Hung out most of the weekend with Mike, and now he’s on vacay this week. (Basically he woke up from his partay solidly the worse for wear and even though I drank pretty much continuously from one o’clock on that day I was not hungover, at least not painfully so, so the first order of business was to get Phở and nap in the sunshine like capybaras.)
He cooked me a couple of meals; brekky yesterday was the best goddamned farmer’s sausage I ever et plus eggs and toast and a latte; dinner the night before was cold soba with chicken and steak cubes with bok choi and enough garlic to make shit levitate. It was all really, really good.
Like the asshole friend I am I recorded Jim, Mike and I attempting to sing Acadian Driftwood during the party while we were drunk and I played it for Mike the next day sober; it had the desired emotional effect, which was horrified horror and childish gales of laughter. Believe me, I didn’t come off well. AT ALL. Couldn’t remember lyrics, held notes too long, it was like a speshul kinda agony.
In a less asshole-like fashion I tried to put together a list of top ten Mike moments since I first started hanging with him in 1997 – yes it has been that long – and while I can’t share all of them –
- The time he slipped on an icy walkway on the way to his hot tub, which at the time was set up in Jarmo’s yard, and not only did he spring up again in a fashion so untoward that the laws of physics got a black eye, he didn’t spill a drop of his wine. Honestly… if I hadn’t seen it, I woulda called bs.
- The time he broke about a hundred light sticks and smeared them all over a Tyvek suit and went walking around the Lantern Festival. Like a multicoloured glowing stain. Right. It didn’t last but it was amazing.
- The time the fam had been hot-tubbing at Mike’s old place across from Trout Lake and I couldn’t find my undies when it came time to change and he deposited them on my desk the next morning in front of scandalized coworkers. so.funny god I smirk every time I think of that….
- The time we and the fam were walking back from the hot springs at Ahousat and Mike slipped and came off the walkway and came (I’m not exaggerating) perhaps ten centimetres from impaling himself through the heart on some cleared brush. For years he would show the double hole in his fleece jacket with a laugh until it finally got too tatty and he threw it out.
- The big one, the one that sits parked at the top of the ‘everything Mike means’ pile, how he took me in for a day three days after John died and reminded me that even if John was dead I wasn’t; he tended me (literally, with a spa treatment and 90 minutes of extremely required massage) and was continuously and quietly sweet to me at a time when I needed love and support like I rarely have.
- Mike doing the Surrey Macarena at a party and me laughing too hard for civility. If you know me, it’s a constant fricking trial how hard and loud I laugh.
Mike and I and Jeff are going to see Dylan tonight.
Daysign card is Death. I guess it rally *is* time to clean my room and do the prep so Jeff can post Upsun.
