When I got back from my trip to Ottawa, I had a dinner party to attend at the parent's house of my friend Adrian. In attendance were of course Adrian, his sister Meg, Adrian's cousin, Guillaume and Anna (daughter of a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Davis). An important factoid to remember later is that I had met Anna only once the year before at the Davis'. After dinner, we all decided to hit the town for a night of mirth-making and rejoicement in the brotherhood of man (and womyn). Here are some of my personal favourite moments:

The scene is Mad Hatter's. The tree that is the night still has many fruits on its limbs that we've yet to pluck. Will our tongues taste the sweet sweet juices of joy or the bitterness of danger? As it turned out, a DJ saved our life. With a daring selection, the dulcet tones of "Gangsta's Paradise" rang through the speakers. Our group, now a dozen-strong and a dozen-loud, sang out every last lyric to Coolio's cautionary tale. I hope that those brain cells which carry the memory of that moment will never die.

Moving on to Cheers. The ugly lights have been turned on, and it's time to head out to the coat check. I'm waiting in line with Anna and she decides to discuss baseball with a gentleman sporting a Detroit Tigers ballcap. Unfortunately, he doesn't like baseball and just liked the way the hat sculpted his chiseled profile (or something like that). Anyways... Anna, a rabid baseball fan and a Boston native (probably was redundant there), becomes deeply offended by his dismissal of the sport and she proceeds to rip into the guy calling him a phony and a wannabe. This is of course, hilarious to me for the first three minutes or so. The following ten minutes became overkill and I started to worry about her safety. Luckily, our coats arrived in time to avoid any major confrontation. Unfortunately, there were Yankee hats at McDonald's. No need to mention what happened next. Here's the funny part though, I left to use the washroom outside (i.e. the alley) and when I returned one of the guys was claiming to be Richard Zednik. The thing is that he was a 5'8" guy who probably lives on the West Island, not exactly the mirror image of a 6'1" Slovakian. When I called him on it, he retracted the claim but proceeded to say he was on the Habs farm team. Anna didn't even know who Zednik was anyways, so I don't know for whose sake he was impersonating him. Later that evening (well morning at that point) we were "stuck up" by Montreal's most famous bum Hollywood.

So as we finished our McChickens, I offered to walk Anna back to her apartment. Making our way up an icy Peel street wasn't easy but finally we got to her place. Since it was late, she invited me up to crash. When she was pulling out the blankets and pillow for the couch, I wandered over to one of her wall where she had about 30 photographs posted. A picture of her dad, a couple of some of her friends I assume, one of my friend Adrian and then...a photo of me...from the only night we met previously... on her wall...with all of her closest friends and family. I slept with one eye open that night and high-tailed it early the next morning.

Thus concludes part three of a three-part series about my vacation. I was going to post one about New Year's Eve but Michael Choi has already blogged it and has done a good job. Here are some pics for those who are interested and for those who are at work (check out my pit stains in picture 4).