Fire. Fire! FIRE!

Today, at work, we had a fire. An electrical fire. In the garage. One of the deep-freezes decided that it had had enough, and the wires coming out the back of it started to burn. You know that weird smell that you get from an electrical fire? We noticed that smell, so Bobby, Danny, and I had poked around in the garage looking for the source of the stink a couple of minutes before the flames started. Danny actually told us he thought it was coming from behind the freezer, which is good, because we pulled it away from the wall, which meant that all of the exposed insulation behind the freezer didn't catch on fire as well. We put it out with minimal fuss, and then we used Brett's ATV to pull the freezer out of the garage.

I should have called Brett or Joe to see what our insurance is worth before we put the fire out. That could have been our chance to turn a tidy profit out of that dump. Seriously though, if that had happened in the middle of the night instead of at two in the afternoon, that whole place would have burned to the ground. I wasn't even supposed to BE at work today, for fuck sakes. This was supposed to be my first day off in nearly two weeks, and I still wound up being there for almost 6 hours. This job is beginning to seriously affect my ability to enjoy myself, and that is simply not acceptable. After this weekend, I'm going to stay as far away from that place as possible for a day or two. I gotta unwind.

T.

I was gone but now I'm back

I wasn't really gone, I was just busy. I don't know how many people actually read this blog, and to be honest, I don't really care, because this blog's only function is to give me somewhere to brag about how awesome I am. Still, it HAS been a while, so I feel that I should tell you why. Have you ever sat down and considered what happens when someone really lazy has WAY too many things to do, and not enough time? What happens is, he doesn't blog for a while.

I helped open a bar. That's a lot of goddamn work. Those of you who know me well, know that I'll always work as hard as I have to, but no more. That's awesome most of the time, but right now it sucks.

So. In 4 days, 5 dudes opened a bar, basically from scratch. The dudes are Brett and Joe (the owners), Bobby (the bar manager), Morgan (who is technically not a dude, since she is a chick), and Me (awesome). And somehow, we slapped this ridiculous venture together, and Brett and Joe have a lot on the line financially, and the whole fucking thing is being held together with duct tape, hope, Brett's force of will, Bobby and Morgan's hard work, Joe's phenomenal ability to worry, and my total mega-awesomeness.

Brett is a Cop. Joe is a Fireman. (If Bobby came to work in a headdress, we'd have a Village People cover band.) I'm not entirely sure what Morgan does, Bobby is working on a Master's degree in education. My deal is that I don't think too much of my chances for getting into Journalism at the U of R. I'm on the "wait" list, the name of which really bugs me, since I'm really impatient.

We hired some people, and I say "we" even though I didn't actually hire anybody yet. I do have some help in the kitchen, since Brett's cousin Terry, who's a good guy, wanted to work in a kitchen and has experience. (I got an application from a guy who is just finishing up a cooking course at SIAST, but has never worked in a kitchen. I don't want to hire someone with no experience. But I don't care whether or not they've got any formal training. Probably because I never had any.) We decided that the best training is on-the-job training, and some of our waitresses had never waitressed before, which was an adventure. And somehow, the whole shit-show went off without a hitch, and we had a great weekend, and we give every impression that we'll be a success. But there's still a lot we don't know. And we havn't even broken our kitchen in, since very few people know that we've made an attempt at running a restaurant that kids aren't allowed into. We havn't had to deal with moving large amounts of food out of a not-at-all organized kitchen, which will be a problem later, but not later enough.

The girls that we hired are pretty hot, and because of the extremely faint possibility that one of them will read this, I'm not going to say anything bad about any of them, unless they turn out to be bitches, and then I'm going to let them have it. In my blog. Which, I guess, they wouldn't care about whatsoever.

Speaking of letting people have it, I have a story to tell you. Last night, my friend Lori hit me right in the nuts. Hard. What happened was, I was standing at the top of the stairs on the deck at Lori's house during Danny's birthday party. Lori ran up the stairs, and since I was standing with my legs apart she decided that she was going to reach through my legs and slap me on the ass from the front, which no one has ever done to me before. Turns out that it hasn't been done to me yet, since she hit me square in the berries, not on the rump. And for the first time in my life, I laughed at MYSELF for getting hit in the balls. You always laugh at someone else when it happens, but you never think it's funny when it's you. Well, almost never, I guess, since it was pretty fucking funny.

This job actually has me a little stressed out. What I need to do is make a list of all the things I need to do, and then do them. This is harder than I make it sound, since it will be a long and miserable list full of boring things that no-one could possibly enjoy. We'll get through it, I know, but I honestly wonder whether or not I'll be able to do this job the way it needs to be done. And I'm wondering whether or not it will all be worth it. I'll keep you posted.

T.

I'm going to win some money.

So, Devin, Garson, and I entered the Kenaston Hockey Draft, and it turns out that we're total geniuses, because WE HAVE THE ONLY ENTRY TO WITH ALL 32 PLAYERS THROUGH THE FIRST ROUND! You need to understand something, here: the Kenaston playoff pool gets roughly 6000 entries every season, and our entry was the only one that got through the opening round without losing a single guy. That's basically unheard of, and it means that we're pretty much a sure thing to finish in the money. The first round was a disaster for pretty much everybody but us, because the top 4 teams in the West were all eliminated. And it turns out that Dev and Garson and I were the only people who picked nuthin' but underdogs! Yay us! This is just further proof of what I've been saying all along: I'm a total genius. I can't take all the credit, though. I thought it was a stupid move taking Edmonton to beat Detroit, but I was absolutely thrilled to be wrong about that one, since my being wrong gives me a shot at 1/3 of the $20 000 grand prize. If we win the big one, I'm renting a pontoon boat and a keg, and y'all are invited to help me drink 'er and sink 'er, not necessarily in that order.

I don't want to sound like it's money in the bank; things could still go south if Anaheim or Buffalo manage to get into the finals. But I don't think much of Buffalo's chances against Ottawa, and I think Colorado should get by the Ducks fairly easily. So cross your fingers, cheer for the Senators and the Avalanche, and maybe, just maybe, you can come to my victory party.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Ain't nobody dope as me,

T.