A week ago Arthur and I were staggering around the north end of the Strip at two in the morning, he drunk off of Coronas and $2-$4 Limit and me reeling from making the single dumbest poker play in recent memory during the $65 tournament at the Sahara. Anyway a floppy-haired dude in a Bentley convertible rolled past and I'm pretty sure it was Elton John.

***

This city is soul-crushing. I don't understand it and I don't like it. I don't understand how people will willingly spend their precious free time in the middle of the desert punching buttons on the slot machines, playing negative EV table games (do they not realize the house is rigged to win every single one of those games?), walking too damn slow and - my personal favorite - taking pictures of SHIT THAT WAS BUILT SOLELY FOR THEM TO TAKE PICTURES OF.

An example of the last would be the statues outside Caesars Palace, which are always a choking point for crowds as hordes of imbeciles pose in front of them with digital cameras and goofy grins. Hey, morons - those statues, like the "Eiffel Tower" and the rest of this gdm city, were built by Jim's Contracting in Summerlin, not the French or the Romans or anyone worth a damn. If you want to take pictures of cool stuff, go to the source. Like say Rome.

It boggles the mind how people can choose this place as a vacation spot over actual places. You could be on a beach, in a national park, on top of a mountain, in Prague or Montreal or something. And yet you are in an air-conditioned room in the desert drinking too much (that I can understand), popping collars or getting whored-up and debasing yourselves in between mindless stints of playing the lottery with a push-button and indulging in your base greed.

And you all walk too damn slow.

***

Anyway I'm leaving for a month and when I return for another two month stretch in June and July I plan to utterly ignore the fact that I'm in Vegas except for the times my friends come to visit and we do tourist things and go to the Peppermill and the Scorpions and Elegant Brownies bring me to the point of stupefied satisfaction.

Speaking of the Peppermill, Art and I went last week and it was probably the highlight of my trip. I finally conquered that bastard the Elegant Brownie and felt extremely sick all night. It probably led to my terrible poker play that I will not talk about again, and that I hate only because it now gives Arthur a comeback for when I chirp him for busting with AQ against my pocket kings in the PokerStars media event last year. Blast!

The rest of my trip was meh. Vegas was what I thought it was. Arthur and I hung out at Bellagio for a week and partied a bit the night before he left and then he left and I spent the next two days pretty much in bed, emerging only to eat and get exercise. I watched a lot of Deadliest Catch and basketball, since hockey is a foreign concept to Americans. Also, the Avs lost bad. And so did the Raps. And the Jays suck. What is this world coming to?

So, life. I spent the last three days at Caesars Palace chirping my friend Aaron on his choice of toque and trying to avoid the resident perv. It was pleasant as far as these things go. But I'm never happier in Vegas than when I'm in the airport milking the free wireless and thinking about how wonderful Vancouver is going to be.

***

I have a month in Vancouver before I'm on the road again, more or less, and I'm going loft shopping. I think the housing market is on the cusp of a correction and listings are starting to skyrocket, which is nice - there are a lot of desperate sellers on MLS and Craigslist now and more, I hope, to come.

Anyway I'm more or less set on a loft. The alternatives in downtown Vancouver is 500 square feet (ie a box) in a nice building or slightly more square feet in a 40 year old building with the washer and dryer either in the kitchen or the bathroom, neither of which appeals. And anyways lofts are infinitely cooler.

I also may look in North Van, but we'll see how it all pans out. I have to talk to some banks etc before I start dreaming too big.

Other things on the agenda for May include Jess presumably coming home from Australia, some of the poker world coming to Vancouver for a tournament and thus my hanging out with some friends, and finally getting my damn car fixed. I have to give her up for a week on May 15th, so I'll be rolling in a rental for a week, which is better than rolling in a car with a busted-ass rear end.

***

I went to the Forum Shops in Caesars Palace on one of my wasted days off and almost let myself get talked into spending $3k on a Breitling. Until I arrived at the airport I wasn't sure I wasn't going to go back and buy the thing, despite it not making any sense. I fear I won't be able to hold out my impulsive watch fetishizing much longer.

***

Andrew asked specifically for a discussion of Jason Seigel's junk, especially how it relates to the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I have neither the time nor the inclination for such things except to tell you there was too much of it in the movie, such that it became gratuitous and distracting from the plot. And does anyone believe dude would be dating Kristen Bell and that That 70's Show chick?

Anyway, dude's junk: floppy and all-too-prevalent. The end.

Arthur and I went to see the 12:30 showing of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" at a theatre on the Strip last night. It took an unreal number of empty elevators and vast vacant passages before we arrived at the box office and the theatre had old school seating. It was mostly empty. As we were leaving, the guy walking out of the theatre ahead of me held the door as he searched the parking lot for his limo. He was Howie Mandel. I thanked him for holding the door.

***

A week and a half ago I flew from Providence, Rhode Island to Louisville, KY, via Washington DC. I wore a turtleneck for some reason and by the time I was walking across the tarmac in DC I'd remembered for sure it was April and spring had spring. It was amazingly warm in Louisville and I took the 30-minute taxi ride from the airport with the window down and the wind in my hair.

The casino is located in what the maps say is Elizabeth Indiana, but what is in reality a couple of parking lots and outbuildings spread around the massive Caesars Palace structure along the Ohio River. At check-in, the clerk practically swooned when she saw my Canadian passport. "That's so cool," said she. "I don't even have enough money to go across the river to Louisville."

She told me she was still living with her ex in the next town up the road. I think that was the part where I was supposed to propose marriage. I didn't.

My room overlooked the river and a giant coal-fired power plant. For exercise I walked the decrepit fitness course behind the hotel. I had two days off and the Doobie Brothers were playing, but I didn't go. I slept a lot and read. And then worked more or less nonstop.

On Tuesday morning I caught a ride back to the airport and hung around the terminal for three hours waiting for my 4 pm flight to Chicago. I watched a couple episodes of Freaks and Geeks (Ep. 111 is one of the greatest hours of TV I've ever seen) and had to refrain from cackling aloud in the terminal. And I read a bit and played this gdm Miley Cyrus song Andrew put me on over and over again.

The plane came and I flew to Chicago and arrived late. I had to make a dash across a couple of terminals to catch my connection to Vancouver but I got there just in time. The plane had about eight people on it and I asked if I could be upgraded to Economy Plus because of my Star Gold status. The flight attendant wandered off to double check and returned telling me someone else knew nothing of my request. Made no sense but eff United Airlines, as usual.

Every time I land in Vancouver it's at the same time as about three 747s from all over the globe. This time it was Shanghai, Bombay and London, which made for some interesting accents during the 30 minute wait at Customs. Because of the tight connection in Chicago United lost my luggage. I say again, eff United Airlines.

The Orifice, the Vibrator Fiend and Brian picked me up from the airport, which was gold of them.

I spent the next couple of days in Vancouver trying to recover from Connecticut and Indiana with limited results. Seemed like there just wasn't enough time for everything I wanted to do, but I did manage to get the taillights on my car fixed and catch up on a bit of work.

On Friday night I flew to Las Vegas for a two-week stay. It's my first time back in Sin City since the end of the WSOP and though I remain in profound hate for this city the absence was long enough for me to be seduced by the excitement and the promise, if only a little bit. The 45-minute wait at the cab stand more or less cured that irrationality and by the time I got to Bally's and navigated another 15-minute wait at check-in (at 11:30 pm, no less) I was just ready for room service and sleep, Vegas be damned.

Bally's, as these things, go, is not a bad hotel. I had to switch rooms on Day 1 because the check-in clerk was determined to get me a room in the "right" tower, which I guess I appreciate although frankly the first room was not terrible and had a great view of the fake Eiffel tower. I currenly have a view of a parking garage.

My obligations are at Bellagio and I'm spending most of my time in a 12th-floor suite overlooking the pool, with the Palms, the Gold Coast and the Rio rising in the distance like the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Paster and Future, respectively. I'm here with Arthur and the dynamic is much different from my work with Marty but it's still very fun and I really appreciate the company.

Unfortunately Arthur gets to leave next weekend and I have to stick around for a few more days, but we should get in some hijinks and Peppermilling before that. Howie Mandel is a good omen, I think.

***

While I was in Connecticut I went on a poker kick. Every night from 10pm-3am I four-tabled SNGs on Full Tilt. The first few nights I made some decent money and then stayed up all night pondering my future as a pro poker player. The next night I started early and lost 10 SNGs in a row and quit before midnight. The rest of the trip I broke more or less even and thus lost interest in poker again.

I'm happy I got it out of my system; as I was playing the tournaments I was approaching it as a job and I could probably survive by multi-tabling SNGs but now that the spell is over I'm glad I'm spending my evenings doing other things. I haven't written in a while and I need to get back to it, stat.

I've been reading well, at least. I've read three really good books lately - "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon, "Bright Lights Big City" by Jay McInerney and "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler. All three authors' creativity and imagination as regards their writing really amazed and inspired me - there are incredible passages/metaphors/bits of dialogue in all three books and I've been thrilled by all three novels.

McInerney's book surprised me quite a bit: it's written in the second person, which is unusual, but beyond that McInerney's work seems to get lumped in with Bret Easton Ellis' stuff a lot and after reading "Bright Lights" I can't really understand the comparison beyond the fact that the two men write about the same city in the same period of time (i.e. New York in the 1980s).

Where Ellis' novels are populated by characters almost entirely devoid of any scrap of humanity, and where the underlying theme seems to be one of soulless decadence and the kind of depravity that characterizes the last days of a dying empire, McInerney's protagonist was heart-wrenchingly human and his forays into decadence more a response to soul-crushing personal tragedy (the death of his mother) than to his not having a soul at all. McInerney's protagonist was identifiable and real and redeemable (fundamentally good) where you'd be hard-pressed to find a redeeming quality in all of American Psycho or Glamorama.

Anyway, I loved "Bright Lights Big City." I have a Bret Easton Ellis book waiting on my bookshelf at home (and unfortunately it isn't The Rules of Attraction but Lunar Park) and am now not particularly excited to go back. I think I'll chase down some more McInerney stuff as a counterpoint.

***

This is apropos of nothing but I've been thinking. I know a lot of people who've had long-distance relationships and it kind of struck me that these things are kind of unique to this generation, at least as far as the sheer number of people who are pinning their romantic lives on a long-distance telephone line or an email conversation.

