Things you realize while laying on a concrete floor on Christmas Eve...

Merry belated Christmas to everyone. I hope you had a great time with your friends and families. Ideally good times were had by all. I went home in early December this year since the flights home at Christmas time were ridiculously priced. This was the first Christmas I didn't make it home at least for Boxing Day. Yes, shed a tear for me - I want you to.

I got invited to go to Montreal with my bestest friends to meet up with their friends and spend the holidays together. Great idea! I'm was going to be the best 5th wheel ever...We made it there late on the 23rd and I slept on the couch in the basement. Fairly comfy and I was tired enough at that point to be able to fall asleep anywhere. I didn't totally fall into a deep sleep because I was paranoid of rolling over too far and falling off the couch. The next night (Christmas Eve) I was presented with the option of the inflatable air mattress. I jumped at the opportunity to be able to stretch out. I used the automatic pump to inflate it in about 5 minutes. It was all blown up and looked dreamy, comfortable and spacious. I crawled into my sleeping bag (I came prepared) and settled in for a relaxing night's sleep with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head. All was well until around 8am when I woke up in a panic on my side because I couldn't really move. The room was pitch black and I couldn't tell why I was so constricted. Upon further investigation I realized that the air mattress had deflated a fair bit and all the air was out at the sides trapping me in a V-shaped air mattress-o-death. It was at precisely that moment I was reminded that I am in fact single for Christmas and that having a girlfriend would have the added benefit of evening out the air mattress so at least it would deflate on both sides, allowing me to sleep longer before hitting the concrete. Being the glass-half-full find of guy I am I decided to look at the hole in the air mattress as the gift of a built in alarm clock. Looking at the situation now I could have achieved the same thing with some sort of counterweight.

Christmas night I had the bright idea of sleeping on the floor with the 2 large couch cushions as my bed. Again I fell asleep decently fast but woke up not long after when the couch cushions separated and my hip bone was rubbing directly on the concrete floor. It was at precisely that moment that I pondered the advantages being overweight and having a layer of fat between my hip bone and the floor that would cushion my hip and allow me to sleep longer. I quickly realized that I could not gain 50 pounds on the spot by sheer will alone. I laughed when I thought about my ex (that gained like 80 pounds over three years) and how she would have been able to sleep through this. I sighed and pushed the cushions back together and a few hours later I woke up in the same predicament. Being stubborn and half asleep, instead of coming up with a better solution I just kept pushing them together and slept for a few hours at a time for the rest of the night.

All in all it was a great trip aside from the weather while we were there. Good friends and good times. Yesterday on my drive home I saw four people over the age of 50 jogging (or at least a sad attempt at jogging) in the -20 windchill. One poor guy's face was an awful shade of red as if it might explode. It almost made me feel lazy by not running or going to the gym in a while, but then I decided running would not be fully enjoying my body's naturally high metabolism. I decided to celebrate it by drinking coke, eating Triscuits and playing Xbox instead...Happy New Year!

Happy New Year - Not So Much...

My first New Year's experience in Toronto was memorable (and a bit mentally scarring) to say the least. I did not yet know many people here in the big city and my options were limited. I had made friends with a girl from NS (Maria) and she invited me along to share in the NYE festivities with her and a group of her friends. I figured it was a good way to get out and have fun as well as possibly make some new friends.

The evening starts out as expected with drinks at Maria's with a couple of her friends. We have a few rounds and discuss where we're meeting the rest of the group. A pub just down from Bloor and Bay St. is the meeting spot for the evening. The night has a positive aura happening and the good times are rolling (people have commented that all my blog entries involve alcohol...and I reply that I don't need alcohol to have a good time. I can also start a fire by rubbing two sticks together, but isn't it that much easier with a lighter?).

