Where Humour Comes From

I think I’ve been relying on ranting too much as a source of humour for this blog and as a result have come across as a bit too negative about our experience down here, particularly given how many people are sending messages of a “don’t worry, it’ll get better!” nature. We’re actually having a really good time so far, and with our place all set up now we’ll be able to turn some of our downtime energies towards exploration and entertainment. It’s just that... well, most humour at its root is complaining. Think about it:

Seinfeld: “What’s the deal with…?”

Chris Rock: “You know what the problem is with…?”

Not to mention the gazillion sitcoms that revolve around insecurity, which is essentially complaining about yourself. In general, nice and happy just isn’t all that funny. You need some sort of oomph to push a good joke forward. Now granted this isn’t a universal rule, not all humour needs to be complaining. For instance: Australians want nothing more than to stop for you at the crosswalk. It doesn’t matter where, when, what time of day… they will slam that car to a halt for you in seconds, waving you across with smoke still streaming from their tires. The other day I walked up to the crosswalk and this guy was roaring down the street. He saw that he wasn’t going to be able to stop in time so in desperation he jammed on his brakes and jerked his car into a truck full of kittens. I think his last living act was to wave me across. True story.

That said, I generally do find that if you throw complaining into an otherwise boring anecdote you can really start mining some comedy. In the interest of proving my point I’ve taken the liberty of providing some examples:

Story #1:
Up the street from us there’s an avocado tree, which is awesome because I love avocados and if they’re growing on a tree I get them for free. Just one of the things I love about our place. (Great story right? Not really)

Now add the complaining:

Does anyone have any idea how to tell when an avocado is ready to be picked? I want to pick some of these avocadoes but I’m at a total loss: avocadoes are green when they start growing, green when they’re ready to be picked, green when they’re ripe to eat, and green when they’re past their prime. They spend their entire lives looking exactly the same. Not to mention there’s a 45 minute window where they transition from “Pre-Judge Dredd Stallone abs” to “Bat guano jammed inside shoe leather”; if you don’t grab them somewhere in that timeframe they’re pretty much inedible. Granted you could bludgeon a cow to death with the ones currently on the tree, so I’ve probably got a little waiting to do.

Story #2:
We live in a really pleasant neighborhood with a good mix of folk. It’s not uncommon to wander past a guy in a suit, then a girl with hair dyed pink, and then a young family taking a stroll.

Now my complaint:

Ok. I get it. Babies require a ton of stuff to keep them alive. It’s not the 1970’s and nobody carts their kid around in a stroller that folds up smaller than an umbrella anymore. But when you’re already marching around with your kid in a stroller the size of a pregnant rhino do you really need the extra coffee holder that juts an extra 6 inches off the side? I just want to get past you without doing the steeple chase through an adjacent café!

Story #3:
The University here is really quite beautiful. It has a much more British flair to it than what we’re accustomed to in North America – very well-manicured lawns and majestic stone buildings. It’s kind of neat to see the cricket pitches all over the place as well. I’m sure Erika will enjoy working there.

Aaaaaand…

Why on god’s green earth would you build a university like a fortress? Honestly, this place is impenetrable. Did Vikings range this far south? Were seaborne samurai a threat from the north? If you’re going to build a University shouldn’t the students be able to navigate it? To illustrate, here is the official campus map, which I assume was passed out to invading forces:

For starters, this map is ungodly hard to read. On top of that, once you go to the school it is also abundantly clear that the map is also totally inaccurate for purposes of navigating the campus. Seeing as how the school of cartography isn’t quite up to snuff, let’s help them get a more accurate representation of the university (click the images for a larger view):

Not only is it virtually impossible to even get into the school, once there you discover that every possible route across campus is cut off. There are no shortcuts, and I’m fairly certain that even if invaders did manage to broach the walls they could just retreat like Russians in winter. I’m surprised anyone even graduates.

So don’t fret folks, the moral of the story is that Sydney is great. We’re having a good time so far, and even though it’s been a torrential downpour the last couple of days it’s still warm enough to sit on the deck and watch it fall, and cools things down enough to sleep well at night. What’s to complain about? Well… there is the internet. Who gives an install window of 1-20 days for crying out loud!



Visitor update #2: Timmaaaay!
#1: Sylvia
#2: Timmaaaay!

