Graeme is a choke artist

Graeme makes for endless hours of fun. I just like observing his life. Last Saturday he agonized again and again over going to the Farmer's Market in the AM with this girl he digs. I had to laugh. He brought it up with me in a sort of nervous way, lamenting about the definition of the outing. Was it a date? No it wasn't a date because they weren't 'dating'. Were they just friends? One could hardly say that, since 'just friends' didn't go out of their way to go to the Farmers Market together, especially when they'd only been 'just friends' for a short time. Where us mere mortals may simply have not worried about it and gone to the god damned farmers marked without a complaint, Graeme got himself so worked up over it I thought he had an ulcer. He looked like he was going to puke before an exam. He was worried about saying something akward, and I didn't help him. Like a true 'just friend' I laughed and laughed, and in between giggles I reminded him that outings like this were nothing but a continuous stream of thoughts you shouldn't say, peppered by ones which were acceptable to vocalize. The game is to tell the difference, and you lose points when you: a) say something you shouldn't have and look like an idiot, or b) don't say something you should have said and instead leave an akward silence. We got him so worked up over the whole thing. Off Graeme went, and nearly came home with an ulcer after his afternoon of studying at the library. Turns out that was just appendicitis, but to the untrained eye the symptoms are remarkably similar. He didn't talk to the girl all weekend, as he was in the hospital (read previous post). After he got back he talked to whatsherface after a run in on campus, and after much overly concerned crooning and questioning, she started dropping hints that she was free for the weekend and tired of her friends. . . looking to do something different. She probably thinks there's something wrong with Graeme's ears too, but he heard the signals loud and clear. The problem is the transmitter. Graeme froze and didn't take the bait, and so walked away, likely leaving her with thoughts of "what's his deal, did he not have fun at the farmer's market?" which he did. This morning I found a note on the counter saying Graeme would be back tonight to go to the liquor store, and could he have a ride to the greyhound station on the way (which is in the opposite direction and three times as far away, but sure). He added on the note that he's such a Freeze that he met the girl again today, and again didn not take the bait. "Somewhere", he added "Someone is saying: YOU IDIOT." That someone is me.

Let's hope Graeme doesn't need anything surgically removed tonight, cause 103 is going out.

Update #2 - Resolution

So I just got back from dinner at the 'rents. There was a msg from Graeme's dad thanking me for taking him to the hospital. . . apparently he had appendicitis and the appendix was removed. He's in recovery now, which is fantastic, so we can go get our special little guy tomorrow sometime. Frickin' Graeme. . . kid's a goddamn handful.

update #1

So now Graeme's going in for surgery . . . exploratory. They apparently now have not ruled out the appendix, so they're going to have a poke around in there. I hope they find something rather than nothing. Graeme called and sounded a lot better, but that's because they upped the morphine dose I guess. . . He seems to have blankets and covers and so forth, so that's good. Let's hope all goes well and he's discharged tomorrow by noon according to plan.

Why am I up?

