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Sunday, Dec. 16, 2001 - 9:41 p.m.
Weekend with S

Friday night

I got a call from S. It started off normally with small talk, then...

JP:So what did you do tonight?

S: I killed my cat.

S had been having problems with one of her cats for the entire time I have known her, which is more than a year. This cat was 16 years old, and peeing everywhere, asking for more attention than a baby would. She reached her breaking point. I had a stark vision of her covered in white fur and blood. She immediately explained that she took him to the vet and put him down. She held him while he passed on to The Cat Dream.

She was sort of a wreck when I got there. I had never actually seen her cry before, but she cried on my shoulder for about an hour.

Saturday

The next day I got my suit dry-cleaned. We packed our stuff and went to Mont Tremblant for my company Christmas party. It was a nice, quiet drive once we got out of the city. Oddly enough, there was plenty of snow in Montreal, but as soon as we got anywhere away from the city, it disappeared completely. We didn't see any more snow until the manufactured stuff at the mountain.

The company party is a pretty good affair, really. You get to go to a really nice hotel with valet parking and full-service everything. The Fairmont Tremblant even had an outdoor hottub. Sadly, we arrived too late to take advantage of it. The idea this year was to go as your favourite celebrity. I didn't go as my favourite per se, but I went as a recognizable figure, depending on how old you are. I was Ricardo Tubbs, of the Crockett and Tubbs duo from Miami Vice. S was a generic Oscars date. Get this, there were not one, not two, not three, but FOUR Austin Powers! They were two junior consultants, the wife of another consultant, and the blue Austin Powers, our president himself.

Meeting everyone was great, the free booze was great, the filet mignon was great (althogh I should not have had the *little one*'s FM as well as mine, now I know why they serve such small portions). S impressed a lot of people. Freaky thing: I found out that the Toronto Regional Manager's wife went to high school with my older brother. She's from my town. Unbelievable.

The annual awards show was hosted by our very own Howard Stern and Stevie Wonder. The Terminator also made an appearance. As usual, I was nominated for the first award and this time it was for Top Project of 2001. The VP of Technology and I (he is also black) are working on a paper. Our nomination was "two black bruthas doing a white paper". Whatever, it was funny. You had to be there. I didn't win. I was, however, honoured in a special way later in the night. S and I ducked out right after the awards as she was tired and I was sick from too much filet mignon.

Sunday

The next morning we woke up and went for a dip in the indoor hottub! It was splendid, I must say. That was followed by a DELICIOUS breakfast (best waffles I ever had). S and I decided to take a walk around the village. It's as though Disney meets small-town Europe, and it's not Euro-Disney. Still, it's quite pretty, and our view of the mountain was spectacular. We took all kinds of pictures of the village and surrounding area. We even met the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, whatever her name is!

We drove back in calm silence. A very nice weekend.

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