Monday, January 31, 2011

Tales from the Homeland

Due to the ridiculously high price of flying home for Christmas, I elected to alternatively spend Christmas away and then head home after flight prices calmed back down. This particular trip had a few extra twists and turns to make it more of an adventure than I expected. Let's get down to it, shall we?

Just my luck it decided to be rainy and drizzly all day the day I flew out, perfect weather for walking to the bus stop. I simply refuse to pay $50 or whatever ridiculous amount of money cabs charge to drive you to the airport. I can ride the bus - subway - bus combo to get myself there for $3. Everytime I ride the TTC I seem to see something entertaining so everyone wins. I ventured out in the rain on the 5 minute walk to the bus stop dragging my suitcase behind me, next stop - NEW BRUNSWICK! That might be slightly exaggerated excitement, but I digress. It was a relatively lame ride up until the end of the subway line. While waiting for the express bus from the subway to the airport I saw this little dipshit of a man running through the subway station and sliding on the floor, back and forth, over and over. There was a group of guys (likely 18 yrs old or so) watching him as he slid back and forth in front of them. I assumed that the guy was just simply retarded until he stopped and the guys all gave him high 5s. I immediately disliked the lot of them immensely. I silently wished bad things upon them and hoped they were taking a different bus. NOPE! Same bus. I was already on the bus when they funneled in behind me and the little guy was now very loudly singing some ridiculous foreign song. I felt my blood pressure rising. It literally took all of my self control not to kick this little singing gnome in the face as he continued to sing for the next 20 minutes all the way to the airport. Luckily I had headphones, otherwise it might have been a much more eventful bus trip. Moral: Do not use a bus as your unofficial tryout for Canadian Idol. Little man syndrome at its finest. Let's continue on...

I arrived at the airport and checked my bags, then proceeded to security. I took off every piece of metal I had on and put it into the bin then proceeded to walk through the metal detector and of course it went off. Who was waiting for me on the other side of the metal detector? Yes, a little customs agent. He asked me if I wanted to be spoken to in English or French. I said English and he immediately started talking in French. I understand a minimal amount of French so I didn't stop him. He waved the baton over me and the only place it beeped was directly over my crotch. I thought to myself that this was likely a great time to inform him I don't understand French all that well. After having unbuttoned my pants and being waved down a few more times we found out it was the button on my jeans. I found it more amusing than he did and eventually he dismissively waved me on through.

Once I made it through security I found my gate and sat down, ready to kill the 2 hours before my flight. To my surprise and visual amusement, two guys sat down in front of me. I wish I had taken a picture of them, but I fear that a picture would not give this pair enough of a description that seeing them in person delivered. I will do my absolute best to describe them, but I doubt I can recapture the essence. The first guy was a wee bitty man with a shaved head, probably 40-45 years old. He was wearing a black bandana with big, friendly looking skulls all over it. Perhaps they were drunken, happy skulls. That was paired with possibly the oldest faded jean jacket still in existence. How can you dress up the oldest faded jean jacket still in existence you ask? That's easy, you clip a maraca and bongo keychain to the pocket! I can't blame him really though, I would never have guessed he was in Mexico without the keychain in plain view. Next up we have faded jeans with bedazzled pockets. I wish I was exaggerating this. Completing the outfit was a pair of white and very light blue sneakers. Like I said, my description can't even do it justice. The other guy was also sporting a jean jacket, a sweet leather cowboy hat and one of the best moustaches I have ever seen in person. All evidence pointed to them not being straight and the roles seemed clearly defined. No way a guy with a sweet cowboy hat and a moustache is the catcher. Moving on...

The plane ride was fairly uneventful, other than my ears feeling like they might explode during the landing. Also I'd like to take this time to tell anyone that feels the need to clap after a successful landing that I hate your face. Seriously, just smack yourself in the face with your seat/floatation device and save me the trouble. I'm not sure why this irritates me so much, but it does. My brother picked me up at the airport and we loaded into his van for the hour and a half drive to my hometown. The roads were terrible from the snow that had fallen earlier. You'd assume it was a slow and scary drive home, but it was not at all. It was a very FAST and ridiculously scary drive home. The few spots in the road that you could see anything other than snow, it was just gleaming ice. My brother is used to driving in that shit and it didn't phase him a bit, he drove about 120km/h the entire way home. I'm still not sure how we made some of those turns. To his credit, we hardly even slid on the turns and he didn't kill me. It did, however, take a few years off my life...

It never ceases to amaze me some of the stories I hear while in my hometown. One of the big stories this time around was how out of control the illegal cigarette trade has become. It's always been an issue with people buying cigarettes from people on the reservation for a fraction of the cost. My brother used to buy a huge bag of them at a time. Quite classy. It's gotten to the point where cops will pull people over and check their cigarette packages for illegal cigs, there is a $2 fine for every one of these cigs you are in possession of. Hmmm and people there ask me how I can possibly enjoy living in Toronto?? Well for one thing, most people here don't smoke at all. Those people I do know that smoke, they smoke legit cigs. You know the small town cops have a lot on their plates when checking for cigs is a priority.  

