"You know what I want to do right now? I want to go over to that D.J, Russ or whatever his name is, and go to shake his hand and say 'Nice job, way to download songs off the internet for a living' and then when he's expecting the hand shake I'll stick a chloroform rag in his face, drag his body under the table and then take over the music and play nothing but New Kids on the Block and line dancing songs." - Bruce, further enhancing his awesomeness.

Just got back about an hour ago from Ken and Jessica's wedding. It was lots of fun - once I found the place. I got a little lost because I screwed up my directions. But I got there on time, all was well.

I realized something about weddings tonight: They're pretty fun, as long as it's a close friend or family member getting married. I had a great time tonight, and I had a great time at the last wedding I went to - Tracy and Kyle's last September.

I used to not like weddings very much - not that I've been to a ton of them or anything, but usually they're boring, you only know like 6 people, and it's taking up precious time you could be using to sleep, download porn or light off firecrackers.

But I realized the reason they're boring is because it's usually your uncle's cousin's neighbour's aunt who's the one getting hitched. So basically it's not too exciting and your interest level is minimal. And by minimal I mean none. But when it's your friend it's just like one big party.

Plus the last two weddings were the only one's i've been too since I turned 19, and I like open bars.

But I doubt that has anything to do with it. At least not much.

During a big thunderstorm in White Rock on Thursday...

Advertising woman: Oh no, my cats are just going to be so scared. They hate thunder. My poor babies!
Rob: *scoffs* You know what I'd do with a cat in a thunder and lightning storm? I'd take it outside, staple it to a tin roof and hope for the best.

"You know what I like? Boobs." - Ian

Heather: Let's go to Darby's Pub.
Bruce: Oh sure, we'll walk up there and nobody will come up with us and
we'll be like "Oh they got us with the ol' 'let's go to Darby's Pub gag' and
then instead of going in the pub we'll go to John's knife shop and pick up a
couple of big knives and come back here and say 'hi here are some knives,
it's a peace offering for your little trick. No hard feelings.' Then after
they have the big knives maybe they won't try and trick us again.

It's been an eventful few days - went to Ken's bachelor party on Thursday night in Kits, then didn't get home til 2:00 and had aboot 4 hours of sleep before work, which wasn't cool.

Then tomorrow I'm going to Ken and Jessica's wedding, which should be pretty fun I'd imagine. I met a lot of Ken's Nova Scotia family the other day, and his brother Bruce, from the above quote, is awesome. He's just hilarious.

Tonight we were just drinking in Sean's backyard but I'm just exhausted so I called it a night early. It's been a weird day - I was dead-tired, then pumped because we had a ball game, then pissed off because our game was cancelled, then I was sad after that when i heard some very not-cool news that happened to one of my best friends. Normally, the emotions would've been up and down a bit today, but so far I've been pretty even-keeled, which I suspect has much to do with a lack of sleep and a few beers.

You know what's awesome? Being drunk.
I'm fuckin shiffaced right now, but thankfully Ian was less shitfaced and was able to drive my car home. What a great night a slapshots even if the power did go out for awhile.

Tomorrow should be good - some of us are going to sean's dad's wedding (Chris, Sean, jenna, Jeremy) and the rest of us are goin camping in Chilliwack. Also in the plans tomorrow is a trip to the ol' movie theatre to see dodgeball, which looks awesome.

In other news, Danny and Amanda had their baby - a 5 lb 14 ounce baby girl named Harmony Grace. Congratulations guys, that's awesome, we're all happy for you.

Well, I'm loaded so I should probably call it a night. Later folks,

Postscript: According to Ian, I also fell off the couch last night when we got home. I vaguely remember it. I am PURE AWESOME.

:: Back from the 'loops ::

Well I'm back from my short trip to Kamloops for Mike and Melissa's grad. It was quite a good weekend - a decent amount of drinking, and I got to see everyone again because we were all briefly back in the same town. Now I'm in Langley and Mike's back in Alberta, so it was a short but sweet reunion.

