I'm Still Kicking Around

First, let me apologize for being so lax in my blogging lately. It's hard to believe it's been nearly three months since my last post. It's not that I haven't been doing stuff, it's just that watching videos on YouTube is so much easier than writing.


I'll give you a quick run down of what's happened in the last three months. It's been so long that I may have actually mentioned some of this stuff in previous posts and forgotten about it.

1) I flew a plane. It wasn't a commercial airliner that was having pilot trouble and I had to step in and save the day. It was an introductory flight in a Cessna 150 (I say that like I really know anything about planes). When we got in the air I was allowed to take the controls. Taking the controls consisted of me holding onto the steering wheel (I'm sure that's not the proper term but I have no idea what it's actually called). I really may as well have been holding onto a stick the pilot found on the runway for all the "flying" I was doing but it was fun nonetheless.


2) I went to New Mexico for a vacation. This was a great trip and really should be part of it's own blog entry so I won't go into detail right now. You can view pictures at http://www.riverrun-design.com/Post.


3) I moved apartments. I went from the seedy streets of Cabbagetown to the bright lights of Broadview. Moving is a pain in the ass. I hired professional movers so at least I didn't have to run up and down stairs all day carrying things but still, it's something I'd prefer not to do.


My new apartment has a narrower corridor than my old one so my couch wouldn't fit up the stairs. I suggested, in jest, that they hoist the couch over the balcony. They took this suggestion seriously and set to work. I have a theory that no matter what you do, some idiot with no experience is going to tell you how to do it better. Incidentally, the "hoist" was actually just two of the movers pulling the couch up while the third mover stayed on the ground trying to keep the couch away from the balcony. About five minutes in, while the guys are sweating like Marlon Brando in a sauna, a 60 year old woman riding by on her bicycle, stops to let them know they need to get the couch further away from the balcony. Her suggestion, "poke it with a stick". It's a couch, not a pinata. Needless to say I beat her with a stick much to the horror of my new neighbours.

Regatta Get Out of this Place

We had our regatta about two weeks ago and I’m proud to say that my team smoked our competition. By that, I mean we firebombed their boats after the race. How badly outclassed were we you ask. It took us fifteen minutes to get the boat in position to start the race. During the race two seven year olds in a swan paddle boat from Ontario Place passed us. So we did not come away as potential gold medal winners in Beijing.

Later in the evening there was a crew that was short a rower and I somehow got forced into rowing with them. Stupid “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, I always get screwed on that. These guys were a much tighter crew and the pace of the race was faster than what I was used to. I thought my heart was going to explode. The bad thing about not being able to keep up in a boat is that you can’t even slow down. It was like being on a tandem bicycle with Lance Armstrong in the front seat. You would think that with all this speed we would have won the race but no such luck. At least this instructor makes up plausible excuses for our loss. She said that the boat we were racing against drifted into our lane and we had to ease up to avoid hitting them. I’m not sure she knew what was at stake though. The winners of each race got a shiny pin that said “Crew”. Dammit, it still gets my blood boiling when I think how my life would be different if I had that pin. No more, “this is a funeral home you’ll have to put your pants back on” and my lifelong ban from the zoo for feeding the animals . . . to the other animals, would surely be lifted.

This sounds like the start to a joke, but last week I rowed with a blind man, a one-legged man and another guy, who I’m not entirely sure what his problem is but he walks with a limp and seems a little slow; other than the limp though they could say the same about me. These guys were all very skilled rowers and a fun group so it was a good experience for me to row with them. When I went to get in the boat I noticed one of my oar handles had a large dollop of bird poo on it. I thought of switching with the blind guy because it’s not like he’d notice but decided against it. The way we get into the boat is to put one foot in and then ease yourself down while holding onto the dock and side of the boat. The way I get into the boat is to put one foot in and then just kind of flop to my seat. I’m about as graceful as a seal with a faulty vestibular system. It’s a humbling experience to have a one-legged man hop (seriously, I kill me) out of a boat much more elegantly than you could ever hope to do.

Final Relay for Life Update

The Relay for Life was a big success. The event as a whole surpassed its goal, but more importantly, me as a selfish individual, surpassed my goal. I was shooting for $1000.00, which I thought was quite lofty considering people rarely speak to me, never mind donate money, and I ended up with $1651.00. Thanks again to all those who donated.

I helped out in the activity tent making balloon animals. My balloon animal making profession was started when I was helping out at a hockey tournament and somebody suggested that I make balloon animals for the kids. I found this to be an odd suggestion as I don’t think in the history of my life I had ever given any indication that I could or wanted to make balloon animals (or balloon sculptures as those in the business call them).