My Fridge is Vaguely Racist

It’s incredible the way you change your view of the world along with your income bracket. For instance: K-Mart is now awesome. Do you have any idea how cheap crap is there? We bought a 24 piece dishware set for $15.00. An 80-piece starter kitchen set for $69.00. 80 Pieces! And we only threw out 5 or 6 things straight from the box. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t go serving tea to the queen off this stuff and there’s an 8% chance we’re going to get lead poisoning from it, but a deal is a deal.

Erika and I finally got a place and it’s fantastic. In fact, we were offered 4 of the 5 places we applied for, with the 5th going to the landlord’s friend. Turns out it’s not as hard to get a place as we thought, all you have to do is be so anal retentive that you send a 3-part email with 27 attachments and enough details that anyone in the CC line can freely steal your identity. Boom! Apartment. And we’re pretty happy with what we got. Here’s the view from our deck:

The amazing thing is that this was only $160 more a month than some of the egregious crapholes we were looking at and is in a great area. So that has us pumped. Of course we didn’t have any stuff when we moved in, but that certainly didn’t stop us. In fact, we spent the first night on the floor:

Doesn’t Erika look all cozy with that big sleeping bag? Yeahhhh… I’m a bit larger than her:

In case you were wondering, those are in fact towels I’m lying on (and I’m wearing a Rambo shirt I got for free that’s shockingly comfortable). That’s pretty much all we had until we hit Ikea for a bed and other goods. By the way, going to Ikea to outfit your home is actually not the most depressing thing you can do as a 34 year old professional married to a doctor. In actual fact, the most depressing thing you can do is to find those same items for cheaper at K-Mart, buy them, and then return the other stuff back to Ikea. Little waft of shame there, not gonna lie. But hey, at least we got a bed! Unfortunately, given that we bought it at Ikea we would have to assemble it. With tools. That we didn’t own. That led to this:

Which was great fun. Nothing like a couple of nights on the floor in spiderland to help you sleep right. At least it was only one night; another trip to K-Mart and we set our bed straight:

By the way yes, those shelves in the corner are our only storage. I was going to remove a shelf and hang some clothes up but we haven’t bought hangers yet. I don’t want to buy hangers. WHO BUYS HANGERS?! As an added note, apparently the spiders on the floor create a 2-foot zone where mosquitos don’t fly. Once we got the bed up off the ground they were free to attack me, and I am now harvested for sustenance by my mosquito overlords 3-5 times a night while Erika has yet to be bitten. Granted I sleep virtually uncovered by anything it’s so warm and muggy at night which makes me a much bigger target. I only wear shorts so that the mosquitos don’t get me in any sensitive areas and I’ve started wrapping my hands in T-shirts at night so they don’t bite my fingers. Erika thinks this is tremendously funny but I’d way rather be bitten on the back than the fingers.

The last thing to do was buy the cheapest fridge I could find and this is what we ended up with:

Hang on, let me show you the brand name:

Doesn’t the name Changhong sound like someone making fun of a Chinese company? That’s the first thing that hopped to mind when I was buying it, and it doesn’t help that for the last 3 days I thought the company’s name was Chang Chong, which would really sound like racially insensitive mockery. Heck, I may have been under that impression until the moment I wrote this paragraph. This unfortunately means that for the last 3 days I have been telling people the brand name of my fridge was Chang Chong, which potentially makes me the guy throwing around racially insensitive jokes. Fortunately I have this photo to recalibrate my sense of what constitutes racial awkwardness:

Wow. You just can’t make this stuff up.


To close, we’re going to keep a running tally of peeps who’ve managed to visit us despite our being in Sydney, Australia. First up was Sylvia who was in town for an exam and grabbed dinner with us. Sylvia is visitor #1!

Moving to Australia Part III: We Have Arrived

View Part I here and Part II here.

Three days. Three days in Australia is all it took for me to get bitten on the neck by a spider. How stereotypical can you get? That’s like coming to Canada and within 72 hours you're having maple syrup fed to you by a beaver (wow, that really didn't come out the way I intended). By the way, where the bite is concerned I’m not joking around. This is what my neck looks like:

The thing latched on in the middle of the night and woke me up. I have no idea what it looked like, but here’s an artist’s rendition:

Yes, I’ll admit that I’m not 100% certain there’s spiders out there who have flames on their abdomen, but you can be damn sure that if there are you don’t want to be bitten by one.

