Any Bet's On The Next Time I Get A Call From Guido?

They say that instances of extreme trauma or stress that one seems to have their consciousness separated from their body. This was the case yesterday at the Guido’s wedding, however, it was definitely an interesting experience. I decided that I would at least try to have a good time. I finally found out why I was invited to be a part of this thing. Guido told me that it was because I’m the funniest guy he knows and that would lighten the mood and that I’m also the life of a party and that’s important. I still don’t like him but at least I don’t hate him as much. His bride is another matter thought. She yelled at me to hand out seeds at the church service. When I asked what kind of seeds they were she yelled at me further and said they Snapdragons and they represented the wedding and the planting of the seed of love. I then told her I hope not as after planting Snapdragons they grow, blossom and die within one year. I then went to the hall and had a sandwich.

The ceremony was also interesting as the priest could not getthe new Guidos name right and used a different one several times. In fact during the ceremony he asked if Guido would take Lesley, which is his sister’s name, as his wife. Another interesting happening was after the ceremony in the basement of the church were some food was available to make sandwiches for yourself. The new Ms. Guido demanded Guido make her a sandwich, when he returned with the sandwich she pushed it back at him and said “You know I won’t eat this go back and do it right this time”. It looks like they have years of happiness ahead of them.

I also learned that the people in the wedding party were not the brightest bulbs in the bunch. Here are a few quotes as well as conversation excerpts from the evening.

Bridesmaid: “I don’t know how you can eat meat and call yourself a scientist, you should know how bad it is on the environment”
MT: “Yes, I know however, I try to make up for it in other ways. Like not driving excessively”
BM: “I love driving I have a new hummer and an SUV”

BM: “I wish we were in the southern hemisphere, like in Florida or something”

The song Mad World comes on in the Limo. I sarcastically say this is definitely a wedding song. The wedding party listens closely to the lyrics for a few moments

“All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying:
They're the best I've ever had”

They all agree it is very beautiful and should be played as a song for the bride and groom to dance to. It is later requested.

DJ to new Guido: “Can you describe how you feel right now?”
New Guido: in a cold robotic voice and dead eyes “I am filled with emotions . . . good ones”

Maid of Honour: “MT, I got up today at 4:30 this morning and I know I won’t go to bed until 4:30, that’s almost 12 hours!”
MT: “I think it’s a tad more than that”
Usher: “I told you he’s smart I bet he can do the math in his head right now”
MT: “It’s 24 hours”

That's just a sampling, I think I may share more as time goes on. Stay tooned next week as my birthday it’s Tuesday and next week’s blog instalment will cover the story of my supposed birth into an Italian family.

Steve Whatever You Do Keep You're Clothing On!

Today marks the beginning of two weeks that I will be spending away from the lovely Ms. Pea. Yes that's right I'm being all politically correct and such because I'm so out of sorts. This is going to be a long trying two weeks. Some interesting things are happening in these two weeks, one of them being Guido's wedding. This is happening on the Saturday; he informed me today that we are having two practice rehearsals. I informed him it was very kind of him to give me four whole days of notice; however, I will be unable to attend one of them because of a prior engagement. This was of course an engagement I planned with the specific purpose of missing out on any last minute arrangements, but none the less it's still an engagement. Now all you folks out there in blog land are probably wondering what I could be doing on a Friday when I get out of work at 12:00 p.m and the rehearsal is at 7 p.m? We'll I'm glad you asked friends and neighbours, I will be participating in a fully voluntary floor hockey tournament on Friday. It’s been a while since I played but I must say I think I’m actually looking forward to it. It may even be able to put me into better spirits before the eschaton on Saturday. Please note that I fully intend on getting into the spirits before, after and during the ordeal.

Other than that I will have my birthday in two weeks. As most of my birthdays have been for the past 15 years it will most likely be a terrible one. My family tends to treat me poorly around this time. I think it’s because they may recall the unfortunate amount of effort it took for them to steal me from my affluent Jewish parents as a baby. The general course of events is that none of my friends remember, which does not usually bother me. I am away from the person I care most about, the wonderful Ms. Pie and my parents ask me what kind of cake I would like. I respond I would to have chocolate cake. Inevitably when the cake makes it’s first appearance it’s a vanilla cake. The reason for this I am informed every year is that no one likes chocolate cake. Unfortunately, this event tends to put me a sour mood as I dislike vanilla cake. I eat my slice of vanilla cake and sit down and wonder why I always get a vanilla cake.

Other than the above combination of events I will be missing my angel.

