Top 10 most anticipated moments in 2008

2008 is already shaping up to be on of the biggest and most significant, if not the most significant year in the life of your’s truly. Here are some of the reasons:

10. Another great year of sports – what’s the best thing about Sports – there is always next year. 2008 brings new hope for my Leafs, Jays, Vikings and for the Riders to become Back-to Back Champs.

9. The Brady Farm Auction – it will be a sad day when all the equipment goes up for auction in March. But I think it’s great that the folks are moving on to enjoy something else for a few years. After farming his whole life I know pop’s is looking forward to a change – which will likely be golfing and biking the whole summer.

8. Quitting my job – Sure the conversation will be a little awkward, but I will have a real sense of relief when I know that my days here are over. I honestly don’t know if I will miss it at all. The paycheck sure, but the job, no.

7. Practicum – Nearing the end of 2008 I should go on a practicum with an actually fire department somewhere out there. I can’t wait for that first time the bell sounds and we hope in the truck. Obviously I have a lot of learning to do before that but I can’t help but be excited to actually be on a real call of some sort, whether it is a fire, an accident, a gas leak, or a cat in a tree.

6. The Bizzes Wedding – It’s not everyday I get to be the best man for a great pal. I totally want one of those best man patches like on You, Me , and Dupree. I hope my outfit has a tie so I can put it on my head. Heads up Brizzes…Heads up.

5. Wedding Reception – I’m looking forward to this, but I also have some reservations. Is it going to be fun if I can’t turn into Taylor and put my tie around my head? I just hope everyone else has fun.

4. Cuba week 2 – aka. Honey moon. After a week of bozzing and weddings I will be ready for some serious R&R with the then Mrs. Brady. It’s going to be sweet to just hang out and enjoy each others company and do all the things in Cuba that we couldn’t do the first week. This will be the first time I have had more than 8 days off in a row since I started working with the bank back in Feb 05.

3. Fire College – well I’ve got to get a place to stay still, and I am truthfully a little nervous but it’s got to be done, and it should be somewhat fun. I found out two days ago that I start on Feb 19, not March 12 like I thought. I am panicking just a little. I just hope I can get a job when it is all said and done.

2. Cuba week 1 – Not only do I get to marry my beautiful bride, but I get to party with some of my best friends and family for 7 days plus. I think it will be ridiculously good times, from the flight down there with 40+ people that I know, to the wedding of 56 people, or to what I’m sure will be some great partying. Here we come Sol Palmeras. Only 10 short days away.

1. The Unkown – I look forward to all those new challenges, opportunities, and moments that they next year will bring. Sharing the year with old friends, new friends, old family, new family. All signs indicate that this year will be full or more great times in this crazy, wonderful life that I have.

Top 10 Moments of 2007 – a look back at the my top 10 memories from what was a pretty great 2007.

10. Doing a back flip off the houseboat – While out in the Shushwaps I pulled the maneuver for first time. It might sound silly, but I was pumped!!!

9. Playing in the waves in Cancun – In the ocean, it’s hot, and the waves were huge. What’s not to love.

8. Rider home playoff game – when combined with the party the Murdock’s house, that was a great weekend. I can’t believe I am giving up my rider tickets next season.

7. The moment I realized that I was actually going to apply for Fire College – I have been thinking about it for years, and there was a moment sitting at home talking with Zentner that I suddenly knew that I was going to go for it.

6. Getting my new golf clubs – I got them the same day Michelle picked up our wedding bands. I won’t tell you which I was more excited for.

5. Getting the engagement ring – it showed up the afternoon before we were supposed to fly out to Banff. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t come on time, it really would have messed with my plans.

4. Riders winning the Grey Cup – Been waiting a long time for this. It was great to be in Regina and share it with so many other rider fans.

3. Holding the Grey Cup in The Tap – And we thought we were just going to enjoy some wings and beer. Then the cups shows up and they put it at the table right beside us. Very exciting!

