A Weekend Well Spent

This past weekend was a bit different than what I've lately become accustomed to. Instead of spending it at home relaxing or going to watch a movie, the weekend started off with a trip down to Pearl Lounge. The occasion, Micheal Michael Motorcylce's birthday. With the passing of my grandmother a little over a month ago now, I hadn't really been in the mood to celebrate anything. However, after a long week and an even longer day at work, a drink was just what I needed. After an hour-and-a-half-long TTC ride from work, I arrived home at about 9:30pm, as usual. I received a call from Mike just a few minutes after stepping into my house, and was given roughly fifteen minutes to get ready. I managed to do it in twenty.

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It was indescribably cold outside as we were forced to wait in line, while also waiting for the last member of our party to arrive, plus one. It was the first time all of the guys had gotten together in a while. Not on the starting line up for the night; DeZilva and Angco. They missed a good time. Eventually, we escaped from the cold and made it inside. Somehow, the line of people waiting to check their coats, in anticipation of a drunken somewhat memorable night, was even longer than the guest list line we had been in, just a few minutes earlier. Most of us were able to get a head start on the drinking, as A.J took it upon himself to check all of our coats in. Obviously, our main purpose for being there is to get Mike as ridiculously drunk as possible, while enjoying a few drinks ourselves. The night goes as planned.

I ran into some people I hadn't seen in a while. It's always nice when you see someone you haven't seen in such a long time, and somehow still feel as if you had last seen them only yesterday. Some friendships never seem to grow old.

We stayed until the club began to close up, grabbed out jackets and left. As per tradition, we stopped off at the popular Jerk Spot to satisfy our hunger. Somewhere between there, and travelling back to the underground P2 parking lot, we managed to lose Mike. Luckily, he didn't wander too far off, and was found sitting on a park bench, staring into the sky. After having taken pictures all night, it's a shame that we missed that one particular photo opportunity. Joy was kind enough to be the driver for the night. We arrived back to Mike's house at about 4:30 a.m. Shane and Francis took about fifteen minutes to tuck him in to bed, took some final, very flattering photos of the birthday boy, and the night was over. I eventually fell asleep at about 5:00 a.m.

(I'm tired now. I'll finish this story later.)

My parents woke me up at about 8:00 a.m. It was the only Saturday that everyone had available to burry my grandmother's ashes. Sadly, she passed away a little over a month ago, and will always be missed.

The cold wind from the night before seemed to have carried over into the morning. We were all shivering as we tried to make sense of what the priest said. He was a middle aged chinese man whose accent was about as thick as the layers of clothing we each had on. I was puzzled for a moment when he asked God to accept her into his kingdom as we gathered to burry her "ass". It slipped my mind for second that we had all gathered that day, to bury my grandmother's "ashes". We each left a rose, and for last time, said our final goodbyes.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning up her now vacant apartment. It was like a museum of our family history sorting through old photo albums, letters, toys and books. I actually found a blank Kodak Beta video cassette, still in original packaging , with an Honest Ed's price tag on it. Honest Ed's Camera Department. All sales final. $6.99 each. By about 5:00 p.m., after seven straight hours of sorting through my grandmother's belonging and getting rid of a mountain of junk, we went to Swiss Chalet, had a great meal, and went home. Later that night, I made plans with Shane and some other people to rent Napoleon Dynamite. That never happened. Most of us, including myself, were still recovering from the night before. I fell asleep at about 11:00 p.m. and didn't wake up till about 2:00 p.m. the next day.

I woke up, went to Ikea to look for some shelves, stopped off at Food Basics to buy myself lunch for the week, and finally came home at about 8:00 p.m. I've found that by bringing my lunch from home, I'm actually able to save about eighty dollars each month. The downside is that I'm not nearly as satisfied with the amount of food I'm consuming, but I am eating much healthier now. That night, Shane, Mike, Francis and I went to AMC to watch "In Good Company". It was actually better than I had expected it to be. I stuffed my face with a huge bag of popcorn and an oversized Coke. It was satisfying. After the movie, we stood outside for a while, and laughed about Friday night's events. Poor Mike didn't remember half of what we were talking about. We assured him that he had a good time.

And that was my weekend, and my first real online blog. If you've actually taken the time to read all this, I'm glad I was able to keep you interested. Thanks for reading. I'll post again soon.