My Very Last Few Days

So, I was a big hit at the corporate party, since the Americans always find us depressive Canadians very funny. They're lucky they caught me on a 'up' cycle, since I thought they were going to hire me as Chief Corporate Comedian, but then they would expect me to be up all the time, and I would have to snort cocaine. :)

The next day I did final preparations for the middle kid to go to his crooked house at Queen's, in Kingston. We got him this cookbook for fresh students, which promised to get them off kraft dinner everyday, which is what he lived on all last year. It started with the basics, such as boiling water, and telling what is the proper colour for a carrot.

My son suddenly all got into this book, and was cooking. It didn't have any pictures, so when he made poached eggs, it was one big stringy mess. "Doesn't that look nice?" I tried not to barf.

With this book, we had to get a knife set and spice rack (both at costco). Anyway, that night, I was dreaming about my job as corporate comedian, when I got up in the middle of the night for a glass of water. With my usual skill, I dumped a slug of water down an open lung, with no air. Oh god! I couldn't cough, but the water went up through my nose, like the movies. The only sound I could make was a strangled 'eeep', which woke up the wife, but she was totally useless.

I knew to get my head down, but there I was. The mystical half of me was saying "Isn't this a nice way to die? No lights down tunnels, no floating bodies, just peacefully fading away." The rational side of me had been through this before. In Mexico, I was body surfing on a beach, when a giant group wave hit me. I was tumbled around like a sock in a washer, but the rational brain said this can only last 10 seconds, if you follow the bubbles, so I popped out.

So, my rational brain was saying "Get real, nobody dies on a mouthful of water. You got three minutes before you really die. This can't last more than 20 seconds." And so it did, and suddenly I could yell "That was something!". Later, my son the lifeguard told me he would have stabbed my lungs like they do for lung-filling gunshot wounds. LEAVE ME ALONE, ALL YOU PEOPLE!

So, you would think that would end my final last days, but no, I had to drive to Kingston. There I put up his computer, and spent 3 DAM HOURS getting the wireless bridge to work. Vista 64 doesn't play nice with strange hardware.