!), you can bet that I'll be calling on a lot of you to put your backs into it to help us do some of these renos!
Garthanarajuat -- the Fast Drinker
I think the reason why I LOVE Auld Lang Syne as "THE" New Year's song is because it's one that no one really knows the words to...so you just mumble along and/or humm the words. This way, whether you are drunk or if you are sober, everyone sounds the same come Midnight.
Two guesses as to whether I was sober or not. Those of you that got a phone call from me that evening already know the answer!
But the evening started out very strangely. We told people to arrive at 7:30 so at 6:15 (naturally) Chad and Robin are already there. Cori and I were just putting the finishing touches on decorating and getting ready...but we didn't want to keep our guests waiting. In a rush, Corinna dumped half of the chocolate that we had purchased for the chocolate foundue / fountain and popped it into the microwave to melt.
She put it in for 3:00 minutes. After 2 minutes had elapsed, she RAN to the microwave...but it was too late. Half of our chocolate had BURNT to a hot, messy, unsalvagable mess. Agh...that's $5 we'll never see again! Fortunately the second half of the chocolate went a lot better, so the fondue was salvaged.
Not knowing what to do, we popped in a movie: Atanajuat: The Fast Runner.
It was the Cannes 2001 winner for best feature film...and it's from Canada. It was nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar and won 6 Genie awards. So it can't be THAT bad, can it?
Sadly, yes...yes it can. Basically, the story is about a couple of Inuit families that face adversity in the North We... Oh hell, who am I kidding. None of you care what it's about...you only care why we were watching it! But I cannot do justice to the masterpiece about Inuit Life. Instead, I will let the movie synopsis do all the talking (I've highlighted the best parts):
When Atanarjuat wins away Oki's promised wife-to-be, the beautiful Atuat, in a head punching competition, Oki vows to get even. Egged on by his intimidating father, Oki and his friends plot to murder both brothers while they sleep. Amaqjuaq is speared through their tent and killed, but Atanarjuat miraculously escapes, running naked for his life across the spring sea ice. We made a drinking game of it. Uh...anytime something stupid happened, we had to drink. Needless to say, after 1.5 hours (or, as Corinna puts it, HALF WAY) we shut the bloody thing off and get back to DVD games and karaoke (without the karaoke machine).
The drinking is in full force in no time at all. Garth (amazingly?) puts us ALL to shame with the drinking. If we had one shot of Jagermeister, he'd have two. Naturally, that amount of booze would make him ten feet tall and bulletproof...and clumsy as fuck. I selected Garth to be on my Air Hockey Team...and we got slaughtered. Oh well, I'm in training for the great 2006 Air Hockey and Darts Tournament to be held soon at our house.
Because I have a tendancy to go on and on in this blog, I'll let the pictures do the talking.
This is my friend Felix, whom I work with. When I mentioned that I lost in Air Hockey, it MAY also be because Felix (a) was playing net for the other team and (b) was sober. In the background, you can see the unused chocolate fountain.
Uh oh... Looks like Chad's too drunk to notice that arm DOESN'T belong to his fiancee!
Hey Jody...maybe you should stick to hitting on woman. Like my amazingly hot wife. (Or...wait...that sounded bad, didn't it)??
Me, looking STUNNINGLY drunk. Uh...this is the part where I start calling everyone, I'm certain of it!
This is me after a dropped a $30 champagne flute after Garth elbowed me in the ribs.
Yes, the night goes by all too quickly. Before long, New Year's has come and gone. Jody runs around outside (in only his socked feet) and I'm pretty sure he pukes in our back yard. Why didn't he puke in the bathroom? That's 'cause it was occuppied by Garth who provided us with his best rendition of the Exorcist yet!
And not to be outdone, I (sadly) also puked.
The next day, I felt kinda queasy...but nothing like Chad who had been drinking Scotch and Jager all night long. Here is the "morning after" picture, shortly before I cooked French Toast (the smell of which also made HIM puke)!
After Chad and Robin said their goodbyes, we made our way to Fairmont. If you've never gone, you should as you see some of the best scenery this province has to offer. You literally drive right through the mountains...Observe:
While in Fairmont, we didn't do a whole lot as we were visiting the in-laws. However, one cool thing we did do is to take a drive to see some people ice fishing. Houle...Cori says she wants to try it out one time!
The other cool thing we did is visit a natural hot spring.
Now, I wasn't here just for a visit...I actually climbed in! (And yes, I need to work on my tan...so save the yappin'). The water here (in the upper pool) is about 35 Celcius. In the lower pool, I estimate the tempature being around 27 Celcius. Oh...and lets just get this clear...before you sum bitches make any comments about the chick in the back ground crawling into the water, you should know that's my mother in law!
But that's not the best part. You see, the cool part of these hot springs is that they are FREE and feed into a river. So, since I am (kinda) young and (definately) stupid, I decide to be a MAN and sit in the river.
This river is the result of GLACIAL RUN-OFF. And it's the middle of December.
Just look at the PAIN in my face. Jesus H. Christ that water was fucking cold!
With that adventure out of the way, we made it back to the condo were I proceeded to drink my face off and then head out to a local bar to sing Karoake. We DO have a video of this amazing feat; sadly, I am not certain if you can post video's to this blog. Which is too bad, because I have the voice of a choir boy that has not yet been raped by the priest!
In the end, it was a lot of fun but I'm glad to be back in the city!
