A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

As many of you know, Travis and I share the same birthday - April 13. We generally don’t do anything to celebrate this historic date, but this year we decided to round up a group of friends and go out for a nice evening filled with food and spirits. The plan was to go to the Freehouse, but I had trouble booking a table for 20 since they already had a couple of large groups reserved. The Barking Fish was our contingency plan, and I was eager to go since I had not yet been there.

Dinner was great, and the atmosphere was exactly what we were looking for. We spent the majority of the evening at the lounge, and due to a majority ruling, we ended up at Whiskey Jacks - a place I am not a fan of. Being good sports, we followed the crowd to the bar, but could only take it for a few minutes before Michelle and I decided to call it a night. The evening was great and I’d like to thank everyone who came out to celebrate my birthday. You can check out some photos from the night by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr
• Thumbnails on Picasa
• Slideshow on Flickr

This weekend my good friend Jason turned the “Big 30″, so he and his wife Cheryl put together a little swaree to celebrate the occasion. Guests were to arrive at their house for drinks and hors d’oeuvres at around 8:00 Saturday evening. There was also golf scheduled for the afternoon, but due to terrible weather, that didn’t happen. I wasn’t planning on golfing anyway since I’m a fair weather golfer, and I was pretty sure the weather wasn’t going to cooperate for this time of year. My predictions were dead on.

There was a good turnout for the festivities including our crew, and Jaosn’s many teacher and Rosetown friends. From my observations, everyone had a great time and were fairly well behaved…except Todd. It was good to speak to people I hadn’t seen in a while, and to celebrate this big milestone in Jason’s life. You can see some photos from the evening here (slideshow) and here (thumbnails). Enjoy.

To celebrate my buddy Kipp’s 30th birthday, a group of his friends and family all met in Edmonton for the weekend. The agenda included water slide and wave pool fun at the West Edmonton Mall’s World Waterpark on Saturday afternoon. For the evening we had tickets for a show at a comedy club, The Comic Strip, in the mall.

I was supposed to travel to Edmonton Saturday morning with the infamous brothers, Travis and Todd. Since they both backed out at the last minute, I ended up making the trek by myself. Here is a picture of me driving to Edmonton (I was bored).

I was on the highway by 7:40 in the morning and was parked in the West Edmonton Mall parking lot at exactly 1:00 pm. Even though I made pretty decent time, water sliding was scheduled for 1:00 so I needed to get my tail in gear to hook up with the crew. After finding the waterpark, I bought my ticket and got changed (not before figuring out how to use high-tech locker system). The waterpark was insanely busy and I thought I would never find anyone. But I immediately ran into Kipp and his brother Ben and we made our way to one of the slides. The lineups were out of control and we probably waited for 15 or 20 minutes for the 30 second ride. Since we had a party room booked for 2:00 and we had about fifteen minutes to kill, we decided to get one more slide in. The lines were even longer and Kipp and I waited for at least thirty minutes. This slide took about ten seconds to go down - but it was a pretty fun ten seconds.

We were a little late for the party, but we were pretty sure they wouldn’t cut his cake before he got there. After eating some of the delicious cake and visiting with everyone, a few of us headed over to the “bar on the beach” for a couple cold ones.

The wave pool was looking pretty good so we decided to spend some time in there, rather than in lines for the waterslides. It was awesome as always, despite getting feet in the jaw and knees in the back of the head. After our eyes were filled with chlorine, and our legs had turned to Jello, we thought we had better get more watersliding in. The lines were no better than before and we ended up getting only one more slide in before having to leave to get ready for the evening’s events. Below is a picture of me in my bathing suit at the waterpark.

After checking into our hotel and getting ready we headed back to the mall where we planned on eating at a restaurant on “Bourbon Street” before heading to the comdey club. It turned out that all of the restaurants had around ninety minute wait times for a party of 12, and this just wouldn’t fit into our schedule. Curtis and I decided to just go grab something in one of the food courts and the other guys went to eat at the comedy club.

