A Breath of Fresh Air

I grabbed a coffee at around 9:30 this morning from the lunch room, and knowing that my boss was out doing errands around town, I didn't expect anyone to be in the lab when I got back.

But when I walked through the door I just knew somebody was there.

I couldn't see anyone; couldn't hear them. I couldn't feel any vibrations in the floor; couldn't taste their presence. But somehow I knew they were there.

I could fucking smell them.

And you guessed it, it was that stanky hoor Rezwana.

"The Due" has really been getting to me lately.

She can't tell the difference between mass and concentration.
She shuts down my computer files for no reason at all.
She wears the same clothes for five days straight.
She is a skidmark on Canada.

She perpetually asks "Tra-fus vare ees Erin?"
"I don't know you stupid bitch, probably out in the world doing something productive. Imagine the antithesis of your life - she's out there doing that!"

But today I received good news!!
Not only is she heading back to India due to "health reasons" (aka she can't hack it here), she's left our lab forever!!!!
My boss got to the end of her rope at the same time that Rezwana's supervisor did, and they both agreed that she wasn't accomplishing anything at all in our lab. So now the prof has to watch her every move back on campus, to ensure she isn't just mooching a paycheque anymore.

I'm all smiles.

For once I don't have to breathe through my mouth for an entire day straight.

Tired of waking up tired

Whenever I get home from work I feel incredibly tired.
I dunno what it is about this place, it just has that effect on me.

I can't say I've been sleeping much lately though, and a big reason for that is my old friend alcohol.

Two of our old roomies returned from South America last week, and crashed with us for a few days. They dragged us out to the bar on Thursday night, but I ducked out early. (As if 12:30 is early.) Like most normal people, I do have to get up on Friday mornings. Rat bastards...

At the bar that night our boy Pegs could barely speak, he was so drunk. We all did a dirty shot of tequila on James' dime. Nobody really wanted to do it bedsides James himself. Pegs took a half shot then threw the rest of it over his shoulder. Bender took it, then started drooling like an idiot back into his shot glass for two minutes. I just cringed with mine. James was unimpressed with our lack of masculinity.

Work on Friday sucked, even though I wasn't all that hungover.
But the night was a solid one. We hit up the Ceeps for old time's sake, and danced like fools to Kelly Clarkson and Katy Perry. As usual.
Bender, James and I bailed with a friend to get high, and left Pegs to his own devices. Turns out he got into our place through a window. We kinda forgot about him to be honest.
I was yelling at our friend's cat, calling it "Zherdev" all night long. As usual when i get near a cat...

Woke up at 6 am with Ben and James passed out in bed with me. Joy.
Apparently we were rocking out to Taylor Swift into the wee hours of the morning.

On Saturday we got rid of the boys at Ben's grandma's place, and then had to wait around all day for my wallet to get dropped off. Forgot the damn thing on a table when I got stoned...

That night we had a solid predrink with the crew on John, and ended up hittin Barneys. Not all that interesting, but I did get to see my old garage-mate from the summer. Farva stopped by to say hi, cuz we were supposed to have partied in the daytime but it never panned out.
His hand was all mangled from a fall on a beer bottle a few weeks back, and interestingly I cut my hand on a bottle at our predrink.
I have this handy little twist-off-helper-dealie on my keychain. Gomer's wife was trying to open his beer and couldn't, so i grabbed it and gave it a go with my device. Turns out the thing was on there really tight, and I ended up just shattering the glass off the top of the bottle. A piece about the size of a dime dug a good quarter inch into the pad of my index finger. I plucked it out right away, and the bastard bled like a mofo all night.
Stupid Sleeman Clear. Inferior shite.

The afterparty at Ty's made the night though. In a mix of about 10 of us, somehow 2 random girls showed up. They were cool and everything until we all came to realize that nobody knew who the fudge they were. Then they insulted a buddy of mine and I totally lost my shit on the one girl. hahaha. "Get the FUCK out!" I yelled, using huge arm gestures to indicate where the door was. Pretty hilarious. But they didn't leave, then 5 minutes later we were all talking as if nothing had happened. Can't really remember all the details (by any means) but we were boozing til about 5 a.m. Or so I'm told.

Ty kicked me awake at 2 p.m. Sunday, and I stumbled home with my fly down. Ran into KP and Em on the street, who politely informed me that I was a complete mess.

But it was such a beauty day that we ended up playing softball in the park for a few hours. James and I even felt compelled to smoke cigars and crush beers in the park. And until 5 o'clock or so I didn't eat a damn thing.

Had me a fat steak, and watched Broken Arrow that night. What a mint movie.

