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.
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