mike the mountain

What an awesome year.  Even though by some measures it wasn’t quite the year I had hoped for, there’s never a bad time in the world of Mike.

One unfortunate thing that I allowed to affect almost everything in ’08 was my shoulder injury.  In February I had what seemed like a very minor fall while snowboarding that ended up dislocating my shoulder and tearing my rotator cuff.  I have NEVER had any kind of injury take so long to fully heal!  I’m still not at 100%.  The toll this took on my usual fun and games was catastrophic: couldn’t go snowboarding for the rest of the winter, couldn’t golf at all during the summer, had to drop out of a marathon training program (still managed to run a 1/2 marathon), couldn’t wear a backpack with any weight so no overnight hiking, couldn’t do any of the normal physical activities that I usually enjoy (weightlifting, rollerblading, squash, swimming, etc.) and, as important, that keep me in any kind of healthy condition.  End result is me being in the absolute worst shape of my life: fat, weak, and pretty dang pathetic.

Enough!  That’s the other thing I let that injury do for me all year: gave me an excuse to be a whiny lazy bitch, eat badly, not do the exercise I could do, etc.  Starting TODAY, I’m back to eating well and working my a$$ off.

One goal I thoroughly enjoyed surpassing was writing at least one blog post a week.  I managed to put up 62 posts in 2008, some of which actually involved original thought!

The big highlight vacation was a roadtrip through BC.  Chrystal had never seen BC outside of Vancouver and our West Coast Trail hiking trip, so I resolved to show her as much of the rest of this incredible slice of paradise as I could.  We did a whirlwind tour of the southern interior, wine country, up the Sunshine Coast, across the island, a week (SUR-fing) in Tofino, then up through the central-BC backroads to Jasper. Tenting the whole way, enjoying some incredible local produce, grilling fresh fish over a campfire, drinking amazing wine every night… awesome.  A trip every Canadian needs to do at least once in their life.

I got all fired up about the proposed copyright legislation some twisted, ignorant, bought-and-paid-for, miserable excuse for a public servant tried to force down our throats and wallets.  Not that I have an opinion about it or anything…

In May I moved this humble little blog from Blogger to my own WordPress site.  Also started Twittering, because I really don’t have enough ways to waste time online.

Dreamgirl (who I think should start her own blog) had a huge year as well: running her first marathon in Edmonton at the end of the summer, on one of the hottest days of the year!  Also, to the joy of us both, she took a part time job at Mountain Equipment Co-Op.  Just for the extra money, of course.  Nothing to do with the staff discount, amazing trips, cool people, or any of that stuff.  Really.

A big personal achievement in the work world was finally building and launching our new website and blog.  I’m pretty dang proud of this, and I hope you will swing by every once in a while and let me know how I’m doing!

I love Halloween… love the TV, the movies, the music, the costumes, the parties… and of course the CANDY!!!!

Remember kids, rich neighbourhoods are a trap, too much time between houses.  Stick to old neighbourhoods with lots of grandparents first (before they go to bed), then work your way down to the new yuppies with no kids having house parties, they’ll have bought lots of candy to hand out because they have a “HOUSE” now and want to be part of the scene, but they’re still young enough to be up late watching movies and getting ready to party!  It’s all strategy.

Guinness with a hint of green please…

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all the men with Irish in ‘em and all the ladies who would like some…

“Here’s to you and yours, and to mine and ours.
And if mine and ours ever come across to you and yours,
I hope you and yours will do as much for mine and ours,
As mine and ours have done for you and yours!”

Celebrate with the one you love.

Also, π Day.

Two very special days all in one.

The order in which you choose to honour them may say more about you then you think.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have something to eat.

… doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it!

Anyway, I’m on a beach, and I’m just not that hardcore to break out the laptop when there’s sand and water to play in.

Vacation. Girlfriend’s parent’s 2-minutes-from-the-beach cottage. AKA: better things to do.

Of course, I have managed to watch half of the first season of Heroes (gimme a break, I missed the first couple episodes and haven’t had a chance to catch up yet!), start and finish Cory Doctorow’s novel “Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town”, and tonight we’re going to catch a double bill of 300 and Transformers at the local drive-in!!

You can take the boy out of the city, but you can’t take the geek… I mean, you can take the geek out of the boy… no, I mean you can’t take… whatever. I’m a geek. Rawk.

Let me be perfectly clear on this issue.

It is NOT “Christmas season” until December.

Screw your “Christmas Creep“, your “Black Friday” in the States, your “Oh my God it’s not even Halloween yet you insane greedy bastards!!” up here in Canada…

Screw your Santa Claus Parade’s in mid-November (Mommy why is Santa wearing a T-shirt?).

