"I'm the pimp of Mp3s." - Mike, after sending me yet another song to help refill my music collection.

Kels, I guess you're in the same category, as is, to a lesser extent Bucholtz.

Thank you ye givers of tunes.

:: Conversation with a quarterback (and then, unfortunately, Mike) ::

Tonight I did about a 15 minute interview with current B.C. Lions' QB Buck Pierce. He called me at home - a day after I jokingly was damning him and all the B.C. Lions to hell for not being around during work hours when I needed to talk to them.

The convo was good - he's a pretty cool dude. And then this msn convo happened....

Nick: yo
mike: sup
Nick: nuthin, just finished up doing some interviews from home
mike: who with?
Nick: Buck Pierce - the bc lions quarterback (he lives in white rock).
mike: ahh, him. Damn him, that Mr. Pierce!
Nick: Actually I won't damn him anymore, he's a cool guy.
mike: no! Damn him!
Nick: no, it's true, he's a nice guy. And he talks with a cool accent - kind of half california surfer, half southerner.
mike: It's a trick!
mike: meant to trick unsuspecting victims
Nick: haha maybe.
mike: so he can spread his lies
Nick: All in his diabolical plot to take the starting QB job away from Dickenson right?
mike: that or take over the world
mike: !!!!!
Nick: Okay. I'll be back in a few - I'm in the middle of cooking dinner and I just realized I'm pretty much burning it. You continue with your crazy theories in the meantime.
mike: Already his lies are ruining your life!
mike: first the burning of your dinner
mike: next, the immolation of your house
mike: and after that, the combustion of your car
nick: shutup you crazy fool.
mike: after that, the entire Lower Mainland!
mike: UP IN FLAMES!
nick: you're friggin insane.
mike: the lick of the flames whispering amidst his evil, evil cackling
nick: okay, I'm leaving now.
mike: wringing his hands with a devious smirk as he surveys the bleak, tattered landscape!
mike: Okay, I'm done. After all, what can we do in the face of such evil?
mike: Nothing but persevere and continue on with our lives.

Wow. I don't even know what to say to that.

:: Quick Hits ::

1. Happy birthday Sean and B-rad

2. Quote from Sean tonight, when Kelsey walked in the door at Sean and Rachels...
"Aahhhh fuck! Where's Scott?"

So much for being happy to see somebody.

3. Just got a few pics e-mailed to me from MeatFest. I look like I'm about 300 pounds. I seriously look god awful in every single one of them. No fucking wonder I'm in a slump, it's disgusting. Gotta hit the gym, I guess. Or do something. Fuck.

That is all. Carry on.

:: MeatFest 2006 ::

"I wish I had a big leg of deer to knaw on right now." - Dave, about 45 minutes into the first day.

When it was discovered that Dan had only drank one beer through the front 9 of the golf tourney...
"One? Only one? This is MeatFest not a pussy convention!" - Dave

"I want to kill a bison!" - Dan, shitfaced, when his BBQ chicken just wasn't doin' it for him.

"Guys...let's face it, meat rules. CHEERS TO MEAT!" - Dave, hammered, during a round of midnight barbecue.

When me and Dave discovered an unguarded, free, cold keg of beer near the sixth hole (at 9:30 a.m.)...
Dave: You think we're allowed to just drink it? Let's tee off, then when we walk past for our second shots, we'll have some.
Me: Dave, if we walk passed this keg of beer without touching it, we'll regret it for the rest of our lives.
Dave: Good point, let's drink.

More MeatFest tales to come later, when I feel like writing more.

On the toss-up between cheap drinks and school work...

"I'm studying. I don't have a lot of money. Scotty paid me the other day, but I did the responsible thing and paid bills with it....Paying bills and studying. I think I'm turning into a homosexual or something." - Bucholtz

:: Random Ramblings ::

For whatever reason, the topic of people having weddings on holiday weekends has come up in conversation many times for me lately - I can think of at least two conversations I've had in person, and then I read similar anger and bafflement from St. Louis blogger/bullpen catcher Al Fritz over at The FYC.

It still makes limited sense to me. And, as someone pointed out the other day - by getting married on a holiday long weekend, not only do you fuck over Big Long Weekend plans for yourselves and your many guests (unless you're me and plan to get married in Vegas with only a coked-out stripper and a guy in an Elvis suit who smells like gin in attendance), but you also ruin that particular long weekend each and every year for the rest of your marriage, which - for the sake of your social life - will hopefully be short, shrift, and merciless.

