Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades

What if the horseshoes keep falling out of your ass?

So Friday night a bunch of us left for NY to go skiing. It was like we entered another fucking world. At the border, the local dialect made the language barrier almost unbearable. Francesco was driving his pimped out Jetta with a box of 10 inch subs in the back. For those of you sandwich artists, those are speakers. We pulled up.

"Where y'all headed?" (we're 1.5 fucking hours from guelph, y'all?)

Francesco, trying to say Canandaigua (pronounced canon-daga) "uuhhh. . . Can-an-daiiii-guaaa?"

The guy looks nonplussed "What y'all doin there?"

"skiing."

"Citizenship?"

"Canadian"

"ID please, hand them to the driver"

"Francisco?" (as in san fran)

"uhh - yeah"

"Where you born?" cocking one eye now, suspicious of the italian accent

"Montreal"

He lets it go, now he asks martin and I our names

"Umm - bree-anne?"

Bryan says "uhh, that's bryan".

He looks at us without a shred of trust, hands our passports back "have a good one"

We pull off the I-90 to find out that the Tim Horton's (chalk one for Canada)/Arby's combo place isn't open at 9:45 on a fucking friday night - OFF A MAJOR INTERSTATE. What country is this? They don't take debit, their payphones are antique, and all the arcade games are from the 80's. We are 10 years in the past. The building is new, but everything inside is old. We keep driving, pissed and confused. We pull into Canandaigua and walk into the Econo Lodge where they told us they'd accept are money at par. They did - twice. The lady was unfriendly. We paid for all the rooms, including those of the people we were waiting on (one more car was lost). We walked across the parking lot to the local Denny's and found ourselves in another world. I felt American. I was surrounded by over 200 high school kids, just hanging out, driving the waitstaff insane. At 11:00 at night I ate a big greasy burger with a side of fries. Onion rings were on it, drizzled in some kind of liquid mayonnaise. Ick. Martin sat across from me, beatin his head against the proverbial wall trying to down his fourth piece of french toast with his third shot of syrup. He ordered the french toast slam, and it absolutely spanked him. He was delirious, rationalizing how he could do it, but if he did he wouldn't ski the next day.

We finished what we could and hobbled back. As we went out the door we ran into the others. They said they'd just paid for their room. . .but - but. . .so did we. We all headed back to the Econo Lodge where the lady was as mean as ever. Francesco was as tactful as I've ever seen him in trying to explain that we just wanted to know if there was a discrepancy. He asked for a pen, paper and a calculator and went through all the numbers with her. The problem was that the lady couldn't do math, and she was getting more agitated by the minute. It was like reasoning with a violent drunk. It didn't matter what we said, it was the fact that we were talking that drove her bonkers. She got more and more defensive, until almost in tears "I don't know why y'all are blamin me for everything." Something we were definitely not doing. "All's I got is the money you gave me right here, it's all Canadian. I'll call the cops and then they can look at the security tape and sort it out." She kept advancing with the cop threat until Francesco calmly stated "I don't know why you want to call the police, but I'm sure they'd like to see some receipts." That shut her up. Finally it was sorted, she owed us 2 bucks. The next day the owners figured out she owed us about $400. Fucking lady. She didn't do it purposely, she just couldn't count. Not even a guy with a PhD could figure out how to reason with her and calm her down. A PhD in neuropsychology. Later that night we sat in our room threatening to call the police on each other. The 8 of us, drunk, laughed our asses off at the thought of her doing amphetamines in the back to take the edge off. That's funny to addictions researchers. . .

The skiing was great, the place was nice and tucked away. I survived off disgusting burgers and dogs, understanding the obesity problem more and more by the second. On the way home we picked up beer and beef jerky, (when in Rome) at the local convenience store. I had to laugh at the site of my research supervisor jamming it in next to his speaker system and covering it with a coat. He was so excited to drink Red Dog, which he referred to as "uncommonly smooth beer" all weekend, drunk or not. Priceless.

The drive home was unevenful, no issues at the border. I immediately got to working on my presentation for today, which I just finished. It went swimmingly I must say, so I am happy. I also got an email on the speaker for this Friday's Biomed seminar (I was under the impression it was me) saying that it was another dude. Remember when school was closed and ice covered everything? That set us back a week (sweet!) So that means instead of stressing from now till Friday, I will go have drinks at trivia tonight at the Keg.

See I was close to presenting this week, but close only counts when horseshoes fall out of your ass. Or hand grenades. . . I could only imagine how damaging that would be if you didn't move in time.

In the words of Derek and I "it appears something has toasted the mechanism."

Random pictures of things: Pieper is running for CSA Academic Commisioner, vote for him if you can, watch his video before it's removed here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1jjFdQpe4Ww

the other is of spanky the bear out in front of the arts centre. . .like you didn't know that.

Anyway, things are looking up. Come to our party on Saturday. Yank, stay in Costa Rica, if this Red State scourge is bleeding northeast to Maine it may be worth it to get your parents the fuck out of there and set up shop in Canada, or in San Jose. You know I always support you when you take 'yank flak' but these muthafuckas was trippin'!

I'm going to call the police.