Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

Wow!  I didn’t realize I had put this off for nearly a three weeks now.  Time for an update on life out here.

I was heading downstairs to a meeting and I decided to go down the stairwell because it was only a floor down.  I got to the door and some how, I sliced my hand on the door handle.  I thought it was disgusting; not the cut itself, but the thought that the door had sliced my hand open.  Why?  Because of all the urine and penis’ that had just infected my hand.  I instantly thought of all of the disgusting people that did not wash their hands after going to the restroom and now I had an open wound to soak in all their lovely dirty goodness.  I hope that flesh eating disease doesn’t cost me my hand or life. 

So today is the eve of Independence Day and as tempting as it is to go to the ‘Mall’ for the festivities, I am reluctant to go.  The Mall is the area near the Smithsonian buildings and the Washington Monument.  There is basically a long field that runs past the museums, through the Washington Monument, and towards the Reflecting Pool next to the Lincoln Memorial.  This is where they will have a bunch of day-long events, concerts, and fireworks tomorrow.  I am somewhat curious to check it out since I’d be nice to experience some of the DC life out here, but the thought of 300,000 people leaving the field to the Metro frightens me a lot.  I am sure that the Symphony of Fire events are similar to this, but since I never took public transit during the fireworks show over the years, I wouldn’t know how bad taking the Skytrain or bus would really be.  I already hate the Metro stations when a few hundred people are waiting for the train.  EVERYBODY tries to get in on the first train for some reason.  Anyway, some of us were thinking of going to Rosslyn, Virginia to watch the fireworks show instead.  We’ll see what happens tomorrow morning.  I will probably go check it out even though I (not so) secretly want to watch Transformers instead.

Speaking of the Washington Monument, I should mention that our weekly Kickball games are now at the field at the Mall.  Here’s a picture:

It’s pretty neat to be playing a children’s game near the Monument.  It’s kinda surreal.  Check out how nice the backdrop is.  When I took this picture, it was a glorious day.  Low humidity and a relatively mild temperature.  I’ve been meaning to take more pictures, but I usually forget to bring out my camera.  On my way home that night, I walked past a restaurant that was playing porno music outside. I should have taken video of it.  Next time though.  I didn’t think about it as I walked by.

Several weeks ago, I opened my mailbox and there were McDonalds coupons inside.  I didn’t think too much about it but I looked at it more closely and it was for a totally free Sausage McSkillet Burrito.  It’s their new breakfast offering.  Think of the 2 burritos that they serve up for breakfast back in Canada, but tastier and better.  So  I saw this coupon and my eyes kinda lit up because I had it before and I thought it was pretty good.  Next to the mailboxes is a recycling bin for junk mail.  I casually looked in and there were a bunch of coupons thrown out.  I shamelessly took out the 6-7 coupons that were sitting in the recycling bin and I ate McDonald’s breakfast for free for over a week.  I had a couple more to use, but I decided not to use the last 2 coupons that I had because I felt guilty from consuming such a high calorie meal each day and because I felt bad for not buying anything else when I claimed my free burrito for six straight days. 

Last week, I went to my first ever soccer game.  I went with some co-workers to check out the DC United; our version of the Whitecaps.  I didn’t think that I would enjoy the game considering I never enjoyed watching soccer on the tube.  However, I thought that the game was quite exciting and entertaining.  I finally got to check out the RFK Stadium too.  This is the same stadium where the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team calls home.   Anyway, prior to the game, my buddy Aaron warned me that in some seating areas, the fans were really rowdy.  So rowdy that beer would be flying all over the place.  I didn’t think too much of it at the time.  So we got to our seats and the game had started already.  About 35 minutes into the game, the United finally scored and tied the game up.  The rowdy seats were about 40 ft in front of us and I witnessed a tonne of beer being thrown in the air.  Cups were flying all over the place.  I wish I had brought my camera with me cause I would have surely taken some fantastic action shots.  Why would anybody want to sit in those seats is beyond me because you would have surely left the game wet and smelling of beer.  They ended up scoring 4 goals that game too!  I cannot imagine the mess they made.

I’ve been having a good time here lately.  I think I’ve been putting more effort in socializing with the people out here.  I figure I should make the most of things out here and not be an anti-social hermit.  This means a lot of beer drinking.  For example, after the soccer game, we hit up a bar and drank some more.  Tonight, to celebrate Independence Day, a whole bunch of us joined the pubcrawl.  We managed to get some free wristbands (normally $13) and then Miller Lites were only $2 at each establishment.  Conveniently, it started at Mackey’s; the bar downstairs from our office.  There were 12-13 bars on the tour, all within walking distance.  We managed to hit a whopping TWO bars!  By the time we left the second bar, it was about 1030pm and we were drunk and starving.  We hit up McDonalds (because it was close and cheap!).  If it was the weekend, I would have stayed out longer, but the Metro was about to shut down at midnight (cause of the weeknight) so it ultimately made the decision for me and I headed home.  Fun times!  Oh, one more thing.  I got home and I was washing my hands and I noticed that my cut from the penis infected door handle was STILL bleeding.  Piss me off!!  Let’s just say that I am glad I used a disinfectant pad to clean my wound before I threw a bandage on it.

