Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Cute, Cheezy And Random


Ha ha, this could even be an add on Craigslist...

So I was recently thinking about a girl who I met many years ago during a trip to Orlando. Her name was Jaime Carter. My family was staying at a resort called Orange Lake Country Club (how posh) and there were always tonnes of kids running around the place so it was easy for the younger folks to meet new friends all the time. I can't remember how old I was exactly but I put the number perhaps around 16.

There was a group of girls from Wisconsin and a cool kid from Buffalo and we all hung out pretty much every night that we were there. The attention getter of the group was named Jean. (perhaps that's when the seed for the fondness of that name was planted but more on that in another post) The girl I liked to spend time with was Jaime. From what I remember, she was a year or gasp, even 2 older than me. She was rather pretty in her own right, but kinda more quiet and grounded than some of the other girls.

We hung out during the afternoons and I even remember spending an evening just chatting in her villa and then out under the stars while most of the rest of our group was busy making out with each other. Yeah, they made out, we talked... moving on. We ended up doing the pen pal thing through part of my senior year in high school. She sent me a few pictures which caught the eye of some of my house mates. No they weren't those kind of pictures. Though at that age, that would have been a nice ego booster. Wait we're men, that applies to any age.

Eventually we lost touch and familiarity become more of a warm and nice memory. I'd think about her now and again over the course of the last 10 years. Cripes, 10 years already... We never heard from each other though. Then tonight as I was packing my hockey bag for a game, I picked up an old journal and I found a couple of pictures within the pages which were facing each other. I pulled them out and apart and who should I see but the lovely Miss Carter in a cute skirt and the classic 90s girl's cut with the bangs and in the other a group shot of her family.

That brought a fun smile to my face as I remembered the first time that I got those photos. I wonder now though what happened to the one that got all the guys talking... Hmmmm. At any rate I used to have her address but I guess one of the reasons that I stopped writing her was because I lost it. I kept the letters somewhere, but she had her address on these little yellow bird stickers that she'd stick on the letters and somehow those all fell off or got lost over the years.

I recently read a post through a link from Megan's page. The post was by Dooce and it made mention of something called Sarah's Cringe Book. It made me think of some of the cheezy things I must have written to her as a love and awestruck mid-teen boy.

From that idea, I started looking for some of my old poetry and written thoughts which I made with such angst and emotion all that time ago. ; ) As I was going through a cabinet, I found a bag containing old cups and mugs which I used to dump loose change and stack pens in. I had always wondered where my beer glass from my 1993 championship hockey season had gone to and now I knew. Beyond finding busted pens and corroded batteries, I found a few souvenir coins from the Magic Kingdom. Again, that made me think of Jaime. As I'm sorting through those, a small piece of white paper, a bottom right corner to be exact, came loose.

I would have thought nothing of it, had I only seen the "Kwik Kopy Printing" tag on the back. Instead of that though, I saw the above with an un-familiar area code of 715. Curiosity got the cat and I almost locked mine in the cabinet as I closed it to check on my trusty MacBook to see where exactly the area code 715 was. Needless to say, I knew right away whose phone number I had found when the search came back.

So that's my story as of now. I still haven't decided what to do but I was thinking of maybe writing for old times' sake. For all I know she's married now, maybe even for the second time and has kids! : P Who knows. All I know is, it was fun, at least for tonight, to re-live those formative moments of the older girl with the great smile.

Any thoughts or suggestions are more than welcome on this one.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Where's YOUR pet beaver?

You know, sometimes you just have to make a stereotype work for you.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Valentine's Day...

Congratulations to all of us who made it through another Valentine's Day. Both for those who had people to share or get through the day with and for those who got to watch those people.

Monday, February 12, 2007

A 5 Point Post

The good: My mother and her new found sense of wanderlust. My mother is an amazing little (4'11") woman. She is the main reason I've made it to the point where I am in life today. She toughed out 15 years of being a single mom to the twins and me. I'd like to think that we all turned out ok and as such have allowed mom to catch up with herself. Now she and my step-dad have seemingly been on fast forward on the catch up thing. They hit it running and have run all over the world together and just got in the door a few hours ago from a trip down to Atlanta, Nashville, bits of Kentucky and Florida. One of the first things she asks me upon her arrival home is to look up air fares to Vancouver for the end of March. This coming from a lady who is already going to Victoria, Vegas and China in May... I should have figured this was going to be the new way when she spent a couple months running around Asia last fall during which she called me one night and said, "oh by the way, we're leaving in a couple days to go to Egypt and we can't be reached while we're there. We just found a trip so we're going to go". I love how almost care free she is right now and good for her too. She fought so hard for the 3 of us so I'm happy to see her live it up. A strange and lovely vice versa this is having the kids watch their parent get out there and spread their wings.