Friday night was prett good - I got into town at around 8:00 and we drank some champagne and then went to Sherlock's for a couple of hours to meet up with some of the few remaining j-school stragglers.

Some of the weekend highlights included Lorne buying 'Hoe Garden" beer (actually some weird belgium beer Hoegaarden; Meghan cramming many marshmallows into her mouth; and Mike and Shaun destroying a Calgary Flames flag for me (including throwing it off a bridge and lighting it on fire.) Also equally important (or more important if you ask her..haha) was Melissa making sure everyone, from family to friends to strangers at the bar, knew that "IT'S MY GRAD!!"

I took about 90 pictures so I'll be posting those in the next little while - most likely on one of mike's new sites once he gets them up and running.

:: Tasteless joke alert ::

Today Ray Charles died at age 73.

He didn't even see it coming.

I cracked the whole office up with that one this afternoon.

Tonight I pumped up the ol' DVD collection with some kick-ass movies - Family Guy seasons 1-3 and both Wayne's Worlds. So if anybody needs me, I'll be in my room watching hours upon hours of tv. Except for Friday of course, when I'll be in Kamloops drinking my god damn face off. I'm headed there after work on Friday to meet up with Melissa, Mike and Meghan after the grad ceremony. I think we're going to some kind of foam party at the bar - which sounds interesting to say the least. We'll be drunk, regardless.

The last time I was there with everyone was on my way home from Peace River and our little reunion didn't really go as planned and some or all of us were a little bummed about it. Well, with Mike in Vulcan and me in Langley this might be our last shot at it for awhile.

So let's not fuck this one up.

"The Internet sure is getting neat." - some woman at my work today.

Good insight. Welcome to 1995 lady.

Jer: aaaoooooooohhh.
Nick: What was that?
Jer: I was yawning. Yawning, you know? It's the past tense of yawn.
Nick: No Jer, it's not.

:: When I saw how big my paycheque was I pitched a tent ::

Okay, I lied. Before you think I'm some perverted freak who gets turned on by money (see also Smith, Anna Nicole), I didn't actually pitch a tent when I got paid yesterday.

I did, however, buy one.

I decided that, aside from paying some of my Visa bill I'd prepare for the many weekend camping/drinking trips that will/better happen this summer. While I'm not exactly one to get all excited about a tent, it is pretty cool for one reason: There is no setup to it. All you do is spread it out, pull up on this top piece and the whole thing pops open and its finished. Takes 4 seconds. No fucking around with tent poles and all that garbage. Why is this important? Well, for starters, I'm incredibly lazy and hate setting up tents. Reason #2: By cutting down on camping setup time, I've now increased the camping drinking time by a good 10-15 minutes at least. And when it comes to drinking an entire weekend away, there's really no time to waste.

I was going to blow some of my money on a bunch of dvds - Family Guy seasons 1-3, Wayne's World 2, Dumb and Dumber, you know, the classics - but decided a tent was a better plan. DVD's can wait til next payday, or til tomorrow if I'm feeling rich.

I'm trying to save a lot of the money I'm making now, but there's so many things I want to buy it'll take some willpower because, like Mike, I really want to get my hands on a giant inflatable octopus or a cactus shaped pinata.

How much do those go for anyway?

"Beer me up Scotty!" - Ian

There's been a Denny's in Walnut Grove for awhile now - somewhere between 6-8 years I'd guess. And there's one thing I've learned from going there: Everytime you go there, you're convinced it will be better than the last time you went there.

It's true. The last time you went there you could've got food poisoning from the chicken strips, some drunken gang of misfits could've started a fight with you at 2 a.m., the $1 crane machine where you try to pick up stuffed animals could've screwed you out of your last few dollars, and your car could've got stolen as it all happened, but you'll go there again because, well "It's Denny's" and really, what else is open at that hour?

I had "The Sampler" - which sounds good in theory until you realize all you're sampling is 4 different strains of salmonella.