I’ve been watching a tonne of movies lately.  I watched Ratatouille on Friday night, 1408 on Saturday night, and a bunch of movies on DVD at home.  You can see all of my recent reviews on Facebook.  I almost went to see Sicko and as you can guess, I’m dying to watch Transformers some time this week.  I don’t have a lot of time this week, but I’m hoping I’ll figure something out.  Has anybody seen Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer?  I am wondering if my big head made it onto the big screen.  I kinda doubt it, but oh well.  I still want to see Ocean’s 13, Once, and Die Hard 4 and upcoming movies like Harry Potter and Bourne Ultimatum.  Anybody wanna see any of those when I’m back in Vancouver next weekend? 

Before I sign off, here are some odds and ends.

- I saw a large women who was lactating… through her shirt… ewww

- Comcast tried to screw me over for $160 by overcharging me for NHL Centre Ice; those bastards!!

- I am going to New Jersey this weekend; Live Earth baby (and Bon Jovi)!

- Kanye West’s Stronger and Joss Stone’s Tell Me What We’re Gonna Do Now are sweet ass tracks

- I am going on a cruise at the end of September; Carnival cruise on the Triumph

- I am likely going to Kentucky for work, for several weeks.  I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.  Anybody been there before?

- The next couple of months will be eventful

- My guitar does not get as much love as I thought it would

- I saw a centipede on my wall one night, but it got away and now it roams free in my place. That little fucker!!

- Entourage was finally awesome for the first time in over a month

- The Canucks are gonna suck badly next year I think.

I’ll be home in less than two weeks.  See ya all soon!

Unlike in Vancouver where drinkers chai-mui or play dice game, it seems that the drinking game of choice here is either beer pong or flip cup.  Everywhere I go, that’s what they play.  I went to my manager’s party this weekend and they had two long tables to play and 3 full-size beer kegs to ensure that we never ever have a dry cup.  Someone brought 2 cases of Bud Light too.  There were probably only about 40 people in attendance so it was going to be quite a challenge to get to the second keg.  I felt that I was doing my part though because I was trying my damnedest to get through as many beers as possible.  We carried on for about 5 hours when we decided to head out to Adams Morgan.  I think getting there was absolutely nuts.  My manager had a ‘regular’ cabbie that he called, and including the driver, we had 10 people in the car.  I think I was the 9th person to get in, and I wasn’t even in the front.  I was in the back with 5 other people.  There was such a big pile of legs and bodies that I never caught a glimpse of the driver.  The man was nuts.

Anyway, Adams Morgan is quite the party place.  I had never been there at night, but the place was hoppin’.  There were tonnes of people out and about.  The street is lined with bars and jumbo slice joints.  Our late night eatery of choice was the Amsterdam Falafelshop.  It was hot and tasty and I suppose that the beer in my system may have enhanced my fondness for the food, but it sure hit the spot. We ended our night and we headed towards the Metro which was a good 10-15 min walk.  Somewhere along the way, I realized I needed to go to the restroom.  By the time I got to my Metro stop, the trolley had stopped running so I had to walk home, which was another 15 minutes.  To put things into perspective, it was 9 hours since I started drinking and about an hour since I had last drained my bladder.  So I had to go really badly and I refused to be one of those guys that peed against a wall/bush in the darkness of some quiet street.  I don’t think I had ever been so close to peeing myself though.  I made it though, barely.

Last weekend, I was at a friend’s place playing poker and we were in the middle of a break when we noticed a bug on the patio window.  I volunteered to kill it so I took a piece of paper towel and caught it.  I was ready to give it the squeeze of death and then the paper towel started to glow a neon green/yellow colour.  If kinda freaked me out at first.  Was I holding kryptonite or something?  haha.  Nope.  It was a firefly.  I figured out if I applied a little pressure to it, it would start to glow.  Pretty cool.  We decided not to kill it right away.  We placed it in a zip lock bag and tormented it a little more.  We couldn’t get it to glow much afterwards.   I’m not sure what happened to it, but I’m sure Jon or Christine killed it after we left. 