2. Getting notice that I was accepted to fire college.- Boo-ya! That was a big day!

1.Getting engaged – Of course this is number 1. I was nervous as hell, and I don’t remember what I said. I actually not even sure she said yes, she just called me crazy and put out her hand.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Feel better about how much you paid for your home

Check out this place. It’s a 300 square foot home, dubbed The Little house in Toronto. On the market for only $173,000. My. God.

While I don’t know it for 100% certainty, I have heard a rumor that Journeyman is going to be cancelled. This is a great new series on NBC, the only TV show that I am watching right now since everything else is temporarily delayed until the writers strike is over. What is wrong with you people, why can’t more of you watch the shows that I want to watch. All the good shows (in my opinion) keep getting canceled and there is more and more crap on TV like “Dancing with washed up Celebrities”, or “So you think you can look ridiculous Dancing” or “ Deal or No wait, we’ll go to commercial again”. How about they cancel on one of the 6 CSI shows or one of the 27 shows about lawyers? It is just like last year when the Black Donnelly’s was canceled, and yet 9 new reality shows start up, like “Bring your Dumb Ass on TV and We’ll Ask You Questions from a Text Book and laugh when you don’t know who lost the Presidency in 1935.” What they hell is wrong with people.

At least I’ll always have SportsCentre.

I’m in!

It was another pretty good weekend for me. Late in the workday on Friday I got a call from a coworker that had been invited to sit in a certain telecom providers private box at the Pat’s game. He couldn’t make it and wanted to know if I wanted to three tickets. I, of course, accepted without any hesitation and when I couldn’t find any work colleagues to come with me, invited two lucky readers of this blog – Josh and Dave – to join me. There was a little corporate schmoozing when we got there, but after that we enjoyed free beer and appey’s and watched a pretty good hockey game in which the Pats won 3-2 in a shoot-out.

Then on the way home Zeddie called me and played a message on the answering machine – It was vermillion and they were calling me regarding my application and I should call them back. I pretty much started hyperventilating as I didn’t know what they wanted – were they calling to say I got it – to say that I should try again next year – or was it just that there needed some additional information from me. After dropping Josh off I made it home and tried calling and of course got no answer and left a message. It was such a cruel thing to do, leave a message like that then not answer. So after finally settling down and getting to sleep I woks up Saturday and played it cool. I didn’t call back again until 11 – 10 their time. Again I got no answer, but I left another message trying not to sound to pathetic and needy on the phone. This time I asked them to call me back on my cell.

Then as about 2:42 local time I got the call. It was Randy and he was calling to let me know I was successful in my application to the fire etc. program. Halleluiah! Halleluiah!

I was and still am – pumped! This is only another step in the end goal, but it was an important one.

But I know you are all likely sick of hearing about this, so I will try and blog about something else once in a while. I think I will tell work once I get back from Cuba.

Other good news, I was at a wedding on Saturday and Taylor never showed (for those of you who don’t know who Taylor is – read here). I kept all my clothing on and I don’t even think there will be any embarrassing photos of me. I was pretty sure that Taylor would make an appearance, especially when I sent Zentner home with my parents at 12:30 and stayed behind to catch up with my old comrades from back home. I think one reason that I stayed a little quiet was the cougar that repeatedly tried to get me on the dance floor with her and telling me that Zentner wouldn’t be hot forever. I was honestly scared of her, and at one time even thought about hitting her so she would leave me alone.

But all in all another great weekend.

