A Truck Full of Fat Men

What's next? I'll tell you what's next, a GD cold. That's what's next.
Not cold as in, "I can't believe how goddamn cold it is and it's fucking April". April showers my dried chapped ass. It snowed my entire way home yesterday. Sorry about that....where was I? Oh yeah, but a cold as in, the sniffles, the runny nose, the dry hacking cough...listen to me, I sound like a bloody Contact C commercial.
Anyhoo, when I was younger a cold lasted two days tops. It usually started something like this. You'd wake up in the morning and feel a little sick, nothing to bad, you just knew that you weren't quite right. So you would call your Mom into your room, conjure up a few coughs, sniffle a few times and then in your most pathetic, sick voice you'd tell your Mom that you didn't "feel well" and that you should probably stay home from school. This would typically work, unless you over acted or you tried it way too many times. Also, you had to pick your sick days. Not on days when you had a test, cause that's just plain obvious. And not on days when you had hockey practice, cause then you'd get the, "Well if you're not well enough to go to school, then you're not well enough to go to hockey". Like I said, you had to pick your days.
Now, you may be legitimately sick, but when you're a kid a cold is nothing. A mere blip in the road. You cough and sneeze a few times and your nose runs a little. Big woop. For the most part you could still do pretty much anything you would normally do. In a twisted way, it even seemed like a blessing. You got to stay home from school and get pampered by your mother all day, and all you had to do was cough and sneeze every thirty to forty minutes. Ah yes, getting pampered by your mother. She'd make you soup. She'd give you ginger ale. She may even move the TV into your room if you're just to sick to get out of bed and move downstairs to the living room. Oh, those were the days.
But now that I'm older, at least for me, when I get a cold, it's like getting kicked in the goddamn head with a stiletto, while a fat man jumps on my chest. It amazes me just how much fucking snot my nose can produce. I've gone through two boxes of Kleenexes in the last 36 hours. I've drank over 4L of orange juice, tried four different types of daytime/night time cold remedies and watched 6 different episodes of Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager...each.
Actually that's one thing that's better now. The daytime TV. When I was a kid I got two channels, the CBC and CTV. I could choose between The Littlest Hobo or the Dini Petty Show. Not exactly the best selection in daytime programming. At least now I can choose which repeated episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation I want to watch a 3 in the afternoon. I can watch it on Space or I can watch it on Spike. It basically comes down to which episode I've seen fewer times. Oh, what wonders the future has shown us. Just look how far we've come!
This is now the third day of work I've missed. I left early on Monday cause I could feel the cold coming. I heard it's early warning cry, that irritating scratch in the back of your throat, and I heeded it's warning. I was supposed to brew back to back days, Tuesday and Wednesday, and I knew it was going to take all the energy I had to pull that off. A normal brew day lasts between 10-12 hours in which I might get to sit down for maybe ten minutes. Also the brewhouse it self is a green house. With the kettles steaming all day on the inside and the sun bursting through the windows from the outside, it can reach some pretty ridiculous temperatures in there. I once weighed my self before and after a brew day...I sweat off 7lbs. So like I said, I heeded the warning and decided it was best if I rested the rest of the day and tried to stop this thing before it became a full blown nightmare.
Well, I woke up at 5am on Tuesday and that fat man who sits on my chest I mentioned earlier, was now not only jumping on my chest but he was leaping up in the air and doing "Power Knee Drops" onto my throat. And that stiletto kick to the head, had pierced my skull and was deeply implanted into my temple. So I picked up the phone, called work, conjured up a few coughs, sniffled a little and in my most pathetic, sick voice, told them that I wasn't feeling well and should probably stay home. I spent the next twelve hours on the couch trying to get the endless stream of snot and mucous out of my nose. But it wouldn't stop. Kleenex after Kleenex, it ate through the box in no time at all. I couldn't believe it.
Even after almost two full days on the couch I still felt awful. But I went in yesterday, cause dammit, that beers not going to make itself. So I took two different types of daytime medicine, brought an entire box of Kleenex, filled my Nalgene full of OJ and headed out. That beer was getting made. Oh yes, it was getting made.
14 hours later I was home. And that fat man on my chest was now a truck full of fat men on it's way to a camp designed to help fat men just like these lose weight. Cause even for fat men, these men were fat. Fat guys on the street would tease these guys for being fat. And even after two weeks at this camp, they'd still be fat but at least they'd be able to reenter the general population.
Long story short, I'm home again and attempting to rest up for tomorrow's brew day. It's going to be another long one, but seriously, how long can this cold last? It'll be five days tomorrow.
I've done everything possible to get rid of this thing but it just won't go away. I wish my Mom were here to make me soup.
So what's next?