God damn chicken strips.

We're going there again next weekend right?

:: The World has turned and left me here ::

The blogging landscape has suddenly gone barren. Mike is in Vulcan with no internet, and his blog has been under renovation for some time. Melissa, who is a new and frequent blogger, doesn't have an internet connection at her place as of yesterday, thus also leaving Meghan cut off from cyberspace. Even though Meghan's blog hasn't been updated since about the time Super Mario Brothers was new on the market.

And as usual, Al and Shaun's blog's are updated infrequently, as Shaun is too busy dealing with crackhead customers during the Super 8 nightshift, and Al is too busy working and, I assume, drinking his face off at weddings and such.

I guess it's up me to hold down the fort for awhile.

"Carnies get me every time!!" - Chris, after carnival games kicked his ass.

:: Playing catch up ::

I've been meaning to post for a few days now but haven't really had the time. Even now I'm rushed because me, Chris, Jenna, Gorski and maybe Seaner are going camping for the night in Chilliwack and we're leaving pretty soon here I think. Either way, I figured I'd get you caught up on what's going on. Also there's some random thoughts thrown in for good measure.

- The Cannons lost again. We played alright except our defence sucked. And there is now a little dugout dissention between those who don't care about winning and those who are ultra-competitive and hate losing. I'd just like it if everyone actually hustled all the time and we had a good time. I'm sure it'll get better. On a positive note, there are new pictures in the Cannons Pictures section.

- I hate people who park on the side of the road and then leave their driver side door open while they sit in there. I drive down Marine Drive in White Rock quite often - it's a narrow street to begin with, and you add in tons and tons of beach-going pedestrians, and cars parked on both sides of the road, you've got limited space. Last week I had to drive past about 6 cars with doors open, narrowly missing a few. Close your fuckin doors you idiots.

- Mike's officially gone to Vulcan, AB. This time for good. Although I'm guessing he'll have to buy all new stuff because by the time he gets there everything will be broken, considering he's already down a discman, computer, rollerblades, and god knows what else. See what happens when you move to Alberta? It's pure evil I tell ya. Pure Evil.
Just kidding, have a good time, even if you'll be homeless for a day or so.

- The Cloverdale Rodeo is not what it's hyped to be. Unless you go for the bull riding and stuff, which we didn't. that costs extra anyways. But we went last night to the carnival portion of the Ro-dey-o and it wasn't much fun. Granted, the weather was shitty, which probably had a lot to do with the place not being very full. But most of the crowd were 14 year old skater kids and a bunch of slutty looking young-year-olds. The only highlights were Chris losing $30 on obviously rigged carnival games. Once, on a ridiculously easy looking softball toss, Chris blew the first throw and was so mad he whipped softball #2 into the back of the carnies tent type thing. It was funny. Highlight number two would have to be Chris offering a cop a bite of the fudge he bought. Oh, also they had mini donuts, so I guess it wasn't all bad.

Well, I gotta go pack up a bit o' stuff for camping tonight, leaving a lot of room for beer, obviously.

:: Who needs sleep? ::

"Tonight has 'Mess' written all over it." - Ian

"Hey Nick, guess how many beers I've had? I had seven, then four...and seven and four is 62...so I've had 74 beers." - Gorski, completely hammered, obviously. (wouldn't you be after 74 beers? or 62? or 11?)

Wow, this weekend blew by.

But I gotta tell ya, it's weekends like this that make me happy to be back home. I got off work on Friday at 3:30 - came home and took a quick nap, which would prove to be the most sleep I'd get all weekend, then I went out with Doug, Christine, Chad and Erica to Las Margaritas, a wicked Mexican restaurant in downtown Vancouver. We had to wait about 45 minutes for a table, but if there's a better place to blow $40 on margaritas and burritos I'd like to see it.

Then I finished off the night by hitting up Slapshots (of course) for a beer with Jeremy and then some hacky-sack in the parking lot with the rest of the crew. Well, some of them.

