Gloating! Entry! Snow! Boarding! Jp's! Birthday!

I've not said this in a while, but this weeks entry is going to be a bit epic. So hold onto your hats and other loose fitting items of clothing. I'm feeling upbeat this weekend, so this entry is going to be smug. If you don't like me stop reading now or have a bin handy to be sick into.

Right, first off, I've not mentioned Joeys in a while, not since I was miserable about getting extra hours and having a 40 hour week. The reason I've not mentioned it is because all has been going fairly smoothly with the exception of last weeks bollocking. The extra hours and tasks I've had turned out to not be as much of a hastle as I expected. They pushed me, and I managed to do what they asked. Plus these days I've realised I can do the job on little sleep and a raging hangover, which takes all the pressure off. Its hard work, but not stressful. If I can't sleep at night, I don't worry that I won't be able to concentrate at work like I did at Eurocopter. Which means I sleep much better at nights. Oh, sweet Irony! Anyways the point of this rambling is... in a couple of weeks I will no longer be a dishwasher, and will be upgraded to a line cook, in my first promotion, in history, ever. I've been enjoying working there lately, I'm still learning new things, and my passion for food far out ways the passion I ever had for the micromanagement of bolts for helicopters. Even the dish washing is kind of fun. I can now unload a tray of 12 dishes from the machine in about 6 seconds. I don't even know how I do it, its just an automatic reflex. I can also roll crispy mash at a speed of 144 crispy mash an hour. Perfect. Uniform. 2 Oz crispy mash. That's the same speed Tiego rolled at, but his crispies were ugly and overweight. But he can still load a the dishwasher far faster than I can. So there is room for improvement.... not that it matters because I will be cooking appetizers and manning the pans soon.

So a break down of the week. Monday didn't start to well, a pair of new work shoes I had bought turned out to have no grip what so ever, they were so slippery that I could slide my feet apart and back together again while stood still. I decided to stick with them anyway. Big. Mistake. Later in the day while carrying a cup of coffee back to my work area I slipped over, and spilled a freshly brewed, no milk added, cup of coffee over my forehead, resulting in an impressive burn that lasted for the week, it looked like it might blister and so scar, but luckily it didn't, but I did get the piss taken out of me for a couple of days until the attention was drawn to Tito's lack of work and they moved back to him. Monday was also JP's Birthday. And as is the great tradition, spanning back a whole 2 months into history, I made a cake and some food, and we had drinks at mine, before heading out for a couple of drinks. JP's cake was banana flavored with Orange Chocolate icing, it tasted pretty good... but I can't say it looked to good. It was meant to be the bat symbol, but was barely recognizable. I wanted to write "Yay for Jon Paul" on the top. But after a icing writing test it became clear that "LULZ" was the best we were going to get. Rosie splashed some cash on Birthday presents for JP, all purchased from the dollar store. The best present being a mini poker set, including cards and chips. The worst being a stretch arm strong like bear that turned out not to stretch very far at all. Me and Rosie managed to pull one of his legs clean off, causing hundreds of (probably toxic) beans to spill out onto the kitchen floor. After a quick clean up we headed out for a couple of drinks and a game of pool in gastown before heading home as we all had work the next day. Tuesday. I read some book. Wednesday. I read some book.

Thursday after my shift finished, me and Kelvin (one of the guys I work with, who's nicknames include Special K, Absolute Zero (that's mine)), his hobbies are sword fighting, martial arts, he likes action films and doesn't like music, I'll be honest, we don't have a lot of common ground, but he's a really nice guy. We went to watch Ninja Assassin at the "movie theatre". It was a pretty crappy action movie, the special effects weren't that special, and the acting and script was dire. My favorite line from the film was "How did you know my dress size?" "Because your heart is special" a guy in the audience let out a Ha! to that. But Kelvin enjoyed it, and the love story that was meant to give the main character that dark edgy feel was actually a bit moving. 4/10. D-. See me. After we went back to Joeys into the bar area and had a couple of drinks. Then a couple of the servers came over and joined us, we had a donkey Kong shooter, and a pitcher of apple sangria, this left me feeling pretty merry on the walk home, but gave me a raging hangover the next day.

Friday! I survived a insanely busy day at work, as were now getting Christmas parties, Christmas shoppers, and the beginnings of the 2010 games tourists. On the bright side, there is no danger of me getting cut and sent home. After work me and JP went and bought the last of the Snowboarding clothes we needed. I managed to find some snow pants for $40, which is $70 cheaper than the next cheapest pair I could find. They are far to large, and make me look like a toddler in one of them all in one coat things, but they would do the job if it turns out I only ever go once. After our shop was complete we went to the Roxy Burger for a ... Burger. I had the tuna one again. Because it tasted amazing. Afterward I headed home and got an early night in anticipation of having to get up at 6:55 on a SATURDAY! to go snowboarding. I got to sleep about 11:00 and slept well with the exception of getting a text at midnight from bloody Rosie Brewster.