Obviously other things have happened since getting here. For instance, we’ve tried to get a home. That’s pretty much the end of the list of things we’ve done: I got bitten on the neck by a spider, and we’ve tried to find a place to live. Do you have any idea what it’s like trying to find a place near the University right when school’s coming back into session? Not fun. All the trekking around the city does give you time to make some observations though. Here’s some for your perusal:

Weather: Sydney is hot and muggy. It is not dry. All of the locals claim that this summer is different than the rest, but in actual fact it’s sunny during the day, then there’s a monsoon at 6pm. And I’m not sure that this year is actually an anomoly. Everyone we’ve spoken to who isn’t originally from Sydney agrees that it rains here way more than the locals claim. So it’s damp and hot and pretty much perfect Paul sweating weather. That said it’s fantastic when the sun is out. Eat it, northern hemisphere.

Walking: We’ve walked over 50km around town in 5 days, including 17.5km in one day. That’s what happens when you’re suddenly poor, need to find a house, and have no knowledge of the area you’re in. I’ll also refer you to my point above about sweating and note that I don’t have access to laundry services. Fortunately I brought every item of dry-fit I own, however I’ll probably have to burn them before the week is out.

Lesbians: This is purely a commentary, so don't get your knickers in a twist people. I couldn’t care less how your brain is wired for humping. But apparently the Newtown region in Sydney has more lesbians per-capita than anywhere else in the world and wow can I believe it. Not the place to open a salon. Just sayin’.

My phone: This steaming hunk of kangaroo turd is my new phone:

Look, I’m not a diva or anything but I had an iPhone. Now I have to use this echoing soup can to talk to people? It makes me sound like T-Pain.

Fridges: Rental units don’t come with fridges! What the hell! People lug their fridge around to every place they live and just cross their fingers that it fits the new apartment, I have no idea why this is the case. I can’t even hazard a guess. I am bewildered.


Our Bags: It’s probably about time for me to harken back to my first post in this series and explain why my hands were shaking. Well, it’s not the spider bite. It’s not the yard sale, the car exportation, the flight, or all the walking. No, it’s a completely avoidable thing: Our bags. You see, Erika and I decided that we were going to get bags that fit our full allotment of space and weight for the flight. Fortunately, Samsonite sells this tidy little number:

Works great. In the photo. You want the reality of what travelling with this bag is? Well here you have it:

Every time I dive into the thing it’s an expletive soaked tirade. By the way, we’re currently staying in the catholic dorm on campus. I want fresh socks and inside of ten minutes I’ve taken the auditory virginity of half the girls in the hallway. I cannot stress how much I hate this bag. And if the pure use of it wasn’t bad enough, try carrying the thing. Look at the photo one more time… there is no shoulder strap. These things hold 25kg of luggage each and you have to drag the bloody bag around by the handles. The best part is that my back is so bad that I can’t carry just one. If I try to it off-balances me and wrenches my spine 6 inches to the right, so instead I’m stuck carrying 110 lbs. of clothes and anger every time we change locations. This was particularly delightful when we moved to our current home, given that the pedestrian entrance is 250 meters from the front door! I finally settled on looping my forearms through the handles and basically running until I couldn’t carry them any further, then stopping and trying not to cry. It was the best.

So this is a) why my hands were shaking, and b) why we need to find a place as soon as humanly possible. The prospect of carrying those boulders around again when we get kicked out of here genuinely crushes my soul. But hey, I’m a positive guy right?

Take care everyone.

Moving to Australia Part II: Importing the Car

View Part I here and Part III here.

*NOTE: I’M BLOWING THROUGH THIS STORY BECAUSE SO MUCH STUFF HAS HAPPENED IN AUSTRALIA THAT I WANT TO GET TO. BEAR WITH ME*

I’m not an idiot. I just need to get that out of the way because I’m not 100% sure that by the time you finish reading this you won’t think otherwise. I maintain that everything I did in trying to export my car was mostly correct, except for the part where I had to cross the border 5 times in order to make it happen.

