Beer heals...

I'm so damn tired these past three days and the brain has been a little fuzzy. I'm proud that I went 4 days without a beer and I resisted as much as I could tonight and I ended up eating beer for dinner. I did go to bed and brought a hamburger patty and a couple of burnt wieners and only had a few bites.

This morning I got my run out of the way. I was on the road just past 7 am. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was a great feeling running that early. I should try and do it more often. The run was hard. I wanted to stop and walk more than once, my body just has a beat up feeling. I didn't stop, fought through it and got it done.

Before work Alice and I went to look at her side board that she's getting refinished. They called her to come down and select the stain color, she went with a dark brown to match the Pig & Whistle. It's a couple of women that work there and it looks like they do a really nice job.

It was off to work and my mission for the day was to finish the revisions for the website copy and make sure the Shutterfly job got in production. I also sent my bosses a few good emails that make it look like I'm working hard and making progress. You gotta grease the wheel.

Yesterday I spoke to a pinball hobbyist that has over 40 machines in his house and runs the Toronto Pinball League. He buys and restores machines on the side and sells them. I'm starting to love my Corvette machine even though I over paid and the guy I bought it from is a little sloppy and hasn't yet come to fix the broken flipper. For me it's about feeling good about something and knowing it's in good shape, it gives me the warm fuzzes. Right now I don't have them and would feel better if I had a guy look at it and do a little restoration. This hobbyist does that and agreed to pick the machine up next week. I've come to realize the Corvette machine is hard and now I kind of like hard. I checked the software data and the average ball on that machine is lasting 45 seconds.

I did promise Alice I will not spend any more money, she's sick about it. Then tonight I spend $260 on a book for Reid. That's what happens when your drunk and Alice leaves the room for a minute. Tonight we were sitting around the bar and Reid spent most of the night with us. Reid was talking about school and one of his friends dads asking him what he wanted to be when he grew up and without any hesitation he said "a movie director". He said the father couldn't believe how fast he answered the question. Reid was then talking about movies and which we thought was the best of all time and he said for war movies he loved Full Metal Jacket and started talking about the book it was based on and that the writer is one of his favorites. This coming from a kid that is in an adapted learning program because he has difficulty reading and just getting him through high school with enough credits for Community college is going to be a major accomplishment.

He's definitely NOT stupid. I couldn't believe how much he knows about movies and directing. He's totally pumped about meeting Jevon next year when we go to Europe. Jevon's a director and has even done a movie with Denis Hopper. He's also a reader of this blog. Reid went on and on and on about movies and camera angles and writing and then he started talking about this book "The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford and that he's been trying to read it online and they only give you a few pages to read and then you have to buy the book.

Whenever I see Reid take any interest in reading or learning school related skills I try to encourage. He definitely needs to learn how to read and do math to succeed. That's one of the reasons I love that he's money driven, he's motivated to learn math skills to figure out how much he's going to make or what things cost. Funny, he can read when he wants to and he can do math when he wants to. He also started talking about particle theory last night and I was impressed. I will say he's definitely got street smarts.

Anyways, he mentioned this book and that it was the book Full Metal Jacket was based on and that it's a collectors item and then he showed it to me on EBay and it was in the U.K and selling for $150 pounds /$259.30 Canadian and had a buy now button. I drilled in on whether he would read it or not and he insisted he would. Alice left the room and I bought it thinking that she'd approve, it's only going to help him with his reading and he is after all her number one favorite son. I was wrong, she was a little upset. I got so blinded by helping him get ahead and learn more about reading and movies that I forgot I wasn't supposed to spend any more money.

We had lots to drink last night, maybe too much for me. I got an email early in the night from my Aunt Debbie who's only 2 years older than me. She sent me an email yesterday saying she was coming to Toronto from Winnipeg next weekend and asked if she could stay at our place Sunday night. I said sure. Then I got this email now asking if she could stay Friday night and pick her and her son at the airport at 11 pm and then on Monday morning drive them downtown. Debbie has always been a mean spirited person, very self centered and will do nothing for no one. She can be a real bitch. I didn't like her much growing up, we'd play together and god forbid you ever toughed any of her toys.

I was thinking I'd do it and then Alice said, "are you crazy" and reminded me of what she's like. Alice knows her well from when our kids when to the same school and Debbie and Sandy, her other sister would snub Alice and ignore her. That's all it took. I sent a nice email back saying no, I have plans, the pub crawl the next day at Al's, true, and that we are staying at his house Friday night. Not true. In hindsight I should have just sent an email back saying. "No can do, got plans that night". I then told her to try priceline.com to get a cheap hotel. The only reason she wanted to chauffeur her and have he sleep at my place is because she's cheap. If I picked her up at the airport I wouldn't get home until 12:30 am. Not going to happen.

Jamie came over earlier in the day. Barbs at home recovering with a minor surgery. They have their house up for sale and lots of traffic and between selling the old and getting ready to move into the new it's a lot of work and stress. He came over and I had a couple cigars then I had about 3 or 4 more and Reid even had a couple with me. My motto is, "a family that smokes cigars together, stay together and get cancer together, and die together". He's a pretty good little cigar smoker. Again, at one point he was wearing his suit. On twitter last night I put a picture up of Reid smoking a cigar and TammyGirl thought he was posing, I then uploaded video.

We did manage to get to bed relatively early. I'm trying to get away from the late nights. Funny thing about drinking beer and getting a buzz on, I started to feel a lot more fresh and less tired, at least temporarily.

Run - 57:25 / 11.09 km / 5:09 per km avg pace.