Walking in a Winter Wonderland

I can't wait for winter to be over; this weekend was too cold.

In early January, Halifax saw record-high temperatures. It was perfect jogging weather: no snow, no iciness, and exotic birds such as toucans. At the time, I was a little annoyed beacuse whiners were trying to pin the blame on one of our greatest allies against winter: Global Warming.

Time went by and the whiners got their wish: cold, cold, horrible temperatures. At least it's not me out there waiting for the bus everyday. The extreme coldness funny for the first day or two, then it got boring. Then terrible.

Nevertheless, I decided to walk downtown Friday night. A while back, I had heard that Halifax was going to play host to a Guiness World Record-breaking event. On February 9th, 2007, Halifax broke the world record for largest pub crawl ever. 3200 people pre-bought pub crawl t-shirts and split up into 19 drunken groups. This event obliterated the previous record of 2,237 people, set by bustling Australian megalopolis of "Maryborough" in June 2006.

Although I didn't find out about it in time to buy a t-shirt and participate (I doubt I would have actually done so anyway), I still wanted to be able to say that I partook. I'm a little lacking on the Guiness World Record front and it makes me feel like I'm not a man. So Friday evening I called everyone I knew to try to assemble my own small pub crawl force. Not surprisingly, nobody wanted to come. Eventually, I won over my friend Mike and a couple of my Japanese students and we were on our way.

There was almost no sign of the pub crawl. Until we arrived deep into the downtown core, the streets were deserted due to the post-apocalyptic temperatures. When we finally did get into a bar, we grabbed a table under the stairs and kept it until it was time to brave the cold again in order to hunt down pizza. On the way home, I saw two people standing on a street corner with what appeared to be pub crawl t-shirts. They looked like they weren't having fun.

And that's the story of the world's largest pub crawl.

Saturday was the eve of my friend Kelsey's birthday, so we scrambled to throw together a respectable Mardi Gras-themed party. We acquired a large number of beads, but other, more indecent party staples unfortunately fell through. I'm sure we'll find another occasion for strippers (perhaps a Chinese New Year party is in order afterall).

As the Mardi Gras party progressed, my voice started disappearing (not from yelling, rather from having a terrible cold). When I woke up this morning, it was completely gone. I've had really sore throats before and it was painful to talk, but I've never had a cold like this, during which my voice just disappeared. I have the sneaking suspicion that my voice is gone forever. What am I going to do? And how will this affect my dream of winning a Latin Grammy?

Well, tomorrow I go back to being a substitute ESL teacher and if my voice isn't better by then, I'll have to be creative for my lessons... summersaults, those new dance moves I've been dying to try out, maybe "tambourine-time"... I'll play it by ear and let you know.