I think it's pretty common these days for people to date someone from a different area code or time zone, as far as I can tell. I've done it a few times and it's not exactly fun, but I think it's a reaction to our generation being increasingly mobile and the world thus getting exponentially smaller.

My friends and I grew up being told we could do anything, and a lot of us actually believed it and consequentially are willing to move across the province/country/world to make sure we don't miss out on our potential. And in our wakes we leave friendships and relationships that, despite our best efforts, for the large part prove fleeting or unsustainable over a long distance and long period of time.

We're able to move anywhere we want and chase whatever dreams we want to chase, and in the pursuit of those dreams we put ourselves first and our relationships second, mostly I think out of the fear that by sticking around for someone we're dooming ourselves not only to mediocrity but to a life of resenting that other person for our mediocrity. There's a certain amount of frantic "gotta be all I can be" mentality and that leads us to focus almost exclusively on self when it comes to making moves that could benefit our careers and personal goals.

But I guess I'm starting to wonder if it's really worthwhile being so self-absorbed. I've spent most of my life since I was sixteen fearing I would wind up mediocre and anonymous and I've made most of my decisions such that I'd be constantly bettering myself and moving towards self-fulfillment/fame/fortune/etc. I have plenty of friends who are the same, and plenty of friends who've left boyfriends and girlfriends in other cities and tried mostly in vain to make their relationships work long distance as they work towards their own goals. And the relationships usually crumble, the price paid for a bit of personal advancement and the hope of a better career.

I'm not advocating settling for a second-rate career or ditching one's dreams because of young love. But most people would concede their dreams include true love and I think as far as personal satisfaction goes, "true love" and companionship probably rank higher on our lists than a great job or even fame and fortune. We're just so scared to acknowledge quote-unquote love that we're willing to turn our back on it, taking it for granted and thinking it will be easy to come by once we've established ourselves and reached the top.

Maybe it will be and maybe it's foolish to even think about altering one's personal and career goals in favor of the companionship of someone you "love". But I feel like at the end of the day we're not all going to be bemoaning the fact that we didn't live up to someone's idea of our potential, but we might be wondering after the person we left behind as we were trying to live up to it.

That's all syrupy and advocating true love and stuff, and I'm not a huge believer in true love or greeting-card sentiment (or I try not to be). But people fall for each other and just about everyone wants to get married. It seems weird to me that we're willing to uproot ourselves to further our self-advancement but can't convince ourselves it would be a good idea to compromise on our career goals in favor of the continued presence of people we'd be willing to admit we "love."

Off meandering mind.

***

I've been in America for almost the entirety of the NHL playoffs thus far and even though Colorado just won their first series (Theodore/Sakic ftw) I haven't been able to watch a minute of any of the games thanks to the NHL having sold its rights to a channel called Versus, which nobody in the world actually gets. TSN broadcasts the games online but you have to be in Canada to get them and so that's a fail.

NBC has shown a couple Red Wings games and apart from an afternoon on CBC when I was in Vancouver that's been my hockey fix lately. I've been listening to the Avalanche games on the radio over the internet and that's had to suffice, but I'm really going insane - why, NHL, did you ensure that nobody in America will ever watch a hockey game, even Canadians who are desperate for playoff hockey?!

That is all.

Two people complimented me on my Camaro my last Thursday in Vancouver. The first was some women in my driveway who claimed to own an IROC. The second was the man who rear-ended Erica.

***


I write from Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, a million miles away from Dublin in my mind and the lines I've trudged through since my last entry. Well, there haven't been that many lines but there has certainly been a lot to talk about.

So my flight from Dublin/Frankfurt/Vancouver was fine. Had one of those "I can't believe this is my life" moments while staring out at the jets on the tarmac in Dublin predawn (the catalyst was an awesome mash-up of Lady Sovereign's "Love Me or Hate Me", Bloc Party's "Banquet" and some Abba song) and then flew around the world a bit and slept, mostly.

Arrived in Vancouver on Tuesday, watched the Avalanche mop the floor with the Canucks repeatedly (and can I say how much I love the NHL schedule that has each division play itself over the last couple weeks of the season? It's like an extra two weeks of playoff games!), hung with the Orifice and friends, went to work.

And on my way home from my sole day at the office Kara and I made plans to meet up around her place. I decided to take Kingsway, thinking as I did so of the last time I drove up Kingsway after work, when I was almost hit by a couple of dumb mother-effers. And I kind of wondered whether I'd have any near misses this time. Stupid me.

So about on the border of Vancouver and Burnaby I'm stopped for a red light when some doofus in a Ford Ranger slams into the back of me doing like 10 kph. I'm calm, pull the car over and wonder what I'm supposed to do now besides exchange information. Dude follows (thank God), pulls in behind me and asks me how much one of those Camaros go for. I tell him it's a Porsche and that it's significantly expensive and he seems satisfied. Then shit gets kind of surreal.

As soon as I get out of the car I start shaking like the proverbial leaf and I guess I was more shaken up than I thought because I manage to lock my keys in my glovebox. Good times. So I have to call Kara to pick up my spare key in Coquitlam and drive it out to me. In the meantime accident dude offers to let me sit in his car to keep warm. It's not that cold but I don't really want to hurt his feelings or something so I do it. And over the next hour, dude (a 50-something man, rotund of body and busy of moustache and white, white, white), tells me about:

- his 40-something Chinese girlfriend (a masseuse)
- his 40-something Japanese mistress (a masseuse)
- his 26-year-old cocktease masseuse
- his land lady

In between actually talking on the phone with these women (and telling his gf he was at McDonald's drinking coffee when he was actually coming from his mistress' place), rummaging through the condoms in his car, showing me pics of the girlfriend and complaining about his hernia surgery, his girdle and his bandages. Good times. Then he offers to take me on a naval cruise in August if I promise to keep in touch.

He's actually a really nice guy, just uh unique. Anyway he hangs out until Kara arrives and then, my keys rescued, we make tracks to Red Robin sans dude where she chirps the shit out of me and I bemoan my fate.

Right, well, the next day I get the car checked out - cracked taillight, some bumper and deck lid damage, my accident cherry emphatically popped. Dude's insurance will cover it but the dealership can't fix the car until mid May, which means I'll be driving around a busted-ass (literally!) Porsche for a month and a half. Ugh. And I spend two hours at a walk-in clinic before undergoing an embarrassing five-minute check-up that results in a diagnosis of a back sprain given more out of pity I think than any real sprain in the back. No drugs, just "Keep active".

Anyway I'm still in love with the car and even while I've been examining the damage to the rear it's kind of underlined how beautiful the rest of the car is. She's still my baby.

***

Friday night was The Orifice's birthday and we all went out to Celebrities, which is well a gay bar in downtown Vancouver. So at least the music was good and although it wasn't really my scene I had a good time holding up the wall with the Vibrator Fiend and Brian, nursing a (one) beer and drinking the girliest shot imaginable. And I bought Kara a bottle of $22 champagne from a sports bar called, uh, Fountainhead. The champagne tasted like knives and I can't imagine Ayn Rand would have approved of either drink or decor.

Saturday I did a lot of phoning and driving, shall we say, and then we had a poker game at Kara's that degenerated into some drunkenness, a long drive downtown and my inability to beat my friends at poker despite making my living from the game (congrats, Brian).

Sunday I was downtown with the Fiend, riding the Aquabus around False Creek and searching for seals at Third Beach. The seals were nowhere to be found so we opted for the mediocre Simon Pegg vehicle "Run Fatboy Run" - which came out in England when I was there in September - and then called it a night.

Monday was big because Bruce Springsteen was playing at G.M. Place and though I've never been a huge fan of the Boss, I know someone who is and we went to the show after a suitably blue-collar dinner at Denny's. The show was amazing and probably converted me into a fan - dude had mad energy and it was pretty cool to see Silvio Dante doing his thing on the guitar and Max Weinberg on the drums as well. So yeah, great show. I went home and bought the man's greatest hits and have been rocking his latest album for days.

The rest of the week was just catching up with friends - I spent Tuesday night drinking embarrassing cocktails and eating Mexican food with Chuck, Wednesday afternoon in Coquitlam with the Deej and Wednesday evening in Vancouver with the Vibrator Fiend. And then on Thursday I was off again, on a 6:00 am flight to Chicago and then on to Providence, Rhode Island, where I am stuck at Foxwoods for seven days before I fly to Louisville for another five days and then go home again. But I'm hanging out with Marty and the schedule is light so it's not a bad trip.

I have more to say but my computer is being a little bitch so you'll have to wait.

O

So I'm in Dublin and flying out in under five hours. For some reason I had the bright idea that it would be useful to take a 6:50 am flight out of Dublin the day after my obligations ended. Six-fifty in the morning means at the airport at 4:50 am, which means leaving the hotel at like 4:20 am, which means waking up at 3:50 am. As if there was any chance of my going to bed.

So here I am.

***

The first three days here were like a writer's retreat. It was absolutely amazing. I woke up at like noon, wrote 2,000 words, ate a decent meal at the carvery (meat, potatoes, carrots and cabbage), went for a walk around the grounds, wrote 1,000 words on a project for my dad, did some review/editing of an old project, messed around on the internets, had a steak and ale pie for dinner, procrastinated, wrote another 2,000 words and went to bed around 2 a.m. There was almost literally nothing to do but procrastinate and write.

So I wrote like 17,000 words in three days and was amazingly productive. I slept well and relaxed and more or less did nothing but write. And procrastinate, which by now is an integral part of my terribly inefficient writing process.

Basically it takes me between two and three hours to write 2,000 words. The problem is only an hour of that is writing; I can blast off 2k words in like 55 minutes once I get down to it. But for me (and I don't think I'm the only one), writing is the hardest thing in the world to convince myself to do. I'll do anything rather than write and I'll look for any excuse not to write. I have to really force myself into a routine and that only works if I exhaust every possible avenue of procrastination every day. So I spend an hour or two surfing the internet, looking at condos and hockey scores and reading random blogs and it's only after there is nothing left to look at that I can finally convince myself it's worthwhile to write.

And then I write like 2k words and probably a thousand of them are useful, because I overwrite like a champ and have to cut down about a novel's length of long-winded crap when I edit. So, writing. There's your glimpse into my writing process. I hope it was fascinating.

Anyway I was going reading through something I wrote a couple of years ago, cleaning up grammar errors and avoiding making any major changes while I tried to figure out if it was worth actually pursuing getting the thing published (and I hate talking about "my novel" because it sounds pretentious and mid-thirties upper-middle class white men who are still in university and will never actually publish anything).

