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!