"I wrote the book on Awesome." - Dave

Chris: Oh good, there's a beer store on this island. I was worried that I crushed too many beers on the ferry over, and that I'd run out before the weekend was over.
Nick: Run out? How many beers did you bring?
Chris: 42.

Hi, I'm Troy McClure.

You may remember me from such failed fitness regimes as "Drink Yourself Thin" and "That doughnut won't get you laid, fatty."

I'm here today to talk to you about getting in shape. In case you're wondering, yes, you have heard this before.

I have exactly 38 days until I board a plane bound for Cancun, Mexico, where the sun is warm, water is clear, and the beer is included. And also where I'd like to be able to walk around without a shirt on without sending the locals running for the hills (Are there hills in Cancun? I don't know. If there isn't, I guess the locals will run somewhere else...likely the U.S. border).

Also, aside from the no-shirt thing, I'd like to be able to eat about 300 lbs of authentic spicy burrito meat and wash it down with about 120 pints of beer and a few margaritas without having to worry about my heart stoppping.

Anyways, the point is, I have approxiametly 45 lbs to lose until I can get to that point. The problem? Outside of a hunger strike or a coke binge of Lindsay Lohanesque proportions, it is impossible to lose that much weight in such a short amount of time. So, because I don't want to snort a bunch of cocaine, and because right now I'm actually sorta hungry, so a hunger strike is out of the question, I guess I'll go to Plan C with the hope that maybe I can drop 20 or so.

Plan C, of course, being eating vegetables and going to the gym a lot. Also, in sort of a desperate move, I'm not drinking. At all. A year and a half ago, I gave up drinking beer for three months. During that time, I went on a wine-drinking jag, and for a time experimented with gin - with disasterous, disasterous results.

And I didn't really lose a single pound.

But now I'm saying goodbye to everything for 38 days. (Well, to be fair, when I say I'm giving up drinking, I mean I'm not gonna go get blitzed on the weekend, and will curtail my weekday beers. I'll still have one or two here or there)

I expect the process to be painful, but ultimately worth it. What makes this task even tougher is that, after a summer of buying more beer for camping trips than I could actually drink, I currently have a mini-fridge full of over 40 beers. Just sitting there, chilled. Mocking me.

But ice cold barley pops can in no way compete with vegetables, nectarines, and rice. Right?

Damn you Coors. Damn you to hell.

:: Playing catch-up ::

I was going to write one of those "sorry for never posting" messages until I realized one thing: I'm not sorry. Not sorry at all. The way I figure it, you'll get the pleasure of reading a post when I'm damn well good and ready to give it to ya.

And I'm ready....now.

So, we've got some catchin' up to do, I suppose. I had half a post written from the long weekend, but most of the stuff I wrote has since become a moo point (You know, like a cow's opinion..it's not important). But let us first relive some of the more quotable moments of the past few weeks.

"That's as naked as I've ever been." - Sean, after being stripped of all his clothes and thrown into Lambie's front yard in the post-UFC mayhem a couple weekends ago.

"At first when you guys jumped me I thought you were just gonna shove something in my ass, and I was like 'OK, that's fine I guess,' but then you took all my clothes instead!" - Sean's twisted thought process as the above-mentioned deed took place.

"Quit being so bleedy!" - Lambie, as he attacked poor beer and blood-soaked Sean, who was flailing away on the floor.

"Beer. It's what's for breakfast." - Buchs

"I'd fight Snoop Dogg. What's he gonna do, gin and juice me?" - Buchs, after a few of those 'breakfast beers'.

"It's not funny but it's hilarious." - Jer, commenting on Buch's retardedness, which resulting in A-Scrams being pretty angry.

Amanda: I want a teleport.
Ian: You want a tadpole?

"They should make a steak cologne." - Bucholtz

Well, the last few weeks have been fairly eventful. I can tell because it doesn't feel like I've been home much at all the past three weeks. I work, I go someplace, I come home late, and go to bed. Rinse, lather, repeat. I'm not complaining, but it just seems like this is one of the few weekday nights where I've had both the time and energy to write anything.

A couple weekends ago, if you couldn't already tell from the quotes, many of us - mostly Sean - became intoxicated. Sean, on a $5 bet, stuck his balls into quickly whirrling fan blades, which obviously caused him to hit the deck pretty hard. Five minutes later, he decided sticking his nose into the same fan was a smart idea.

