:: 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.
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