Sticky Beak
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The Skinny
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...life in small Northern towns, working for assholes, boys who refuse to become men, synthetic personalities, anorexic models and their link to emotional scarring, bad marijuana trips, crazies on BC Transit, beer, piece of shit cars, living out of a suitcase paycheck to paycheck, unrequited love, Seinfeld, minimum-wage jobs, broken New Year�s resolutions, and over-limit Visa accounts.
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I am in Hell... I am in hell. My tonsils are once again the size of cherries so I can�t swallow (Horror of horrors! Holly can�t eat!!!), "The Last Cookie Round-up" sung by Cookie Monster is playing on the stereo ("Yippee-Cookie-Ki-Yay"), and there are a million houseflies swarming all around and landing on me. FECKING FLIES!!! Oh, and I woke to find a pile of mail telling me that a) I owe Visa a butt-load of money (no shit), b) don't qualify for GST rebate, and c) am overdue in my BC Med payments. GODDAMNIT! So now that I've got that little rant off my chest, I can share with you the weekend adventure I had in Saskatchewan. Borrowed Mel's minivan to make the blitzkrieg trip from Edmonton to Waskasiu (think I spelled that right), which is in the middle of nowhere, but an absolutely beautiful setting for a wedding. I showed up Friday night after seven hours of driving (broken up by 2 hours of napping in the minivan outside Tim Horton's in Lloydminster). I knew no one except the couple getting married, so put on my 'friendly outgoing hat' and pushed my way into a few conversations so that I could feel a little bit less of a knob. One person I did meet was the Italian French-Canadian guy that I was bunking with for the weekend � Alan (pronc. Ah-laaan). Funny guy, nice enough, but man can he snore... and FART. Holy shit. I don't know how he managed to sleep through them, but between those monster ripper farts and his constant, full-on snoring I didn't get a wink. (Bingle) Aside from that, the weekend was fabulous. I went over to the hall to help with whatever needed doing the afternoon of the wedding, and wound up on 'Poo Patrol'. Yup. Apparently a whole herd of Elk had visited the wedding site the night prior and left little nugget piles behind. That place was a bloody minefield. There were two other ladies besides myself on Poo Patrol (one was the groom's mother), and between the three of us we collected nearly four gallons of poo. That's a whole lot of shit. I tell ya, I've been to a lot of weddings, and I've been assigned a lot of tasks, but this was by far the strangest. The sun was out, the people were happy, the day went perfectly... a beautiful wedding for an awesome couple. I was even introduced as the amazing friend who came 'all the way from Australia' for the wedding, which totally made me sound like a hero and scored me some serious brownie points with the other guests... :) Here�s a couple pics of the happy couple and wedding...
So, aside from lack of sleep due to my snoring, farting roomie the weekend was fabulous. Except that I 'woke up' sick with this goddamned tonsillitis on Sunday morning with a seven hour drive ahead of me. The trip went smoothly until I was about an hour from home when BANG! the front driver's side tire blew. So here I am, pulled over on the side of a three lane freeway when I walk to the rear of the van, kneel to peer under and � oh, what�s this? � no spare tire. Goddamned-son-of-a-bitch-n-whore-n-bastard. Pop the back of the van and low and behold... no jack either. WHAT THE BLOODY BEEP BEEP BEEPITY BEEP!!! So what now? It's gonna be dark in about an hour, and I'm up shit creek without a paddle. What can you do? So I started walking. I was only about 20 seconds into my hike (to god knows where) when Good Samaritan #1 (a 90 year old grandma) pulled over and offered me a lift. She spun round and about half a kilometer back on the opposite side of the freeway was a Gas Station (fancy that! I never even looked in that direction). Grandma dropped me there and I went inside to buy some puncture seal. Hallelujah! I got the last can! Whew! On the way out the door, I gave Melanie a call to let her know that I was stranded with a flat and no spare, but had just got some sealant and would call back if it didn't work. Off I truck baaaack across six lanes of traffic, through a grass median overgrown with thistle and back to the sad little minivan sitting on the side of the road. Spray the shit into the tire, and what a shocker... it doesn't work. Of course it didn't work. This is me we�re talking about. It did inflate the tire enough that I could move the van off the freeway and into a driveway about half a kilometer down the road. A white truck followed me in, and out jumped Good Samaritan #2. Apparently he'd passed me in the opposite direction, saw me using the sealant and turned around to help me. Nice guy. First he tried to inflate the tire with a portable compressor, but we found the hole, which was actually a pretty large split in the tire, and the air was leaking faster than he could pump it in. At this point, I borrowed Good Sam #2's cell phone to call Mel and give her a status report. She had already called our friend Mike who was on his way out to rescue me. At this point, a cop car pulled into the driveway and two green coppers jump out to make sure everything's ok. Geezus H! This is turning into quite the drama, for a spare tire! They wrote down my license plate and took off. Shortly after, Mike arrived in time to help Good Sam #2 jack the minivan (actually, Mike gets full credit for that big salad), remove the flat tire, replace it with the rear tire, and then replace the rear tire with a spare trailer tire that Good Sam #2 had in the back of his truck. It was bigger than the other tires, but (hallelujah!) it fit. Buddy gave me his name and phone number, and said to just drop the tire off at his work in the next few days, once we get sorted. Very nice. Definitely need to buy him a case of beer or something. So that was my big adventure this weekend. Fun and games. As Mike said when he arrived on scene... "Just another chapter for the book, eh Hol?" Touch�, Michael. Touch�. |