If I’m going to write in this blog, I really should do it on a regular basis. All I’m doing is making it choppy, and I hate choppy things. Choppy movies, that song “Chopping Broccoli” from SNL, Chopped chicken liver! None of it’s good, and neither is this, so I’ve decided to stop it....as best as I can. To make this blog better I’m also trying to figure out this HTML crap .I have a feeling that my need for linking is going to develop into some Scary Jeopardy Madman linkage. So far, I’ve found out that it’s not as hard as I thought it was, but it’s still really confusing. For instance, Bolding words is now possible!

So now, I go through everything that I’ve wanted to enter into my online journal (I think that’s what it has become. Cause I feel that I’m writin’ for me). Tonight, Sunday January 18, I talk about Thursday night, January 15. Wow time flies! I hope I can remember. What with all the Rum and Cokes I’ve had lately.

Thursday night, was a time of reflection. While it was a work night, and a most hated work night, since I was missing The Apprentice (which I taped), it was also a night that took me back to my roots as an Ice Technician. If my name was Ebenezer. That would have been the Night of Curling Past. Not only did I return to the basics of sweeping and mopping, but also to the finer points of pebbling. Now for those of you out there who think curling is about hair, well you’re right....and wrong. Curling is that wonderful sport that occupies TSN and Sportsnet during the day, while all of you are of at work, completely oblivious to the dull sport’s existence. I’m not going to go into the rules of the game because not only is that a waste of my time, but yours as well. However, I am going to spread along the knowledge of the “pebble.” Now this is a very delicate and ultra sensitive version of watering your lawn. Unlike hockey ice, which is flat, the surface of a curling sheet, as they call them, is very bumpy. This is so the “rocks”, ya know...the rocks, can slide easily over the ice. The bumps provide less surface area, which creates less friction. My job, Ice Technician, Pebbler, or Ice Monkey (my fave), is to distribute little water drops over the ice to make that uniform bumpiness, or pebble. This might sound easy, and it is. As long as you know how to keep a perfect rhythm, I’m talkin Nadia Comeneci perfect, and are able to endure the muscle strain (think about sanding wood with sandpaper. Imagine doing that for about 3 hours nonstop.). Along with this, you need technique, which can be easily acquired, and most of all “the sense,” as I call it. The ability to know exactly where those water droplets are falling, and if an air bubble is going to come out. Cause if this happens, the water droplets hit each other in the air, and we get blobs. Curlers don’t like blobs.

I began my pebbling career 3 years ago. I was the only part-timer to learn pebbling, because I chose to work the Sunday morning shift (which left me to prepare all of the ice by myself in an empty building at 10am every Sunday. Alone in a building, my first year. What were they thinking? Good thing I broke into that building my first day on the job. If anyone’s interested in that story, tell me. Otherwise who cares.). From there I became the only part-timer who could pebble. This led to the insane amount of hours I worked the first year. One week I think I had 36 hours...FOR A PART TIMER! That was the week I worked my infamous 14 hour shift. The longest part time shift ever at the club. In at 8am out at 10pm. Where was I? This must be the worst blog entry yet. Ah yes, well I was taught with a pebbling can that was slung over my left arm, and the hose then stretched around to my right hand. Ever since Old Jon left (my old boss was named Jon, and my new boss is named Jon.), I have been forced to use the new “fancy” backpack watering can. It is better but there isn’t as much control. Thursday, the backpack broke and I was forced to pebble with the old school model. I think I was smiling the whole time. Yeah, it took me back. But that was nowhere as good as when I swept the lower hall. I know what you’re thinking, “How much longer is this? Where is he going with this?” or “I hate it when people say I know what you’re thinking.” Well, out of all the part-timers in the first year I did most of the sweeping, on the ice and off. This led me to become the best sweeper out of us all. And man oh man, last night when that shitty orange bristled broom hit my fingers, it was like the fusion of sweeping, and fucking. That broom and I got right back int the rhythm of around the backs, two level sweeping and wall walking (where I use the broom to hold me up as I run along the wall, over dirt piles or previously swept areas.). Why does my life suck this much?