I had a horrendous sleep last night, and the snow and shit today just made the day that much worse.

I think it's time for a nap.

News

Haven't updated in a bit, gotta get on that more often...

This past weekend I got ridiculously drunk on Friday night, said some stupid things, danced to Katy Perry. Good times.

Then headed to TO for my step-mom's 55th at a fancy restaurant on Saturday night. Scaramouche. Interestingly, after the dinner I was watching sports highlights with the old man, and I saw the commercial for that new ap for the iPhone, the "dinner shuffle" or whatever.
And guess what came up on the first shuffle?!?! Why it was that very restaurant, Scaramouche. Weird...

I got to hold my niece for the first time that night. She's dead weight mostly. And she sleeps alot, which is boring.
Someone at the restaurant was also having a bday party, and one awkward woman sang "Happy Birthday"... only the lyrics were all wrong. In fact, it wasn't even the happy birthday song.
She just kept singing "Happy Birthday... Happy Birthday.... Happy Birthday!" Fucking bizarre.

This Monday I got all fancied up in my brand new lab coat in the Ivey atrium on campus for a set of speeches and a photoshoot. Unfortunately my lab coat was a XS in size, so I couldn't even do the pig up.
Tony Clement was announcing a $5 Million investment for a new partnership between Ivey and Health Sci. I had to clap and smile and run our cool machine and pretend to be happy I was there. Davenport was all fuckin smiles.
It was actually really good exposure for our little company, which only bodes well for my job security and the possibility of a raise. Mint that. My boss was even in a pic in the London Free Press with the "honourable" Mr. Clement.

What else is new...

The Pope has lost his fucking mind.

Our Science Minister kinda sorta thinks that God lives in mini-microscopic particles.

And Barack "El Duderino" Obama speaks in public as if he's having beers with buddies:

The Rezwana-due

So a couple weeks back, a prof from campus worked out a side project with my boss, and decided to send one of his masters students down to our lab for awhile. It's kind of a part-time thing where some work will be done on campus and some in our lab.
Anyway, her name is Rezwana.
And she is fucking terrible.

I consider myself to be a pretty good judge of character, and when my boss said to me after Rezwana's first day, "I think she'll work out just fine" I had some serious, serious doubts.

She's roughly forty I'd say, has some sort of background in food sciences, has at least two sons, and is short and fat. And fucking terrible.

First of all I noticed that she seemed baffled by the concept of a lab book. And it's showing right now, since she has very few records of the work she's done at our lab. Needless to say, my boss and I just shake our heads.

She's utterly useless without my boss holding her hand through ever step of this project, which is supposed to be handled primarily be Rezwana and the prof on campus. And if my boss isn't around for any period of time, she literally sits there doing nothing, or maybe she'll check her emails or something. Utterly useless.

She also just wanders around aimlessly if she's confused, rather than ask where something is, or how to use a particular piece of equipment. Plus she seems to be flat out stupid. Today she struggled with the lid of a bucket for about five minutes before asking me to help her open it. Turns out it had a locking mechanism (in blatantly clear view of anyone using said bucket) and I opened the fucker in about 3 seconds. What a goon.

And then there's the language barrier which is pretty rough with this one. Not exactly her fault, but still.

But worst of all is the smell.
Imagine garbage water mixed with some sort of terrible middle-eastern food, mixed with a soiled diaper and sour milk.
I felt bad saying anything to my boss until she said to me last week at lunch "Boy you really notice it when Rezwana's in the lab don't you". I laughed my ass off and we've joked about it since.
But it's not really that funny when she puts her stank-assed parka on top of my coat, leaving it unwearable before being washed again.

Honestly how do you handle smelling that bad? She just emanates this terrible stink all day long, and it fills the lab.
How did anyone decide to marry or fuck you? Shit.


I have an associate, more like a friend of a friend, who's name is Reza. Good guy, but he smells like crap too. A buddy of mine has labelled the stink "The Reza-due". Hence my name for the new stink, the Rezwana-due. (Aren't we clever??)

On top of all of this, she seems to feel that my desk is her place to set up shop all the fucking time. She has her own desk, but the odd time she needs to use my computer. But rather than use it and leave, she establishes herself there for hours on end. Get the fuck out of my chair!

And lately she's been claiming some sort of bizarre illness, though we've seen no symptoms at all. Apparently she's debating whether or not she wants to go back to her home country. I have my suspicions that she's in way above her head and needs a serious excuse to bail out of this whole "education" thing.

My boss is also getting pissed that Rezwana constantly wants a lift to an from campus, which is maybe a 10-15 minute walk of a 5 minute bus ride. Get a grip woman, normal people have to walk and ride the bus sometimes. Pull you shit together.