The comedy show was super-funny and we all had an awesome time. The MC was an Edmonton radio host and he was surprisingly good. There was also a couple other opening acts as well as a Bubbles (from Trailer Park Boys) look-alike who was great. The main act was John Wessling, a dude from Texas who was on Last Comic Standing. He had everyone laughing hard. Since we were out of the club at around 10:00 eight of us just headed back to the lounge at the restaurant and hung out before calling it a night.

On Sunday we all went to Denny’s for breakfast and then went our separate ways. Curtis rode back to Wilkie with me. As we passed Sherwood Park we decided to go visit my brother and his family since it was still early. We visited for a couple hours before heading out.

One thing I noticed while in Edmonton was that service there (and apparently all of Alberta) is terrible. People in restaurants, hotels, etc. were either rude, ignorant, or incompetent….or a combination of the three. I personally have never seen anything like it. Apparently the reason is because there is a real shortage of service workers in Alberta and places are under-staffed, or hiring anyone they can. I understand that, but come on - that doesn’t give you the right to do a half-assed job or to be rude.

Other than the service issues, the weekend was great. I got to see a lot of people that I havent’ seen in a while like Kipp’s brother and sister and their families, as well as some old friends from high school. I took a few pictures while at the waterpark and you can see them here.

It was my nephew Jayant’s third birthday on Friday, and his party was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. I thought this was a good opportunity to take an extra long weekend so I booked Friday and Monday as vacation. I drove out to Wilkie Friday morning to pick up my parents and we arrived at my brother’s place in Sherwood Park mid-afternoon.

The weekend was fun and it gave me a chance to visit with my brother and his family - I hadn’t seen them since the summer. Most of the time was filled with playing with my nephews and playing Xbox 360 (mostly Gears of War) with my brother. The party was also a good time - not a huge event, but just a few of my brother’s and sis-in-law’s friends.

My parents and I left Edmonton around 12:30 Sunday afternoon after the Raptors game, despite my father’s objections. He likes to leave early, but I was driving so I was the boss. The drive was enjoyable, and even more so since the Raptors blew out the Los Angeles Clippers (all you nay-sayers should act early, because the bandwagon will fill quickly).

I was planning on staying the night in Wilkie, but I decided to just drop my folks off and drive straight through to Saskatoon. I thought I would use my day off on Monday to take care of my passport stuff. I rolled into the passport office around 11:00 am, and finally was out of there around 2:00. It wasn’t as busy as it was a week or two ago, but three hours is still long. It was quite the setup - waiting in lines to wait in other lines. Once I actually saw the Examiner, I spent maybe three minutes with him. I do feel bad for people who waited in lines as long as I did, and then were told their forms were inaccurate, or they were missing certain documents, but I think a lot of them just didn’t read the instructions. People were showing up without a guarantor’s signature, passport photos, etc. Luckily I took the thirty seconds to read the instructions.

Anyway, I took some photos while in Edmonton and you can see them here. Enjoy.

I turned thirty nearly two years ago, and Curtis, one of my best friends, hit that milestone on July 29th. His family planned a big 30th birthday bash at their cottage in Turtle Lake this passed weekend which, as I understood it, was supposed to be a surprise party. Despite losing its secrecy early on, I managed to keep my attendance unknown until the last moment - when I actually arrived at the cottage. There were a ton of people who attended, including Curtis’s family, relatives, and closest friends.

The weekend was a blast and blew by as we took part in all sorts of games and activities. Bunnoc was a big hit, probably as much as it was when idle Russian soldiers played it in Siberia during the 1800s. Who would have thought that throwing horse bones could be so much fun? Cups was another favourite, a game which involves a Frisbee, four poles and four plastic cups. Even when we ran out of activities, new ones were invented. VolleyDisc was born when we couldn’t find a ball to play volleyball at the beach.

Since this was a Fenrich get-together, a grand feast was on the agenda. Being that thirty is such a monumental age, what could be more perfect than sacrificing a pig? Ok, we didn’t actually sacrifice a pig, but one was roasted in an underground fire pit concocted by Mr. Fenrich. It was quite the setup, and the final result was delicious. The night was capped off by a fireworks display at the beach put on by some of the boys. It was pretty cool.

I managed to take a fair amount of shots during the weekend, and have posted the better ones here so you can share in on the festivities.