Top 10 favorite things about Christmas

10. Sportscentre Year in review – I have to get my sports in. It’s always on right around Christmas. I would say the World Juniors, but they are on passed Christmas.
9. The holiday – just being off work or school for a few days. It’s great to have a couple of extra days to do nothing but eat, sleep, and drink.
8. The gifts – best ones over the years include a Nintendo, a remoter Car race track and a Maple Leafs jersey.
7. Turtles from Grandma – ever year since I can remember – I get two gifts from Grandma and one is always socks and Turtles
6. Stockings – always open stockings first…always.
5. One gift on Christmas Eve – get to open just one. Sometimes it’s the right one, sometimes it’s not.
4. The food – I love Christmas supper and Christmas baking. Time to put on the winter weight.
3. Wifesaver – it’s food again, but I live for Wifesaver on Christmas morning. If you don’t know what that is, you should find out.
2. Family – For the most part I enjoy my family and have always enjoyed the day with them. It’s not always perfect but lots of good times over the years – snowmobiling, skating, curling, shinny, games. It’s all golden
1. The traditions – like opening 1 gift on xmas eve, going to the same place after church on xmas eve, opening stockings first, boxing day curling, Wifesaver, super with the extended family, Turtles. I always look forward to these same things that I know and expect to be a part of my Christmas.

Ok, time to rant

Work is pissing me off again and it is all about people making a big deal out of nothing at all – and I hate it when people make mountains out of molehills. I got an email at 6:50 am this morning (go back to bed you crazy bastard) in which a client was explaining how a particular issue was of grave concern to him. He needed response by 11:30 or he would have to escalate to some of the executives in our company. He is in a meeting that whole time, but he is unable to extend the deadline. RRAAAAHHH. Oh no, you can’t extend the deadline or you are going to escalate… is that supposed to scare me. It almost makes me want to intentionally wait until after the “deadline” so he does escalate, just to make my day more interesting. Maybe that works for some people but I think I respond much more effectively to something like “ we have this problem, I would appreciate it if you can look into it today as it is important” – how about being nice for once. Why the threats? It really pisses me off. Don’t threaten me with escalating – that means nothing to me. What am I going to get yelled at – not likely, get fired – no chance. Worst is I might get another email saying that I need to do better next time – but even that isn’t probable.

Then there is a second email – responded to another service issue in which we had previously responded with a - we’re sorry, we should have done it differently, we didn’t, we will do better next time – our bad. Now this isn’t the greatest explanation but it was really all we could say. There has been a lot of changes lately and this one was not easily identified. Well the client came back and said that that isn’t good enough, they realize we’re sorry but it was a really big deal (even though it wasn’t) and we look bad to there executives – but then they add nothing about what they would like us to do. So they don’t like our response, and write a page long email about it, but say nothing about what steps they would like to see. Well I hope you had a good time writing that bitchy note because I sure had a good time reading it….idiot. What they hell do I say back. I can’t say I’m sorry, I can’t say I will do better next time, I can’t say I should have done it differently. What they hell do I say?

Then a third note came about how two project were done incorrectly. This note came after I sent this client an email 12 days ago saying that I wanted to talk about these projects as I knew they were off track little. But I got no response, so I sent another email Monday, got no response - they complained to one of our other staff yesterday and it came back to me, so I phoned, left a voice mail, no response… then I get this email this morning saying that we haven’t addressed this. WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK I WAS TRYING TO DO!!! GRRR.

I need to go for a walk.

Life is good again.

Have a read of this article. As briz put it – only in Saskatchewan.

It is officially one month from Wedding day. (Que the scary music). I actually can’t wait. It is going to be lots of fun down there.

I’m not feeling very ranty today. Really I don’t have to much going on until after Christmas, the next 3 weeks should go by without too much stress. Although I am still worked up from the lat couple weeks, work should start to slow down heading into year end, and plans are in place to Christmas. Then it will be off to Cuba and two weeks of relaxation – mixed with drinking, eating, a small ceremony and many family and friends.

My testing in Vermilion went good last week – although it is evident that when it comes to standardized testing I am way dumber than I was about 7 years ago. That is the last time I did anything with Chemistry, Biology or Physics. That shit is hard. I should find out next week if I get in or not.