Today I said to my boss, "I think she really got you off your game, didn't she."
She responded with an emphatic "That's an understatement."

I wish it was Rezwana's birthday tomorrow.
I would buy her the following things:

1. Deodorant
2. Perfume
3. A plane ticket home
   

Fullstride wristshot from halfcourt with a cigar hanging outta my mouth...

This past weekend was a pretty solid one. Best in awhile actually, and it's definitely got something to do with the weather switching from pure shite to tolerable.
Sunday was actually a t-shirt-on-the-patio day. We rocked a couple of Caesars, but they weren't all that great. I can make a solid Caesar, and I kinda wanted to jump behind the bar to make my own. Get some skills, honestly.

Friday night started with my friend Em and I scoping out costumes for a 5-person flip cup team that we were putting into a tournament that evening.
We were pretty much stuck for any ideas regarding a team name, or even costume ideas period, but as soon as we walked into the Goodwill, I had a mad brainstorm.
After seeing the large rack of bright pink women's shirts, I decided that we should have four of us dress in pink and one in brown, for the epic team name of "4 in the Pink, 1 in the Stink"
I even found a wickedly terrible sweater made by "The Helen Keller Foundation of Jerusalem". Obviously I was geared up to wear that one.

Needless to say Em was not so pumped for that idea. And after several phone calls to other team members, and a change of venue to the ol' Value Villiage, my idea was deemed "too offensive" and officially murdered.

But another look down the women's shirt aisle gave me another brainstorm. We scoped out the most horrific looking women's turtlenecks and declared ourselves "Team Foreskin". Em got a nice rose-covered one, I got a pretty little number covered in turquiose flower-like things, Jmath ended up with the white and red snowflake look, we got Kris got a disgusting purple POS, and Ty was forced to wear a nice white one covered in candycanes and xmas gifts. Even had little penguins and snowmen on the cuffs and collar...

We looked like complete assholes. James had man-titties, since his shirt was so damn tight, and I actually looked somewhat like a tranny. Not flattering.

And this party was being hosted by people that we barely know, which was part of the reason Em didn't want the first team name to stand. What a pansy.

Anyway, there were 10 teams in the tourny, and I had very little faith in our abilities. For starters I'm terrible at chugging beer, so I had to rock the one thing that I can chug - red wine. I started out with a nice 13.5% Merlot and ened up on some terrible mixed bag of "house wine", whatever the fuck that means. Thank god that crap was only 7%.
Add to that James' terrible flipping skills, and the fact that we had two girls on our team (no offense), and I thought we were going to get killed for sure.

Turns out we made it all the way to the finals! I nearly puked in the semi's, but held 'er together. So after losing the first game of the best-of-five finals, we won two and were a shoe-in for the trophy. But that was the point at which Em decided to fall apart at the seams and start taking 3 decades to flip her cup. So we ended up losing, but it was a close second. And I was probably the drunkest asshole in the place, courtesy of my poorly chosen beverage.

In fact, at the bar afterwards, I was chatting up one of the girls who beat us in the finals, and used the line "your sister is cuter than you." I dont really remember saying that, but apparently she made me repeat myself, probably because she couldn't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to say something like that... then she walked away angrily.

Fastfoward to 10 a.m. Saturday morning and envision James and I crushing Caesars... I followed that with a nap, only to wake up around 1 for some catch out in the yard with the boys.
That led to garbage can ballhockey in the street, which is apparently a ridiculously busy little road these days. Who knew? We had a good go of it though, and Baldy and I scored a few mint goals to take the title (unofficially of course, those other hosers would never admit defeat).

We all dressed up in our St Patty's day uniforms, and went to Molly's for the night. We got nice and wasted, but there wasn't any green beer at all. I guess they're saving it for tomorrow.
The night was semi-filled with stupidity and drama with friends. But we had a great time.
I dropped yet another gem of a line a girl - "Your abs are cushy", after poking her in the belly. Not cool apparetnly, but I honestly thought she'd laugh her ass off at me when I said it. Girls are too worried about that kind of thing, she has a fine body. Fiiiiiiiiiine. hahaha


Anyway I bought her a drink and offered to take her to McDonalds to prove to her that she needed to actually put on some weight. So I hope I did reasonably well to recover, she's a really cool girl.

I grabbed an entire pizza from Georgio's for $20 flat, which soon became the envy of everyone in the street outside. The girl even had to ask her manager if she could sell me an entire pizza, which was funny in itself. I just pointed and said "gimme that whole thing right there".
Ended up passing out on Em's livingroom floor that night.

Didn't get much sleep through the weekend, so I'm pretty spent. It'll probably be an early night tonight.