Let me explain. When one exports a car, there is really only a single hard rule that affects this story: Once paperwork is received by the US border officials you can’t leave the country with the vehicle until you’re actually exporting it. Unfortunately, the people who can do the paperwork to export aren’t available after 3:30pm. You now have all of the pertinent background info for this story to make sense.

If you remember from Part I there was a bit of chaos associated with us getting up to Canada in the first place. Despite our best efforts we weren’t able to make it to the border in time to export the car, having missed our window by a mere 4.5 hours. That meant that we had to ditch our car in a McDonald’s parking lot in Lynden, then take the truck with our worldly belongings across on its own (Crossing 1). After the escapades of that night, the next day we had a simple plan. We’d borrow a car from Erika’s folks so we could finish loading the storage locker, then we’d go south so I could grab our car and import it while Erika went to Bellingham to get her driving record (required to get her BC license again). It all seemed so easy.

Strangely enough, loading the storage locker was the smoothest part. Miraculously nobody had taken our shit (which happens to us a lot) and we were able to upgrade to a 7’x10’ locker that fit everything perfectly. So off we go to the US! We hit the border at around 2:30pm (Crossing 2) and grabbed the car down in Lynden. After parting ways I drove to the border in Blaine. I was mildly concerned because I had forgotten the sheet of paper that explained the exact directions of where to go but I did remember something about “staying to the left”, so I felt I was pretty good on that front.

So after all of the hassles and delays, it’s finally time for me to export our car. A short drive gets me to the border and I am staying to the left when I see a sign that says “Government Offices”. Hey, that’s me! I drive over to the left, find the visitor parking, and head into the offices. It is now 3:05pm. I go inside and see a small window with a Vehicle Export sign over it. Up until now things are going perfectly. I walk up to the window… and it’s plastered in Bruins paraphernalia. There’s news clips, player profiles, you name it. I am in my Canucks hat, and have the distinct feeling that my mojo is shifting. After some light conversation where I establish that yes, I hate the Bruins, he takes my paperwork and goes into the dark recesses of borderland. He stamps my vehicle title, then after a moment he asks a strange question: “Where’s your car?”

ME: Uh, right outside?

GUARD: No, I mean where exactly?

ME: I put it in the visitor parking off to the left.

GUARD: We don’t go out there for inspections. You have to bring it around out front.

ME: Ok, how do I get there?

GUARD: Just take this slip of paper then give it to the guy blocking the gate out. Pull up to the sign that says “Return to Canada” and drive through.

ME: Ok.

So here’s what I do: I go back to my car, take the slip of paper, and give it to the guy blocking the gate out. He lets me through and I pull up to the sign that says “Return to Canada” and drive through. All of a sudden I find myself in no-man’s-land – I’m stuck with Canada to the north, USA to the south, the border to my left, and a dilapidated shack to my right. I have literally no options at this point. I can drive north into Canada and break the exportation regulations. I can pop the car into reverse and back up the highway into the US (which I’m pretty sure is illegal in some way). Or I can give up, abandon my car, and go back inside. I finally settle on backing up my car, then moving it forward, then backing it up again, then moving forward, then backing up again, then saying “to hell with it” and driving onwards into Canada (Crossing 3). I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing at this point, maybe I already did everything I needed to?

The Canadian border dude hears my story and asks if I got my title stamped. “Ok, then just take this yellow slip and pull into Lane 1”. Sounds great, I guess I did do everything I needed to in the US! Only problem is, as I’m pulling into Lane 1 I realize that the US guy never gave me the title back. Damn it! So I race inside because it is now 3:15pm and time is ticking away.

It is empty. And I mean that this border crossing is a dead, barren wasteland of staff. It’s the Mojave. Nobody comes out of any offices or talks to anyone. There are no voices, no people at the counters, and nobody in front of or behind me in line. The only thing I have for company is a single clock on the far wall that is ticking inexorably forward: 3:17pm… 3:18pm… 3:19pm. I stand there entranced as my hopes and dreams dribble away one second at a time. My phone buzzes: it’s a text from Erika. The DMV won’t give her the paperwork, she’ll need to drive to Olympia for it or do it by mail. Fantastic. Finally, at 3:25pm someone comes out of what I can only assume is a drug mule extraction room, and asks me what I need. I immediately tell them that Iamanidiotidon’tknowwhati’mdoingiamexportingacarandiwentthewrongwayandistillneedusapermissionbutigotturnedaroundandnowineedtogobacktotheusandohpleasegoddon’ttakemebacktotheroomyoujustcameoutof. He says to just go back to the US and take my yellow slip with me. Well that was easy.

