2008 : The Wonderful Clusterfuck
2008 was a year filled with adventure but hopefully not soon to be repeated. It was all too much and cost me everything. Let’s run down the list quickly:
- I got rid of my apartment
- I sold or rid myself of 90% of everything I owned
- I took a big gamble on an adventure with the Cirque du Soleil
- I took more or less 100 plane rides
- Slept in over 20 hotels across the US and Canada
- Slept in airports more than once
- Discovered the REAL MEANING of the BLUES in MEMPHIS
- Setup networks in over 20 cities for Saltimbanco.
- iPhone
- Setup the telecommunication infrastructure for Kooza in 3 cities.
- Steel-toe boots, hard hat, leatherman tool, gloves and a bright orange vest – Fashion Statement.
- The laying of miles and miles of network cable while Frost poems run through my mind.
- Kick-ass new laptop with HD monitor
- Macro Lens and Wide Angle Lens goodness
- Met more self-involved selfish self-centered cocksucking fucktards in one year than you will ever meet in your lifetime
- Met more cool down-to-earth real centered determined sweet caring people than you will probably meet in your lifetime.
- I once expensed over 50 cab rides in one expense reports.
- I found out what it’s like to slam a bottle of rum in under an hour and paid for it dearly.
- Three Words: Chicken Fried Steak
- Three Words: Cheesesteak Wit Whiz
- Because luxating my knee and damaging my quad wasn’t enough damage, tearing down the Cirque du Soleil site only helped in making it worse.
- Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Sandstorms, Heat waves from hell… dude The Show Must Go On
- Sick like a dog, fever of 103, 90 to 100 hours a week, 104 degrees outside… dude The Show must Go On.
- After having had enough of mental water-boarding from petty little tyrants I called it quits and headed back home.
- I spent all my savings re-establishing a base of operations in Montreal
- Got an apartment
- Went on a spending spree at IKEA
- Got me a HD TV with HD PVR with HD Cable
- Got me a Playstation3 FUCK YEAH
- Found out my would-be contract waiting for me at Cirque Du Soleil no longer had financing so I was basically out of a job
- Suited up for interviews: I now know the silky softness of an amazing Nautica stripped suit… OMG! Worth the fortune I paid for them.
- Went back to my firm and pulled all the strings I could tug on and got a job – after gambling away other prospects – which is basically an upgrade and all this 2 days before the holidays – talk about end of the line.
- I’m no longer a technical resource – I’ll be doing Incident Management.
- Went Xmas shopping at Warp speed
- Xmas dinner – no conflicts YAY!
- Now that I have a mandate at work – I could afford vacation time and I relaxed the rest of the year.
There’s certainly more but those are the big moments. I’m burnt – no really, at one point when I got back I thought I was going to collapse from exhaustion. 2008 was brutal and could be erased from memory were it not for all the awesome people I met, the cool cities I got to visit and the fantastic career upgrade this gave me. Plus the Americans elected a brother as President now that was cool.
Categories: Burn-Out, Camera, Cirque Du Soleil, Computers, Despair, Hotel, Kooza, Life, Montreal, Saltimbanco, Slice of Life, Travel, USA, Work, iPhone
Cirque Du Soleil, Saltimbanco, 2008, Memphis, Blues, Music, Kooza, Chicken Fried Steak, Macro, wide angle, Cheesesteak Wit Whiz, 2008 Recap
As long as you are always learning something; bring on forth the good and the bad.
I’m always learning. I would just prefer wash my hands of 2008. It was brutal.
Chicken Fried Steak – hell yeah. There’s a truck stop called Petro and some of them have restaurants called Iron Skillet. Be sure to get the “trucker portion” of the Chicken Fried Steak. Also bring a designated driver because you’ll want to lay down afterward.
geez…
@Jason: The plate of Chicken Fried Steak I had, with the mash must have had 3 pounds of food in it. Yummy tummy in my tummy but U was in a food induced coma for 12 hours.
@Jon. Yeah