Usually when I write about "characters" (I feel pretentious even writing about this stuff but whatever) they're based in some ways on people I know. In this case the entire piece is based on people I know, enough that were I to somehow publish it I'd never be able to go back to my hometown again (I'm kind of cynical when I write and tend to focus on the negative about everyone and everything and that's what came forth pretty strongly in this piece).

Right, anyways so beyond simply offending my friends with my skewed caricatures of their lives, I actually "kill" one of the characters in the (sigh) novel. Not kill like, I take an axe, but I use my writer's license and end their life via drunk driver. Which was melodramatic admittedly but which seemed to fit the story. Reading it a couple years later though it kind of gave me pause: what would offend my friends more, having the negative aspects of their personalities being used as characters in something I wrote, or having their caricatures killed in my imagination?

I remain undecided on this novel-length piece of pap. Reading it over, I was in love with some parts and absolutely thrilled that I'd written it. Some parts were unbearable. The story is unoriginal in its basic form but I feel like it does say something worthwhile in the end. And I toyed with keeping the dead character alive at the end, but I couldn't make it work with the theme. So there you go. I guess you'll stay dead in the pages of my damned book, character based on mystery friend. But it was nothing personal.

***

Right, so after the writer's retreat I moved on to actually working, which was fine. It got me kind of in the poker mindset such that I may devote one day at home to playing as many SNGs as possible and seeing how I do. Beyond that, it got me into eating crappy food, working long hours and not getting any writing done. But that's normal.

I got to hang out quite a bit with my coworkers at other organizations and made some new Irish friends, which was pretty fun. And tonight we had a big party that involved celebrating someone's 800,000 Euro windfall by eating a lot of Thai food, drinking a lot of Bollinger and Asian beer and laughing a lot about Eurodonks. I was particularly pleased about the Bollinger because that's what James Bond drinks.

And then I begged off early and left Chris and Rod and Dana to their own devices in the bar and came up to my room, ostensibly to sleep by more likely to listen to bad music, kill time on Facebook and contemplate whether I should write anything.

***

As usual I'm really looking forward to getting back to Vancouver. I missed Kara's birthday but we're celebrating on Friday, which should be nice, and then there are a few other things lined up that I'm looking forward to, as well. But mainly I'm just looking forward to being back in the Lower Mainland and indolent for a week or so. And to hanging with my friends.

When I travel again I'm going to be with colleagues, for the most part, where since early February I've been traveling on my own. It really makes a difference having someone to kill time in airports with and to share cabs with, etc and I'm looking forward to that aspect of traveling come April when I'm on the road again.

In May I've just picked up a couple trips to Latin America (Rio and Costa Rica) which are absolutely thrilling, and possibly a trip to Paris as well which would also be nice, although I had kind of counted on having May in Vancouver to gear up for six weeks of living in Las Vegas. From the looks of it the schedule is getting pretty packed, though I guess that's what I want/ed.

***

So I've read all four books I packed on this journey, meaning the only distraction I'll have tomorrow (flight to Frankfurt, three hour stopover in the World's Worst Airport - International Division, during which time I hope they'll let me in the Star Gold lounge, nine hour flight to Vancouver) is the latest British edition of GQ, which strikes me more and more as simply a catalog for the aspirational man.

I like it better than the American version but the lifestyle it espouses is unattainable to like 95% of human beings. And besides, I'm getting more and more annoyed with the fact that every article comes with suggested clothing/hotels/restaurants/etc with price tags attached, as though it's impossible to live one's life without constantly consuming. Then some days I enjoy daydreaming about being able to afford even dressing myself in the styles they advocate, to say nothing of eating the meals/taking the trips/buying the homes they straight-facedly suggest.

The last book I read was Stewart O'Nan's "Last Night at the Lobster", which I bought because Gregg Easterbrook (who writes "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" on ESPN.com) compared it favorably to "Empire Falls", which was a great book. "Lobster" is about 150 pages concerning the last day of operation of this Red Lobster in New England, mostly following the manager around as he tries to keep order during a blizzard that sees most of his staff desert him.

It was well-written and a decent look into the lives of the people who work at Red Lobsters, but I didn't really think it said much about the human condition or anything like that. It was kind of unsatisfying because the manager was faced with these big changes/problems that he couldn't or didn't control and thus didn't take much action to correct them, although there was a certain poignancy in his simply trying to get through the day.

But the last line was typically "literary fiction" and by that I mean poor literary fiction that implies the author doesn't really know where he's ended up either. And so the book wasn't as enjoyable as I thought it would be and definitely no Empire Falls, although at 1/3rd the length it would have been remarkable if it had been.

Anyways that's my book report. I'll probably pick up a sleazy paperback in the airport and not read it on the plane.

***

So that's the story of my life at the moment. My plane leaves in about four hours and I have to leave the hotel in under two. And I'm happy to be going home again.

As it turns out, I was wrong, wrong, wrong, about the amount of time I'd be spending in Warsaw. For whatever reason, I booked myself in and out on the days before and after my work obligations, and now I'm in Dublin with three days of idleness when I could have spent at least one of those days exploring in Poland. Compounding the issue is the fact that my hotel in Dublin is actually 30 minutes north of the city, on a golf course in the middle of nowhere. And I don't golf.

Well, whatever though. I'm actually quite happy here. It's a beautiful day and the golf course, as most golf courses are (particularly private courses with helicopter pads and a fleet of Rolls-Royces) is pretty picturesque. The birds are singing and the sun is shining and I slept 14 hours last night, woke up and wrote 2,000 words of fiction. The food is quite good and though the room isn't particularly baller it's pleasant enough and I'm happy.

Warsaw was amazing, even though I saw very little but for the cab ride to and from work in the morning/evening. My cab ride took me from the glitzy commercial district through an older part of town with a bunch of old buildings housing Burberry stores and the like. Then it was down through Embassy Row (plenty of old stately buildings surrounded by treed tracts and guarded by wrought-iron fences) to the Hyatt hotel, which was ultramodern and plush (though not as baller as mine, he he).

I think the defining image of modern day Warsaw is the requisite two H&Ms sandwiching the giant Stalinist Palace of Culture.

But what I found most interesting about the city was its rebirth in the wake of what could be described as a pretty piss-poor 20th century. The more I read about Warsaw, the more I was kind of overwhelmed by the profound history of tragedy and struggle that had occurred. Treblinka is nearby and there are still remnants of the loading docks used to transfer people there. The Warsaw Ghetto, from what I could ascertain, was largely razed, but reminders are still there. The city's defining characteristic is a 40-story tower built by Stalin to remind the populace he was watching. Depressing.

And even if the reminders are not immediately visible, even just reading about the stuff that had happened in Warsaw seemed to affect me. I read about the Warsaw Uprising (in which, after it was foiled, the Nazis killed 150,000 of the citizenry while the Soviets watched from their tanks across the river, and immediately afterwards got into a taxi and rode through the streets and tried to picture that sort of thing going on. The taxi passed a bunch of old people who had undoubtedly been alive (even if not in Warsaw) during World War II and it seemed to compound the effect.

I've had trouble really explaining what I was feeling in Warsaw. I just found it affecting to be in a place with such a recent history of tragedy. It was like what I imagine I'd feel after touring a concentration camp or maybe Ground Zero, albeit (for the camp especially) on a lesser scale. I would really have liked to have had the time to get deeper into the history of the city, even if it would probably have sent me reeling.

***

But anyways, yesterday I got up after two hours of sleep and went to the Warsaw Airport and tried to check-in to my LOT flight. It turned out to be a gong show, as the flight was operated by Lufthansa and the good people at Lufthansa: Warsaw have no idea how to run a first-class check in. There was no room to line up so we kind of milled about in a vague semblance of a line, but the existence of our queue escaped the comprehension of a number of self-entitled rich tourists who bypassed the lines, and the check-in agents, who let them.

Anyways I was enraged by the time I checked-in, but after that it all went well. My flight to Frankfurt was uneventful and I spent my three hour layover in the Star Alliance Gold lounge after convincing the Lufthansa rep to let me in even though Aeroplan hasn't mailed my Elite card yet. You have to pay for internet in Lufthansa lounges (eight euro an hour!) so I ignored that and watched movies instead.

Then flew to Dublin after only one quick and easy security check. Flight to Dublin was just as uneventful (empty seat beside me on both flights, holla) and the customs guy was uncharacteristically nice. Got luggage, got money, caught a cab and got out to the Citywest Hotel and Conference Center, which will be my home for the next eight or so days. Ordered a really good steak and Guinness pie via room service, checked email and collapsed into bed for fourteen hours. Life is good.

***

I read a book on the flight over from Warsaw - after finishing the final James Bond book in the airport, boo hoo; I now have only one 200 page book and the latest British GQ to stand me until I get home, which could mean the first time in ages I've underpacked, book-wise, for a trip - called "No Hands Clapping" which is the sequel to this seminal book of loserdom that I think I mentioned last time called "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People", the title alone of which makes it deserving of a Pulitzer.

Anyway the book is a memoir about this guy, who in the previous version had attempted to break into the world of glossy NY magazines as a journalist/columnist (and failed), ostensibly trying to make it as a screenwriter in Hollywood while becoming a father. It's actually more about the after-effects of the first book and its impact on his life while he Adrian Moles his way through a relationship with his now-wife, although there are bits on screenwriting in the book.

Right, so the book was insubstantial and forgettable, but it impacted me in two areas. First, there were about two or three paragraphs about his feelings upon becoming a new father that kind of tilted me, but in a good way. I've always said I don't want kids, but it's not for not liking children, and the description of how this guy feels holding his newborn daughter and seeing her look up into his eyes for the first time was pretty affecting.

I'm kind of a sucker for that - I think it would be absolutely heartbreaking to have kids and have to live up to their absolute need/trust/belief for and in you, and to be worthy of that trust and their unconditional love.

There's a part in Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road where a young father is kind of hanging out resenting his wife and his two small children and the kids come to him and beg him to "please read the funnies" to them and I've always found that scene pretty moving, although as with most things I'm totally unable to articulate why. I guess it's just really their complete innocence and the idealized notion that if this man reads to them, everything will be alright, his personal problems be damned.

I find the concept of fatherhood pretty daunting (so it's a good thing that I haven't gotten anyone pregnant yet), partially because parenthood brings with it the necessity of living for someone else and not yourself, and also because I feel like that selfish resentment of one's kids is probably the worst thing in the world to feel, even though it's probably entirely human.