Let me tell you. So this weekend is Guelph's homecoming. Nothing really compared to the K town experience, but that doesn't stop us from having a different kind of adventure. So my friend Alanna came up from McMaster for the weekend, for the Ultimate Frisbee tournament Guelph is hosting. Derek, Graeme, Frankie (Derek's girlfriend) and I thought we'd show her a good time in Guelph after the game . . . We were here studying when in stumbled Graeme, complaining of abdominal pains that had him breathing heavily and doubled over. The WFR instinct kicked in and we started asking questions, knowing abdominal pain is the most nebulous thing, and so hard to diagnose. We got him to try to eat something, but walking around made it hurt that much worse. . . This is when we knew something was wrong. We called Telehealth ontario, a service whereby one can get free advice from a medical professional over the phone on what the bes tnext step would be, and the nurse on the phone agreed with us - get him to the Hospital ASAP. So there we were, Graeme, Alanna, Derek and I, sitting in the emergency room. They bumped Graeme to the front of the line, and for an hour and a half or so the three of us waited in the emergency room, looking at all the sad faces around us, wondering about our friend. Finally we got word he was going to be there for awhile, so after exchanging cell numbers with him (just in case he needed anything) we were off to salvage a few hours of fun just to say we did. We headed out to the ebar, drank and danced, and walked home. Stumbling it at 4:00 AM? Bad idea. Hours later (7:45 or so) Graeme called from the Hospital. He just wanted to be picked up. Derek and I groggily walked to the car, and in the harsh light of the cold autumn morning we drove through the deserted streets of Guelph. I walked in to Emerg, jumped the line, walked into the doors and found Graeme. He had been on morphine for his extreme pain, which apparently wasn't enough, and on top of it all, they had no idea what was wrong. The treatment at Guelph General was certainly sub par, as his IV drip slipped out twice as he bled onto himself, with only so much as an "Oops, I think that's okay now" from the nurse. He didn't get a real bed, or a blanked, just a cold examining room all night, and after all he'd been through all he wanted was to get home. So they pulled the IV out and he grabbed his perscription for T3's and limped to the car with us, pissed off, painful, groggy and tired, sent off with no more instruction or diagnosis than "It's not appendicitis, come back if it still hurts in 24 hours. I felt so
sorry for him. As soon as we got in the door Frankie was standing there with an apologetic "Sorry, I wish I was kidding" look on her face as she told us the Hospital had just called, they needed him back for an Ultrasound and blood tests, right away. Balls. So we got back in the car, beat our best lap time to the hospital, and I dropped Derek and Graeme off while I looked for a spot to park. No sooner had I paid for an hour of parking, Derek was walking toward me saying "He just went in, he said just go." So here we are, totally sleep deprived, wondering what the F shot is going on with our friend.

Alanna has to go play frisbee now.

Homecoming. . . so who won?

I'm sorry I'm so slow these days. . . Life is catching up. But enough about that. So last weekend was Kingston homecoming. Sweet christ on a cracker it was awesome. Got there Friday night and saw too many camp folk not to drink, so drank. Hungover Saturday morning, but that didn't stop us. Bacon and eggs at 9:40 AM, and by 10:40 we were at our friend Kate's for a pancake kegger. The Queen's engineers have this tradition of dying themselves purple with this medical dye. My god some of them are dedicated . So this is the kiddie pool with the purple dye. You have to heat the shit up for it to work. Yikes. Then the day flew by. Beer after beer, maintaining the old buzz. For those of you who have done this, you know this is an easy job until you get to around 3:00. That's when you realise you need lunch - BAD. So you eat your lunch, and that's when you realise how tired you are. If you choose to drink more and do some activity until the sun goes down (that's when your energy comes back) then you will be fine. If you choose to nap until then, god help you, that's like 3 days of drinking instead of two. You have to wake up and start alllll over again. Enjoy that. I got the worst of both worlds. I was at my friend Megana's house. I opted to drink, she opted to nap. The problem was she fell asleep on me in front of the TV, so I, not wanting to wake her up (yeah nice guy, I know) didn't move. For 2 hours I sat, still buzzing, watching "So you think you can dance". 2 hours man! I've never had to pee so bad in my life. When she woke up I basically ran outside to take a piss. It was surreal, I stepped outside and the orange glow of the sun bathed everything in a soft light. People were everywhere, playing frisbee in the street, throwing a ball around, most front porches had crowds. It was like a dream, any one of those people could have been your best friend. And also, you're drunk.

So that went on until about 11, when things got really surreal. We went to one of the literally hundreds of keggers that go on on this night. PRetty much every other door is open and you can walk in. Grab a cup off the lawn and they think you paid for beer. Honestly, call me a jerk, but if I want to check out three different houses, should that cost $30? Or should I just pay 10$ once. Exactly. So we go to the phys ed. house, which has a tradition, all the phys ed frosh have to do a naked run around the house. Apparently the guys had gone 45 mins before (big loss) and we missed that, but when we arrived, looking up into the window as we walked along the side of the house, we saw literally 20 topless girls in there. What the hell? This happens in real life? I thought this only happened in Tom Green's stories in 'Road Trip'. What was funnier was the reactions of the guys at the party to this. The whole backyard was packed shoulder to shoulder, and the girls were going to come out of the sliding glass doors at the back. The doors opened and the girls filed out, running to the right side of the house. All the guys on our side (the left) angrily yelled at each other "MAKE A PATH! MAKE A PATH!". So we parted like the seas, and sure enough the girls started filing through on our side. No I don't have any pictures. What kind of asshole do you think I am? After that little escapade we decided it was time to hit up Aberdeen. The street that is the core of the homecoming event, and it didn't disappoint. Shoulder to shoulder crowds, people on rooftops, fireworks, toilet paper wars. The cops were friendly this year, embracing the event. If they caught you with a bottle they'd trade you for a cup, which was nice, and they had first aid and water stations set up everywhere, so all in all it went off without a hitch. But man was that a huge crowd! As far as the eye could see down the street in both directions, just people. People there for the sake of being there, it's not like any other party I've ever been to, really, it's like being at a concert where you just talk to the people around you, and a lot more fights break out.