Guess what? It wasn't. You see, when slim blades made of hard plastic, metal, or any other solid material are set at speeds in which you can no longer tell one individual blade from the other, whatever comes into contact with said blades is likely to be caused some undue strain. It's like when you used to throw your Grade 9 math textbook into the ceiling fan, just to see what would happen. What happens is you get calculus everywhere.

Lesson learned, Seany. Lesson learned.

This past weekend, while other people were at stag parties or Nintendo nights or UFC TV events, I was back in Kamloops for the first time in what seemed like 100 years. In reality, it was only about two and a half or so, but still too long. Quite a bit had changed - people now hung out with people I didn't know, the Burger King near my old house was now a Tim Horton's, and an entire new uber-large strip mall had sprung up on what's basically one large median between some major thru-ways. Very odd.

Some things, however, don't change. The pulp mill still stinks - something I'd forgotten about, but was reminded of at nearly the exact same time the "Welcome to Kamloops" sign came into view from the highway - and also, Sifton Ave. is still a formidable foe. One day, however, me, Mike and Shaun will have our revenge.

We just need a better plan. (And a shovel, ahead of time)

Friday evening was spent at Meghan's, drinking a few beers with her and Lorne, before we headed to a very crowded, very hot, Central Station Pub, where I proceeded to a) spill beer on my jeans and b) drink six beers and a caesar but somehow only get charged $13 for three beers. Still not as good a deal as Al though, who downed a couple double paralyzers before just walking out, apparently completely oblivious.

So we did that. And then me, Shaun and Mike drove around for quite awhile (see aforementioned failed plan) before Shaun went home to sleep, and me and Mike hit up some 7-Eleven hotdogs which the slurpee jockey informed us were anywhere from 2 hours to four days old. We took our chances anyway. We killed some more time, before the night basically ended, and boy did it ever end in (insert sarcasm here) fine fashion for me.

The night was mercifully ended at 3:15 a.m. after a loooooooooooong, painstaking conversation with Meghan's otherwise delightful two friends, who spent two hours - two fucking hours - talking about cats. The next day, when explaining what happened to Mike and Shaun, I was actually incapable of words, such was the rage and bafflement that had built inside me. Ask 'em, they'll tell you. It was a tough one.

Nevertheless, on Saturday - refueled after some coffee, Ricky's breakfast, and a solid nap - we eventually got the ball rolling again. Some people went to Earl's for dinner, but me, Mike and Shaun instead went to White Spot, where the TV viewing was far superior to watch the Canucks' Game 6. We said we'd show up at Earl's after the first period, but that was before we were informed that not only did Earl's have worse TV locations, but in fact no TVs we could see at all. So we eventually rolled in around 7:45. Nobody seemed to really miss us anyhow, so that was good.

The Earl's experience was ended with one giant beer each, and this from Shaun:

"I'm having fun, if fun means the opposite of fun."

So rather than hit up the pre-drinking/Blue Grotto, the three of us crashed a work-related conference (for a different division) at a downtown hotel, where we met up with Al, Ken, Melissa, and briefly, Tara. It was an open bar so it turned to a pretty solid night. Near the end, the little makeshift bar actually ran out of beer.

Hooray for us.

So that, in a nutshell, was my long-winded Kamloops experience. I left Sunday after attempting to throw a sponge soccer ball at Mike's car from mine (they'd previously chucked it at me), but it turns out you have a better chance to hit them if you roll your own window down first. Rookie mistake, but it nearly caused Mike and Shaun to laugh so hard they nearly drove of the road, so at least there's that.

Oh, and if the weekend wasn't success enough, Shaun - former video store warehouse employee - gave me a lifesized, lighted Superman Returns standup. I haven't taken it out of the box yet, but I can only imagine its awesomness.

This week: Tonight we had softball, kicking the ever-loving shit out of some team of poor saps, 16-2. Tomorrow and Friday are Games 1-2 of the Nucks and Ducks series, and Saturday is my all-fucking-day-long conference at an airport hotel. It's the same exact thing I crashed Saturday night while in Kamloops, only that I'll have to sit through 10 hours of workshops before the drinking can begin.

But hey, it's another open bar.