Right, anyway, I don't know if I want kids. I think it's something you have to be sure about, although I think very few people/couples actually are.

***

The second thing that this insubstantial book brought about in me is the rekindled desire to move to Los Angeles and write for movies. It re-sparked the interest so much that I was fairly jumping about on the plane waiting to get on the internet and look up creative writing schools in California. Now that I have, I see I'll need about $40k and three reference letters, so if you want to donate/provide reference letters, please contact me through this blog.

Anyway, I'm considering that as my long term plan. In a year or so I will have exhausted all possibilities in this job and will no doubt be anxious to start somewhere new. So why not move to Los Angeles, invest five figures in an arguably meaningless education in the hopes of becoming a professional screenwriter? The prospect of giving up a comfortable life and returning to student poverty is a bit scary, but it's in the pursuit of a dream and may ultimately be worthwhile. The thing is, I feel like there's a bit of a time crunch on this b/c I'd hate to be trying to get my start in LA after I turned 30. So the next few years are key.

So that's where I'm at, but I remain unconvinced about anything. Except that, after watching The Living Daylights, I appreciate Timothy Dalton as Bond much more.

My goal today is to write between 5-7k of fiction and I'm at best 40% there, so I'm leaving this navel-gazing exercise for the moment. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I've been in a lot of bad airports over the last few years. Most airports are pretty crummy places as would befit any place characterized by transience, jet lag and poor eating decisions, but in general there's a standard that most world-class terminals are at least able to maintain. It doesn't take much - competent staff/security, decent lines, seats in the waiting area and a place to get a bite to eat are pretty much all I've come to expect from my pre-flight experience, along with an easy way to get from terminal to terminal in the larger airports. Extras like power outlets, shopping concourses and free WiFi (I see you, Las Vegas International) are just icing on the cake.

Even with those kind of minimal standards, though, I've been to a few stops on the neverending journey that fail miserably. Among them are the airports in Atlanta, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, which are holes. Other places like LAX get low marks when it comes to getting around the airports (monorail one time!) but are usually pretty good with respect to staff, security, lines and the like.

I haven't been to too many really bad places internationally, although I can't say I'm a huge fan of London Heathrow in large part because of their inflexible "one carry-on" rule that effs things up for working photojournalists and overpackers, both of whose categories I identify with. The place is also freaking massive and impersonal and overcrowded with shops at the expense of any real waiting areas, but there's a new BA terminal coming at Heathrow and maybe that will change things.

Anyway, I have arrived in Warsaw and along the way have discovered the newest and thus far leading candidate for the Owen Laukkanen World's Worst Airport - International Division award and it is Frankfurt (FRA).

I've flown through FRA three times thus far and have emerged in various levels of displeasure every time. Whether it's security members who yell at me and grab my junk, long, dark and complicated corridors between terminals, ridiculous lines, lack of available food options or the fact that in the boarding lounges there are often half as many seats as there are passengers waiting to board the flights (and these boarding lounges are barricaded to all but ticket-holding passengers, who must line up outside the lounge in order to crowd into these small areas and jockey for seats before their nine-hour flights), the Frankfurt airport is something of a dive and although I have no beef with Lufthansa, it's to their eternal discredit that their global hub is in such a sad state.

Yesterday's flight through Frankfurt brought things to another level and garnered the airport its nomination as World's Worst. The story is thus: I arrive from Vancouver at like 10:20 in the morning with an 11:45 connection to Warsaw (we'll leave out the part about how I thought it was 11:20 and panicked a bit and was soundly put in my place by a Lufthansa customer service clerk).

My plane arrives at A terminal and my next flight departs out of C terminal. So whatever, I wander through the halls of the airport for a bit, following the signs through a number of depressing half-lit hallways populated by long-layover international travelers asleep in their seats. I've got plenty of time and I round the corner and hot damn, it's a security check point. The line is kind of long so I ask the attendant (not a security guard, just some airport staffer standing there babysitting) about my connection (still thinking it's an hour later than it already is) and she tells me nothing can be done and I'll have to ask the line if I can but in while the passengers in the line tell me they're all on tight connections too.

So I go to the back of the line and languish and everyone else languishes ahead of me. The line barely moves and I'm fortunate enough to be in the midst of a 747-load of angry Americans headed back to Washington. They call for a manager, who is unhelpful in the Germanic tradition, and then airport polizei arrive to keep order.

So we languish some more because there are only three lines and security is giving everyone the pat-down/reach-around and even after I figure out that I have an extra hour to spare it's still getting down to the wire. Meanwhile, the line babysitter is the picture of incompetence, watching the line grow and periodically instructing all the ladies to take the right-hand line. This in turn makes all the men think they have to take the left-hand line and my progress is further impeded by about fifteen dudes cutting in front of me as they move from right-hand to left-hand. Of course I'm in the left-hand lane and of course the right-hand lane moves quicker with both men and women accepted.

Eventually by 11:20 I'm getting my junk fondled by a nice young German man and my shit goes through security just fine. Except they want to take a closer look at my camera so, carrying my belongings and stinking of trans-Atlantic flight-sweat I follow some dude downstairs to a secondary security area. I tell dude my flight leaves in 20 minutes and he's down; it doesn't take too long to figure out my camera's no big deal and he lets me go.

I walk literally ten steps, putting on my belt, watch, sweater, jacket, getting pockets filled with various shit WHEN I AM STOPPED FOR ANOTHER SECURITY LINE UP. This line up is literally down the stairs from the one in which I just wasted 1.5 hours of my life, but it's deemed necessary that we all remove laptops, belts, watches, sweaters, jackets, etc once more and run it through another x-ray. This time, thankfully, my junk is not fondled but it's still patently ridiculous.

Anyways I'm no longer panicking because most of the people in this line are going on my flight so I make it through, collect my belongings again and then board a bus which takes me into the middle of nowhere to find my gate. Now jet-lagged and murderous, I enter the plane via the wrong entrance and sit in the wrong seat before, muttering profanities and getting headphone wires caught on chairs, handbags and tits galore, I collapse into my seat just in time for the captain to announce that we'll be waiting an extra 30 minutes on the tarmac because some family with 17 pieces of luggage has decided that they don't want to fly today and so we have to take every last bag off the plane and reload in order to get those 17 pieces off.

I sit there and stew as I watch the baggage handlers outside my window and I want to hate this overpacked family whose decision not to fly has meant another 30 minutes in travel hell, but really after my experiences at this god-awful airport, can I really blame someone else for wanting to opt out?

***

Anyway, I make it to Warsaw eventually and that's where I am now. It's 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday and I've been up for about six hours after sleeping off the travel for close to twelve. My hotel is extremely ballerific - it's the Intercontinental in downtown Warsaw and I'm on the 38th floor with a stunning view out over the city. My room is kitty-corner to this Stalin-era "Palace of Culture" which is a massive old tower that for better or worse is Warsaw's landmark (that and a giant fake palm tree, don't ask). Anyways I'll post pictures but it's a pretty stunning view.

Somehow I've managed to wrangle myself into "Club Intercontinental", which means I get a nicer room and exclusive access to this executive lounge on the 41st floor, complete with breakfast in the morning, tea in the evening and drinks and snacks all day. This morning I got up and had a pretty nice meal (eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, yogurt, orange juice) over the International Herald-Tribune while a bunch of suits and skirts around me discussed international commerce in a million different languages.

It's about nine degrees C outside and sunny and I've been out a couple times, yesterday to find something cold to drink and today to the mall to find a replacement power adapter for my laptop - this computer has logged probably close to 200,000 miles of travel in its life and so far has held up quite well, knock on wood, but on this trip its power cord decided to fray itself into uselessness and I was kind of panicked for a while about the prospect of having no computer while being here to do a computer-based job.

Anyway I picked up a universal laptop adapter which features power connections for pretty much everywhere in the world, meaning no more adapter issues and meaning I can do my job here and with alacrity.

***

I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath this morning. I'd put off reading it for a few years because I figured it would be something of a struggle, albeit worthwhile. East of Eden was like that, and to a larger extent Paradise Lost, but I made it through this book pretty easily and enjoyed reading it. I'll have to give it a bit more thought before I come to a detailed verdict, but it was definitely a moving and pretty grim tale of Depression-era life. The fact that this stuff happened to families just like the Joads in an era with highways and cars and movie theatres really gave me pause; it's depressing to think that with all of the advances in technology and infrastructure and quality of life there are still people living impoverished and desperate even in the so-called developed world.

Anyway, with Steinbeck's 450 pages now crossed off the list I'm afraid I might run out of reading material on this trip - I've brought the last James Bond book (Ian Fleming's "Octopussy and the Living Daylights"), Stewart O'Nan's "Last Night at the Lobster" which is supposed to be good but is like 200 pages, tops, and some fluffy Hollywood memoir by Toby Young, who wrote "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" and which I'll probably read in an hour.

The Joads I am not, but I may become desperate for a decent book while I sip complimentary beverages in the Star Alliance Gold lounge on my return trip to Vancouver.

***

By the way, in case you're wondering which airports in the world get my seal of approval:

- Vancouver and Toronto (since the new Air Canada terminal was built) are both pretty decent. Clean and modern with food options, generally decent security line ups (I've never waited a minute in the international line in Vancouver, although if you hit US customs at the wrong time you're screwed) and manageable sizes.

- Dallas and Chicago O'Hare are also hub airports that despite having a hell of a lot of people pass through them manage to keep things competent.

- Detroit, shockingly, has a pretty good airport and my opinion of their services is increased tenfold by the BA rep giving me access to the first class lounge when I was flying to Barcelona from there last summer.

- Las Vegas will always be a favorite not only because of the free internet but also because when you're there you're usually on your way out of Las Vegas.

- Internationally, I kind of draw a blank. I haven't seen enough of Charles de Gaulle to give it a proper verdict but of all the European hubs it's been the best to me. Melbourne was too "Heathrow" in terms of having just too many shops and not enough airport. Hong Kong's airport I guess was the closest I'd give to a ringing endorsement, although it was too damn huge and I was too damn tired to really enjoy my visit.

***

Right, so I'm in Warsaw until the 17th and then I fly to Dublin. Unfortunately for me I have to pass through Frankfurt three more times before I get back to Vancouver, but fortunately for me I get to spend a week or so each in Poland and Ireland and then have recuperation time in Vancouver to recover from FRA's ill-effects.

