Happy New Year!

I'm finding it difficult to describe 2001 without using the phrase "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". So, I'll just put it this way:

Some good stuff happened. These events and people have enriched my life. I will never forget you.
Some bad stuff happened. I don't care about these things and I have found better people. I have already forgotten you.

So, cheers to 2002, where I will add some more good things to my bag of experience, and slam dunk the bad ones into the waste bin.

Round of applause to our National Junior Hockey team, as they battled out a great contest, and came up with a hard-fought silver.

Round of boos to the Russian goalie that knocked his own net off in the dying seconds of the game, and even more boos to the referee that failed to call the infraction, which would have resulted in a penalty shot that could have sent the game into overtime.

Don Cherry puts it best: "We're Canadian, so we don't complain. We just say 'Thank you for stiffing us'."

Foooooossssbaaaaallll!!

Today, I remembered why I don't like optometry appointments.
Ow, my eyes!

On the upside, the examiner was really really cute. She spent the entire time gazing intently into my eyes, but I'd better not take that the wrong way.

If you and eight other drunks wander into a bar at 1:00 in the morning, remember a few things:

• Britney Spears's motto is "I am woman, hear me whore"
• Hanging from a street sign is not a tenable position for a human being
• Be sure to tell the officer that it was the other group of drunken bastards that put that discarded Christmas tree over there
• Be really nice to the waitresses
• Try not to tell your friends that beer can cure a sprained ankle
• Don't believe your friends when they tell you beer can cure a sprained ankle
• Some things should just never be repeated. Ever.

Ball hockey begins today. One last determined shot for a championship.

Show me the land that is mine to rule
I shall defend it
Show me the shield that can guard my castle
I shall wield it
Show me the foe that is larger than I
I shall thwart him
Show me those who would break my guard
I shall strike them down

Bring the attack that would invade my home
I shall step in the line of fire
And they will fall back
For I shall stand my ground
And none shall make their way past

Bring me those who put faith in my guard
I shall keep their hopes secure
And they will applaud my name
For I shall make their faith my own
And their faith will stop bullets

The net is my home
The crease my kingdom
The pads my power
The victory my glory
And the glory shall be mine to hold

Glory particle one: 7 - 4 win.

For nearly the past two weeks, I've been consistently staying up very late into the night working on graphics assignments. My goal is to stay an assignment ahead (assignment one is due this week, and I just finished assignment 2) to give me some valuable extra time to work on the final project. I've never worked so hard so early into a term before. I find myself up until 3, 4, or 5 in the morning trying to get one more objective done, or track down one more elusive bug, and the list of things still to do just seems to grow longer. It is now 2:30 in the morning, assignment 2 is nearly sealed, and I only just now got home for some dinner.

And I love it.

This is the stuff to which I've been looking forward for over four years. This is the good shit, so to speak. I feel like I'm in my high school days again, when I would fiddle with cool graphic code for fun; make boxes spin around, ships fly about, and images dance and flash around the screen. This is the stuff I want to do for a living. When A2 started working, I sat there for a good fifteen minutes just playing around with it, marvelling at my creation.

Does that make me a geek? Likely, yeah, but I don't care. I'm the only guy that shows up for class in the morning with a smile on his face, so I must be doing something right...

Oh, and I got new glasses yesterday. Don't I look stylish?

Glory particle two: 10 - 5 win.

Having a tutorial at 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday is bad enough; when the TA is late, it's even worse.

Five minutes went by. "I wonder where the TA is," I say. "He's five minutes late."

Ten minutes went by. "This is getting silly. I just want to find out how to do our project and then leave!"

Fifteen minutes. "It's amazing how all of us will just sit here doing nothing," Kevin says. "That's it; we'll give him five more minutes, and then we should turn out the lights and leave."

Nineteen minutes. "One more minute!" We begin packing our belongings. "We'll all count down from ten; it'll be like New Year's!"

Nineteen minutes, 50 seconds. "Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! THREE! TWO! ONE! HAPPY NE-" and the TA walked in.

Amid the giant groan emitted from the class, the TA said "Sorry I'm late, I couldn't find the room. Let's get started."

I've never seen more impeccable timing; particularly timing that was exactly twenty minutes late.

Glory particle three: 20 - 1 mutilation.

The game was stopped early out of mercy. We maimed them. It was brutal. Onlookers were stunned by the mayhem. People were gaping at the carnage. Ladies dressed in black wept for the befallen.

We enjoyed a game well-played.

New York, New York.

Back Tuesday morning. If you don't hear from me, assume that I was killed by a Harlem street gang.

I'm back, I survived, and there are a ton of stories, but now I am so bloody tired that I'm going to sleep for a few days.

I'm still thinking about that sandwich. That was the best meat in the universe. We enjoyed. We gorged. We took a picture. I'd go back to New York just for another one.

All hail the sandwich.

So many New York stories... so much my mother would rather not hear...

In a nutshell, what we did was sight-seeing and bar-hopping. Each day went like so: Wake up, check to see if there was any hot water, grumble in disappointment, head out, eat at a random restaurant, walk, walk, walk, walk, with a few subway rides in between, find a bar, drink, drink, drink, drink, talk to some locals, walk to a different bar, repeat a few times, somehow stumble back to the hotel at about 5:00 AM, pass out.

We saw:

• Times Square
• Rockafeller Centre
• Central Park
• City Hall
• Empire State Building
• Battery Park
• South Street Seaport
• Wall Street
• Ground Zero
• Grand Central Station
• NY Library
• United Nations
• A lot of stuff pretty much everywhere south of 72nd St.

We ate at:

• Dojo restaurant in Greenwhich Village
• Katz's Deli (twice - all hail the sandwich!)
• Some tequila place in Empire State Bulding
• Yaffa Cafe
• Fuel
• Two Aboot at Grand Central Station.

We drank considerably at:

• Some random sports bar
• d.b.a.
• Coyote Ugly Saloon
• Barmacy
• McSorely's
• Village Tavern
• CBGB's OMFUG
• Waited in line at Madame X.

We met:

• A pair of pure, authentic, Brooklyn ghetto boys
• A foursome of locals that liked to discuss our Canadianisms
• A big, burly, tattooed guy at Coyote Ugly
• A cute bartender from the south of Ireland
• A Village-born and raised bartender that made an in-depth comparison of the Village to San Francisco
• A guy from Harlem that liked making fun of our Canadianisms

We did not talk to:

• The pair of toothless port whores at the Port Authority
• The guy with the "452 love positions - $1" sign
• The two guys yelling at each other as they crossed the street
• The guy with the big bb-gun on the subway
• The guy down the hall in the hotel with what may have been a cellphone

That's just a brief overview... so many stories... particularly about the Brooklyn ghetto boys, the hotel, the cellphone guy, and many other details. Perhaps I'll talk about them later, but for now I need more sleep, and dream of pastrami sandwiches...

My travel companion Nick also appreciates the wondrous awe of the pastrami sandwich.

Rigid contact lenses make the baby Jesus tear up like a city hall water fountain.

Glory particle four: 13 - 0 win.

This was my first shutout, but most of the reason for that accomplishment was because I only received seven shots the entire game. Mind you, the stats don't give our opponent justice; they hustled us like no other team and they were incredible defensively - they just didn't have any offense. I made two difficult saves with my foot and glove, and stuck my stick out for the other five, and for the rest of the time I thought about what I was going to write for my history essay.