So I tear back to the US… thank god there’s no lineup (quick tip: most of the people who take the truck crossing would lose an IQ contest to a muffin. There’s always an empty lane to the right while the other lanes have 3-7 cars in them. I have no idea what those other cars are doing). I roar up to the border and explain my story: Iamanidiotidon’tknowwhati’mdoingiamexportingacarandiwentthewrongwayandistillneedusapermissionbutigotturnedaroundandnowineedtogobacktotheusandohpleasegoddon’ttakemetothebackroomywherebadthingshappentogoodpeople.

His response: “Just take this slip of paper then give it to the guy blocking the gate out. Pull up to the sign that says “Return to Canada” and drive through”.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

ME: “That’s what I did! I just did that! I did what you said and I ended up in Canada! Give me some more freaking details!”

GUARD: “Well, just drive around to that dilapidated shack and get out. Then walk in and finish your paperwork”.

Seriously? So giving up, abandoning my car, and going back inside was actually the right decision. Ok then… did not see that one coming.

At any rate, I drive through (Crossing 4), park at the shack, and head inside. It is now 3:35pm, and although they’re supposed to have shut down they cut me a break. Apparently the dilapidated shack is the "Kiosk" and there's some sort of photography equipment there. Great, maybe instead of writing "Kiosk" on the shack you could write, oh, I don't know, "Car imports, stop your freaking car here"? At any rate, it was back to the Canadian border and finishing the paperwork there (Crossing 5). Loads of fun.

So my advice: Bring the freaking instructions when you import your car.


Up next is Part III: Off to Australia and First Impressions!

Moving to Australia Part I: Getting North

View Part II here and Part III here.

My hands are shaking. It’s making typing a bit hard to be honest with you, what with the keys being so close together and all. It’s been a hectic 2 weeks trying to get our disorganized asses moved across the planet, and pretty much everything has been a gong show. But that’s not why my hands are shaking. I’ll get to that later. First, some highlights in chronological order:

Monday, Jan 30th: Paul’s fifth-to-last last day at work. Car export paperwork put through, car can no longer leave the US until paperwork finalized by US officials. Erika packs, Paul plays hockey.
Tuesday, Jan 31st: Paul’s fourth-to-last last day at work. Packing.
Wednesday, Feb 1st: Paul’s third-to-last last day at work. Erika packs, Paul gets a massage.
Thursday, Feb 2nd: Paul’s second-to-last last day at work. Erika packs, Paul plays hockey.
Friday, Feb 3rd: Paul’s last day at work. Slow clap as I leave the office, then drinking.
Saturday, Feb 4th: Moving sale. It’s incredible what crap people will buy. Highlights include: Old Asian man vacuuming our floor for us, selling the kitchen table I’ve had for 24 years, Erika selling my neck pillow right before we go on a 15.5 hour flight.
Sunday, Feb 5th: Paul goes to watch Superbowl in Vancouver while Erika packs (anyone else seeing a trend here? I don’t know how I’m still married. Trust me, it seemed reasonable at the time). Mad scramble to get everything loaded.

Monday, Feb 6th:
2:30am Go to bed for the night.
6:00am Try to get the remaining packing done, the U-Haul loaded, bring our cable box to Comcast, and visit the DMV for Erika’s driving record; all in time to leave for noon so we can export the car.
12:30pm Realize we’re not going to make it.
12:40pm Eat Lunch.
12:40pm Go to DMV. It’s closed. On a Monday.
1:00pm-4:30pm Pack the truck, get crap in to Comcast, have the apartment inspected, watch Erika get angry at the inspector for nitpicking, watch Erika give the inspector the “I will rip out your liver and feed it to the squirrels if you don’t give us our full deposit” look, watch the inspector give us our full deposit.
4:30pm-8:15pm Drive to Lynden, eat McDonald’s, leave the Subaru in their parking lot, take the truck across the border to the storage lot (strangely, crossing the border back home with all of our goods was the easiest part of the whole day. Thank you Aldergrove border!), and start unloading.
8:15pm Discover that we have to be done by 9pm.
8:16pm Discover that we have a storage space half the size of our truck.
8:17pm Experience a brain-shift that makes us say “We can do this!”
8:58pm Discover that we can’t do this.
8:59pm Start loading everything back into the truck.
9:15pm-10:00pm Load the truck, wake up the guy to a) let us out and b) loan us a lock for the back of the U-Haul so we can leave it in a sketchy dark parking lot behind a Wendy's. Get driven to Erika’s parent’s house for the night.