O

Last Tuesday morning I left the City of Commerce near Los Angeles and taxied to the airport. After I'd checked in and navigated security and watched a couple episodes of Deadliest Catch it was early afternoon. I went to the airport cafe to get a bite to eat and every TV in the joint was tuned to the local news with a ring of people crowding around every monitor and a second ring further back comprised of people taking pictures of the first ring.

Anyways, on the news was breaking coverage of a high-speed police chase and as I sat down with my turkey burger and fruit plate I had little choice but to watch the drama unfold. Some guy had gotten out of prison the night before, gone back to East L.A. and stolen a Cadillac Escalade, which he was now piloting through the residential streets of one of the poorer neighbourhoods.

So I watched this stuff, the breaking news and the shocked newsanchors and the TV helicopters jockeying for position and it was a weird feeling, watching what was pretty much this person's life effectively ending before my eyes and the eyes of everyone in the airport.

I mean, if you're in a high speed chase you have to know you're plum fucked, right, especially in the middle of the city with helicopters everywhere and an increasing number of police cherries in your rearview mirror. But what can you really do but keep driving and hope desperately for the one in a million shot that your life will turn out like the movies and you'll somehow escape. Or maybe you don't even have hope but just drive because it's the only active choice you can make.

I dunno, to me it was a pretty depressing scene. The camera kept focusing in on this guy, who looked pretty young, as he kept driving around in circles and eventually found his way into the City of Commerce and near my hotel, coincidentally (good job me getting out of there beforehand), and eventually he must have gotten tired or whatever and he gave up and was arrested and that was that.

And I mean, you see these things on those cop shows or whatever and you're kind of detached, but watching it happen in real time or as close to real time as possible was really kind of disturbing. Not so much because the TV station was clearly loving the opportunity to interrupt the midday game shows but just because of the idea that while I sat eating in an airport cafe somebody a few miles away was at the tail end of a series of decisions that will probably mean the end of his life as a free man and I was playing voyeur. I guess it was kind of like I imagine watching a public execution would be like. Weird.

***

Anyways, on to less depressing things (and I'm aware of the irony/contrast of my writing about watching this high-speed chase and then blinking and moving on to fluffy selfish things while the object of my lunch time diversion is forced to live with his fifteen minutes of infamy for the rest of his life).

I write this from the relaxing confines of the Maple Leaf Lounge at the airport in Vancouver, where I sit in luxury watching my plane arrive late at the gate and enjoying free wireless and complimentary beverages/cookies. I could use a sangwich, but that's of little relevance.

My last flight from Los Angeles pushed me over 35,000 Aeroplan miles since January 1st, which combined with about 2,000 miles on other airlines means I've flown a hell of a lot in a short amount of time (and in an hour or so I'll add another 5,000 to my resume when I fly to Warsaw). So as of Friday I've made Aeroplan Elite status (Star Alliance Gold), meaning to my frequent flier geekdom that I get free lounge access in airports all over the world, priority check-in and boarding and a bunch of crazy upgrade certificates. And it's valid until January 1st, 2010. This is basically the pinnacle of my career as a professional traveler, at least until I finally book myself a first class seat somewhere.

***

Every time I come back to Vancouver I'm absolutely overjoyed by my arrival. The weather always seems to be sunny and the sky clear and the plane always takes an approach path that shows off the city and its surroundings in the best possible way. Coming up from Los Angeles we flew over Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands before crossing over into Canada just south of the Strait of Georgia. My seat was on the left hand side so I could look out over the Gulf Islands and the low mountains of Vancouver Island as the sun set behind them and the ferries plying the water before them. And then we turned inland and came down over Delta and Richmond and hit the tarmac more or less just as the sun disappeared behind Vancouver Island and it was dusk.

I swear no matter where I go in the world I always come back to Vancouver feeling lucky that I live here and feeling like I'd love to live here for the rest of my life. The city has its problems like every city does but on the whole I can't think of anywhere else in the world I'd rather spend my time and even though I love my job I usually find it pretty difficult to leave this place every few weeks. It's that aspect of my job, though, that lets me spend most of my time in Vancouver doing what I want to do and not commuting to and from an office. And I'd probably get pretty tired of staying in the same place for too long anyway.

So, anyone banking on me moving back to Ontario/elsewhere is probably going to be waiting a while.

***

Anyways, I've been in Vancouver for a little less than a week and now I'm heading out on a 17-day adventure to Warsaw and Dublin. I had a pretty nice stay in the city this time - hung out with the Orfice and the Coquitlam gang a bunch of nights, indulged in retail therapy, played a bit of poker, had a nice dinner with the people I work with and went on a date - we went to eat and then to a Canucks game - and even though the home team won I think it was a pretty good time, although you'd have to ask her to confirm.

I've never been to Poland so it should be an interesting trip and I was in Dublin last year around this time and quite liked it - I just miss being in Ireland for St. Patrick's Day, as it turns out, which is kind of unfortunate but then again not really because I probably wouldn't do too much partying anyway. I miss the Orfice's birthday but I'll be back in town on the 25th and that does it for my European adventures until the fall.

In the short-term, though, flying to Frankfurt, being molested by German security, flying to Warsaw, checking-in to my hotel, ordering room service and sleeping for 16 hours is the game plan. I'm going to try to be a little less absent-minded than I've been lately - left my passport on the plane from LA and the next day left my debit card in a bank machine, good times (got the passport back, thank God) - but if I call you from Warsaw don't ask questions, just send money.

***

Airport lounge update: a young couple have just come in and sat down beside me and their child is shrieking, throwing building blocks and tearing newspapers about an arm's length from my seat. Maybe being elite is not all it's cracked up to be.

I'm going to find me a sandwich. Will write from Warsaw.

I'm still alive. My life is kind of boring, though. Los Angeles is incredibly boring. I wrote an entire boring blog and then decided I really couldn't subject anyone to my pop-culture consumption and ramblings on boredom, so, just so you know, I'm alive.

And looking forward to flying up to Vancouver tomorrow/today. And still haven't packed.

Basically I'm adrift in a commercial/industrial wasteland and have been for the last like twelve days, gaining weight and avoiding the sunlight and eating hot dogs like 75% of the time, with turkey burgers comprising the other food group of which I've partaken.

One day I walked to an outlet mall nearby and didn't buy anything.

I've been reading Steinbeck and Ian Fleming and watching the end of House Season 4 and Deadliest Catch and listening to Timbaland's album as well as other terrible pop music.

I've written about a thousand words of fiction almost every day I've been down here and am pretty happy with the output. It's taking me forever to get to the plots in my stories, though - I envision rambling 500,000 word opuses (obligatory opi joke/question here) with little to no commercial viability finally getting finished in three years and promptly thrown in a desk drawer or hard drive somewhere and forgotten.

Must buy condo.

This is getting long and boring again so I'll cut it off here, but suffice it to say I'm looking forward to being in Vancouver and then Warsaw and Dublin, although Vancouver most of all.

Kbye.

I usually get pretty depressed around my birthday and have since I was in my teens. It's partially just the fact that I have to acknowledge I'm growing older and that I haven't accomplished nearly anything I really want to accomplish, instead having wasted another year being a normal human being instead of a superstar, but in another way it's also just a reaction to the expectation that I actually have to celebrate the damn thing. Most years I just want to turn off my phone and computer, lock myself in my room and feel sorry for myself until about mid-March. Boo-hoo.

Yeah, I was pretty well set to do that this year, too. It obviously never turns out like that; generally my birthday consists of a hastily-planned excursion to a series of inadequate and increasingly empty clubs, with nobody really having a good time and me caving under the pressure of playing musical chairs between my various groups of friends and failing to provide anyone with a reasonable facsimile of a decent night out. And then there's the growing old thing.

Sooo, yeah, I don't like birthdays and this year was a pretty big one, so the pressure was doubly high. I thought I took my birthday notification off of Facebook and Skype and prepared myself for a David Lynch movie marathon in the place of a party, but luckily for us all it was not to be.

The Orfice convinced me to convince myself that I should avoid the self-indulgent route and so instead I cobbled together a pretty last-minute plan involving a WHL hockey game and nine of my closest friends. A few nights before the game I managed to buy ten tickets in the same row and managed to find nine people willing to celebrate my hitting the quarter-century mark and from there the game was afoot.

So after a pretty decent weekend (Cactus Club on Friday night, I really can't remember on Saturday night although I think I may have walked the dog, ABC Family Restaurant with Mischa on Sunday night), a day in the office and a couple of nights with The Orfice and her sister (we watched The Condemned, which was kind of sick, and went to see the second National Treasure, which was what it was) it was about time to get my party on.

Spent most of the big day on the phone or on the internets, fielding emails and calls from friends (I love you all) who despite my non-Facebook-alert (at least until about noon) managed to remember the big day. I had to run a couple of errands in the afternoon, including picking up a birthday cake from a Chinese bakery inside a mall - my dad had ordered it over the phone and they'd refused to deliver or accept his payment so I had to pick it up, pay for it, and instruct them to change the name in the icing from Owon to the proper spelling. But I got the cake and by the time I got it home it was time to head out again.

Picked Kelly up in New West and motored downtown for a pre-game dinner at Moxies with Country Chuck and "Big" Art, which proved to be a bad idea since dinnar went mad long and it was 6:30 by the time I got back to my car and headed out to the Pacific Coliseum. Game time was seven o'clock, and 6:30 was conveniently the exact hour I'd asked everyone to meet at the arena. The tickets were in my name and nobody else could get to them, meaning everyone had to hang their arriving-on-time-asses out in front of the stadium until I, freaking out beyond belief, arrived at like 6:53 apologizing profusely and obscuring the lunar eclipse.

Anyways, got the tickets, got everyone inside, (I REALISE NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE LOGISTICS OF MY BIRTHDAY BUT DAMMIT IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY), inadvertently mortified Becca when I apologized for my lateness during the moment of silence for Mickey Renaud (ugh) and probably offended poker guru Lance Bradley when I ran into him in the stands and made a joke about selling online poker accounts (ugh).

Right, well, the game happened and it was good and everyone, I hope, had a good time (except Chuck, who had skipped work that day and then had the freakish misfortune of spying his boss and the rest of his company enjoying the game from about ten rows ahead of us). There were goals (7-0 Giants), fights (and blood!), 15-year-old cheerleaders and directly in front of us a cadre of hyperactive eight-year-old boys who'd strip off their shirts and wave them like helicopters whenever anything remotely exciting happened, thus rendering both Becca and The Orfice half-crazed with little boy lust.

