Oog.

I might be tired, but that has NOTHING to do with Halloween.  Well, ok, it absolutely does but the point I was trying to make is that there were extenuating circumstances during the proceedings yesterday, which was unoffcially denounced as the
"Saturday-before-halloween-AND-before-daylight-savings-time-so-we-get-an-hour-bonus-so-let’s-PARTY" day
(I attended the meeting).

But to tell you about the night, it’s necessary (and unfortunate) to tell you first about the day.

So, soccer game at the ungawdly hour of 10 am on a Saturday morning for me.  Apparently, the only referee willing to be up this early is some 70-year old geezer who doesn’t run very fast at all, and who doesn’t see the need to follow the play close up.  Calling throw-ins from accross the field works fine for him, thank you very much!  Anyways, that’s another story.

The point, anyways, is that it was a brutal and close game and I was pretty tired by the end of it (notice, dear readers, the foreshadowing.  Ooo literary devices!).  But that’s pretty normal anyways.  What I want to do when I get home and what I have to do are two entirely and unfortunately mutually exclusive things.  Instead of chilling on the couch, I get to start working on my costume, while one of my roomates does the same.  We still don’t know why, but for some reason both of us came to the conclusion that creating the most complicated costumes of our lives was an insanely good idea, and it would all be worth it in the end.  Et tu, my once-mighty brain?  Is coming up with ideas like this some sort of punishment for my slowly killing you with alcohol and computer monitor radiation after all these years?  If so, I feel that your catching on only now is a problem in itself.  We’ll talk later.

So I’m pretty tired, and I finally take the decision to go as one Harvey Birdman (more), attorney at law, defenders of cartoon characters past.  I’ve never actually dressed up as a person before - I mostly have done hack jobs about concepts or reputable professions.  So this whole "get the character traits right" was a little new to me.

All in all, I was very proud of myself when it was complete:

MORE! YOU WANT MORE!

However, before it got to that suave final state, and while I was cursing at how much work was involved to make a pair of stinking wings out of cardboard, what was going on down the hall, pray tell?

IT WAS: LINDSAY SHAGPADDLE, Carpet Warrior!

As you can see, I was insanely jealous of his +15 shag vest and tried to vent my emotions in my own special way.  Unfortunately for me, shag carpeting turns out to actually be quite functional as a form of armor and I was left bitter and inconsolable.  I tried again a little while later, but by that time he had fabricated himself a defensive weapon and I was denied my bloodlust once again.

One thing I hate about Halloween is getting to whatever party you’re going to invariably involves some form of public transportation and therefore the inherent public humiliation that goes along with wearing something ridiculous among the throngs of people.  Add to this that the exact metro we choose to take was the one in which all the Canadians fans from the Bell Center decided to pour into after the hockey game, and I was feeling a little cramped.

My first (yes I said first) party was way out near Crémazie metro station, so I parted ways with my comfort group and made my way through dark alleys and abandoned parking lots looking like a superhero who really needs to get somewhere in a hurry.  My exhaustion lingers in the background.

I catch up with my good friend at the party (my costume is actually recognizable!), and then decide to make my way to the second where a bunch of people I know are hanging.  I call for directions and an address, and I’m off into the darkness once again!

I arrive at the right metro, and start walking.  And walking. And walking.  The directions are simple, yet long.  I turn down the required street.  Approaching the address.  Approaching.. 30 minutes later, cold and tired, I look up.

The road ends.  The address doesn’t exist.

I place a necessary phone call.

I repeat aloud the address on my piece of paper.

I start swearing.  Mostly at the person on the other end of the line.  Something about eating their firstborn.

I walk back up the bloody street for another 1000 addresses in the right direction.

I arrive, finally, I don’t know 90% of the people there, (interestingly a good 25-30% know me or Harvey Birdman) and it’s almost impossible to move around the apartment because of the massive amount of people present.  Notable is the German guy who dressed up as a large (large!) carboard box, who basically clogged up whatever room he stood in.  Good times.

The party was fun, there were a LOT of drunk people (and boy, I mean drunk), and we had St. Viateur bagles from the closeby store at the end of the night.  I get back in at 5 am, but thanks to modern technology and the elliptical orbit of the sun, I magically go to bed an hour earlier, dead from soccer and costuming and walking and walking and walking and dancing and walking again.  But it was a good Halloween :).

Quote of the night:

German box guy trying to go down the front steps to leave with his box on (i.e. recipe for disaster).  Asked if he had fun, he stated a little sadly and with finality:

"I’ll never be box again."

Beautiful. 

Too, too long.

Of course, this is going to sound exactly like the last post if I’m not careful.  Which I’m usually not, which generally gets me into a whole different bag of monkeys, and we’re not going to touch on that right now.

Much to my chagrin (and even my chachacha-grin), I realize that I’ve probably alienated the five or six true regular readers that I had by unceremoniously spurning them of sweet, sweet content for oh so long.  Another sacrifice to the gods of online video gaming, I’m sure.

So I come back now, to what?  What fair tale of Dan-lore is there to relate?  Honestly, there have been many days where I was thinking of something I could post, but then… then… I faltered, and the post was relevant no more, and I crawled my way back to the warm carpel-tunnel embrace of World of Warcraft.  However, I promise right here right now (With you/Is where I wanna be) that I shall return to my other online addiction as much as possible.  In the meantime, however, because physical damage to one is always equivalent to a sadistic laugh by another, I present to you: Soccer Injuries, October ‘05! (EXTREME Indoor version).

I really don’t know what it is about indoor soccer.  It must be that specific place that I go and play, because I’ve had the most devastating injuries of my soccer career all occur right there, and I still. keep. coming. back. for. MORE.  Am I insane?  What the hell is wrong with a normal (ok, that may be reaching) person when they keep going back to a place that keeps sending them so much pain?  Among other weekly gems, I’ve had my right ankle completely removed from its socket when a dude decided to jump as high up in the air and possible and land on the inside of my right foot;  I’ve been viciously bodychecked from behind, so much so that I landed on my knees, *hard*, and have lost all feeling around my right kneecap (to this day); and recently, in my first game back in the new indoor season, I’ve had a soccer ball kicked at the highest velocity possible directly into the right side of my face, which made me see a mosaic of spots for the next 20 minutes, the largest of which are still hanging around taking their sweet time to go away.  Understandably, I had to go to emergency for that last one, which only took about SIX freaking hours for about 45 minutes of actual checking (I did get to see an ophthalmologist at the end, thankfully) to tell me that everything was still fine back there.  In case you were wondering - yes, this was a prime example of a potential blog post, and boy, it woulda been a beauty…

Anyways, as always when you see an eye doc, they put those crap eye drops into your face that dilate your pups to a horrifying degree.  See for yourselves:

Unnatural.

Anyways, there’s more (there always is), but I think I’ll save you from the nastiness that has come to be called my "death toe" which is in the process of having its nail slowly come off after another player stepped on it about a month ago.  The roommates have cheerfully accepted this thing as being a natural part of the landscape by now, but that simply makes me less of an able judge of how much nastiness people are willing to tolerate in one sitting.  I have a picture as well, but honestly, no one wants to see that.  Put it away Dan, put it away.