Month: October 2015

Most of you don’t know this but I’m best man for my friend’s wedding. This is his second marriage. I was at his first wedding but I wasn’t his best man for that one. I was just considered a close friend. This time around, I’ve moved up the ladder. Yay!

While I think it’s a great honour to be best man, it’s a role that I’ve never had before. I like to think I take these type of things seriously but when it’s your first time, you don’t have experience to fall back on. For example, I’m in charge of organizing the bachelor party. I’ve never done that before. About a week and a half ago, my friend gave me a list of dudes and date that he wanted the party to be on. I immediately got stressed because there were 30 names on that list. I’ve attended several stags and I’ve yet to see that many dudes on one. That immediately ruled out a few options because the group is so large. To boot, other one of the guys, I don’t know any of them.

In hindsight, I should have asked my friend for the list two months in advance so I had plenty of time to figure out what to do. I then discovered that people are terrible at RSVPing to things. I sent out an e-mail to all 30 dudes explaining what day the bachelor party was and that all I needed from them was just to reply with either a “yes” or “no” if they could make it. Some dudes responded right away with their answer, while others sent theirs a day or two afterwards. Unfortunately, even after about four days, two-thirds of the group hadn’t responded yet. After consulting with my friend, I decided to send a follow-up e-mail. I gave them 36 hours to respond, otherwise I’d just assume they weren’t coming. It was harsh but I needed to get a firm number so I could book a restaurant or a venue, knowing how many people would show. Some people did get their answer to me before the deadline but about 10 people gave me nary a peep.

In the end, it will be sixteen of us including the groom and myself. For the last week or so, I’ve been in touch with two professional bachelor party planners. We’ve been going over different types of venues and activities and price levels. I will say this, as with many things, if you have money, planning a bachelor party is way easier. If I were a millionaire, I wouldn’t even be stressing over this. It’s one of these things in life where throwing money at a problem actually does solve it and in a spectacular fashion I might add.

Alas, I am not rich, so I’ve had to settle for something less extravagant. I’ve tentatively booked a venue, food service, and “entertainment”. It’s within a reasonable budget but I think the guys will also have a good time. One of my biggest fears is that no one will enjoy themselves and I’ll be known as the dude who threw a terrible bachelor party.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be in the position to be best man again but if I am, I’ll be much better at planning the bachelor party next time.

The fire alarm went off twice while I was trying to sleep last night. The first was about an hour or two after I retired to my bed. The second time was closer to morning but still well before my scheduled wake up time. Both times I ignored it because my building has so many false alarms.

Later I discovered the alarms went off because someone pulled them in the parking lot of the retail complex below. When they built all three apartment towers and the retail, some genius decided to connect all the fire alarms. This meant an alarm in one building initially led to all the alarms going off in every building. Over the years, a massive amount of work has gone into separating the alarms. Most of this work is general red-tape BS as various groups and the city have chimed in to figure how to best fix the problem. As an example of how bad this was, a fire alarm in one of the apartment buildings originally triggered alarms in the movie theatre. Because of several firewalls, a fire in either of those places could not reach the other.

As I was reminded last night, the work is still not finished and many more false alarms are in my future.

In the video above, Sue Walker teaches us how to make toast from bread.

In recent weeks I wrote a post about someone farting at work. It happened again today. Sometime in the late afternoon, a massive wave of terrible smelling farts wafted over to my area. Just like last time, it was surprisingly not me who did it.

It was an awful smell and it lingered for far too long. Whoever is doing this is letting those bombs go with nary a toot so it’s difficult to know who’s doing it. I can rule out one of my co-workers around me because he was long gone for the day when this aroma assault started.

I’m afraid someone is gonna blame me for this. It’s not me!

Recently comedian Nathan Fielder appeared on Conan’s show. Fielder is from Vancouver and went to school in Victoria. He describes to Conan the jacket he wore for many years and how the Vancouver company that made that jacket had some interesting thoughts on Nazis. Interestingly enough, I also wore outdoor clothing from that same company for years as well. I stopped buying from them because I also heard about those Nazi stories and also because MEC had better styles. Fielder though, went one step further than I did.

Well, like an idiot, I worked until about 8pm tonight. As many of you know, I’m a temporary full-time employee, meaning I don’t get paid OT nor do I get bonuses. I can’t work every night until 9pm but that would be dumb. So why did I stay late tonight? While I did need to finish something, I mainly stayed because I was lazy. My ride was staying late and I also didn’t have anything to make for dinner at home. So by default, doing a little bit of OT solved both my problems. I got fed and I also got a ride home. Had I gone at the normal time, I would had to take transit home and then required to find out what I needed to eat for dinner.

I won’t be doing this too often though. Working for free is not a good idea!

Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien recently returned from a trip to Armenia. Conan took along some crew and his personal assistant Sona, who is Armenian. They were there for four days and taped some material. I believe Conan understands one of the things he does better (by a country mile) than any of the other late night hosts is his ability to make a remote segment funny and entertaining. As such, he stands apart from his peers as he’s traveled to Cuba and now Armenia to film for his show.

The material from his latest trip will air in mid-November. The above clip is just a taste of what’s to come!

I woke up this morning feeling exhausted despite going to bed at roughly the same time as usual. As I laid in my bed wondering what had happened, I briefly toyed with the idea of doing a “work from home day”. I’d sleep until 10am then start work remotely. As tired as I was though, that seemed like too much of a hassle, so I decided I still had to go to work.

Why was I so spent? Had I expended too much energy in following the federal election? Did watching Stephen Harper disappear from the national political stage tucker me out? Who knows. Perhaps it was a symbolic hangover of a not-very good decade of conservative rule.

I borrowed that phrase but it’s true. After almost a decade of steering this country off-course, Stephen Harper and his band of misfits has finally been cast off by my fellow Canadians. Following disappointments in 2006 and 2011, I was worried that Canadians had forgotten what made this country so great. Today was a sign that you can only push them so far before they reject the perverted vision Harper had for this nation. I lost $100 tonight but I would say it was the best way to rid myself of $100 in recent memory.

Over the course of the next few days, I will lap up the tears of those puzzling Harper supporters, who somehow drank the Conservative Kool-Aid with such mind-numbing vigour. If Schadenfreude could sustain a person, I might not have to eat for weeks.

As you can see above I did not want to tempt fate. I’ve never wanted to lose $100 as much as I do now. By this time tomorrow, I hope that money (and more) won’t be returned to me.