You're A Very Bad Man

It’s time for my weekly blogging instalment. The weeks seem to fly by these days and before I know it, it’s Sunday night. The craziness at work is getting better and my workload is evening out but out of my 37.5 (which usually ends up being 45 hour) work week I have 27 hours of meetings (which means things will pile again). A lot of the reason for that is the fact that people are now working together as a team and we’re getting a lot done. Unfortunately, the upcoming week is going to somewhat more trying than the last because I am going to be forced to make some decisions that are going to be wholly unpopular. This is where I hope to get input from my blogging public. I realize being in a position where you manage projects you are going to have to upset people and make unpopular decisions. Thus, I am most definitely prepared to do; however, it would be great to get your input on how to best give the news to the people who had hoped for a different outcome. Unfortunately I have to be rather cryptic, but essential it’s telling people that despite the way they would like to have something dealt with it’s going to have to be dealt with in another way, essentially the complete opposite of what they would have wanted. The way I think I am going to proceed is to explain to them the reason for the decision, ask for input on if they see any viable alternatives and if not explain to them what is going to happen. It would be great to get all perspectives from you guys out there. I know that I’ll inevitably come out looking like the bad guy and would like it if people respect the decision even though I am both new and relatively young.

It would also be interesting to see if anyone out there could let me in on any fun and exciting things to do on the upcoming weekend. If the ideas have to be location specific we can go with either Toronto or the Niagara region. It seems like a lot of my blogging audience tends to come from Niagara so this might be an interesting exercise.

It other news my birthday is coming up in two weeks which also happens to coincide with my Guido’s upcoming wedding. Thus, I lose both a weekend and a birthday weekend with friends. This wedding is work than daylight savings time.

Shameful Pleasures

I really have to say that the people who read my blog are really class acts. Thank you all for your support in this crazy and stressful time in my life. Strangely when I started blogging I never thought I’d see the day when a comment could make me smile or really make a day better. Recently things have gotten even busier due to the ineptness of my predecessor. One of the silver linings is that it is widely known now that these problems were not of my own creation so I’m not getting into any real problems. What it does mean is that I have an insane amount of work to do in a limited period of time. As everyone knows when you have more work than you can do in your nine hour day that means working overtime. I’m not getting paid hourly, unfortunately, but I am looking at this as a learning experience. If I can make it through this period of roughness at the beginning I don’t think anything will look as bad. Now since I feel as though I’ve bonded with you folks and you’ve all given me a case of the warm fuzzies I’m going to open up to you. Inspired by seeing high fidelity with the beautiful, the gorgeous, the spectacular Nikki Pea I am going to go through my top five little know embarrassing things about my self

5) I really enjoy reading New Scientist. In fact when I save enough for the school year I am going to purchase a subscription to the magazine. Know I know that does not seem very embarrassing to you but it’s like a journalist saying that they enjoy reading Cosmo for its literature. Most scientists see it as fluffy science but I find it’s really good to get long stories in good bite sized pieces. If I find I am interested in a particular topic I’ll go look it in a “real” peer review journal.

4) I have an unnatural affinity for shoe shopping. This is one that came as a big surprise even to me. One day I found myself shopping for a pair of brown shoes at the Eaton Center. It was then that the epiphany came, like a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds. I found that I wasn’t grumpy and that I was enjoying the challenge of finding that perfect pair of brown shoes. Sadly, the shoes that became famous for their stylish nature have been retired to due salt damage. Fortunately, that means that my days of shopping for brown shoes shall return. Huzzah.

3) I once upon a time enjoyed playing dungeons and dragons. This is one that makes me shake my head even now. I’m not quite sure how it even happened. I think it was because I feel into a bad crowd one day. The peer pressure was just too much, I often refused. Then in one of my periods of weakness I accepted the offer, after all how could someone refuse elves. *Shudder* enough said.

2) I have a widdling set that I look forward to using when I have the time. This was a gift for me many moons ago when I had thoughts of becoming a dentist. My girlfriend at the time was thoughtful enough to get me the tools for my birthday one year (sarcasm). I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that she wanted me to do well on the DAT and get into dentistry school. After all what 20 year old wouldn’t want a widdling set for his birthday instead of say, anything else? That being said I did use the thing a few times and found much to my surprise that I enjoyed using it. I haven’t done it for a year or so but next time I go camping I’ll be sure to bring it along.

1) This one takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to talk about. I, molecular turtle, play magic the gathering. In fact I have played for the last 12 years. Not only do I play, I love playing. I find it relaxing and fun at the same time. I really enjoy strategy games and this is definitely my favourite. I also like playing because I highly rated in the online version. I like it for its strategic element and the amount of skill it often takes to win. I enjoying going from a situation that looks impossible to one in which my opponent is scratching his/her head asking what happened. This is quite the big secret. Fortunately, my lovely gal pal knows about this nasty, nerdy, habit of mine. She’s actually the first lady friend of mine that I have told right away about this habit. I often thought of telling girls that I play as the best form of birth control ever, fortunately the Pie doesn’t mind. Strangely, out of all the women I’ve dated I’ve only told one other, the one that gave me the widdling set (I wonder if the two are correlated in any way) and she wasn’t impressed at all. She did like the pictures on the cards though so I gave her a few. I broke up with her two weeks later. (Again correlation or causation!).

So now that I’ve shared my inner most twisted machinations, how about you share your shameful pleasures?