The workplace cafeteria menu for today read, "Chinese New Year". I sat there thinking to myself, "Self, I would've appreciated a day off instead. But maybe they'll have cool dragon dances and hand out red pocket money! And have all you can eat turnip-cake! This could turn out to be a not so bad attempt at being culturally sensitive!"

Then it was time for lunch.

And wouldn't you know.

Chicken balls.

So I basically ate 'Manchu Panda Express Wok' for lunch today, but I'm sure other people actually felt like they were taking part in an authentic Chinese New Year celebration. Poor fools. If only they knew that the real celebration involved trading well-constructed phrases of good-wishes for money.

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I wrote this yesterday, but I chose to publish it today. Why? I had to take my time and make my readers wait on this one, make my readers all mad and stuff, like, "You usually throw up something on the day you write it, post it already!", and then I come out of nowhere...

I forgot to gas up the car this weekend, and only realized this on the highway on-ramp with about 2 blocks of fuel left. Since the little fuel light hadn't flashed on yet, I was somewhat confident I could at least make it to the gas station outside my house (the most convenient one). Then, I went and did the dumbest thing.

I opted to take the Express lanes home, only to find out that the 401 Express was crawling, and now I didn't even have the option to take a random exit for gas if needed.

Then the little gas light turned on, informing me that I was not only in need of gas, I was also an idiot.

The rest of the way home, I tried my best to conserve gas by doing things that may or may not actually conserve gas, but gave me some peace of mind. I flipped off the radio (driving start-stop traffic without radio is maddening), and I only turned on the heat every ten minutes (to defog the windows and bring my freezing limbs back to life). The best idea I came up with? Put my car in neutral, and let it roll down any natural incline instead of giving the car any gas.

Brilliant, amirite?

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Because I live in the mushroom kingdom.

Let me explain.

Rushing in from the "deep freeze", my sense of smell (my smelling buds) was overwhelmed by an aroma I had never before experienced. It was not outright pleasant, but after a tiny adjustment period, I found myself breathing deeply.

Doing my best impression of Leroy Brown, I rightly concluded that the smell was burnt mushrooms (yeah I asked my mom what she did).

I think my mom just facilitated my third-hand smoking of mushrooms. My first semi-encounter with not-real-drugs. How exciting. And revolting.

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I usually have about 3 or 4 stories that I plan to convert to blog posts coming back from a trip. Thanks to my ever changing blogging habits, I probably shouldn't go with the tried, QA'd, QC'd, and true "lead with a small story and build towards the biggie" method. Let's just get right to the main event.

I went kayaking...

...through the "river of death".

Which turned out to be more "stream of tight turns, underwater obstacles, and low hanging branches".

I didn't take that picture, because not only was I surrounded by water (water + electronics = go back to school and learn things okay?), in the state of Florida, it's not mandatory to kayak with a life-jacket on! Even if you're going through an area where there are supposedly alligators and snakes. And, before entering that area, you had to cross through a relatively high traffic channel (first time through, level 10, if you're being competitive).

Meaning that even if the camera is safely protected by Ziploc, in the event of a kayak flip-over, the camera would just float away as safety is struggled for. And I wasn't willing to take that risk.

Kayak also satisfied my need to "work out" at least once a year. Check how the generic conversation taking place sometime in 2009 would go down.

Gym Buff - I'm tired from pumping that iron and benching, like, double my weight. But going to the gym is soooo worth it. Could you please open the door? I can't lift my arms right now.

McOysty - Back in January, I paddled a kayak for 2 hours with alligators and snakes swimming beneath me, other boats either trying to run me over or cause big enough waves to tip me over, and branches hanging so low I was directed to duck, all while sipping on a can of beer. Yeah I did. So I think you should open the door for me, seeing as you owe me for imparting that bit of aawesome on you.

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Me:



For comparison sakes, most people that read this:

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7:40am, running through the checklist before leaving the house...

IBM Laptop? Check.

Employee ID? Check.

Dress shirt? Check.

Dress pants? Check.

Dress shoes? Check.

Fast forward to 8:45am, in the office, making the necessary "how was your holiday" conversations to avoid starting work...

Dress shirt + dress pants + NO BELT = thanks for trying, but really, just go home.

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I got fans. Internet fans. Maybe not Internet Nerd Fans, but close. And no, you won't really understand that song unless you're this guy, and if you really were that guy, I hope you didn't click on the link to bring you back to your own blog. Haha.

And my internet fans are always like, "Yo, how come you don't blog no mo'?"

Okay, so they're not ALWAYS like that, and they usually don't use "mo'" instead of "more". But they really should. Their point would be that much clearer if they phrased it that way.

I don't know. Something has happened since I stole a piece of framed paper and escaped from Kingston's tenth prison, if you know what I'm saying.

I was talking about Queen's University.

We good? Right, moving on.

I used to pride myself in writing free-flowing blog posts. Not very cleverly crafted posts, but I compensated for this fact by touching on a wide variety of topics in one post. However, somewhere along the line, I lost the ability to connect thoughts. So I started using dotted lines and allowed my thoughts to be disjointed. I know, sounds like a bandage solution right?

It also smells like one too. What?

Now this has bubbled over into not-MTV's the real world. Because I think I have some amount of quick wit, I like to chime in with a well-timed phrase here and there during a conversation to give it new life, or a change of tempo. Recently, I've bungled the words I want to say, sometimes in a very dyslexic manner and other times just not putting much thought into what I'm saying. I've also struggled to convey my thoughts. And I read somewhere that your thoughts don't exist unless you're able to convey them.

Aw shucks. Turns out that author really wrote the same post I'm attempting to write right now, but ten times better. That's my cue to wrap this baby up and put it under the Christmas tree.

What!?!

I cannot resolve to be a more consistent blogger. Life as I know it is a-changing. I'll be around here when I want. Is blogging dead? Is hip-hop dead? Is my cellphone dead? People have been calling but unable to get through even though the phone is just sitting there in front of me, and yes it is switched on.

Where do we go from here? I have a company trip to Florida coming up this week, I'm sure I'll have somethin' to say soon after that.

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