Back to the Front of the Back

Things got more than a little messed up because of my recent tete-a-tete with Madame Influenza. I had fully intended to have a deep and meaningful retroactive chat about all the stuff that happened in 2004, and all my super duper uber plans for 2005, posted bright and early in the new year and polished to a mirror sheen, but I was distracted trying to avoid coughing up a lung or sneezing my brain out my left nostril. And suddenly here I am, the dregs of January 2005 already growing stale and crusty in the cup, without any psychic closure or renewal adorning my chakras. Well, that's simply not good enough - not when time travel is only a matter of a flux capacitor, a bent ruler and a prudent measure of psilocybic mushrooms. A quick juggle and we go back, back beyond the resonant first chime of 2005, to a simpler, more innocent time... to 2004.

2004 was an odd year, and not entirely full of roast potatoes. My first couple of months were spent subsisting off crumbly biscuits and snowmelt, pausing occasionally to carve great chunks out of my credit card with a rusty chainsaw. Vancouver remained a nipply place outside my window, too expensive to explore without the sale of major internal organs. My work visa came through in February, and with it came a job that quickly did its best to send me completely insane. Spring unfolded like a origami rose, my girlfriend and I broke up, and my lower back exploded with a muffled squelch. Somewhere in there I think George W Bush got himself re-elected, too. I went to Seattle and met the Penny Arcade guys, had five months of physio on my back, and bought a snowboard with some pretty red demons on it. I played a lot of Xbox games and gained a whole bunch of weight, and I have a feeling the two might be related. I met a couple of really good Canadians, went to my first ice hockey game, snowboarded without dying, did the Grouse Grind twice and learned to cook some pretty good Dijon chicken drumsticks. My final report card would probably read Some progress, but Hamish needs to concentrate on his core skills. C+.

So there it was, and I feel better for the telling. The grey birds of memory and missed opportunity have left my shoulders, and are winging and wheeling their way down the local farmhouse, where they will be shot. What about 2005? That can wait for the next installment, I think.