My car had a squeaky break. I freaking hate having to deal with vehicle maintenance. It would help if I new a think about cars. I always feel like I am getting ripped off when I take it in for repairs. Now there is a rant I might have to go on, the lousy, no good mechanics that always over charge for any work they do. And half the time it doesn’t even fix the problem. But I’m in a good mood today and don’t want to ruin it thinking about this.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Oh so much happening

This is the man now known as Taylor

So I have been slacking a bit on the blogging of late, but it’s really because things (life) has been pretty busy. So many things have been and are happening. First off work has been keeping me pretty tied up, but that’s boring so I won’t talk about it.

On Saturday we had my companies annual Christmas Party. About 120 people gathered together for some food, booze and music. And somewhat surprisingly it was a blast!

I was the MC for the evening, first time I have mc’d anything of the nature and in the end I quite enjoyed the duty. People told me a did a good job, and along they may have been lying, I think it went pretty good. Although I wasn’t a big fan when my boss had the mic and pointed Zeddie and I out and that we were going to get married. Then the clinking glasses started and we had to kiss. Then later when it happened again, Zeddie wouldn’t kiss me so I had to kiss the other guy sitting at my table. Awkward!

But I was a little nervous for it, and so after that part of the night was over, and the band came on I was ready to get my drink on – and apparently so were a lot of other people. Drinking games and dancing ruled the night and thepicture above basically tells the story. I am starting to get a little concerned because it seems lately that very time I drink I turn into this other person…we’ll call him… Taylor.

Taylor is the happiest person on earth. He smiles constantly, he talks to everyone. He talks loudly to everyone. Taylor does not have a throttle or a governor when it comes to Whiskey. He drinks as much of it as quickly as he can. He doesn’t really tire out, and he loves to be in the action. He will do just about anything to bring attention to himself – included taking is pants off at parties he knows less than half the people, wearing 12 different name tags at his girlfriends work event – one of which says “top performer” or putting his ties on his head at a company Christmas party. Taylor also seems to love getting his picture taken, because when the next day rolls around all I see are different pictures of Taylor doing things that he (and I) are not necessarily proud of.

I think Taylor has problem and I am thinking about holding an intervention to address this with him. Any of you care to attend?

But enough about Taylor, I have more important things to worry about right now, like my testing in Vermillion this week. There will be no top 10 on Friday as I will be either ding pushups, struggling though long division on paper, or nervously answering interview questions. I am nervous, excited and anxious all at the same time. I want this pretty bad, so I hope I don’t screw it up.

The wedding is only a month away – that also has me a little nervous. Not sure why exactly, but it’s a lot of pressure knowing that 50 people are going on a vacation and a certain amount of that vacation centers around you. What if it rains the whole time, what if no one has fun, what if Josh and Peewee get in a fight and henning has to kick both their asses. And standing in front of that many people during the actual wedding, it’s a little unnerving. Where do I put my hands, what if I cry (I am a bit of a cryer), what if my nose itches and I need to pick it. You see what I mean?!?!

Plus it almost Christmas and I haven’ even thought about gifts let alone bought any. Any volunteers to do my shopping this year? I know what I want, but no one I know can give it to me.

By the way, it looks as though I am going to have to cancel my stag. I think I better attend a wedding that same day, and it also appeared as many of the potential participants couldn't make it. I think I will try and have it after I return from Cuba.

But no more time to blog, I need to pack for the big trip.

Wish me luck.

Go Brody Go

Top ten things about the Grey Cup 2007 – pretend I posted this Friday

10.I got all you can eat pizza and a schooner for $10 at BP’s
9.They won it a year after Barret and Shivers were out. Shows those guys weren’t doing such a great job.
8.Rider Prider Shots!
7.That Henry Burris was broadcasting and not on the field – HEENNNRYYY!
6.That all of Canada got to hear about how crazy rider fans are.
5.That long time footballers like Gene Makosky, Yo Murphy, and others got to lift the cup
4.That the Bombers lost
3.That I got to be in the middle of the pandemonium Sunday night on the street of Regina.
2.I got to Hold the Grey Cup at the Tap on Thursday.
1.The riders WON