The Summer time Shakes

Finally I can say without using any figment of my imagination that summer break is here. That is, for me at least. And I'm not sure how anyone else who has their break now is feeling, but I always find that whenever something is long awaited and overdue, it doesn't seem even close to as good as you thought it'd be. A few examples in the past include Kill Bill Volume 2, Fable, Blade Trinity, and the list goes on and on. Although I'll admit, I'd far rather be doing this summer routine than to be worrying about finals all day, it still isn't all that it's cracked up to me. Here were my experiences from the weekend in Calgary:

Friday: Finally finished my exams joyfully and right after I was done, it was off to Calgary for a weekend of name calling, swearing, money spending, bum encountering, elevator imprisoning, fun times. More on this later. But this day, I pretty much arrived in Friday to see Ryan's very cool place. It almost felt like an episode of Cribs to me, seeing as he'd been there for so long and I hadn't had the time to visit him earlier. Only this episode was like 2 minutes long, because it was an apartment. Arrived there at about 3-4 PM and we pretty much hung out and did whatever shopping we could do for the rest of the night. In my efforts, I took home a new 500 pc poker chip set (probably my best purchase there). And we capped the night off with some profanity filled, frustration invoking Xbox Live Halo 2. Great times... Highlight of the day: As we were walking around downtown, we came across a homeless guy who asked for some spare change. When we said we didn't have any, the homeless guy offered that if we gave him some change, he'd let Ryan use his comb because apparently Ryan's hair looked messy. It was just such an unexpected remark coming for a dirty old man with a long messy beard, and frizzy hair.

Saturday (Daytime): Didn't wake up until about 1 PM or so due to lack of sleep for the night before (I had stayed up all night to study for my last exam). Nonetheless, I had a good rest, despite Ryan's comments about my fricken phone beeping every 10 seconds because of its low battery, and my very bad snoring habit. Then it was off to Chinook mall. Known as Calgary's equivalent to West Edmonton Mall, I wasn't expecting very much. But once we got there, I'll have to say it was one of the most visually pleasing malls I have ever been to. They had all kinds of unique shops that you wouldn't find anywhere else, and it was generally a good layout. From that experience I bought myself a nutritious lunch of 2 papa burgers for $5 at A&W with a large rootbeer, a pair of jeans, 4 sleeveless summer shirts, and a pair of shorts. Not too bad of a trip, but that was pretty much where all of my tax return went :P

Saturday (Night): After coming home, Dev (Ryan's brother) wanted to get some pain killers because recently he had hurt his back at work and had taken a paid week off. So with Ryan's apartment being on the 16th floor of the building, we decided to take the elevator down. It was only a walk across the street to get to a Mac's Convenience store, and on the way we were fortunate enough to run into yet ANOTHER homeless guy hanging around the telephone booth of Mac's. Again we were asked if we had any spare change, and of course the answer again was no. So we quickly went into Mac's, picked up some Tylennol EZ Tabs, while I picked up some pepperoni sticks for on the way back. The funny thing was after we got out of the store, Dev was feeling kinda hungry for pizza. And right next to the Mac's was a place where you could buy pizza by the slices, but he was too afraid to be encountered by the bum again, so we went immediately home.

Again we took the elevator to head back to Ryan's place. The elevator we get into happens to be the lower budget one seeing as the number plate above the door was missing and only had lightbulbs showing, making it impossible to know which floor you're on. I remember back in a previous elevator ride where we were joking about the elevator getting stuck at one point, and what we would do. Sure enough after about 7-8 lightbulbs later, the elevator stops except this time more abruptly than usual. So we begin to wonder what happened exactly. Ryan starts to push the open door button many times, and nothing is happening. We're beginning to actual wonder if we got stuck in this stupid elevator. Other than the number buttons, there's the close door, open door, alarm button, some crazy abbreviated button, and a locked panel. So our next resort was to ring the alarm button several times. What's stupid is that, pressing that only made it seemed like there were just a bunch of punks who were causing trouble and pressing the alarm button for kicks. Reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. Anyhow, nothing happens. But luckily Ryan has the building's front desk number on his cell phone. We give them a call, and they tell us to wait while they get someone to help. Let's just say at this time there was a large void of time (say 30-40 min) of annoying elevator door noises, farting nastiness from Ryan's brother, stench from me eating my pepperoni sticks, and laughing from realizing that we had actually got stuck in the elevator. After that, we were finally rescued from the damned elevator, and we had figured out that we were actually b/w the 11th and 12th floor the whole time. I mean literally b/w them because when we managed to open the elevator door, you could see half the door of floor 11, and half the door of floor 12. Needless to say we took the stairs up the rest of the way once we got out.

Sunday: This was the day we left Ryan's place. We pretty much just packed our stuff up, had a cereal breakfast, and started putting stuff into the car. The funniest part of the day I'd have to say was the experience me and Dev had with another elevator. We were looking for a down elevator, so Dev pushed the down button. Wondering about how sensitive the buttons actually were, I was surprised to find that the up button lit up only after touching it. So now were pretty much calling for both an up and down elevator. And as fate would have it, the first elevator that comes to us is going completely the wrong way. So we have to tell them to go ahead, and we finally catch our down elevator. Thankfully this one is different from the one we had the night before, it actually had it's number plate. So we push the ground floor button, and again I get curious about how sensitive the buttons are, once we are about the 4th floor, i decide to touch the 16th floor button. And again it lights up. Dev, wondering what the hell I was doing, laughes and presses ALL of the floor buttons below the 16th floor. So now we have a panel of numbers that are half lit. We start to laugh about the poor sucker who has to get into that elevator, and begin to hope no one needs to get into it. Sure enough, once we hit the ground floor, a girl on rollerblades is standing there waiting for that same elevator. We get out trying to keep the most straight faces as possible as she casually glides into the elevator chamber. Immediately we get as far away from there as possible and start laughing about how the girl just got owned.

Overall, I really enjoyed Calgary. A few things I noticed about it this time around were that first there are a lot more homeless people in the popular downtown areas. Second, their downtown is WAAAAY nicer looking than ours. Third, it feels so much more walking friendly in their downtown area than ours, probably because of the scenery.

I'll end this blog with a nice and short story from the Darwin Awards:

"The Bumbershoot"

April 18, Germany

A sword-swallower died in Boon after he put an umbrella down his throat-- and accidentally pushed the button that opened it.