This week looks busy, both at work and in the evenings, so hopefully it goes by fast in the lab and slow in the nights. I'm actually debating whether or not I wanna hit the road for a jog right now. Unfortunately my legs are sore as hell from ballhockey, so I'll probably just loaf around.
Fuck I'm outta shape.

So Jesus came to visit Canada today....

Betcha he didn't count on this:

(Not that it was Canadian or anything. Leave it an American to be that racist)

The minto from the real story has a wicked name though!

I read a quote in the Globe today saying that the first officer on the scene got on the radio for help and said,

"There's a man down. He doesn't look good," he says, referring to the disfigured Ms. Nash. "We've got to get this guy out of here. He's got no face."

The whole thing is horrible yet strangely intriguing. And also hilarious in its own way.

The lonely end of the rink

I just watched the Penguins lose to the lowly Islanders.
What a fucking disgrace.
Not to mention the two recent losses to the Maple Leafs, who are a complete joke these days.

I think there's a number of problems that have led to this sorry state of affairs, beginning with how well the team did last year. Let's face it, they overachieved. And now the pressure of repeating something like that is just weighing down a young team too much.

Having Whitney and Gonchar out for so long certainly didn't help, and both of those guys have returned quietly, without making much of an impact. Hopefully they step it up soon, cuz the clock is ticking.

Fleury is overrated. He doesn't look comfortable out there, he's perpetually injured, and he's getting lucky most of the time he does have good games.

More importantly is that plug they call Malkin. This douche thinks he can take on the entire opposing team each time he touches the puck. And it costs the Pens tons of scoring opportunities, which is something that doesn't show up on the old plus/minus.
They should've traded him for some solid guys rather than sign him to a contract. Just look at the way he collapsed last year in the playoffs. He gets hit a few times and then he's a ghost. Very European, I must say.

Get rid of the fucker, and to hell with the stats he puts up.

And that's all I have to say about that.

"Never have I seen a man so excited about deodorant"

Fuck I hate getting my second wind at 10 p.m.
Had a nap after work, lazed around all night watching hockey and playin Perfect Dark with Jmath, and now I get a full head of steam. I actually wanted to go for a jog earlier, but I was far too lazy. Maybe some weights will tire me out enough to put me to sleep. Not likely though.

Work was ridiculously busy again today, but I probably accomplished the most in a single day thus far at my job. Thankfully tomorrow will be more relaxed. I just know I'm gonna be dead tired cuz I'm so wide awake right now. Always goes that way it seems...

On the good news front, I found something so elusive today at the grocery store that I almost crapped my pants.

You see, about three years ago the good people at Gillette decided to stop producing my brand of pit stick. Needless to say, I was fucking fuming. At first I thought maybe just a few stores had run out of the stuff, but after looking for months I figured out that they had flat-out fucked me.
As most of you children out there in radio land know, pitstick is a very personal thing. I had settled into my very specific type and when they killed it I was lost. I had been raving for years (old man-esque) that I was going to write a letter to the company and chew them out. But my laziness got the best of me and I just pissed and moaned to anyone within earshot.

But today I found it - that unmistakable shape with that oh-so-sweet consistency of solid gel (none of that shitty goop that Gillette still makes for some fucking reason) and that oh-so-important word "antiperspirant" - but it was under the name Right Guard, and being pitched as a "New" product.

Eat me, that shit ain't new.
And ten to one says Right Guard is owned by the same damn people that own Gillette anyway.

But I can't complain, I've got my baby back.
And the next time I'm up at Loblaws I'm going to buy the entire shelf of the stuff, no word of a fucking lie. You just can't trust the bastards anymore.

So my bill at the beer store was $145...

Goddamn TD.
I've never had insufficient funds in my life.
But these bastards put a weeklong hold on my paycheque that I deposited last Friday, and my stupid landlord took out a G-note on tuesday for last month's and this month's rent. Pricks.

So my burrs had to go on the old mastercard.

Fortunately my rent cheques cleared by $1.37, which is my current balance (sans cheque).
Mint that.

Anyway, I'll have to mooch money for boozing tomorrow night. But I did have a gander at my change collection (terribly exciting I know) and found that I have $263.50. And that's not even including my little "Niglet" who holds all of my smaller coin-age. I have no rollers though.

So fuck.

In lighter news...

Changed the layout, like it better now.

And has anyone seen that Single Ladies music video by Beyonce?
James and I sat there and stared at this thing the other day without saying a word.
Who knew somethin as simple three girls (one borderline man-face) dancing in a round room couple be so mesmerizing??

For some reason it won't let me embed, so here's the link.