A Memorial Weekend Spent in Montreal

Chris and Anne

So Chris has been happily married to the girl of his dreams since one-thirty in the afternoon on the twenty-eighth of May, two thousand five. Theirs was a lovely wedding held inside Birks Chapel at the majestic McGill University, where they met. Cameras rolled and tears flowed as the vows were exchanged. Chris' unique creativity was invested in the ceremony, instantly recognizable in the music of the processional but moreso it was felt during the reception that followed. Joy and fellowship filled the air as the festivities... Wait a minute, WHAT HAPPENED?? I am a whole stinking day older than the guy!! My parents were already pregnant with me at my age! Some of my peers are already siring their own offspring! Where does that leave me? Sheesh, well, be that as it may, I am very happy for Chris and Anne and I know God has blessed their union. In turn, may they together be a blessing to everyone in their lives as well.
I enjoyed much more over the weekend than just the few hours we celebrated Chris and Anne, however, because Michal, Christopher and I not only represented the contingent of old buddies from Arizona at the wedding, we were released upon Montreal to wreak havoc as we saw fit. Boy did we do our job well! I believe much credit is due to the excellent breakfasts we ate every morning at Chez Cora Dejeuners which held us through to dinner every evening. We spent much of our time at the Old Pier juggling fire batons with the street performers; sneaking into the Cirque du Soleil; shooting tourists in the clock tower; ramming paddleboats and leaving them to sink in two feet of water; kicking down signboards; knocking over pedestrians in our rented skates and bike; charming the waitresses into serving us food not on the menu; and, most importantly, giving the local drivers a few really good scares. Well, you tell me how we were supposed to know the red octagonal signs that said 'ARREZ' meant 'STOP'!
We also spent a few hours in Montreal's very own Notre Dame first scandalizing fellow patrons by pointing out the horns protruding from Moses' head and then going to confession for the aforementioned crimes. Once our consciences were cleared by reciting Hail Maries and attending French mass, we moved on to Saint Joseph's Oratory, which is perched on a hillside and overlooks the city. We tried to be good but it wasn't long before we raided a Father's chapel-turned-museum to read a few of the prayers people left for him. Most of them were in French so I won't repeat them here. We thought our rampage was to meet an early demise at dusk when what appeared to be a crowd of zombies filed toward us from across the plaza, but it turned out they were just the local parishioners holding a candle vigil for the Father whose chapel we had just, uh, inspected. In order not to arouse any suspicions, I covered up the skull and crossbones shirt I was wearing, Christopher hid his camera and Michal tried to look nonchalant as we chanted along with the crowd all the way down to their underground sanctuary where we accidentally signed to have someone canonized thinking it was a guest book.
Ah but it wasn't all fun and games as I have since paid dearly for that weekend in Montreal. My car died from the journey. She blew out her engine on the freeway but held together long enough for me to make it home before giving up the ghost in the school parking lot. I had to have her towed to the mechanic who took a look under her hood and concluded she needs an engine transplant. As she is getting on in years and we have only been together for ten months and my insurance does not cover the procedure, I think I may let her rest in peace while I find a new vehicle to take her place.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about my weekend as much as I enjoyed retelling it. As a disclaimer, however, this is my blog and my story so the facts may have been embellished just a tad and the truth may have been twisted just a teensy bit. It's more exciting that way.

clever car clip

Hey everyone, check out this really neat advert. Be sure you turn up the volume to enjoy the music and grab a kleenex! It made me cry.

Some humor for you (at someone else's expense)

Here's an interesting story to help you appreciate your job.
The next time you have a bad day at work... think of this guy. Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an e-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 on FM dial in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.
Hi Sue: Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.
As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.
Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.
I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.
So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.
Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job."

Re: gliding over pavement

Considering the sun likes to peek out from behind the rain clouds every so often and I don't have to wear a heavy jacket to venture outdoors anymore, it's high time I took up inline skating!!!
Now I know what you're thinking; rest assured the rolling blades will probably never replace the mountain bike as my first love (sports-wise that is). It's just that, well, hm, how do I state this... there are no mountains here! Sure, there are dirt roads I hope to ride soon enough but that won't be happening on a regular enough basis to call it exercise - ergo the wheels on my heels. Besides, once I combine the skates with a sporty outfit, a pair of shades and a tan, there will be one very cool cat painting the trails in this town!
Ok, here's the catch. I can count the number of times my feet have been strapped to rubber wheels on the fingers of both hands, maybe even on just the fingers of one hand if you've got six fingers. When wearing the rollers I kind of look like Frankenstein's monster trying out a new dance and I am attracted to the ground much like a large helium-filled balloon is not.
Also, I don't own a pair of skates - well, at least not yet. Are any of my avid readers an authority on the matter of inlines? Would you like to impart some of your knowledge to me? What should I keep in mind when purchasing the means to release myself from the grip of static friction? Is there a good brand name I should choose? How about durometer? bearings? flat-rocker? hard or soft boot? Is it really not possible, as I've been told, to get those cool clip-on blades in the United States? And finally, that burning question, should I get soul plates?
BTW, FYI, a full five minutes into my exhaustive research on the matter I discovered a couple interesting facts. First, inline skates where invented long before some square decided to arrange the rolleys in a rectangle. Second, did you know that, like Kleenex, Rollerblade is a registered trademark? Sure it is. Why the Rollerblade website even has a fascinating grammar lesson on the proper use of trademarks. Who would have thunk it? Well, it was enough to get me to edit out of this post any incorrect use of a trademark as an improper adjective, a noun or a verb, but nobody owns slang so the blade lingo stays!