so this time last week I was packing to leave for Vancity for days of debauchery and general good times, which were undoubtedly had. a week later, I’m sitting in my living room, dinner on the stove, tired as hell with a headache and sore throat, but still feeling good about the whole time.

let’s begin shall we?

we begin last friday when, after i arrived (two hours late, wf westjet?), a sushi lunch with Yi Hong, and dropping my crap off at Dario’s, we headed over to Chad and Danielle’s for a pre-Cambie dinner of awesomeness with Ryan and Elise. it was there that the singing of arrogant worms, watching of dario cheer for the wrong hockey team on goals, remembering of camping trips and laughing happened. so much in fact that danielle found herself in the unenviable position of having to throw up some dinner to make room for more laughs. yeah, that’s right. it was THAT fun. krista managed to make it over from her new home on the island for a night of Cambie fun. Post dinner, we headed out to catch the skytrain downtown, meeting Andrea on the way.  and then, to the Cambie we shall went! Steve met us there after having already had a few beers after work downtown. of course, I rocked out my new Cambie shirt.

i agree, that shirt was totally necessary. why? you know why, and if you don’t well then you should just agree with me and that really makes things a lot simpler. i may have put $20 in the jukebox and totally overrun it for an hour or more. probably more. yi hong and bonnie showed up for a bit too, and then left early, leaving the rest of us to drunkenly sing and yell and talk more.

the whole set of Cambie pictures are here.

next up, the Trevisani banquet on saturday where Dario and I were made the official banquet photographers and got to walk around trying to make lots of old italians smile for the camera. no easy feat sometimes you know.

it’s hard to not have fun at an event with lots of italians, food and drinks. it’s better when you’re pretty sure that you’re table has the goofiest faces in pictures.

sunday morning was basically doing not much, then hauling my stuff from dario’s to chad and danielle’s and then heading out to meet Jordan and Sonu downtown for lunch, drinks and some arcade time.

im kind of choked i didn’t know the Evil Dead musical was on cause I totally would have gone. but in any case, spending the afternoon with the guys from MPP was good times. we got chatty with a waitress at Speakeasy who went all zone out deer in the headlights when we explained what we had our degree in.

post sunday, I woke up starting to feel the efforts of the weekend so far. but there was more to be done! monday I headed downtown to see my profs. that was good cause I talked with our program chair for a while and she’s going to put me in the department newsletter as an example of life after MPP. i think it was the stories about roller derby that did it. i picked up my bound thesis, so now i can beat people over the head with it and maybe they’ll learn through osmosis. but probably not. whatever. i was good to talk to them. I pretty much feel completely reaffirmed in my choice to grind through two years of no sleep and papers. they’re excited when we land good jobs, and frankly, they have every reason to. apparently our cohort is still being used as the prime example of the program. not too shabby I’d say.

that night we, as in me, chad, danielle, dario, ryna, elise, andrea and tania, ventured down to the Drive to indulge in some delicious and awesome Memphis Blues meat. the only downside was that i was rocking a pretty bad headache and it’s hot as hell in there. but i motored through dinner and left feeling satisfied that i’d probably crap a barn in the morning.

tuesday, I went for hot pot lunch with yi hong somewhere in burnaby at this place called Posh. it was actually really good. then there was basically mayhem as we drove all the way to granville island so i could go pick up some Rogers Chocolates for the gals in my office.

then, back to metrotown where I met up with kristin, who I hadn’t seen in a long time. then a rush back to the ciavarro pad for dinner with marlee, and a dash downtown for the matt good concert.

all pictures from the concert are here.

oh man, such a good show! i managed to get my hands on a setlist after, so, iTunes setlist, yeah. opened with On Nights like Tonight and moved right into Avalanche. such a good build as an intro! I was kind of hoping that the Joy Division interlude in Hello Time Bomb might go a bit longer or turn into more of Love Will Tear us Apart, but even if it didn’t that’s ok. it fit wickedly into that song!

krista managed to get back over to Van for the show, and briefly introduced me to the one and only Dan Lilly. they happened to be talking with MG’s parents. I didn’t say hi, not sure why, but I was standing there thinking, hmm, they know dan and krista, so maybe it would be best to not bust in and be all “im so and so and i like your son’s music.” i dunno. how often do you get to meet the parents of one of your favourite musicians?

post concert we headed over to library square pub for some drinks for alicia’s boyfriend’s birthday, but i went more for drinks for Dario’s birthday which happened to be the next day. Robyn and her friend met us at the bar which was cool cause i really dont get to see robyn as much as I’d like to.

that leaves Wednesday, remembrance day. I got up before chad and danielle, got cleaned up, and went downtown to meet up with Everett to go to the ceremony at the cenotaph at Victory Square.

after the ceremony, I jumped on the skytrain, booked it out to burnaby for lunch at danielle’s parents, picked up some elk meat from dario, packed up my stuff, and hopped on the brand new, shiny skytrain out to the airport to fly back to flatter lands.

good times, Vancouver, good times.

see you again soon.