Anyways, the moral of the story as far as all that goes is that before the game started I was so caught up making sure the arrangements got off without a hitch that I didn't have time to be depressed about my birthday. And during the game I kind of played musical chairs a bit to make sure I got to talk to everyone (sorry Deej and Mischa...) and my various groups of friends seemed to mingle reasonably so I didn't have to worry about that either.

And then after hitting up the Cactus Club later in the evening and watching The Orfice and her sister get kind of drunk I went home and the next day consumed my cake alongside a party of rabid 3-8 year olds, all of whom had made me birthday cards and one of whom decided to give me the added present of his cold when he coughed repeatedly and with extreme prejudice directly into my mouth from a distance of oh six inches and then cackled gleefully about it all. But the cake was good and I pray the kid didn't have the consumption, for all of our sakes.

Yeah, and then it was Thursday night and Thursday night was pretty cool and that's all I'm going to say about that.

Today I woke up at the crack of nine in the morning and The Orfice drove me to the urport, where I cleared customs like a pimp and flew down to Los Angeles. An epic cab ride later I arrived at the Doubletree hotel in the City of Commerce, a low-lying ubiqui-tel amidst an ocean of warehouses, freeway on-ramps and outlet malls and a few blocks away from the Commerce Casino.

***

So here I am, back on the road again. I can't say I'm entirely thrilled to be here, this trip coming as it does just as things are getting interesting back home, and besides I'm here alone without benefit of either Art or Marty to keep things lively, so I've got a week and a half in this industrial wasteland outside of LA (City of Commerce sounds like the sort of place my former roommate would go to pick up transvestite hookers, if my former roommate was Barry Zuckercorn) while the real parties go down in Copenhagen and Iowa (starting next fall, I'm spending as much of my on the road time as possible in Europe and Asia; eff this America thing).

A little bit weird to be back on the grind; I haven't been on the road for anything but pleasure for three weeks and I haven't been in the States for over a month. The last time I was in the States for these obligations was also the last time I was at one of these things by myself and that was back in mid-December in Atlantic City. So it's a bit of a strange feeling being back in U.S. America.

I was thinking about this today, and I realised that for all of my traveling in the last year.5 I've only ever had repeated stays at the same hotel twice. That doesn't include Foxwoods, where I've been twice and have stayed in each of their on-site hotels. Beyond that, no matter how many places I've been to more than once (or in the case of Vegas, over and over and over again), I've only stayed at the same property twice, well, twice.

I've been to Atlantic City, um, three times and stayed at Harrah's AC twice, the first time disastrously and the second time rather pleasantly. Now I'm in Los Angeles and even though this hotel was a Wyndham property last time I was here, it's still the same building and the room service hours are still the same, so there you have it. I'm here and with my stay come all of the memories of last year's stay.

The enduring memory of last year is wandering across the hotel parking lot to the outlet mall across the way, listening to Jody Wisternoff's "Hot Girl, Cool Drink" as the sun set and wasting time until I could talk to Erin on the phone. LA was about the time that Erin and I started talking on the phone for like eight hours every night and ramping up to a pretty serious relationship so basically all I did in this place last year was sit in my hotel room and blab or wish I was doing the same.

Not that I'm wistful or anything (I'm not), but it's just kind of interesting to come back to the same place and walk over to the outlet mall and think about how much things have changed since those nights. I'm not pining and I'm okay with how things turned out, but I do find it something of an experience returning to a location that, simply by virtue of it being the place that I came home to at night, played a pretty major role in the formation of my last big relationship.

And to this day that Jody Wisternoff song means dusk in Los Angeles in March to me and I don't really listen to it anymore because I don't really have reason to think of that particular place and time. (It should mean Victoria with Andrew since that's where I heard the song first but obviously a trip with my brother has been supplanted by other things)

It's like how, oddly, Angels and Airwaves "The Adventure" (yeah yeah) came to symbolize an important trip I took to Tofino, even though it wasn't until a few months after the trip that I started listening to the song. I'd always think of that trip when I listened to the song, though, and feel extremely sad about it until finally I got sick of that and while I was on the train to Toronto forced myself to apply the song to what I was seeing out the window (rural Manitoba) rather than windswept Long Beach. It worked, but then the song lost all meaning and I don't listen to it much anymore either.

NB: I am aware Angels and Airwaves suck.

Anyways, enough rambling about dumb things. As I said, I'm going to be here for like 12 days before I go back to Vancouver. At the end of the trip I get to play paparazzo, which I really don't relish but so be it. You take the good with the not so good, and after I recharge for a few days in Vancouver I go to Warsaw and Dublin, so who can really complain?

I feel like I'm avoiding something that I wanted to write about but I can't remember what. Suffice to say I'm pretty happy, although I'd rather be in Vancouver than Los Angeles and since I have to be in Los Angeles I'd rather I had a colleague with me.

Thanks to all who sent birthday wishes or endured my birthday celebration!

O

Anyways, it's been so long I don't really know where to start. I'm back in Coquitlam after well about three weeks of travel, some paid and some for fun. I've been kind of working my way through a bit of a funk, as is kind of usual for me at this time of year, but things are looking up socially so maybe I'll be able to get over myself again before I head off to Los Angeles at the end of the week.

So, since last I wrote I've done a bunch of stuff and seen a lot of movies. The prospect of writing about it all is somewhat terrifying, but the alternative is to blah blah blah about my gasp !feelings!, which is probably worse.

So, after seeing Charlie Wilson's War with the Deej and There Will Be Blood with Jeff and The Orfice and, oh, spending the first of many moneys at the new H&M in Coquitlam (and also Armani Exchange and the Gap, minor douchebag alert), I hit the old dusty trail once more and headed to Germany on a Lufthansa flight that, despite boasting Recaro (car racing) seats in the Airbus, featured nil in seatback entertainment. Fortunately, I slept the whole trip while jockeying for armrest supremacy with the well-fed young German porker in the seat beside me (When he left I noticed he was reading German GQ and felt bad for having hated him the whole trip, since I read a lot of GQ myself - but only the British version).

Then I misunderstood the scary Teutonic instructions of the woman in Frankfurt security and was molested by a male security guard who stuck his hand down my pants. And then I reclaimed my dignity and met up with my colleague and good friend Martin, who'd flown in from Toronto, and we flew to Dusseldorf and took a train to Dortmund, a grey coal-mining and beer-brewing city in the middle of the Fatherland.

We stayed at the NH hotel, a convenient walk from the train station and nowhere near the casino, which to be fair is like 25 euros out of town by taxi - a long time when your traveling partner is seemingly intent on insulting and alienating every European with whom you come in contact. We had one cabbie tell us he'd lost 400,000 euros playing poker in the last three years. Martin's response: "Euro donk!"

Anyways, Dortmund the city is rather uninspiring, although it did boast the requisite saturation of H&Ms (two in a city block) and a number of other massive Western clothing brands in a small area. There was also a proliferation of sausage vendors and winged rhinoseri, as well as some damn good beer and unhealthy but quite filling meals.

We had a day to explore Dortmund and discovered the above, and then it was five days of obligations, which weren't so bad since the action started at three in the afternoon and ended at midnight, meaning a pretty good schedule for my nightowl habits. Except I was jet-lagged and so woke up pretty early.

On the first night was the requisite player party and we hooked up with Benjo of the French foreign press for a descent into the usual ridiculousness - go-go dancers, a hula-hoop artist and her handstand-performing hubby, chocolate fountains, lonely eurodonk dudes dancing solo while ogling the go-go dancers, and a couple of harsh-looking young women in lingerie swallowing fire and fondling boa constrictors. The chocolate was good.

But it was a fun trip and I enjoyed Germany. It was reasonably warm (8 degrees), but pretty grey and often rainy. On the last day, it snowed, which was a nice change. The city was clean and people spoke English, the food was good (at the casino, however, there were tons and tons of free chocolate bars, a small sampling of fruit and very little in the way of actual food, meaning I survived on Fanta, oranges and the ubiquitous "Corny Big" bars and felt sick the whole time) and the trains ran on time. I have like 20 pictures on Facebook and so I'll save myself 20,000 words by directing you there.

Our obligations ended on Feb 2 and after four or so hours of sleep Marty and I boarded a train at 7 am on the 3rd for the hour-long trip through dreary Germany to the Dusseldorf airport, which Marty claimed reminded him of a dystopian future as scene through the eye of a 1970s B-movie director. We flew back to Frankfurt and went our separate ways as I boarded the same damn Airbus back to Vancouver and he headed back to Toronto.

No seatback entertainment and not much sleep on the flight home, which turned out to be alright since it was a beautiful day across the globe and the sky was clear for the entire flight. We flew over much of the arctic, which was pretty amazing as looking down on the ice and snow drifts it was impossible to tell whether we were 30 or 30,000 feet above the ground.

We flew in over the Northwest Territories and then the Rockies, which were beautiful and snowcapped and amazing, and then down the Coast Mountains, over Whistler and Horseshoe Bay before, for whatever reason, the plane made a sharp turn from the middle of the Straight of Georgia and flew us over Vancouver and deep into the Lower Mainland. I was sitting on the left of the plane and got a good view of West and North Van, Burnaby, the Tri-Cities and then Surrey, Richmond and Delta before we landed.

The line at Customs was the longest I've ever seen, owing to the fact that somebody had the bright idea to land like eight 747s from Shanghai, London, Hong Kong and everywhere else in Vancouver at the same time. So it took like an hour for me to get my baggage, pick up the Porsche from valet parking and speed out to Tsawwassen.

It was my grandmother's birthday on the 7th and so my parents had come out to celebrate in Victoria, so I was headed across a bit early for a mini family reunion. I missed the three o'clock ferry by five minutes and so sat around the ferry terminal reading Steinbeck and catching myself gazing out at the Gulf Islands or the Vancouver skyline and the mountains and the cloudless sky and feeling extremely happy to be home. No matter where I go in the world, I always come back to Vancouver and feel lucky to live here; the city matches up with any other city in the world, imo.

I love ferry rides and loved the ferry ride to Victoria. Almost fell asleep driving into town but arrived alright and after greeting my parents and grandmother checked into the guest suite in my grandmother's building and crashed. I woke up jet-lagged at like 6 am and couldn't get back to sleep thanks to the intermittent but persistent buzzing coming from the walls of the suite. It would prove to be a regular problem over the course of my stay and eventually I was reduced to sleeping on the floor of the living room to escape the noise.