Stay tuned for Part II: Importing the car

Ladies, Pucks, Blades, and You

Hey folks!

It’s been a while since my last post. Life gets hectic sometimes, and in my case the blog is what fell behind. I can say though, that I have a fantastic reason to write this post, and I hope you will agree.

As you may or may not know, sometimes people get sick. Sometimes people are even born sick (shitty, right?). In a lot of these situations, the only thing you can do is research the disease and try to find out how to take it behind the woodshed and give it a whippin’. Since research takes money, there’s a demand for kindhearted people to raise funds for such diseases. A friend of mine, Beth Snow, is partaking in an event intended to raise money for research into Cystic Fibrosis. She is playing hockey for 10 days straight.

Ten. Days. Straight.

Not “a game for ten days”. “One game that lasts for 10 days, 24 hours a day” is more like it. The event is called the “Longest Game 4 CF” and it is going on right now (watch a live webcast of the girls playing from here… as of this writing they’ve been playing for 84 hours straight). When done they will have set a World Record for the longest hockey game and hopefully have raised a bunch of money for CF research. You can donate to Beth’s efforts here: www.2mevents.com/index.php/pledge/729. As an alternative plan, you can live a sad and shallow life. Your call though…

In order to wrap my head (and yours) around this ridiculous fundraiser, I did a bit of a Q & A with Beth before she began cursing her skates. I have commented where appropriate:

You have your PhD. Can I call you Dr. Beth?
I wouldn't have you call me anything else! ;-)

What, exactly, is the "Longest Game for CF"?
The Longest Game for CF is an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the longest ever game of hockey. The current record of 10 days was set by a group of men in Edmonton in February, so we are going to play for 10 days and 65 minutes. This is one, continuous 10-day-long game of hockey. That's 243 hours of hockey… Put another way, this one game is equivalent to three seasons of NHL hockey. (PAUL: 3 seasons of NHL hockey? Sweet Merciful Crap!)

All of this is being done, of course, to catch people's attention so that we can raise money for, and awareness about, cystic fibrosis.

Have you lost your marbles? Seriously… aren’t PhD’s supposed to be smart?
I'm sure they aren't lost, exactly. They must be around here somewhere.

If you have not lost your marbles, were you in possession of marbles previously?
Oh yes, of course. They were very pretty.

Why CF?
The event is the brainchild of Val Skelly, an incredible woman who lost her dear friend Lucia to CF. Val wanted to do something totally huge, something so epic that everyone would have to sit up and take notice to promote awareness about CF and fundraise for CF research. Being a hockey player, she came up with the idea of playing the longest ever hockey game!

One of the amazing things about raising funds for CF research is that we know the research makes a huge difference. 50 years ago, a child born with CF didn't live to see kindergarten. Today, thanks to research, half of people with CF live to see 40 years of age. That's an incredible amount of progress in a relatively short period of time. But we still have a long way to go, because people who have CF live with a very debilitating disease every single day of their lives and they die a lot sooner than they should. We need funds to continue the research!

Did you ever consider a charity that fights marble loss and marble-loss-related illnesses?
We did consider it, but to the best of our knowledge, there are only 40 people on earth who have marble loss-related illnesses to such an extent that they'd play hockey for 10 days straight, whereas CF is much more common. 1 in 25 people of Caucasian descent are carriers of this genetic disease, as are 1 in 46 people of Hispanic descent, 1 in 65 people of African descent and 1 in 90 people of Asian descent. There are approximately 3,000 people in Canada and 30,000 people in the US who have CF.

As well, as I mentioned above, incredible progress has been made in improving treatment and extending longevity for people with CF, whereas we are pretty sure that those with marble loss are beyond hope of ever finding a cure.

