Then other times, when you have a horseshoe up your ass, you catch bullets in your mouth and spit them back

So - resolution. Let's start with the past and work our way to the present. Just like life. When did we talk last?Ah yes! Drunken idiots and posters. Well let's leave off from there! So my poster was pimped, I worked so hard on it! Wanna see it? I'll show you since no one else got to. . . Long story short, I got to the poster seminar and eveyrone's poster but mine printed out. I worked so hard on it. My supervisor didn't seem to much care, because unbeknownst to me that was not the day they were being marked on, but still! It was like I was underdressed for a party and my name wasn't on the guest list. But then I went into the party anyway, and it lasted from 8:30 in the morning till 4:45 in the afternoon. A gruelling day of seminars on air pollution. People barely looked at the posters anyway, but I was still bitter. I sent mine in as a jpg and a corel file IN CASE anyone had any issues printing it. I guess I dind't have a back up plan for when the village idiot down at environmental biology that runs the printer forgets to actually print a poster.

Okay now it works

I tried to write this entry a week ago and it didn't work. I'll try again now even though I have ZERO time. The longer I wait the less entertaining it will be for both of us. So last weekend (after posters) Graeme and I went to Jess' for a bathrobe party. The party was actually being held for George, one of my TOX students. Yes - what a tangled web we weave.

I figured if it was going to be at Jess' there was no conflict of interest. . . despite the fact that all night I had the authors of the papers I was marking coming up to me telling me how awesome their paper was going to be. . . then there was the part where I demanded that one of the students ditch his shirt. He was wearing it under a bathrobe, to be fair, and that just wansn't right. That is how I knew I was hammered though. There was also another part where I looked over and a girl I barely know was taking a picture in a direction more generally mine than anyone else's, and I can't help but think it was so she could go home and say "see, that's my TA, he's drunk." Or maybe she's going to blackmail me with it. I don't regret it though, we had some boat races, it was fun drinking with and against my students. The end of the night was classic though. Most of the TOX crew was gone, luckily, but word still got out apparently so it doesn't really matter. So there was this dude walking around with a couple of George's beers tucked in his arms alongside a poorly constructed funnel. Sarah, George's girlfriend, had but put George to bed a little earlier because this wise guy kept taking his beers against George's will, and there was going to be a fight. Apparently this guy has a history of making trouble wherever he goes. I can't see why Jess still invites him, but in the words of her "well he's our friend, we can't just break up with him right?" I guess that's the difference between us Jess.

So fuckface is walking around with these beers when Sarah comes up to me and asks "can you please get those away from him, they're George's and he won't let them go."

I politely approached him and asked whose beers they were. He lied and said his two friends gave them to him. 5 minutes of conversation made me more confident that he knew that I was aware of his lying and I gradually became more assertive until I had one of the beers in my hand, he was saying "do you got a fucking problem with me?" and I was saying "I think you should stop being such a douche bag and just put the beers back."

He was steaming mad now, he wanted to fight but couldn't bring himself to do it. Graeme was beside himself with glee watching this guy writhe in his own anger but not working up the courage to back his words up. He was on the sidelines swingin away, like he was about to kick some ass. Fuckface was busy walking off his rage around the house while we had some laughs on the couch. I realised he was going to pick the beer back up so I told Graeme to drink it, and he obliged. This is the best part. We're sitting on the couch, sprawled, I've traded graeme for Jess' bathrobe, which I am now wearing. I'm sitting there in my pink bathrobe, enjoying the last cold one of the evening, when happy clappy has finally worked himself into enough of a rage "I'm going to fucking say something to him, I'm going to fucking say something" that he walks over to me and points at me as I sit on the couch, listening attentively.

"Before I go, I just want you to know something. I don't care what the fuck you think."

This is when I start laughing. When the giggles subside enough I say "but you just proved yourself wrong by talking to me, if you don't care then why tell me?" Now he's seething, but he talks right over me "and - AND - you're a fucking homo."

Now I'm really laughing.

Jess is laughing.

Graeme is laughing.