I got home late but didn't even get to sleep in, as the Cannons had a 10:40 game. So we had to get ourselves organized, search out a beer store that still actually had beer, and head over. We also had a game at 4:00 so In between games we all went out for lunch and then had some pre-game batting practice, except for certain unnamed lazy people who just slept on the grass all game instead of trying to improve. God knows it couldn't hurt.

Anyways, on the downside, the Cannons lost both games - we got SMOKED in the first one. We played awful. And there was NO hustle, which pissed most of us off. Things were better in game 2 but we still lost.

After that game we hit Sean's house for a team BBQ that turned into one hell of a little shaker, including Sean's dad drunkenly singing old navy songs and his step-mom introducing her friend Fiona to us about 30 times. She was also a little inebriated.

Sunday, instead of sleeping of the last night's drinking, I got up at 7:00 to head to the hills around Chilliwack Lake for some ATVing with Doug and company. It was awesome. That was the first time I'd seen Doug's new ATV, and the first time I'd driven one at all. It was wicked. Also we saw a bear - it darted out in front of Doug as he barelled down some logging road going about 75 km/h. We were right behind him in the truck, doing a little unintentional 4X4ing of our own - some of those logging roads are deadly - not to mention narrow. Especially for an old Ford F350 - We only broke one hubcap though.

So that was my busy weekend. It was a lot of fun, but now i'm tired. I've gotta work tomorrow though, then we have another ball game. We'd better not lose 3 in a row.

"Every three to six months I come back here with a big box and just clean house. Last time we found Jimmy Hoffa." - Rob, talking about how messy some people's desks were. Mine was nice and clean though - which is what started the whole conversation in the first place.

:: KABOOM! ::

The Cannons are back with a .500 record after tonight after winning an 11-10 squeeker over the Leis Expos. We were up 11-6 in the last inning, but some shaky defence let them back into it. Thankfully we held on for the win to halt the three game losing streak.

And because Justin was late getting to the game, I got to play the first inning in right field. With my blazing speed (Ha!) I also batted leadoff, and got an infield single due to some stone hands from the opposing shortstop.

It was another shaky, nerve-wracking one-run game, which we've gotten accustomed to.

Just call us the Cardiac Kids I guess.

Either way, a win's a win. Next up: A Saturday double header with a MANDATORY team lunch in between games. We're gonna bump the record up to 5-3 - and if you're a Cannons player and you think you are skipping the lunch on Saturday, well you may as well use that lunch time to pack your bags, cuz you're cut. Just kidding.

:: Are you kidding me? ::

I finally got last week's copy of my old paper, the Record-Gazette, in the mail. Because of the distance I usually get them a week behind schedule - since the newest paper comes out again tomorrow.

Now, when Ken left the paper, it suffered because Ken knew what he was doing. However, without sounding too arrogant, I knew what I was doing too, and I managed to put out 2 papers that were very good - and I got them done very quick too. But when I left, there was nobody there who knew anything about layout etc - I'm still convinced that this new editor, despite his long, very impressive list of journalistic accolades, doesn't know how to turn on a computer. Also, english isn't his first language..and it shows.

This weeks paper was AWFUL. I can seriously say, without exaggeration, that this is the worst published paper I have ever seen anywhere in my life.

EVER.

On Wednesday mornings, the office manager there used to take sadistic pleasure in pointing out to me and Ken the one or two mistakes we had in the paper. She used to think she would've caught them all, and never hesitated to tell us.

This week there were 29 errors. Including 6 on the front page. Hey Marie, where were ya on that those ones?

The sad part is, I haven't even read the stories. These are layout mistakes. 29.

Headlines? Fucked. Photos? Fucked. Columns lining up properly? Nice try. Photos? So bad I wouldn't even have downloaded them off the digital camera. Those pictures are what the 'delete' button is for. I would've said "DELETED!!!" so many times that week that you'd think that I'd turned into Strong Bad himself.