It was a little while ago when I was at Mackey’s when I noticed that Hazel Mae was on the tube.  Hazel Mae used to be a sportscaster on Sportsnet and I hated her.  She looked like some kind of thai hooker on TV and she was terrible at her job.  I was surprised to see her still in the sports new business.  Apparently she landed some job in New England as their lead anchor.  Those suckers.  Anyway, I thought I’d mention this for the guys since I know that the Sportsnet guys still make fun of her from time to time.  I guess they didn’t like her either.  What happend to Jody Vance?  She was easy on the eyes AND good as a sportscaster.

Did anybody watch Fantastic Four this weekend?  Did I make it on screen?  hehe.  Anyway, I don’t want to run this too long, so I’m signing off for now.  Until next time.

I was sitting here minding my own business when I noticed an ant had made it’s way up to my arm and was finding a nice meaty place to bite me.  Well, I got the better of it and I squished it.  I went to the bathroom to wash it away and to clean my hands.  That’s when I noticed I just crushed half of it cause the other half was still moving like crazy.  I washed it down the sink with hot water and I sat back down, wondering if there were a lot of them in my place or if it was just a stray that wandered it’s way into my apartment by accident.  No later than five minutes later, I looked up and on the wall was a huge bug with a bazillion legs.  Here’s a picture of the giant thing:

I tried to get it to crawl into a water bottle that I had and it wasn’t cooperating so it fell to the floor and I threw the lid of a CD-R spindle over it.  The coin in the picture is a US half dollar which is bigger than a toonie.  I wanted to give you guys some perspective on the size of this friggin thing.  It was big!!  It’s kind of curled up in the picture so it’s not even fully extended.  Anyway, I’m a big pussy and I didn’t wanna grab a wad of paper towel to kill it, so I brought it over to the toilet.  This thing could tread water!  It made it’s way to the dry part of the bowl and it started climbing out.  Holy shit!  I’ve never reached for the toilet’s handle so fast.  That took care of the bugger (no pun intended, OK, maybe a little).  I just hope it doesn’t swim it’s way back up.  If it does, hopefully it ends up in someone else’s toilet.  I guess it was a centipede or something.  Disgusting! If I find one of those in my bed, I’m gonna flip out!

Friday night, some of da boys from work wanted to hang out and they offered to show me around Bethesda cause I hadn’t really explored any of the local watering holes and restaurants.  It’s kinda sad considering I’ve been here nearly 3 months and I hadn’t even sat down to eat at any of the nearby restaurants.  We started off at a couple bars and let me say that Brant is quite the social butterfly.  He knew someone at every establishment that we hit and we covered quite a few places.  I guess this shouldn’t really surprise me because he bumps into someone every where we go.  Anyway, we hit up Rio Grande, for some stellar margaritas and fantastic mexican food.  They had freshly made nacho chips and salsa for us.  They they brought out a giant platter of chicken and beef for our fajitas.  I wasn’t convinced that the beef would be good but it was awesome.  The meat was nice and tender and easy to bite into.  I think I only had three (maybe four) and I was stuffed.  We hit up another bar and after we picked up our first round of beers, we found out that a rep from Anheuser-Busch was on location giving away free Budweiser Selects.  Too bad they were a little on the warm side, but free is free!!  So we double-fisted our beers up to the outside deck to check out the scenery.  It didn’t take me  long to realize I was too full to drink.  The beer was battling with the fajitas for space in my stomach and I was feeling like crap.  I don’t think I was the only one feeling that way cause we all looked beat.  We called it a night shortly after and I was close to throwing up when I walked the two blocks home.  Fun times!!

The next night, we rounded up some of the Canadian crew to watch Knocked Up.  It was pretty good and although I’m totally sick of Katherine Heigl’s character on Grey’s Anatomy, she wasn’t too bad in the movie.  Has anyone seen the cover of this week’s Entertainment Weekly?  She’s on the cover of it and it doesn’t even look like her.  She looks exceptionally hot on that magazine cover.  Well, enough lusting over her.  I recommend the movie.  I thought it was better than the 40 Year Old Virgin although it was pretty close.  The summer movies are totally ramping up.  Every week until August, I think there’s a movie that I want to see.  This upcoming weekend is Ocean’s 13.  Next week, it’ll be Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.  I want to see if I see my fat ass anywhere on the screen.  Then I’ll be only a couple weeks away from Transformers, which I’m dying to see! 

I should note that it’s OK that I stay up late now because we’re on ’summer hours’ now.  This means I get to work an hour less; either come in late an hour or go home an hour early.  I choose to sleep in.  Alright, it’s time for me to get to bed.  I’m scratching myself all
over ’cause the thought of the bug encounter tonight is making me
itchy.  So night-nite, don’t let the bed bugs bite!