The next few days were quite fun, though. I hung out a lot with my parents, my grandmother and my aunt and uncle, who also live in Victoria and are training the cutest future guide dog evar; he's a 12 week old black lab and he was amazing. My mom and I braved gale-force winds to walk to Munro's Books (Victoria landmark and a pretty sweet bookstore) and my dad and I made some progress on a writing project we're working on. On the 6th we celebrated my grandmother's birthday with a mini-party at her place - the highlight was my cousin and her bf making a surprise appearance after driving down from Powell River. They had to catch the last ferry back and didn't stay long but it more or less made my grandmother's day.

In the evening, Andrew called me as we were eating a celebratory dinner and offered me the chance to fly to Ethiopia for only like $200. I seriously considered it (and would have gone had he been up to it), but in the end we decided we were both too busy and took a rain check.

On the seventh we all went our separate ways and after my parents left to catch their flight East I packed up Erica and drove over the Malahat up to Nanaimo, braving black ice and intermittent snowfall after failing to secure a reservation for the 11 am ferry from Swartz Bay.

Made it to Nanaimo alright - although the car got utterly filthy on the highway - and caught the noon-thirty ferry to Horseshoe Bay. Got into Vancouver and drove Erica to get her oil changed in False Creek, a process which took about 1.5 hours and cost $230 (I'd budgeted $500 for the task so I was actually pleasantly surprised). Then home to Coquitlam in the crunch of rush hour traffic.

Went to work on the Friday and then hung out with Kara, her sister Kelly and her sister's friend in the evening. We went out for dinner at Cactus Club and then hit up the Foggy Dew in Coquitlam, which apparently is a douchebag hot spot as it was crawling with drunk assholes, particularly around the girl I was trying to chat up.

At about midnight we had to say our goodbyes and Kara and Kelly drove me to the Coquitlam bus station, where at 1 am I got on a packed Greyhound bus and proceeded to suffer through 17 hours of transit time to Calgary. Actually, it wasn't bad after we got out of the Okanagan and into the Rockies, but I was damn happy to get to Cowtown and see my friend Phill waiting at the bus station with hot chocolate and Timbits in his hand.

Phill drove me to Red Deer, with a short-stop in his maternal homeland of Innisfail, introduced me to his mom and girlfriend, and then I crashed in a room populated by Freddy Mercury posters and Spawn action figures.

***

My friendship with Phill was forged in fire at Katimavik six years ago, but we haven't seen much of each other since. He came out to Vancouver and crashed on my floor for a week when Queen came to town two years ago, but since then haven't seen much of each other and it was nice to get a few days to catch up once more. We played a massive game of Risk on his massive Risk game board and then I taught his gang poker (and the poker chip riffling trick, which would alternately confound and enamor Phill throughout the week). That was Day 1.

On Day 2 Phill gave me a brief tour of the Deer before I played in an EPT media event on PokerStars in the afternoon. I finished seventh and cashed $59 and change while simultaneously taking down a pair of SNGs, and by the time I was done it was like 4:30 and we were scheduled to be in Edmonton like an hour ago.

So we drove to Edmonton to the dulcet tones of Dane Cook and I got my first sight of the West Edmonton Mall, which was not as amazing as I'd been led to believe. We met up with Phill's gf and a couple of her friends and proceeded to browse every comic book store in the place (we live in different worlds, Phill) before the mall closed and we drove through boocoo Edmonton back roads in search of the highway again. I got a good tour of the city, anyway.

Day 3 featured the strange phenomena of me trying to buy cowboy boots, due to some devil's bargain with my dad. It was hilarity in motion, me being probably the last person in the world to actually need cowboy boots and with that fact being obvious in my general appearance. Phill, in retro sport-coat and prog-rock hairstyle, simply underlined our uselessness in the various western-wear stores we visited, but when I explained the situation to the salespeople they were more than happy to try and help, and at the end of the day I emerged with a pair of $200 size 13E boots in brown leather, replete with gold toe cap and Indian Chief stitched into the leg in gold thread. Good times.

We then went home and had a Mad Max movie marathon, in which the notion that the Mad Max movies have any worth beyond beefcake gay bondage camp flicks was quickly and excruciatingly dispelled. Seriously, those movies are awful. We watched the first one and Phill was all, it gets better with the second and the third ones. The second featured a bad guy who carted around a blonde dude on a leash in a leather singlet with nipple cutouts, FFS. The third featured Tina Turner, a midget, and a bunch of Ewok-like children. It was atrocious. Never watch Mad Max.

Day 4 involved more touring Red Deer. We went to the Liquidation Warehouse and I considered buying the movie Can't Hardly Wait ($5) but didn't. We went to the mall and I considered buying Hot Fuzz and Rounders (2/$25) but didn't. Then we went home and I played Resident Evil on the Wii (awesometown!) before we completed the World Series of Beefcake by watching 300. Which was pretty good, despite featuring more oily pectoral muscle in two hours than I could hope to achieve with three lifetimes, six gym memberships and a million gallons of Crisco.

At around the time the movie was ending, Phill's girlfriend announced that she had to go to Rocky Mountain House for work. It being 11 pm and damn cold and scary on the roads, I volunteered Phill and I to make the trek with her and so off we went into the night. We stopped for a surreal gas-buying experience at the local "Fas Gas", staffed by a midget and her younger brother, and featuring a bunch of rauncy metal heads in the supporting cast. The feature plot involved two girls who pumped $65 of gas into their Cherokee and then could only muster $30 to pay, leading to plenty tense negotiation at the till between the brother and the tarts, who eventually drove off to get the extra $35 from across town having turned down the option of withdrawing cash from the ATM on-site because they didn't want to pay the $1.50 fee. Ostensibly.

We eventually made it out of there and drove to Rocky Mountain House, dodging black ice and deer while suffering from the effects of the worst "Energy Mint" I could ever have hoped to consume. It tasted like laundry soap in pill form and royally fucked up my day.

Anyways, Rocky Mountain House was there. The work was done. A blind homeless man was displaced. We talked about strippers and drove home. I spent two hours on the internets and then at 4 am Phill drove me back down to Calgary. We got there mad early and roamed the downtown streets in search of a 7-11 where I could buy reading materials. Eventually found a Mac's and then headed to the bus station, where at 7 am I bid Phill goodbye and boarded another Greyhound.

I managed to get a few hours of sleep and woke up in Golden, BC, and then stared out the window listening to my iPod until we got to Kamloops. From there the Coquihalla highway was closed and we had to take the Fraser Canyon route home, meaning hella lateness, and by the time we were supposed to have arrived in Coquitlam we were in like Yale, meaning at least 2 hours lateness.

For some reason, the bus driver gave us the scenic route through the Lower Mainland, taking mad circuitous routes to Chiliwack, Abbotsford and Langley as I got more and more enraged before finally dropping me in the Coq 2.5 hours behind schedule and with me resolving to never take a long distance bus ride again. I make enough damn money to fly or take the train.

Kara picked me up and we hit up Boston Pizza. Then I went home and went to sleep. Got up the next day and went to work, which was not as tiring as I'd expected. After work, hung out with Kara a bit more and then Jeff, Brian and Becca came over and we hit up the Cactus Club, where Brian and Becca put on a drinking performance for the ages (Brian's bill, including eight triple Hulks - Courvosier and Hyptnotiq - and a shot of 151, totaled $160 w/o tip). Then back to Kara's place with the gang for some awkward soft-core porn. Fun fun.

Gave Becca a ride in Erica and was rewarded with mad chirping about my old man driving style. I guess that's the thing about these cars - you kind of have to drive with no disregard for the speed limit if you want to keep impressing people after you've got them in the car. It's not sexy I guess to have a Porsche and drive it like a grandmother, but thankfully I'm not driving Erica to pick up women but rather for the joy of the $230 oil change. Also, I got Becca's number so old-man driving or not, I must have been doing something right.

Slept until 4 pm today and still felt tired. Watched two hockey games, talked a bit on the phone, played on the internet and walked the dog. And that brings us to now. Breathe.

***

My ardour for Vancouver real estate has cooled. And I'm falling behind in my 1k words/day writing goal, having not written a single word in Red Deer.

***

A prize to whomever can tell me what the name of the late 1990's dance number is that features a woman singing a chorus of "Da-ah, da-da-da-da-da-da-ah, da-da-da-da-da-dah". The song has connotations of late nights, at least in my mind.

***

I have a few days in Vancouver and then I go to Los Angeles on Friday or so. I promise to write a bit more in the coming days and weeks and I also promise to not write so damn much about so damn little.

O

First things first, a hearty "Eff U" to United Airlines. As if the debacle with the luggage wasn't bad enough (Fall 2006, but the scars last a lifetime), they recently saw fit to screw with me in the foulest manner imaginable. And then, as is the way of any and all incompetent people in the travel/hospitality industry, they blamed it on my travel agent.

So I was in Australia. I was caught up in my obligations so I didn't have much time to actually post on this blog but so be it, here I am now. And I'm kind of tired and not exactly pleased with a certain airline.

So the story is, I was set to fly home from Melbourne to Vancouver (via Sydney and Los Angeles) on the 21st on United. I'd booked the trip a month in advance and been assigned a window seat, which is exactly what I wanted for a fifteen-hour trans-Pacific flight. So I arrived at the airport, secure in the knowledge that even if I would have minimal legroom and no seatback entertainment (seriously, United? for a 15-hour flight you can't outfit a 747 with personal TVs when WestJet can manage it for two hours???), I'd at least have something to lean up against and therefore be able to sleep.

I show up at the desk, check-in, receive seat 49J. Which to my eagle eye is not a window seat. I ask the woman why she gave me a non-window seat when I'd been assigned one and her very Zen-like answer is thus: "There are many reasons why things change." Gee, thanks.

Then she outright lies to me and tells me she's given me an aisle seat, so I take her at her word and, since she's told me the plane is entirely full, I guess I accept. It's only when I'm watching Arthur, who as tradition would have it (he always gets the better hotel room) is flying home on Air New Zealand, complete with window seat and seatback entertainment, scarf down a Krispy Kreme that I realise the bitch done lied and given me a gdm middle seat.

So I'm furious and by the time I get to the gate I'm furiouser. I harass the United gate attendant, whose computer isn't working and has to call his boss three times based on my continued claim that I was assigned a window seat and what gives?