How much are you hoping to raise as a team and as an individual?
I'm aiming to raise at least $3,000 by the time the game starts on August 26th. Collectively, we want to raise $400,000!

You are all awesome. What about the event itself? How does it work? Can people leave the building?
We are not allowed to leave the Burnaby 8 Rinks property. So while we won't stuck in the building the entire time, we are only allowed to be in the building or to hang out in the parking lot. The world is going to be a very small place for us in those 10 days!

Is it refereed?
Yes, the Guinness Rules require that there must be two referees on the ice at all times, so our committee has been working hard to recruit people who can skate, who like wearing stripes, and who have a lust for power to be volunteer referees. (I think we may even still need a few more refs, so if you are interested...)

Are you allowed subs? I don't mean sandwiches.
Each team is only allowed 20 people and whoever is dressed and on the bench when the puck drops to start the game constitutes the two teams. No substitutions allowed, so if anyone gets hurt, your team just has fewer players. And we can't switch teams either, so if 5 people were to get hurt on one team, that team would only have their 15 remaining players and the other side would not be allowed to share theirs.

Because we are only allowed 20 players per team and it is physically impossible to stay up for 10 days without eating, sleeping or taking care of other, um, biological functions, we are setting up schedules where we will play for about 4 hours and then have 4 or 8 hour breaks. In order to do this, at any one time we will only have 6 skaters and a goalie on each team. This means that when you are on your 4 hour playing shift, you will be physically on the ice for almost the entire 4 hours. This, of course, assumes no injuries. If anyone goes out with an injury, we'll either have no sub on the bench or have fewer 8 hour breaks.

Man, where did I put those marbles?

That seems like a big time commitment. Did everyone quit their jobs to do this, or are you all hobos?
I cannot speak to the hobo nature of my teammates, but I'm taking vacation. I know at least one person in the game is a teacher and so she's on her summer vacation (but has to be in class to teach the very next day!) and I know at least one person who is taking unpaid leave to be able to play. The rest of them are probably hobos.

How many fighting majors do you think there will be, just to get some rest in the penalty box?
The desire to sit in the penalty box will likely be outweighed by the sheer terror of actually getting hurt in a fight, resulting in the team losing a player. Also, I don't think any of us will have the energy to swing a fist.

Are there periods? If you don't Zamboni the ice a couple of times won't you eventually just be running around on the floorboards?
There aren't periods, exactly, but we do get 10 minutes to clean the ice for every one hour that we play. Apparently the Zamboni normally takes 10 minutes and 15 seconds to clean the ice surface, so we are going to need to employ some kamikaze Zamboni drivers who can shave off that 15 seconds, because the entire thing is being videotaped and the Guinness people will be watching everything to make sure we followed all the rules exactly. And the Guinness people do not put up with no 15 extra seconds of ice cleaning time.

Has Vegas set an over-under on goals scored for the game?
Excellent question. I'll have to check with my bookie on that one. But I do know that in the 10 day long game that the men in Edmonton played in February, the final score was 2090 to 2010.

In related news, I hope to get my first ever hat trick during this game!

I have been reading a lot of Harry Potter Lately. If it gets out of hand is there any chance someone can catch a golden puck for an additional 150 points?
Absolutely. Which reminds me, I need to pack my broomstick to take with me!

What about the spectators? Surely people can watch?
For sure! We are playing on Rink 1 at Burnaby 8 Rinks, which has room for spectators (I believe you can even sit up in the bar and watch, if you are so inclined). And we definitely want spectators to come and cheer us on - the more, the merrier! I'm also hoping that people will show up with funny signs. Because funny signs make me skate faster. (PAUL: Note that the game will be streamed live here: http://longestgame4cf.com)

Where do you sleep?
We will be having RVs set up in the back parking lot that we'll be sharing amongst the players. So it will be kind of like camping but without the wilderness, lakes, greenery, campfires or anything that makes camping good.

Speaking of which, how are you eating during this?
During our breaks, we are going to be fed the most delicious foodstuffs cooked by Chef Brian Wong of the Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel (though he'll be cooking for us in the kitchen of the Delta in Burnaby, what with it being much closer to the rink and all). Brian is spending his vacation cooking non-stop for 40 hungry hockey players! All the food is being donated by Save-On-Foods, which is pretty awesome. (PAUL: Rock on Brian!)