What am I talking about? Good question. If you get married on holiday weekend X, that would therefore make each impending Holiday weekend X your anniversary, so instead of spending said day off work at some peeler bar with the boys, or in Vegas doing jello shots off hookers' tits, or taking the boat out on the lake, you're stuck with your wife.

And while everyone else is off having fun, you're suddenly wearing a tie, going to some overpriced restaurant with an unpronouncable menu and bathroom attendants, and then you're off to the theatre to watch some horrid chick flick.

Or you're snuggling.

God forbid.

On another note, I mentioned yesterday that I added a pair of new blogs to the links list on the left there. They both rule to a serious degree. Being that I discovered these sites through Mike's blog, he of course, demanded credit. I, of course, refused to give him any.

However, today - for the first and only time - I will change my mind and give Mike his props. I do this only once, and only because he impressed me greatly today in the mocking of a mutual friend.

Sometimes Mike, you outdo yourself.

Anyways, as I was going through some of the old posts at these new sites, I came across a post at 123 I Love You which I quite liked:

"I’ve made a new decision today. It’s to be more cruel.

I’ve decided that I expend far too much energy trying to cater to everyone’s needs. I spend far too much time worrying about whether or not I’ve hurt/angered/insulted someone.

If I can do at least one cruel thing each day, I think that would be a major step in the right direction. It will show people that I'm not afraid to go after what I want. It will get me into the habit of just not giving a damn, and maybe it’ll help me pick up chicks."

I've wrote similar things in the past, but this says it better. Perhaps because it's a high school teacher saying it, not just bitter ol' me after I downed 11 Kokanees alone sitting in the dark.

Then of course he ends with this: "Some days I think I rule so much that the world can’t take it."

Amen.

As most of you know - through my incessant complaining the last few weeks - I'm now working a Sunday-to-Thursday shift at work, thus giving me Friday off. It goes without saying that I'm unhappy - having Friday off while everyone else is at work is sort of a waste to me.

Below is my first Friday off, documented. A waste? You be the judge.

- Woke up far too early for my liking...around 9:30.
- Watched two episodes of the Cosby Show on TBS, followed by King of Queens.
- Overpaid for pineapple.
- Ate a mango.
- forgot to buy milk.
- Vacuumed, and cleaned my kitchen. Left the bathrooms for another day (Don't want to peak too early after all)
- Downloaded 32 songs to my new computer.
- drank a beer in the bathroom
- completed 2 fantasy football drafts on Yahoo!
- added two new links to this blog (at left)
- started drinking at 3:45
- drank another beer in the shower
- Now having Internet access again after a week without, I checked to make sure there is still porn on the world wide web. There is.
- Double checked.

That is it.

:: Wakeboarding, breaking shit, work, golf carts, MeatFest 2006... ::

Well folks, it's back to work for ol' Nick - although not before a) ending my holidays in fine fashion and b) breaking a lot of expensive stuff.

I had two weeks off - which were, quite frankly, up and down. Lots of good times, some really bad, some just boring. But still, it beat the fuck out of being at work.

Some of the highlights were, of course, my annual trip to Seattle with my dad. We watched a pair of outstanding ball games - including a gem of a game from M's Felix Hernandez. We also went to the Experience Music Project and wandered around. If you like music - especially any of the following: Hendrix, grunge, or 80's rock from the Pacific Northwest (Heart, Queensryche, to name a few) then I suggest you go there next time you're in Seattle. Also, if you have any musical ability of any sort, there's a whole room full of gear to mess around on.

Probably the coolest part of the trip though, was leaving the second game with a batting practice home run ball off the bat of Richie Sexson. We were chilling in the lower left field seats with the other ball hawks there, gloves-on-hand, waiting to catch a ball. I, however, wasn't paying attention, and Sexson's ball came straight for my head. It bounced around off gloves before it got to me though, and my dad eventually scooped it up.

After Seattle, I hit the golf course (again) and basically hung out for a few days doing nothing, until I went with some of the family up to Shuswap to my uncle's cabin for a little drinking, boating, wakeboarding, and some drunk golfing.