I’m not a great balloon animal maker. I can make a dog, a mouse and a giraffe with confidence. I have made rabbits, teddy bears and elephants but these take a long time to do and in the balloon game it's all about speed. I ask a kid what they would like, always hoping that they say a dog. Sometimes a kid will ask for something that I think looks close enough to something in my repertoire. I’ll make it and just say, “here's your cat” not mentioning that it looks exactly like a dog. At the Relay I asked one kid what she wanted and she replied “a dragon”. I didn’t think I could pass a giraffe off as a dragon. Another kid replied, rather smartly, “what can you make?” I rhymed them off while she listened intently weighing the pros and cons of each choice and then wisely decided on a white rabbit.

In the morning my friend Joey Jo Jo Shabadu Jr. and I were sitting outside the tent watching the sunrise when we saw just the most beautiful sight. A 9 year old boy running at full speed tripped over one of our tent pegs and skidded face first along the dew soaked grass.

Here is a picture from the luminary ceremony.

Quick Update

The Relay for Life is tonight and I wanted to thank everybody that donated. If you haven't donated and are feeling a little left out, buck up cowboy or girl, I'm extending the deadline to July 21st, 2008. The link is on the right hand side of this page. Happy now?

Raising money is quite easy when you're a large man with a hair trigger temper.

Rowing

I started rowing about three weeks ago. I’ve always wanted to get an Olympic medal and since they rarely go on sale and I don’t believe “Searching for Arcane Inane Facts on Google” is an Olympic event yet I took up rowing. I think two words accurately describe rowing, “really freakin’ hard”. I go Tuesdays and Thursdays but I missed the first Thursday to see comedy legend Don Rickles at Casino Rama. Since I missed the first Thursday I asked if I could do a makeup class and was lucky enough to get a spot in the Saturday and Sunday Learn to Row class. The weekend classes were three hours a day so by the end of it on Sunday I worked my abs so much I felt like they could stop a bullet. They’re now back to their normal pudding-like state.

When I went back to my regular team on Tuesday they had all attended the Thursday class that I missed and not knowing that I had attended the weekend session thought they were far and away more advanced than me. “This is an oar Skippy, can you say oar?” I tried to play along, hoping that if I did well enough they’d give me ice cream after the session.

There are two instructors for our sessions. One is a no-nonsense drill instructor kind of guy. If you’ve ever seen Full Metal Jacket you know the type. The other is a scatterbrain who praises us for doing the most basic of tasks. “You got in the boat, good job, good job. You moved your oar, you’re awesome.”

I’m in the scatterbrain’s boat. On the first night I rowed we hit an anchored boat and the dock. On the second night we didn’t hit anything; but, the person sitting in four seat (I’m in six seat so four seat is the first seat behind me with an oar on the same side) kept hitting my oar because he wasn’t in sync with the rest of the rowers.

The third night was the worst so far. The seats in these boats have wheels and are placed in rails so they slide while rowing. My seat was not properly in the slide and consequently I couldn’t row properly and because I couldn’t row in sync the person behind me kept hitting me in the back with her oar handle. On top of that I usually have a very attractive woman sitting in front of me but on this night we mixed it up a bit so we could get a feel for rowing on the other side and I had this terrible beast in front of me. Regarding the actual rowing, well, we got blown into a cove, hit an anchored boat and the dock and then had to be pushed out by a passerby. We also hit the breakwall on the way back but managed to get ourselves out of that with considerable effort. While we were in the cove we saw the other boat whiz by with their instructing shouting instructions at them (in German I believe).

On the fourth night we hit a dock and got trapped in some floating tires that have been setup to prevent you from hitting the dock. They’re going to need more than tires to prevent us from hitting stuff. After our session, the second group was short one person and asked if anybody wanted to row again. Being a bit of a sadist I said sure and maybe I can wear clothespins on my nipples for the ride. I went out again and the ride was so much smoother, the boat was balanced and everyone was in sync but the rowing was a lot harder. I was very happy to get back to dry land and walk on my rubbery legs to my car.

Garage Sale for the Relay

A few weekends ago we held a garage sale to raise money for the Relay for Life. Although, I've since heard that there was a massive garage sale the same weekend to raise money for another cancer event our dinky little one was not tied to it. There were 4 of us participating; myself, Daisy, Monkey and Joey Jo Jo Shabadu Jr (not their real names).