SATURDAY! I actually woke up at 5:30 because I was so excited to be going on an adventure again. I stayed in bed till 6:30 before admitting defeat and making some porridge, and ate it while watching the snow report on the weather channel to get into the spirit of things. JP arrived at 7:10 looking tired, this being because he had 3 hours sleep, not because he was excited, but because he is rubbish. We caught the bus and watched the sun rise as we headed over the bridge to North Vancouver and the base of the mountains, before hopping off at a random mall to get a bus run by the mountain, more suited to the weather conditions. Which turned out to be an old school bus, painted bright blue with massive snow tires, like something from an endothermic version of mad max. The bus slowly weaved up the mountain, being overtaken by roughly 400,000 cars. Before depositing us, squinting into a clear sunny day, with added snow reflection... Who bought sun glasses? No one. After wondering around aimlessly trying to find out what we were meant to do for a bit, we sorted out renting the board and boots, and turned up for our lesson. Our tutor, Eric turned out to be English, continuing the great tradition of ski resorts only employing people from at least 2 time zones away. After showing us how to strap our leading foot into our board he showed us how to push ourselves along with one foot, and then place the other foot onto the board unstrapped to get from A to B when not on a slope, a bit like skateboarding. Every time I tried to slide along the board would start to slide down the very slight incline we were on and not in the direction I had pushed, standing on it felt like you were constantly going to fall off, if I was like this now, how the hell would I ever get down a steep slope? I had a bad feeling about this. When we finally arrived at the slope he showed us how we could basically use the snowboard slidey-parallel-to-the slope technique to break our way the entire way down the hill. Then we did the entire thing again facing backwards. After a while we were managing to do wide zigzags down the slope. The next mission was trying to board the tow rope back up the hill. On the nursery slope there is no ski lift, just a giant tow rope that goes to the top of the run, that you hold onto and it pulls you along. The frightening thing is, that to board the rope you have to have one foot unstrapped so you can push yourself up to it, then you have to ride one foot free to the top, meaning if you fall over and the board flies out in some interesting direction, your ankle bend in new interesting ways to, and unlike ski's your boot is strapped, not clipped in, so when the maximum possible interesting angle is reached it won't just pop out the board. But after a couple of attempts we got the hang of it, and before long the winch minder was shouting encouraging slogans at us as we boarded. By the end of the day I could kind of slalom down the nursery slope, and hopefully next time I go, we'll be able to perfect slaloming enough to get us onto some proper runs. I was worried I wouldn't be able to pick up boarding as quickly as my co-ordination is shocking. But its actually all about balance, and its the kind of balance that you don't think about. Not balancing beam balance, but recovering from a slip on a slippery floor balance. Some deep part of your brain from when your a lizard is going "Hang on, you appear to be falling over on some kind of slippery slope, I'll try and keep us upright, if you can suggest any leg or arm inputs that might help us not hit trees and children that would be cracking. PS I'm hungry and cold". Some times you would look down and go "How the hell am I doing this?". But I think it is actually easier than skiing, and it feels like you have a lot more freedom of movement, and, as a beginner, when you get to the bottom of a slope, the ability to just unlock one foot and push yourself along is so much easier than trying to edge up a slope slowly when your trying to board the evil tow rope.
By 4pm me and JP were feeling pretty battered and bruised, and had cold feet and so decided to head home. When we got back we decided a meal was in order, and so returned to Templetons for the first time post rat. And it was as good as ever, they had a homemade white chocolate cheesecake with raspberry and almond that I had after I had eaten some vegan chili. It tasted. Marvelous. After I headed home feeling pretty tired. Only thing was, I couldn't sleep because of all the caffeine and sugar in the cheesecake. So lay awake listening to Blackmail (now my 4th favorite band according to Last.fm) Every time I closed my eyes I could just see visions of snowboarding, and the feeling of motion. Similar to the experience I had after Diving, and my first day at both Eurocopter and Joeys, I guess its your brain trying to work out how to adapt to what happened that day, and deal with it if the experience crops up again.

sunday. I woke up around 8ish and got up, made pancakes, had a coffee and cigarette, put my washing on. Around 12 I got a text from Rosie saying she had bunked of work and we should go to 'Valu Village', a charity shop super store a few blocks west of me. Rosie finally pitched up at 2 and we got the bus down to Commercial drive to have a look around. Value Village is perhaps the best clothes shop in Vancouver.... nah, actually it is the best clothes shop in Vancouver. Its the size of a matalan, but all the stuff in there is second hand. But unlike most Charity shops a lot of the stuff is branded, and in newish condition, and dirt cheap. Rosie found me a Threadless
Tshirt for $2 and I found a cracking woolen buttoned tank top for $2, that I like to think makes me look like a 50's Journalist/poet/hipster/grandad/twat all rolled into one. I'm going to bring them back into fashion all by myself. After me and Rosie walked up Commercial drive, a place I really should have already been by now. Its full of little boutique shops, and independent cafes and bars. We found a cheap Sushi restaurant and ate there, before browsing through some of the shops. That night there was also an amazing sun set right behind the downtown skyline. The weather has been really good this week, bitterly cold, but clear and NO RAIN! Its made a massive difference, and I've fallen back in love with this city again, afterwards Rosie headed home and I also returned to my humble abode. Sorted washing. Packed work bag. Pasta. Bed.

Quote Time

Burnt Forehead special!

Tito:- "Greg, I dare you to eat a spoon of Cinnamon, apparently its impossible."
Me:- "Nah I've done enough damage to myself for one day"
Tito:- "Greg Likes Cinnamon In His Coffee!"

Corder:- "Hey Greg how.. Wooooah! Holy Fuck! What happened to your forehead?"

Ski Rental Guy:- "Jesus, looks like you had a nasty fall out there and hit your head?"
Me:- "Nope, that was an earlier adventure this week. A burn from Coffee."