2003-02-07

Three cheers for the weekend. This week at work has been a real exercise in biting the pillow and thinking of better days.

And speaking of (better days), I�ve recently been reacquainted with a very old friend of mine. Proving yet again my postulation that Canada is the world�s most freakishly gigantic small town, my friend, who lived three blocks from me in grade school, now HAPPENS to live walking distance from me yet again, several thousand kilometres from our old neighborhood. Fucked up. I hadn�t spoken to him in over three years, when a mutual friend gave me his phone number. We�re going out tonight for beer and nostalgia.

So this evening promises to be a liver-crunching monster truck rally of a time. This particular friend was my closest henchman during my years of hard core vice-stravaganza in art college (or perhaps I was his henchman�we never did sober up long enough to hammer out the details of who was henching for whom). I remember one night, shortly after my eighteenth birthday, we assembled at my apartment to make a heroic dent in the cartoonishly large bottle of Jack Daniels I�d received as a �first legal birthday� gift. After several hours of listening to the Talking Heads and drinking some sort of whisky concoction involving coke and lime juice, we decided that our effervescence could no longer be contained, and we headed pub-wards. About half a block from our regular hangout, my friend let out a jubilant howl and lunged at the sidewalk, having spotted a FIFTY DOLLAR BILL lying at our feet. The next, and last clear thing I remember is walking into the pub, slapping the bill down on the bar, and ordering a PITCHER of Guinness. The rest of the evening is a stout-tinted blur.