In addition to having a chef cook our meals, we will have volunteers to do our laundry, take our skates for sharpening, and go on Starbucks runs to get our coffees. I may never want to come home after treatment like that!

What, exactly, will everything smell like when this is over
I don't even want to think about it. I can only hope that I'm so delirious from over-exertion that I lose all sense of smell by that point.

Are there any sponsors you'd like to thank?
Indeed there are!

Canlan Ice Sports (owners of Burnaby 8 Rinks) is our presenting sponsor, as they are donating the rink, the dressing rooms, and space in their parking lot for our RVs for 10 days!

Save-on-Foods, as I've mentioned, is donating all the food to feed the players for 10 days. That's a lot of food!

CBC is our official media sponsor. (I wonder if they are going to call it Hockey Day and Night and Day and Night and Day and Night and Day and Night and Day and Night and Day and Night and Day and Night and Day and Night and Day and Night and Day and Night in Canada?)

Another major sponsor is Richport Ford Lincoln - this is the place where Val works and they've been incredibly supportive of this whole endeavour.

BC Transplant is also a sponsor, as many people with CF require organ transplant.

And then, of course, there are countless donors who have given individually (you can see a list of most of the people who've donated to my fundraising campaign on my donation page: www.2mevents.com/index.php/pledge/729)

And finally, please pimp your blog (www.nottobetrustedwithknives.com) for my readers via an eloquent haiku.
I don't know if I'd call it eloquent, but here goes!

Hey, you know what's good?
Not To Be Trusted With Knives
Dot Com. OMG.

Did I mention that I suck at haiku?

So there you have it. If this sounds ridiculous, it is. PLEASE donate to this effort. This is a group of girls making an incredible commitment of pain and suffering so that others don’t have to. Throwing a few bucks into the pot is not too much to ask. You can donate to Dr. Beth specifically here: www.2mevents.com/index.php/pledge/729, or to the team in general here: www.2mevents.com/index.php/event/longest-game-4-cf/pledges

Good luck ladies!

In Situ

I am an extraordinary sitter. I think it’s because I have such a sitting resume: I have spent literally years of my life sitting. And it’s not all one kind of sitting, I have explored the gamut of sitting, to the point that one could consider me, dare I say, a connoisseur of sitting.

It’s not something that’s come easy to me by the way. When I was young, I didn’t always like to sit. Sometimes I’d want to just run around, it was all anyone could do to get me to sit. Fortunately, like many child athletes, my parents pushed me in subtle ways. Books, toys, pleading… they knew that if I was to be the sitter I am today, I would have to commit to sitting in my youth. Oh sure, they made sure I had a complete life, but today I am capable of sitting for over 15 hours a day! Do you have any idea what that would do to a person who isn’t properly trained? And that’s not even counting the 8-9 hours of cross-training I do lying down every night!

There are many ways a person may sit, and many purposes for that sitting. Sometimes I’ll mix up my sits, using a “lounging sit” at work, or throwing a “gaming sit” out there when watching a movie. Sure it’s showing off, but when you’ve got it, flaunt it, right? I worked hard for this body, I’m not going to let it go to waste leaning am I?

When any high-performer looks back on their career, they’ll invariably point to the times when they couldn’t do what they loved as the worst days. Whether it’s because they got sick and could only bear to lie down, or when an injury sidelined them; it’s being taken out of the game that hurts the most. I’ll tell you… you don’t want to be in a room of accomplished sitters when a hemorrhoid sufferer walks through the door. Everyone tries to act normal but you know every one of them is thinking the same thing: “That could be me.” One long car ride too many… a hard bench… too much cheese… it’s tough knowing how quickly sitting can be taken away from you.

For me, the hardest time I ever had as a sitter came not from my career, but at home. It’s not an easy thing to talk about given the personal nature, but if marathon survivors don’t talk about their experiences then those going through the same thing will feel alone, and that is the far greater tragedy in my mind. In my instance, my wife was stricken by the marathon bug, and we knew that the only way we were going to get through it was together, no matter what that meant for my sitting. I knew that everyone at work would understand how important it was for me to spend that time not sitting, but you still can’t help thinking about everyone else sitting while you're not, logging hours that you are unable to. Inevitably you find yourself thinking “Will I be the same sitter when I come back?” Only time will tell.