We get to the bar at around 10pm and meet up with the other members of our party. I take my place at our table and sit on the side facing the door. We have a few more rounds and we're all enjoying ourselves, so much so that I do not take notice of the other clientelle in the bar. This crazy looking guy came in (looked like the lead singer of Econoline Crush - see picture to the left), noticed me and came directly toward our table. I look up and this guy is coming at me with the fist bump. I thought the guy was just hammered and being festive so I bump fists with him. I am not a fist bump snob, perhaps I should be. He leaves the table and continues on into the bar. He is mostly forgotten by the time I see him walking by again eyeing me in a peculiar way. The next thing I saw was him talking to the hot girl across the table from me (I was hoping the alcohol would give me enough courage to talk to her eventually). She looks at me and smiles, then shakes her head and the crazy-eyed guy walks away again. I am wondering what the heck the guy was talking to her about and what he said to make her smile. She smiles at me and leans over the table then motions me to come closer as well. At this point I am thinking 2008 is going to be a great freaking year. She whispers in my ear "That guy wanted to talk to you, but he was shy so he asked me if you were single and/or straight? I said I thought you were single and straight but I'd find out for him". Apparently the look on my face and the noticeable dry heave made it obvious she would not be playing the part of homo-cupid this evening. She looks a little disappointed. Then she reassures me I do not seem gay but "in this city, you always have to ask". I begin to feel a bit better about the situation and less violated by the visual assault I was getting earlier from the freakshow.

Hot girl seems to have taken a bit of a liking to me and we are conversing a little. At this point we both look at our watches and notice that it is 12:10am and that the bar did not even do a countdown. What the hell? What bar does not do a countdown on New Year's Eve?? I start to question what type of establishment we are in. Our table does our own staged countdown at about 12:15am and hot girl gives me a peck on the cheek. Life is good, 2008 seemed to be a keeper already. And then I got up from the table to go to the men's room...

I walk into the room and there are three empty urinals. Naturally observing urinal etiquette I choose the one furthest to the right to allow the one urinal buffer zone to be preserved should someone else walk in. Sure enough someone comes in and he clearly breaks the urinal code by taking the middle urinal next to me. This makes me uncomfortable. I stare straight ahead but I get this overwhelming feeling of being watched. I think it's just that I'm still rattled by the earlier turn of events. I can't shake the feeling. I glance over a bit and notice the guy is definitely not looking straight forward. I look further over and the guy is not only breaking urinal etiquette, he is looking straight down at my downtown bonanza. He was like a fat kid looking at an ice cream cake. Having never encountered such behaviour before I was not sure how to proceed. I made the uncomfortable cough noise (the "what the hell are you doing?" cough). At this point he looked up at me and smiled. I give him the "what the hell is wrong with you?" face and he just keeps smiling back. I get the hell out of that bathroom like someone threw a live grenade in there. It hits me that this may all just be a bad dream, or maybe I have stumbled into the twilight zone or something.

I slowly make my way back to our table and immediately the ghostly look on my face causes people to ask me if I'm ok, what happened, why am I so pale?? I have a small audience as I recount the events of the visual molestation I received in men's room. The people at my table laugh at my hardship but I am a bit traumatized and not yet able to find the humour in this strange turn of events. I begin to look around at the other clientelle in the bar and to say they are odd is an understatement of epic proportions. A mixture of guys in pink shirts or blouses of some kind (as Charlie Murphy says "You know where you got that shirt and it sure as hell was not the Men's Department"). The other perhaps odder element were the number of chubby 50 something year old women with the makeup that looked like it was applied from short range with a paint gun. These two worlds were intermingling and making perhaps the strangest scene I have ever seen. I've always wanted to try Abscinthe and I imagine it might cause me to hallucinate something more normal than this. I could not bid that place a not-so-fond adieu fast enough. This experience almost made me reconsider my move to Toronto. I thought maybe people here were a bit too in your face for my liking. Somehow we ended up in Chinatown for chinese food so the ship was righted.

Moral of the story: do some background checking on the meeting location if you're going out with a group of people you don't really know. Also even if you are openly gay, you should still follow the rules of urinal etiquette (look straight ahead!). Consider this a public service message.

Stay thirsty my friends and happy holidays!