:: Holidays ::

Mom: When do Chris and Jenna get back from church?
Me: Well, it's only an hour and it started at 11:00, so I guess they'll be back just after midnight, unless church goes into overtime.

"I went out to go to the bathroom before the service started, but when I came back they'd already started singing Christmas songs. I didn't know if I was allowed to just go sit down, or wait for a stoppage in play." - Chris, on his Christmas Eve church experience.

"If you ever get the chance, I reccommend dating Amanda, just for the presents." - Bucholtz.

"How come if you pinch me, I can't just hit you right in the face? God Damn society - they've taken all the fun out of abuse." - Matt

"I bet you that TV makeup artists are a lot busier these days because of all the HD channels now," - Buchs, after seeing some less-than-attractive people on TV.

After a Bucholtz burp...
Amanda: Just say excuse me!
Buchs: Why? It's not going to unstink it.
Amanda: Well, it's just polite!
Buchs: OK, well when I'm having tea with the queen, I'll say excuse me.

"Hello Nick! How was....whatever it was you were doing, before you came here?" - Sean

"If Brad is a testament to everthing that Christmas stands for, then fuck Christmas!" - Scott, after some shitfaced/weird waitress at The Duke, came over to us, literally crying her eyes out, and proceeded to tell us how great a person Brad was, because he'd "been through Hell" and was a "testament to blah blah blah."

The speech, and the whole situation, was probably the most awkward/ridiculous public speech/moment any of us had witnessed in quite some time. Apparently, this stupid old broad had got it in her head that Brad's car accident - which was what, 13 years ago? - was a result of drunk driving, so she a) gave a speech about the merits of not driving drunk and b) proceeded to turn B-Rad into the epitome of hard work, determination, and all-round good guy-ery. Basically, if you'd have listen to this woman, you'd be under the impression now that it's not Jesus whom we celebrate on Dec. 25, it's Brad Fucking Gorski. Same person, apparently.

Now don't get me wrong, Brad is a standup guy, but he's still a douchebag, and in no conceivable way was deserving of any kind of tribute. No more than anybody else we know, anyhow. And certainly not one that involved actual, real tears from a complete stranger.

So in conclusion, we all like Brad, but we don't like drunk-ass old waitresses. Also, Libya is a land of peace and contrast.

Oh, by the way - Merry Christmas. For those of you coming to the annual Christmas Night drinkathon, I'll see you in a couple days. As usual, we'll celebrate the birth of Jesus by drinking Budweiser and playing darts. I can think of no better tribute. (No wussing out either, people...not like last year).

For those of you not coming, well, I'll just leave you with this.

"I'd fight Duke. I'd fight a shark." - Bucholtz, talking about the formidable size of Bobby's ever-growing dog.

"The vagina's connected to the baby holder....the baby's connected to the....other thing," Buchs again, singing a song.

And now, a couple frightening quotes from Lambo's buddy, Mangel. He could've been talking about the video game he was playing, but then again, he's also from NYC, so you decide...

"Murder, huh? Sweet - I'm all about the killing. Who's ready to die?!!!!"

"I'll just grab whatever and I'll murder you with it. That's how I roll, bitches."

:: Making friends ::

People become friends in different ways. Maybe you meet somebody at work, or you play on the same hockey or baseball team as kids. Or perhaps, as is probably most often the case with best friends, you meet people in elementary or high school and stay pals for a long, long time after that. That's how I met most, if not all, of my best friends.

Or, in this techno-age, people meet on the Internet, bonded by some common interest. And then sometimes, the way you meet people is just completely random - maybe you met in the cereal aisle at Safeway, or at the bar, or at a cockfight. Whatever works.

Or in the case I'm about to explain, maybe you should've met years before, but some avoided each other every step of the way, until recently:

A year ago, not long after I signed up on Facebook, I got a random message from a girl who's name I didn't immediately recognize. After a few quick messages back and forth, it turned out that we worked in the same company, but at different places. After that, we ran into each other at our company conference, and after talking for a bit, it turned out that we'd pretty much been following each other around since we were 15.

We both went to the same high school, and knew a lot of the same people, but she went to school elsewhere in Grade 11 before coming back for Grade 12 - which was the year I left for someplace else.

And the reason I didn't immediately recognize her name was because it was different now - she got married, and as soon as she told me her maiden name, I instantly recognized it.

Then after graduation, we both ended up going to Kwantlen College for a couple years, although our paths obviously never crossed. Not that strange, really, when you consider that it's a large four-campus school, and a good portion of local kids start out at KUC. However, it got a little stranger after that, because we both ended up majoring in the same thing at university, and both ended up in Kamloops in the same program. Again though, just missing each other. She arrived just as I was leaving.

Once again, many of her university friends are my friends, too.

Now working for the same big company, she was just transferred into our office last month. Now our desks are 15 feet from each other.

So, anyway, after realizing this odd set of circumstances - and also realizing that we're pretty close to the same person ("You're like the guy version of me!" she drunkenly told me, over and over again, last week at our staff party) we decided that since we probably would've ended up being friends years ago if only our paths had crossed, we'll just be friends now instead...We know very little about each other, don't have any sort of friend history to speak of, but we're instantly good friends anyways, just because we decided that we would be. Kind of like when two five-year-old kids decided instantly that they're best friends simply because they live next door to each other, or because their pre-school coat hooks are side-by-side.

We drove in together to the aforementioned staff Christmas party (Her husband didn't come because he had tix to the Canucks/Penguins game), and since we appeared throughout the night to be good buddies, one of the office folk asked us how we knew each other, since she'd just started working for us.

"Oh, we've known each other for years - we went to high school together," she said.

And just like that a new friend becomes an old one. Weird? Maybe. But it's still kinda cool.