Anyways finally the boss (I just know it was Zen-woman from the gate) tells him to tell me that someone got into my file and changed the information on January 4th and forgot to update the seating allocation, thus resulting in my being given a middle seat on a 15 hour flight when I'm Star Alliance Silver and had booked the damn ticket like 90 days ago with special emphasis on I want a window, dammit.

They blame the travel agent, who would have no reason to change any info (and didn't, I find my double-checking with her after the fact) and thus with a full plane I'm powerless.

So I spend the next 15 hours in a middle seat, pissed off at United, who are idiots and liars.

Thankfully, I was seated in between two twenty-year-old girls and while I didn't pick them up or orchestrate some mile-high menage a trois, it was a nice change from the fat drunk Newfies who usually befall me when the airline screws up and gives me a middle seat on the red eye.

I slept a bit and read a bit and watched some of Rush Hour 3, which was atrocious. And then we landed in LAX and I suffered through customs and got to the Alaska terminal and flew home in a window seat. And slept for 18 hours when I got home.

Fuck United.

***

Anyways so the flight to Australia was thankfully not as bad, despite it being a collection of connections totaling 30 hours of airline hell. First I flew from Nassau to Charlotte, NC with tuberculosis cough in full effect. Then it was Charlotte to LAX, during which time I believe I slept but can't really remember.

I arrived with a couple hours to spare before my flight to Australia boarded and made it through security just fine before rendezvousing with Joe Sebok and Alex Henriquez, who were also due to be on my flight. My friend Matt had told me I should get a visa at some point in my travels (and that it was no problem to get it at the check-in desk) but I hadn't yet and from the looks on Joe's and Alex's face that was a mistake.

So I went back through security and to the United desk, where a very nice woman worked for about 30 minutes while I sweat out her warning that since it was Saturday in Australia my visa request might not go through, but then it did go through and I got back through security and ate some McDonald's before hopping on the plane, where I found I'd been upgraded to Economy Plus courtesy some poor kid's asthma (unbeknownst to me, they'd later debate landing the plane in Hawaii because the kid's asthma started acting up).

So I had extra leg-room and I slept for most of the flight. And then we landed in Sydney and it was like a mile and a half in between planes but we made it and flew to Melbourne and after sweating the Aussie customs I was through, met up with Arthur and we taxied to the hotel downtown.

I'd intended on sleeping but instead we wandered about in the summer sun looking for a restaurant and fighting off the flies, and after considerable looking we found one in a mall and ate heartily before he went off to look for the beach and I went off to sleep.

The next seven days were a blur of obligations, interrupted only by frequent curry lunches, the occasional stroll by the "Yarra" (river?) and, well, that's about it. At one point I met up with my good friend Jessica, who was in town with her sister, and we wandered about looking for a restaurant and found one beside the one Art and I had eaten in in the mall. So we had a good couple hours to catch up and did so and then she went on her way to New Zealand and I went on my way back to work.

I had no days off in Melbourne but saw enough of the city to like it. It was summer and the days were long, the weather was sunny and not too warm, and the girls were pretty and not wearing much. One evening Arthur and I went to see Cloverfield in the theatre and were surprised by the assigned seating, the strange tampon commercials and the option to go "Gold-class" which featured dinner and better seats or something. We passed.

Cloverfield was an interesting movie, although it was a bit too 9-11 at the beginning for me. Maybe that's too Liberal but I just found it a bit off-putting to see explosions and ambulances and people screaming in downtown New York presented as good clean monster fun when it wasn't that long ago that the dust clouds and bleeding and terror in the movie were actually happening and people really were dying. But I got over my sermonizing as soon as the monster showed up and enjoyed the movie quite a bit - it did a damn good job of telling the story within its context and had some awesome/terrifying moments, even if the ending was a little too pat.

Right, so that was that, and then I went home, miserably, in a middle seat.

***

I read a book that Matt recommended, called "Rust and Bone". It's written by Craig Davidson, who I gather is some young neo-Hemmingway type out of Calgary, although his short stories centered mainly around St. Catharines and the low lifes who inhabit the place.

I liked the book, although it was quite depressing and some of the stories were very tough to read. There was one particularly graphic depiction of dog fighting that I could barely finish and the entirety of the book was pretty sad. That said, it was a worthwhile read and the author was pretty good at picking the most excruciating characters and situations, although it didn't say much about my mom's new home city.

I also finished "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", which was a good read and reminded me why I like reading Ian Fleming.

***

In other news, I'm still trundling along in my 1,000 word a day writing challenge, even while being occupied 12 and 13 hours a day with my formal commitments. So that's a good sign.

***

Sigh. Vancouver housing market = terrifying. Would someone please tell me if the US recession will affect house prices here and if so, by how much and when? It seems like the only people who feel that way are angry bloggers who hate anyone who owns a condo. Housing prices are ridiculous here but I feel that's more a function of demand than it is artificially inflated prices, although trying to present that viewpoint to anyone outside the Lower Mainland is impossible because they'll get stuck on the fact that you want to buy a 600 sq-ft apartment downtown for $350k and look at you like you're nuts (which I guess you are).

But the alternatives are? Living in Surrey, I suppose. Or moving to Ontario.

My dream home is I guess a two-bedroom place in Coal Harbour or out at UBC, which puts me firmly in the 650k-900k+ range, but my attainable (and I use that word loosely) dream home is a $350k 1 bedroom on Seymour with floor to ceiling glass windows, insuite laundry, parking and storage. I'd also take a False-Creek-view place in Spectrum 3, but for $330k those places don't even have parking ($45k extra!!!!11). On the one hand I want to ask the developers if they're effing nuts, but on the other I think it's a pipe dream to hope for a mass market correction that will see those prices drop to even like $300k-$325k. Arrghghghgh.

***

I guess that's it. I'm in Vancouver for a few days and then on Saturday I fly to Germany for a week or so. It should be mentioned that by the end of the month I'll have accrued like 30,000 frequent flier miles in 31 days, which is patently obscene. At least February should be more relaxing.

O

Over the first ten days of 2008 I have written 11,300 words of fiction. If I can keep up that rate over the next 356 days I will have written 413,580 words in a (leap) year, which will shatter my goal of 365,000. Obviously quality and quantity are not especially related, so having 365,000 words of crappy fiction will not be much of an accomplishment at all, but if I can keep up the word rate I might by accident write something interesting and, one hopes, publishable. Otherwise I'll have reams of proof of why I will never be a fiction writer.

The first tough test of my New Year's Resolution (beyond just getting in the time while I'm working in the Bahamas) comes tomorrow, when I get on a plane for Australia and am in transit for about 31 hours and change. I arrive at noon on January 13th, meaning I entirely miss January the 12th and will therefore have to make up the day at some point (I don't really want to do it on the 21st, which is when I fly back to Vancouver and regain that lost day, because I'll be so jet-lagged I'll be nigh-incoherent and won't want to write anyway). I'll also have to write while I'm traveling if I'm to get tomorrow's 1,000 words in, which is not something I'm generally down with (writing in airports is not particularly easy for me). Anyway, it will be interesting to me to see if and how I deal with this, or if I just decide to rationalize it all away and fail not even a month into my goal.

I've decided I'll buy myself a nice watch if I reach the goal by the end of the year, just to sweeten the pot. So maybe that will help. Either way I'm pretty pleased with what I've written so far, although it will need a lot of editing and I'm pretty rusty and probably an awful writer.

***

Somebody explain to me why I have to go through security checkpoints in three different airports when I fly from Vancouver to the Bahamas. It's asinine. I flew from Vancouver to Toronto on Air Canada on the 3rd and went through security in Vancouver. Then in Toronto I had to pick up my bags and go through US Customs and go through security again before I flew to Ft. Lauderdale.

When I flew to Ft. Lauderdale (which is a hole, by the way), I got off in Terminal H and my flight wasn't on the board. So after wandering around for a bit I asked an airport person and she directed me to Terminal 1, which I could access by waiting 30 mins for a bus in an exhaust-clogged covered drop off area and then taking the scenic route to the Continental terminal, where I went through security a third time. The process ensured I didn't get to eat a decent meal while waiting for my flight to the Bahamas.

I guess I just hate standing in lines and I hate the involved process that is going through a security line - all metal out, shoes off, belt off, watch off, boarding pass out, headphones off, laptop out, marshaling a bunch of bags plus containers through the security checkpoint and then reassembling oneself on the other side. Three times seems a bit much.

Anyways, the flights down were alright. My friend Aaron drove me to the airport and we got the chance to catch up a bit on the way. I slept all through the flight to Toronto and on the flight to Ft. Lauderdale watched Superbad again in my seatback TV, which was kind of awkward because the flight was filled with geriatric cruise passengers and the old man beside me kept staring at my screen during the teen sex moments. He gave me a long look as he got ready to exit the plane but I avoided his gaze.

I was hungry and tired and miserable on the flight to the Bahamas, but it was short and when we landed the customs guy was friendly and joked around with me and my bags weren't lost and the process of getting out of the airport was quick and easy, and my cabbie was friendly and the people at Atlantis resort were competent and friendly and I got into my room and fed just fine. So that was nice.

I had a day to explore Atlantis and it's a pretty amazing place - it takes up this whole island and contains miles of beaches, like 18 pools, waterslides, inner-tube rafting, shark tanks, aquariums, turtles and a swim with the dolphins exhibit. I partook in none of the above but I did wander around and enjoy my day off.

Then it was on the grind and I've been occupied ever since and such have not had the chance to explore and enjoy Atlantis. Everything here is very swank and very expensive and I fear I have caught the consumption as I have a fearsome cough that won't go away. It may be a food allergy or it may be lung cancer. Who really knows? Either way it keeps me awake at night and I hope it doesn't follow me to Australia, or kill me for that matter.

So we finished up today and had a bit of a party, which I bowed out of early to come up and sleep, although I ended up surfing for condos on MLS and staying up far too late, as usual. My first flight leaves Nassau tomorrow at 12:45 and takes me to Charlotte, from whence I fly to Los Angeles in the afternoon, from whence at 10:30 at night I fly to Melbourne, Australia, arriving God knows how many hours later and having very little time to adjust to the time difference before I'm thrust into the thick of it all again.

I'm looking forward to Australia anyway. And to the air miles that will come with the trip.

***

I played a celebrity/media poker tournament the other day that featured the likes of Norm MacDonald, David "Boomer" Wells (the baseball pitcher), Dave "the Hammer" Schultz (hockey player) and a bunch of pro poker players. Rick the Te