The bad: The mayor of Toronto, Mr. David Miller. I don't know what it says about the people of Toronto that he managed to get elected again, but this man is a disaster. Of all his campaign promises a few years ago, the only on that he's managed to fulfil was to not build a bridge out to the island airport... Never mind the financial and structural promises that have gone by the wayside, nor the fact that he is not a strong supporter of the men and women that I work with. He also sits on the police service board and I honestly believe they are the only service board in the world who actually capmaign against the betterment of the people they manage... Amazing. The only serving and protecting he knows of are for his own interests so it seems.

The funny: The looks people make sometimes. I'm just thinking about the look my mother gave me when I made a glass cracking sound and pretended to break the neck of a miniature crystal guitar she had brought back from Nashville. I swear up until that point the biggest eyes I'd ever seen were from the characters in Total Recall when they got sucked out into the Martian atmosphere. When she realized I was joking she laughed, but I thought my life was over for a brief nano-second. So that inspired this little part about people and their faces when they realize something just isn't right. Sometimes the innocence of a child is just plain old cute but when you mix in innocence and hormones the results are just hilarious. The toppers in terms of emotions that bring about the best faces have to be shock and fear. Nothing like seeing that in a group of people and then trying to pick out who is getting owned the least.

The sad: My friend and co-worker Kirk and how he felt after a dream he had where I commited suicide!!! Yeah, that's pretty bleak eh?!?!? He felt terrible about it and had to tell me about it and was so genuine about how sad he felt about it. I felt so bad for him that it had affected that much but was more than happy to tell him I was ok. The second part come courtesy Mayor Miller again... Last week all the city counselors met to have their annual group photo taken. As the story goes, the mayor and his inner circle had the front row reserved exclusively for themselves and when some of their spots were taken and argeuments ensued, Miller threw a hissy fit and cancelled the whole deal. In addition, just a couple of days ago, it was announced that he had approved an over 6 million dollar renovation to some offices in city hall which included making his bigger and moving his inner circle so they could be located closer to each other... This after pandering to Parliament Hill for more federal financial assistance stating that the city was cash strapped to maintain even basic infrastructure.

The down right odd: A Chinese zoo is running a Big Brother style competition with a difference -- the contestants have to live in a monkey enclosure. Six people will live with the monkeys in the zoo in the northwestern province of Shaanxi to experience the lack of freedom the animals have. The last person remaining will win 11,888 yuan ($1,534) and title of honorary animal lover. There is hopefully no literal implication in the title... It is the first such activity in China, and any Chinese National from 18 to 60 years of age, in good psychological condition with wild animal protection and survival knowledge may participate. Nevermind being in good physical condition, the first requirement is being in good psychological condition!!! One would opine that the reverse would seemingly be the pre-requisite to participate. As of yet, there is no mention on whether the traditional viewing audience will decide who gets eliminated or if the laws of the jungle will take over.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Bugs and Elmer

We all know due to the actions of our fellow beings, the world is becoming a warmer place. We didn't need the trusty ground hogs to tell us that spring would be coming early, but could you just imagine the confusion if they'd used this furry guy instead! : )

Thursday, February 8, 2007

At Least The Pug Was Keeping Guard

I've always been a sucker for babies so I decided to go out and get a couple to see what it'd be like to have a couple of my own... Presenting babies Dylan and Rylan and Oscar The Pug. And for those of you wondering out there, no they aren't mine.

In the heady and fast times of a 20 something stuck somewhere between a career, an education, an identity crisis and figuring out the life and love thing, it's easy to get caught up and ground down. You lose touch of what makes the struggle worth it and then you get a moment like this to make the big scary world just a little bit smaller.

I don't know who pacified who in this pic here, but I guess the end result kept everyone happy. Though poor Oscar looks like he feels like he got suckered into being a part of the whole deal.