Maybe I’m biased, maybe growing up in the far frozen north (relatively speaking) has ingrained in me a certain expectation of what the holiday season entails. Certain associations I have with different times of the year.

Christmas:

Snow.

Cold.

December.

LATE December.

These are good things to me. Images I want to hang on to. Skating. Hot chocolate. Snowmen. Sleigh rides. All the wonderful cliche’s.

I’m not the most spiritual guy in the world, and this isn’t intended to be some big anti-capitalist rant against the retailers. This is just me taking my own little personal stand for when I will acknowledge the start of the happiest time of year. Once December 1st hits, I’m all in baby. Lights, decorations, trees, music, parties, you name it, I’m in. And I actually have a home nice enough to decorate this year!

Halloween, baby. Definitely my favourite excuse to dress up funny and harass strangers into giving you candy.

Thought this year was going to be a bust… Dreamgirl and I were signed up for some all day fundraiser with my office on Saturday (aka: grownup Halloween party day), and we figured we’d be dead by the evening and not really in the mood to drive an hour into Toronto to hit the big club scene. So be it, we’ll still hand out candy on Tuesday, and maybe just find a local bar to pop into.

Then salvation!

On Friday I got the call that every other member of our team had dropped out due to various illnesses, prior commitments, [insert excuse here]‘s, so we were free! Gee, I bet it’ll be easy to find costumes Friday evening of Halloween party weekend…

No worries, after surfing a few options we hit Hollywood Costumes up in Thornhill. Packed, but still a decent selection left. Chrystal found an AMAZING ghostly-spirit costume, all flowing white lace and gossamer. And just to match, I grabbed a wicked looking LOTR Ringwraith costume, all black, ripped and shredded and making a perfect match to the angel beside me.

If only it was that easy.

We figure we’re set for Saturday, have to pick up a couple extra accessories during the day, and then head to town for the big club crawl. I snagged us the last couple tickets for a great sounding event through Party Crawls. Should be a blast. Of course as soon as we get home we rip open our costume bags to try them on… Chrystal looks awesome, just needs some white face paint, stockings, etc.. I, on the other hand, pull on a black stocking with couple strips of mesh. It looks like crap. We try to twist and adjust it, stare at the pic on the bag, eventually we had to accept it. Half the costume was missing. All I had was the plain black piece that is to be worn underneath the big scary gothic cloak and hood. Useless.

Now I’m mad. Not only do I not have a costume, but I’m going to have to try and return the one I did buy after the big party weekend… I’m sure no one has ever tried to run that scam before. “Uhh, yeah, I know it looks like I wore it, and it smells like beer, but seriously it didn’t, uh, fit. Yeah. Can I have my money back?”

Oh yeah, and I still need to find something to wear for Saturday night.

No problem. Hit teh interwebs, grab a list of every costume shop in 50K, and first thing Saturday morning (relative concept when you get up at 5:30am all week), we’re on the road. Not a ton left. Big surprise. Finally get to one of the coolest costume shops I’ve ever seen: Seams Like Magic, in Waterloo. And there it is. Sitting right at eye level (for me anyways), front of the rack. Calling to me. The perfect costume.

Two words.

Zombie.

Cowboy.

Hell yeah! Now I’m REALLY excited. Grabbed a few accessories (bandito ‘stache, grey hairspray, “Severe Wound” makeup, bullet belt), headed over to Winners to grab a suitably cowboyish shirt that I wouldn’t feel too bad about ruining, stopped by a mall to grab some white fishnets and white Crocs for Dreamgirl’s costume, and we are ready to rock.

The party started out really well, awesome first bar, great mix of crowd, some amazing costumes (we took 3rd place, behind two guys dressed as Duff Beer bottles and a very uncomfortable looking “Horse From Brokeback Mountain”!). Unfortunately, as the night went on it became very apparent that this was not our scene. Each bar we went to got younger and younger, and neither of us really enjoyed being stuffed into an overcrowded bar full of drunk 19 year olds. Been there, done that, we were hoping for something a little more mellow. After almost getting in fights at two different clubs (someone tried to get “physical” with my Dreamgirl, so I got “physical” with him), we called it a night.

Even though it didn’t end on the best note, overall I still had a fun time. If you are in the mood to really rip it up and go crazy, I definitely recommend Party Crawls. Great group of guys, well organized, obviously having a ton of fun. Thanks again Mike!

Now where’s my candy…

~~~~~