I ask him if that's really even an insult any more, and what decade it is, and he stomps off, pissed. His friends are dragging him out the door, and right before he leaves he storms back in and bats the lampshade so hard the light goes out. We laugh some more and the front door slams. It was absolute gold. Graeme still brings it up almost every day. "Just OWNED with intimidation, do you know how hard it is to intimidate a drunk guy!?"

We came up with a bunch of other great responses to "you're a homo" like "sorry I don't date fat guys." But I think that would've started a fight for sure, no?

Here is where the horseshoe is up my ass. I walked into the office of the dept head of biomed here. We'd scheduled this meeting over three times due to schedule conflicts and him missing the meeting completely. I walked in thinking "today my life will change." I didn't know if it was for the better or not, or by how much. After all, chances were I'd be in school longer than expected now. Probably I'd get funnelled into another lab and might not like the work there either right?

Enter horseshoe.

I sat down, and for the first 15 minutes the head went on a tirade about how the way the MSc is organized is rediculous and not conducive to sending people onward from there, and that he sympathizes with my position and something needs to be done. Then he talked about how things work in europe. I was happy he sympathized but what does this mean to me? He then let me in on a little top secret secret. Yeah that's right. They are starting a new program up here this summer. 1 year master's, mostly course based, with 4 months of lab work in it. You get flexibility for your courses and your lab, and you're out in a year. Some of the course I took would already count. I am not behind, in fact I will finish on or ahead of schedule, and will likely be the first person ever to be enrolled in the program. WTF!? I could not have fucked up more conveniently. I walked out of that meeting laughing my ass off. How did this happen? Apparently I had an ace up my sleeve. Or a horseshoe up my ace. Ass.

Lucky?

In other news, the above picture is of a snow shelter we've been periodically working on just off the cow path. It's therapeutic, and pretty soon we'll be able to crawl right inside it. . . The bottom pic is of Couse and I deeply in love. I think this was about 1 hour or less after I got off the van from the attawapiskat. Hence I looke like cooked leather from 16 hours a day of direct fucking sunlight. Also i'm drunk. We had a nice exchange of 3 or 4 emails yesterday, and we are happy neither of us is going to camp. See you don't want eras to continue without you in them, and so now we are ending our eras together. This is facilitate any independent canoe tripping that will happen this summer. Word on the street from Deb is we might be doing one in early June. Alanna is apparently in? (that's the girl in this picture). Hey Deb, why don't you send me a funny one of you. . . You need more exposure on here. Couse, I hope you are in too.

That is all.

Wait no it isn't

Let me append this now, since this entry is constantly under construction. Alanna, you are not just the girl in this picture, you are so much more than that. You have lit so many moments in my life, like the time Deb and I were canoeing and you almost decapitated us with a water ski rope by navigating the 3 feet between our cedar canvas canoes. Here is a picture of you paddling gracefully into the fading dusk light of lake Kabakwa.. .

On that note, let me introduce Alanna. Alanna and I have been going to camp together for quite some time, but have never really gotten to know each other until the last little while (summer). We were both trippers, and even lived in the same cabin. When things got lonely around camp and I was the only guy left in my cabin I moved in with all the girls. Why you ask? Why would you ask that question? Anyway so we had a blast making fun of children, fixing boats, exchanging stories, getting hammered, and doing other various things that trippers and camp friends do on a regular basis. Alanna always says she reads my blog, but I guess you gotta piss her off before she actually writes something. Well Alanna, let me take this opportunity and show everyone what a big deal you are by inviting you with this permanent, digitally immortalized invitation to our place this saturday. . . We are going to have people over around 9:30 Saturday night, want to come? C'MOOOON. Bring Mackie, I'll tell Kilmer, he's in St. Catharines, maybe something can be worked out. You haven't been here yet this semester. Now I know I said I'd come to Hamilton some time, and I know I didn't last semester, and I know I said I probably never could because of school, but I just told you what changed with school, and so after this week all the craziness of presentations is over, and a trip to Hamilton is not out of the question. . .like that will bribe you to come to Guelph! Seriously though, do it. I'm going to invite the camp crew here.

Bob and Willsy, you're invited too - so is Mack. Sorry I have to make it an afterthought like that, Alanna is kind of a big deal.