Cleaner Shrimp

So it's settled, I got one vote, and that was from Will, to name the shrimp after him. So here he is, in all his glory: Willsy the cleaner shrimp.


Look how proud he is, rearing his head and feelers like a little horse, showing us his wild side.

Neat little guy isn't he. . .

AAAAaaaaand we're back

And no, I am not superimposed in this picture. It was low light so I had to get Stu to use a flash. This is at my favourite campsite ever, on my favourite river ever, the Magnetawan, when it was at a 30 year record flow, making this sport safe to jump in to, which it never was. Moving on. . .
So August was good - led a few shorter trips - 6,7, 3 days etc. There are some great stories from those I will post intermittently as the nostalgia grips me. Life is really different right now considering my surroundings from last year haven't changed too much. Alaina and I broke up 2 months ago, on very easy terms, so honestly no hard feelings there. I don't know where the hard feelings went, it's kind of wierd really to break up after almost 3 years and not really be too upset about it, but we have a very mutual understanding of our positions, so that's that. Back to the old single life. I'm pretty happy with the situation, I think we're both happy we had the courage to get out before it got stale. Anyway, we still talk. Alaina is in Kingston, 3 hours away doing OEE, which is outdoor experiental education, it's a teacher's degree in the outdoor context, very cool. So anywho, there's that.

Derek Pieper, or D-Rock Pipes, or just D-Rock, or just Pipes, is a long time camp friend and this year's house mate. Very solid guy with some awesome stories. Probably more integrity than anyone I know. My other housemate is a guy Derek knew, named Graeme. Graeme and I have been hanging out the last little while, going out, meeting each other's friends, crackin' jokes, telling stories, stuff new housemates do. We get along. Graeme is from Vancouver, and so is our welfare case of the house. It's kinda hard to lug your own computer desk and shit from BC, so he slept on the floor with his computer from a week ago up until now. We all seem to have gained some strange posessions suprisingly easily since then. Jocelyn, our neighbour, asked me if I needed a kitchen table. I said no but that Graeme did need a computer
desk, so we figured maybe he could use that. Jocelyn then said she did have a computer desk at home, that it was just a matter of getting it in the horse trailer. . . I then made a joke about how he was so poor we was sleeping on his floor. Later that night, after dinner at the 'rents, I pull in and see the horse trailer backed up to the ledge in front of our houses, like it was a shipping/receiving dock. So what did Jocelyn's kind parents bring Graeme? A huge computer desk, a bed frame, box spring and matress included, a big cushy chair for our living room, a night table, and a sweet tall backed computer chair, with wheels, better than the little one with wheels which we thought was an awesome find on our front lawn. Not to mention the kitchen table which we kept anyway and it's 3 chairs. So we furnished our apartment this year by doing nothing, by simply saying okay when people asked us if we needed stuff.
See - this is Graeme. He's kind of a big deal around here. The ladies love Graeme. To the point that 2 OV's ditched their Guelph duties to come an collect him from the airport. Hot.

Oh - what strange posession did I gain? A saltwater aquarium. It's pretty badass, no big deal. It's actually Bob's, he subletted myr oom for the summer, and now he's off to see the world. It's a little too big to fit in a travelling backpack, so he left it here. I'm the proud new owner of a little cube of ocean floor. It's called the nanocube - I don't know why - but it houses some anemones, several species of coral, a very colourful and active brine shrimp, whom I will name (v0tes on what to name him?), 2 snails, and 2 hermit crabs. It's a neat little set up in there, and if any one thing malfunctions, I'm screwed.