I'm quite pleased to announce that we raised just shy of $504.00. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights from the sale:

• One of the items for sale was a gag voodoo kit. A tiny little doll with pins that you could use to get back at an ex-boyfriend, etc. A woman looked at it and said "I'm not ignorant but you shouldn't be selling this to raise money for charity." Whenever somebody says "I'm not ignorant but . . ." you can be sure that the next words out of their mouth will be something extremely ignorant. This woman also tried to buy our cooler for 50 cents, not realizing that it was actually the bottles of water inside the cooler that were going for 50 cents. When I tried to give her the bottle of water she said, "that's okay honey, I work at an after hours club and can get all the free water I want." We all can lady, it's called a tap.
• One woman asked Monkey if we still had the sombrero and how much it was. When she replied yes and 25 cents the woman gave her $20.00 and said thank you, keep the change. That's an 8000% mark up. Now I know how the cable company feels.
• On the flip side another woman took 2 purses at $2.00 each and a skirt for $1.00. She tried to give me $3.00. I said the price was $5.00. After trying to push $3.00 on me she finally broke and said she'd give me $4.00. I repeated that the price was $5.00 but I would throw in the mousepad that her husband wanted. She said $4.50. Obviously this woman wasn't getting it, I tried contorting my body into the shape of a 5 but I'm simply not flexible enough and was worried that people would start singing YMCA. I won the battle and got the $5.00 but they drove off with such hatred in their eyes that I wondered if I had violated their daughter (and/or goat) at any point during the transaction.
• Daisy purchased more goods than she donated but has a couple of nice summer ensembles now.
• One woman asked if we had any smaller planters. I told her I would check the storeroom and she waited patiently and then said "would you mind?"
• Monkey told a couple of slacker kids that they could keep their "stash" in a coconut head we were selling.
• We had one bin where anything in it was a nickel. These two kids almost cleared it out but left one coaster in there. I didn't know if they had such discerning taste that the coaster just wouldn't go with all the plastic tchotchke they bought or they ran out of nickels.
  
• An exercise bike was donated to the sale and we managed to sell it to some guy whose van was already so full that he wasn't able to fit the whole bike in. The handlebars were sticking out. Monkey told him not to speed on the way home and he promised to keep it under 90.
• On Saturday a man bought one mug out of a set of two. On Sunday, our first customer was the same man, looking for the matching mug. We didn't know if he met someone the night before and wanted matching cups to have coffee in or broke the first one after he got home and needed a replacement.
  

Boston

Despite buying our bus tickets in a Chinese bakery and only paying $15.00 for them the ride to Boston was uneventful, this is not always the case though as we learned later.

My main purpose for this entire trip was to see a couple of comedy shows in Boston (Somerville actually, just outside of Boston). On Friday night doktor cocacolamcdonalds, Eugene Mirman, Todd Barry and Emo Philips performed. On Saturday night The Walsh Brothers, Morgan Murphy, Jim Jeffries and Patton Oswalt were on the bill.

I’m a huge fan of Todd Barry, Emo Philips and Patton Oswalt and Toronto isn’t exactly a comedy hotbed so I figured I could kill three birds with one stone by going to Boston.

The other comedians were amusing though doktor cocacolamcdonalds was a little odd (hard to imagine based on the name).

The Walsh Brothers did their entire act about the Fung Wah Bus Company. Apparently, the bus has run out of gas on the freeway, caught on fire on more than one occasion, lost an axel, rolled over a few times and left many passengers stranded at McDonalds in Connecticut. They closed the act by performing a theme song they had written for the Fung Wah. One Walsh brother changed into a yellow jumpsuit a la Bruce Lee in Game of Death while the other wore a karate gi and a giant ceramic Hello Kitty head while “floating” around the stage. It was a catchy number.

As I mentioned, the venue was located just outside of Boston, so, not knowing our way around the city we took a cab there. The cab ride cost $20 ($10 each). This was only $5.00 per person less than the ride from New York to Boston. When we got to the theatre we realized there was a subway stop right beside it. We took the subway back but had difficulty figuring out how to buy a pass. We eventually got one and the plan was for me to go through and then pass to card back to Auntie Monkey so she could go through. The entrance is not a turnstile but doors that open like in Star Trek. You put your card in the front of the machine, it slides through and pops up, once you take the card back the doors open and you run through. We didn’t realize any of this was going to happen so once the doors opened we panicked and both ran through. After getting a taste for the criminal life we decided we might as well do this the next time we had to take the subway (plus, since I was always going through first, it would be Auntie Monkey’s ass they hauled off to jail and not mine). Total cost of two people taking the subway three times, $5.10.

The only other thing of note that happened in Boston was my running into the FBI. I was waiting outside a store when I saw a small group of Midwesterners standing around and two boys around 15 or 16, also Midwesterners, walk up to them pointing at their brand new baseball hats. Both hats had FBI written in large letters on the front and, wait for it . . . written in small letters just beneath, Female Body Inspector. I think George Washington wore a hat like that when he first crossed the Delaware. This proved to be the height of hilarity for not only the boys but the entire group. There were high fives all around, mixed in with tears of laughter.