But not before my computer decided to completely crap out Thursday night. I should also mention this was two days after I shelled out $200 for a new phone. (a completely unecessary new phone, apparently).

Not only did a need to buy a new laptop, which I picked up tonight, I also lost all data on my old computer - it was unsavable. So goodbye 900 Mp3s, and good bye all my pics of my digital camera.

All those drunken memories gone. Or at least only in online form (link on the left, as always).

I was on quite a streak of breaking stuff last week. The phone broke. The computer died. And my "Maintenance Required" light came on in my car. And then when I went to hop in the car bound for the Okanagan my iPod wouldn't turn on either.

For the better part of the week, literally everything I touched broke.

At that rate, I was petrified of jerking off.

But, electronic troubles aside, I had a fantastically great Labour Day weekend. Hung out with my two cousins and their significant others, Dave and Kyle, who are fast becoming a couple of my favourite people to hang out with. All four of 'em really.

On Saturday me, Kyle and Dave cracked beers by 10:30 - much to the chagrin of either their wife or girlfriend. I don't have a wife or girlfriend to speak of sadly (Yet not surprisingly), but lemme tell you, my mom did not look too impressed.

We hit the water around lunchtime and after jetting around the lake for a bit - going from Anglemont to the Narrows, we went wakeboarding. And I suck. A lot. After many attempts I couldn't even get out of the water on the board - although I came close on a few occasions. Compounding the problem - aside from my obvious lack of skill and the fact I have arm strength similar to a 9-year-old girl - was the fact that the lifejacket I was wearing sucked. It fit OK around the middle, but was old and had a few straps missing. As a result, after about 5 seconds of being pulled by the boat, the jacket ended up around my face, basically, which hampered my ability to do just about anything.

As Kyle said, "It looked like you were wearing the lifejacket for a hat out there."

Not pretty folks. Not pretty at all.

The next day my arms hurt like a bitch, yet I joined the crew for a neighbourhood best-ball golf tourney in Salmon Arm with about 40 people from the surrounding cabins. I didn't expect to golf, so I had no clubs, but I rented some from the Salmon Arm Country Club.

There were a number of problems right away.

1) My clubs were too short, I soon realized, which made hitting the ball with any power or accuracy very difficult.

2) Even with good clubs, I'm still not very good.

3) The girl in our group had never golfed, and had no idea how to even hold the club properly.

4) The two other guys in our foursome, Mark and Shawn, were stinking hammered by the 3rd hole.

I'm talking drinking-a-case each, doing 720-spinaramas downhill in golf carts kind of hammered. It was a pretty interesting back nine, I'll tell ya that much.

Somehow, however - we managed to not suck. That is to say, other people sucked far worse than we did. Far, far worse, from what I saw.

We ended up shooting a 4-over-par, good enough for a second place tie. But I gave us the unofficial silver medal because we drank more beer. We were two strokes back of "Team Domination" - the squad of Kyle, Dave (who's a 5 handicap), Tracy and Jen, who have now won the tourney 3 straight years.

Not a bad outing though.

In other weekend news, the first night we were there, Dave told me about his newly founded end-of-summer extravaganza, MeatFest 2006. Such an event will take place next weekend at Dave's Grandpa's summer house on Bowen Island, and the premise is a simple one:

Bring Meat. Lots of it.

We're talking 30-ounce steaks and 3 a.m. rounds of cheeseburgers here, people.

It is also necessary to bring copius amounts of alcohol, but that goes without saying. Golf clubs wouldn't hurt either, because Dave's also hosting a 12-person golf tourney he's dubbed the Bones and Beer Invitational.

I won't know many of the people going aside from the aforementioned four people and, if they decide to come, Chris and Jenna, but it's nonetheless going to be a disgusting show.

The only hitch is the plan is that I now have to work Sunday fucking mornings, courtesy my new fucking work schedule. This will entail peeling myself off a piece of Bowen Island, still drunk as an Irishman, at about 5:30 in the morning and getting on the 6 a.m. ferry back to Horseshoe Bay. From there, I'll likely just hightail it right to the office.

Normally I'd go home first to shower, change and sober up, but it's a Sunday and there's not going to be anybody else in the office.

Besides, even if there was, it's a Sunday and they're gonna have to get used to me in my natural Sunday state.

Hungover as fuck.