I'm The King of Past, But Still I Walk Forwad

"This one's for the Rheostatics. We're all a little richer for having seen them here tonight."

What's next? I'll tell you what's next, Vermont and the Rheostatics. That's what's next.
This past week I had two more experiences that got me thinking about my ever dwindiling youth.
First it was my good buddy Phil's stag weekend. As a tradition we've always "kidnapped" our friends, crammed a beer into their hands, stuffed them into a rented min-van and taken them away on a weekend filled with fun and fueled with booze. As groomsmen or just as friends we decide on a location, work with the wife-to-be to set the dates and make sure all the work arrangements are taken care of, then we show up unexpectedly and steal our friend away for the weekend. I've been the recipient of said bachelor weekend (and there is a naked picture of me floating around in the general population there because of it) and I've been the kidnapper many times aswell. We've been all over Canada and the US and we have the stories and scars to prove it. I think this was our seventh bachelor weekend.
This particular time we showed up at Phil's door grabbed him, shot down the 401, took a quick right at Le Belle Province and moved into the Green Mountain State....

Vermont for the uninitiated...to do some skiing and drink some beers.

Absolutely nothing went wrong. Everything went off with out a hitch and it was a great weekend for all parties involved. Even Carlos Delgado made an apperance. The sun shined,

the beer flowed

and no one got hurt. Not every bachelor weekend has gone so well. But those are other stories for other times.
What I wanted to discuss was although this weekend was a resounding success and I had a great time, I still feel a little sadness at the passing of this weekend. For after Phil, there isn't many more of us to continue this tradition. He was one of the last to get married. There may be one or two more of these weekends down the road, but after that, this chapter of our lives is over. We'll all be married. All of us.
Over the past decade I've seen all my friends gradually get older, move out of their childhood homes, into bachelor pads, into marriage and now many of them are starting families of their own. It's been great and I'm exceedingly happy for all of them. But I still can't help but feel saddend when I think that this portion of our lives is now over and all we have left are the pictures and the memories.

I guess that's just life. But what a good life it's been.
The second experience I had this week was watching the Rheostatics last live performance at Massey Hall in Toronto. That's right, the most Canadian of all bands has hung up their guitars for good. On the lonely darkened stage of Massey Hall, along with a cardboard cutout of Wendel Clark and a pair of worn out old brown goalie pads, the Rheostatics said goodbye to their legion of loyal fans.
I wasn't always a fan of the Rheo's. I can still remember seeing and hearing them for the first time at a concert in North Bay when they opened for the Tragically Hip. I was much younger at the time, 16 maybe 17 and I didn't understand their music. I mean it's not really the most accessable music out there. Their songs make sudden and drastic shifts and the structures are not exactly a good fit for main stream radio. At the time I just didn't "get it". But as I got older and I listened to them more and more, they grew on me and I started to understand the music.
Now many of my memories of the past ten years have been painted with a light coat of Rheostatics music. Certain songs instantly bring back memories from my past. And now that's it. They are gone. No more Fall Nationals at the Horseshoe.
Anyhoo, I loved the show and I was glad I was their to help say goodbye to one of my favourite bands. Just getting to hear Northern Wish live one more time was woth it. It was great. But the best part of the night was after each song the crowd heartily applauded. But it wasn't so much applause as it was a gushing wave of gratitude. You could just feel it. Each hand clap was a last attempt at a thank you for the twenty years of music and showmanship the Rheo's given us.
What's next?