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.

Is that a lobster in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

I can't believe it has been over a full month since my last blog entry, time flies when you ignore your blog duties. Rest assured I have not been wasting this past month laying comatose on my couch watching infomercials, although I wouldn't mind getting a ShamWOW or a SlapChop (give me one of those Grate-y buggers too)...I have been traveling a lot this last little bit and I have created an internet talk radio show with The Joe Long Show (you can listen to the right). The travelling consisted of a last minute trip to Cuba and one quickly planned trip back home to the East Coast. I'm back in the TDot but my head is spinning from all the miles I have put on. Even though I have been far from my loyal readers, you have never been far from my thoughts...and after driving solo 14 hours each way, there were many thoughts.

So what was it like to be home? Well it is always a culture shock. People assume it was so hard for me to move to Toronto from Fredericton because of the culture shock, but I truly find it more difficult going from here back home. That is likely because when I go home I spend the majority of my time in the small town I grew up in. I'm talking about a town with a population of 1700 people that most of the time seems like less than 100 people. Priorities are just a little different there. Based on my observations it is normal to spend a good portion of the day making sure you can identify every single person in the town. This baffles me since 90% of the people I see on any given day are strangers and I really don't care who they are. I like being relatively anonymous and not having anyone care what I'm doing. Even though I moved away from my hometown when I was 18 for school, my mom assumes I know every single person there still. I didn't know half the people there when I lived there nor did I care. Anyways, constantly needing to know who people are is not part of my makeup.

One other thing I found out about my hometown is that there is a huge increase in the amount of shoplifting happening. My brother told me a bunch of stories about people stealing tons of stuff from the local grocery store. That is bad enough on its own but when he told me what people are actually stealing, that took the level of ridiculousness up a few notches. Apparently the store would cook lobsters then wrap and sell them individually. One guy came along and cleaned out the entire display (about 6 lobsters), except one. How did the guy steal them you ask? Oh yeah he put them down his pants. So this guy has cellophane wrapped lobsters stuffed down his pants and he walks out of the store. How's that for ballsy? The owner of the grocery store was so sure of who stole the lobster that he took the one remaining lobster, drove to the thief's house, knocked on his door and told him he might as well have that one since he had the rest of them. 

Ridiculous. As ridiculous as it is, the next one is ever stranger. A different guy went into the same grocery store and decided to steal a package of boneless, skinless chicken breast by taking it out of the package and stuffing it down his pants. Oh yeah and that guy was my old high school English teacher. It's bad enough if you steal it while it is still in the package, but taking it out of the package and putting raw chicken down your pants? Let's hope that is not the Colonel's secret for 11 herbs and spices, or the way Popeye's marinates it's chicken for 12 hours. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. How is that for a Lysol commercial idea?

I will make an attempt to increase the blog entries going forth and remember it is not a good idea to light cop cars on fire and smash windows. It may be fun, but it is never a good idea.