It's sickenly awful to think about because, as much as I don't like that paper much, me and Ken both worked hard to make that paper good. And it was. I got more compliments on my sports section than I can count.

Now the receptionist is writing the sports section.

I'm not fucking joking. Out of all the stories in the sports section, there is only one tiny one that would be suitable to run - the rest are either not stories at all, or are taken from other Bowes papers that are so far away from Peace River that it's not funny.

What a complete mess. I cringe just thinking about next week.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, she has finally done it. Melissa, who everyone knows and loves, has started a blog. Go read it right now, or fear my wrath.

Actually, you should fear my wrath anyways.

"Okay, I'll read you the riot act now about photos. No cheque presentations. No team pictures. No trophy presentation pictures. You'll get a million calls and e-mails about them, but just say no. We don't do that. Those pictures suck." - Brian, photographer at work.

Did you hear that? No cheques. No teams. Greatest. News. Ever. I hated doing all of those things at my old paper, but we had to do 'em. It'll be nice to have a sports section that doesn't just look like a god damn yearbook.

It's been two days at my new job. So far so good. It's so incredibly different than what I'm used to that it'll take awhile to get accustomed to things. Shorter deadlines. WAY bigger editorial staff. And editor who isn't a good friend of mine like Ken was and who is more hands-on. Plus there's extra pressure because it's a bigger paper at a bigger, better company. (Everyone there makes fun of Bowes. It's got a pretty big rep for being a cheap company by the sounds of it.)

I really feel like a rookie, and it'll take awhile for me to get into the groove I'm sure.

I've also been fighting a cold the last three days, and despite not being stressed about the new job like I expected to be, I've been incredibly tired lately. Fighting off yawns at work. Crashing and burning almost as soon as I get home. Going to bed WAY earlier than usual. I just feel shitty. Hopefully a bunch of medicine and vitamin C fixes things, because I'd really like to have some energy by the weekend.

On the plus side, the paper comes out tomorrow and I'm anxious to see what my three stories look like. In other news, the Record-Gazette is going to hell in a handbasket without me and Ken. The paper this week looks bloody awful according to people I know in Grande Prairie, and from reading the sports section online, I can tell you that its just terrible. I'm not just saying that because I want to feel like nobody could do as good a job as me, but it's really bad. They've got stories on people from all over the damn place, I'm sure they just pulled them all from other far-away papers. Oh well, it's not my problem. Thank-God.

In other news, Mike officially departed for Vulcan, Aberta tonight via everyone's favourite mode of transportation - Greyhound. I'm sure there were a few sad people in Kamloops who won't get to see him for awhile, and I like Shaun's MSN name today: There's no use crying over spilled Mike.

Good luck in Alberta. Also, enjoy your LOOOOOONG bus ride there.

A couple leftover Gorski-ism's from the last day or two.

Brad: I know exactly why I say everything I say.
Nick: Okay, why is that?
Brad: Uh, I'll tell you later.

Also, it's Gorski's grand plan to start a new TV show, CSI: Ninja Unit, starring Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Johnny Depp, Macaulay Culkin and either an animated Peter Griffin (Family Guy) or long-dead John Candy.

I bet CBS would buy that show's rights in a second.

:: Garski Falls ::

As Ian spilled beer on the deck...
Someone: Ian, you're wasting beer!
Ian: Well at least it's going to a good cause...getting a dog drunk!

"You know what's great about our group of friends? We can just sit around doing absolutely nothing, and then all of a sudden we've got a big fire going and it kicks ass." - Sean

Last night, in lieu of our usual night at Slapshots, we decided to mix it up and take advantage of the kick-ass weather. So we spent a few hours drinking in Jenna's backyard, then Brad said we should go have a bonfire someplace, so we did. We drove out into the middle of nowhere down past Fort Langley by the river and sat around finishing off the last of our beers. We all decided to name our new spot "Garski Falls" not because there was a waterfall of any sort, but because Brad fell in the river about 3 seconds after we got there. He was trying to move a big flaming pallet closer to the river, then he slipped, then Chris accidently dropped another pallet that hit Brad in the head, then he went knee deep in mud and water.