It snowed practically every day I was there, along with a 30cm drop on the Friday. That didn't stop me from venturing out to get beer in the storm. I didn't bother shoveling the mouth of the driveway, electing instead to try to drive out as fast as I could. There was so much snow that when I hit the end of the driveway about half of the snow went flying up and over the top of the car. Hey if you were in a small town in NB you would have done the same thing for alcohol. Don't judge me. The days after the snow, it was just bitterly cold. This brings me to my second story. The next door neighbour has a rather large gazebo in his backyard. My brother told me about how the neighbour goes out and stays in the gazebo most nights. On the bright side the guy does have plastic surrounding the gazebo and a wood pellet stove inside. Classical music can be heard blaring from the gazebo as well. How crazy must you be, or how much do you want to avoid your wife, that you would elect to stay in a freaking gazebo in -20 weather than inside of a warm house??

On a side note I had a very similar experience going through the security at the airport coming back, but at least this time the guy understood me when I elected for English correspondence.

All in all not a terrible trip home to NB, good times were had, good beer consumed with good people. Will I be moving back anytime soon? Hell no, but it is not a bad place to visit in metered doses.

Until next time, keep your trays in the upright position until the vehicle has come to a full stop.

Monday, January 24, 2011

A Bit Concerned

To the guy that used the urinal at work today before me: for the love off all things holy please go get checked by a doctor. Nobody should ever lose that amount of hair from that area while urinating. I am genuinely concerned for you. You almost made me throw up as well. Is there male pattern baldness for that area too? Throw some Rogaine on there just to be sure.

Dickie out.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Dickie's 2010 in Review

Happy New Year to my dedicated readers and may this post find you all rich and content. If it doesn't, then too bad - suck it up and carry on. Maybe 2011 will be the year for you, maybe it won't. First off I would like to apologize for the long delays between posts, it is hard to build the necessary momentum with a post every six weeks or so. I will make an attempt to vamp this up as time permits in this new year full of potential and wonder. It's the least I can do...without further adieu, here are the highlights.

2009 ended and 2010 began with me almost throwing a short little f*ckface of a man out the window of a 21st floor condo. Luckily I refrained, otherwise my 2010 would have taken on a totally different, less optimistic look. No matter how justified you may be in doing so, law enforcement generally frowns on people being thrown through windows of highrise condos.

I don't remember much about the Winter and Spring, other than finally getting rid of my piece of shit VW and the now infamous "hoodie scandal". I would elaborate further on this, but I fear if I commit it to a public forum I may be attacked by the hoodie thief. But seriously, who steals an f*cking hoodie from someone they are dating?? That doesn't seem like a good way to make a positive impression to me, but maybe I am just old fashioned like that. It's still a touchy subject with little chance of resolution. Let's move on.

The summer of 2010 marked my first vacation to anywhere significant since 2007. A sweet deal and a group of friends was all the convincing it took to get me to Varadero, Cuba. Sun, drinks and girls in skimpy bikinis? Count Dickie in for that. It was a great trip aside from an episode where I was worried I had the Bubonic plague for about a day. There was one particular episode where 3 of us were quite far out in the water and the waves were decently choppy. Huge prehistoric looking birds were flying overhead and one of them nosedived the water close to me. It scared the hell out of me to be honest. What happened next scared us even more. Literally thousands of silver fish started swimming in and around our legs (first thing I thought was pirahnas, not a safe feeling). All of a sudden these fish start flying out of the water, some bouncing off of us and back into the water. We were literally under siege. I kept expecting to see blood in the water, but it turned out the attack was harmless. I decided to get the hell out of the water once the thought entered my mind that something was CHASING these fish and terrifying them. Couple that with the fact that a shark was found near the beach days before and I was out of the water in a flash. I don't know much about sharks, but I do know that being on land greatly decreases the odds of getting bitten by one. Still frazzled by the excitement when we left, I forgot a sweet painting I bought in the hotel room. The rest of summer was not overly memorable aside from the abundance of sweet weather and my 14 hour solo drive to NB (which I did both ways overnight). That particular experiment taught me that there is a fine line where levels of Monster Energy drink will go from energizer to hallucinogen. I swear I was dodging purple unicorns along the side of the road at one point. That's not nearly as fun as it sounds, take my word for it. I also attempted to fight two speeding tickets and the freaking cop showed up each time. Not the best year for luck overall.

Fall was not overly memorable either. Winter brought about some happenings that literally made me believe that hell might be freezing over, but overall it was a pleasant ride. Christmas was spent in Quebec with great friends and skiing. What more could you ask for?

My plan going into 2010 was merely to survive it and it ended up being a decently good year. My plan going into 2011 is to make it a year worth remembering in 10 years down the road so we will see where it all takes me. If you get in my way I will take you down, you've been warned.

And remember that any time you have a chance to harness the power of dynamic inertia, you've got to do it.