It was funny to about everyone but Brad, who spent much of the rest of the night trying to convince people to give him their pants.

I also drank 13 beers (including shotgunning one) yet somehow didn't even get slightly buzzed, let alone drunk. It was very odd. I guess my alcohol tolerance is better than I thought. Next up this weekend, before I start work again, is probably Sean's garage, cuz there's a TV there now and hopefully a little bit of space left to write something clever on the wall.

As I sit here at 9:30 in the morning that feels much later (still on mountain time I guess), I figured I'd try and sum up the last few days. I've got some time to kill since I'm still waiting for Chris to move his car and let me out.

There has been a lot of news lately - it's been a very hectic, stressful, yet happy week. I'm home now, my three day journey from Northern Alberta is complete. And I really couldn't be happier to be home. It might take some time to get used to living with people again - no drinking straight from the carton (when people are looking), it's now necessary to wear pants at always all times, etc etc... But they're minor details - I'm still glad to be back. And I've already seen most of my friends - we went to the usual spot, Slapshots, last night for a few beers. As is the custom with these friends I've known for years and years and years, nobody either noticed I was there, or noticed I hadn't been there for the last 7 months. It took Jeremy a good three conversations before he said 'hi', and all I got from Bucholtz was a "Still got that same haircut eh?" I'm not complaining of course - it's nice to be able to slide right back into things without missing a beat.

I also stopped in Jasper on my way through and saw Dustin for a night, which was nice. I hadn't seen him since he took off for Vermillion over a year ago. We didn't do a whole lot of interesting stuff - we went for some beers then watched Kill Bill, but it was still good to catch up.

Then the next day it was on to the Main Event - Kamloops, my second favourite city. I had a pretty good time drinking and hanging out with everyone I hadn't seen in forever - Mike, Melissa, Meghan, Carlos, Neal and the rest of 'em. Although, like Mike mentioned a few days back, it wasn't quite the same as before - it was hard to do a lot of catching up really, but that's because there were just so many people there - and really, the Max isn't exactly the right place to 'catch up'. It is, however, the right place to fall down, as Melissa can attest. Oh well, might not have been exactly as-planned, but it was still nice to see some familiar places before we all go our separate post-j-school ways.

Speaking of that, Mike - the only one of us who's been in Kamloops longer than 3 years - is off to Alberta. This is good news for a number of reasons, the obvious being that he has a job and won't have to be unemployed all summer long like I was until I went to Alberta. He's going to the wonderfully quirky town of Vulcan, to do layout. I have a funny feeling an upcoming front page of the Vulcan Advocate will have a photo-shopped picture of the Star Trek Ship engulfed in flames, with townspeople running for their lives.

Or maybe a picture of Spock getting hit by a bus.

I'm glad Mike's happy about the job and I'm glad he's not nervous. From my experience I can say that while my Alberta experience was sometimes lonely and not always the most fun, going there was one of the single best decisions I ever made. Without that job - I never would have got the job I have now. I had originally hoped that Mike would've found a White Rock job so we could get a place together, but I'll be happy living at home for awhile and saving some money, and I'm happy Mike has a job. Also, it seemed like the 'loops had turned into quite a little soap opera at times - and as much fun as we've all had there in the past, sometimes it's good to just start fresh.

I gotta admit though, It will be weird not to have Mike in Kamloops - last summer we each made a trip or two back and forth and it was a good time, but they'll be plenty of time for that later I'm sure. And one day dammit we're going to live in White Rock - I just got beat by the clock this time. Also, like Mike said, it's probably good to move on. I was glad I did, even for a little while. It's good and often necessary to leave certain things behind, and it makes coming home that much sweeter whenever you get that chance.