Cookie Monster Would Be Proud

I'm all about eating competitions. I really really am. When there's food that needs to be eaten in large quantities and at a fast pace, I'm there.

Well, I have another notch to add to my ever expanding belt of eating championships.

Cookie Eating Champion '09! It was intense stuff, the massive sweat stains in the photos are proof of how difficult things were.

The challenge was to eat as many cookies and chug a glass of milk as fast you could in one minute. There were a variety of cookies to choose from, and realistically nobody was going to be able to eat all that many, so it came down to choosing which cookies could be ingested quicker without the aid of much milk.

The buddy next to me allegedly was on the brink of hurling. Good times!

The chocolate chip cookies were quite deceiving. When you think of cookies, they're generally the first one that pop into mind right? What I didn't count on when I ate one was how dry they would be, and dry food is the professional eater's worst enemy. They were akin some shiny bauble laid out as bait in a deadly trap.

The leftovers

I definitely lost time after eating one of those. By far the best ones were the ginger snaps and double chocolate chip cookies. This is where I made most of my headway.



I definitely thought I had lost, but after all the scores were added up, leftover cookies cookies counted, and extra points for skill and execution tallied, I pulled off a victory from behind! Kudos to my coach for his pep-talk, It really helped out.



I won't get into the details, but there is some controversy as to the validity of my win. This means there can be nothing but complete and total annihilation of my competition at the next eating event.

Being champ isn't all sunshine and roses, this is serious stuff. Each bout gets more intense, and success not only climbs further from my reach, but becomes that much more crucial.

But enough looking forward for now. It's time to live in the present, and bask in the happiness of knowing that all those years watching Cookie Monster devour those delicious discs of dough and chocolate finally paid off.

Gingerbread Competition

This past Tuesday evening was the official judging for my station's gingerbread house that my coworkers and I built. Here's a photo of the creative team behind its construction.


We didn't win any special mention or anything, which kind of sucks. But, that being said, holy smackers, you should see some of the ones we were up against. I'm proud of our little gingerbread church, but some of the creations were completely astounding and amazingly creative. So I'm not surprised when our team didn't win.

Here's some pictures of the other creations:

This one depicted Christmas in Africa

This is the house from Pixar's 'Up.' I was stupid and didn't catch the balloons that were attached to the roof of this thing; but they're there, attached to that white stick at the top of the picture.

This isn't the most Christmasy creation, but I was really impressed by the detail. Also, I've discovered by looking very closely that the real trick to making creations like this is to use fondant. All of the really intricate constructs were covered in the stuff.

The Nightmare Before Christmas, good stuff.

I think this one got second place, that carousel actually rotated and the reindeer went up and down, just like the real thing!

This is the first place winner. It's almost sickening how good this one is. The picture doesn't do it any justice, you really have see this one to believe it.

This is but a few of the creations of this year's Festival of Trees. And after seeing what people had to show for themselves, we're going to step up our game.

Screw Christmas themed creations! We're going to build a scale representation of the Colosseum, and hopefully have some kind of bloody battle scene playing out in its pit. The battle scene will of course feature Russell Crowe. That's just a given.

A Return From Exile

I'm back from vacation in Manitoba, so to recap two weeks of carousing, here's the basic breakdown of what kind of places I went to.

The first thing I did was take a tour of CBC Winnipeg. I'm media geek, so that was a neat-o experience!

The coolest people were of course in the radio creative department, which is where all cool people in radio work, or want to work.

Then I went Enterprise Rent-A-Car and was stapled to a desk.


On the way to my hometown I stopped at the famous Manitoba landmark "The Halfway Tree."


During a brief stay in Brandon, I went drinking with some friends. After hitting the bar we stopped at Burger King for 'Heavy Alls." Apparently at BK, you can order a burger with a ridiculous amount of toppings. The result was a giant mess.


And I quit taking photos after that for some reason, but other highlights including slaughtering turkeys. This activity put me right in the Christmas mood.



Then my father put me to work tearing up old linoleum and carpet from someone's house where I inhaled a nice healthy lungful of polyurethane foam.


Then I went to a wedding which had lots of Ukrainians dancing everywhere. It was pretty much like this:



And finally, because liquor is too expensive in Alberta, I took home two jugs of whiskey.

And that's what I did for Christmas Vacation.

Hammelltime on Holidays

I'm taking my Christmas break early this year. Be back in two weeks!

In the meantime, enjoy this holiday themed gingerbread/Rice Krispie church my coworkers and I constructed for local charity contest, 'The Festival of Trees.'

Art Day: Nuns With Guns

Today I present:

Nuns With Guns

Actually, I don't know if that's the right name of this piece. I kind of forgot to write it down before I sent it away.

This is a painting I made for my younger brother. It's a single frame from the anime series “Black Lagoon.” Since I know he's a fan, and making a painting for my brother was a well overdue task, this'd be one he'd enjoy.

Here's a verbatim quote from him:

"It ... blew my mind the second I saw it."

I've had this one rumbling around the old noggin' for a while now, and I'm happy with outcome for the most part. I wish I'd put more blood on it though. There's a few spots that are just devoid of colour. I think my problem is that it's a little unbalanced. But, as I said, it's something I'm 99% happy with.

Plus, elderly eye-patch wearing nuns with custom designed .44 magnum Desert Eagles are cool.

And that's a fact.

Once Upon A Halloween, Not Long Ago...

Yet another Halloween has come and gone. One thing I've noted over the past couple of years is that the number of Trick or Treaters has been dwindling. There's a lot fewer now compared to when I was a young buck harassing people for candy.

Luckily though, there's a heavy drinking crowd of adults who are all to happy to wear costumes and eat candy once a year. They'd probably do it year round' if possible, but that would ruin the fun.

This year, A coworker announced that she wanted to have a Star Wars themed party.

Sidenote #1: I love Star Wars.
Sidenote #2: Any excuse to geek out on Star Wars is a good one.

Which is why for Halloween this year, I was

Han Solo

That's me and Kenobi. Except Kenobi has a red lightsabre, which isn't even close to canon.

Anyway, this costume was so good, I got mistaken for Harrison Ford about a dozen times. Okay, not really, but the costume did turn out alright, and it wasn't all that hard to make either. Maybe six or seven hours work altogether.

At the bar, I also ran into my two best friends

Chewbacca and Leia. I think Chewbacca and Leia were dating, so there was no rescuing of the princess for me. Some wing-man Chewbacca makes!


Also, Darth Vader was there. He was drinking so I didn't have to worry about being frozen in carbonite.


My big disappointment though was in the female population in general. I'd say 70% of girls had no idea who I was. All the dudes did, and they shared my disappointment when I was met with “Star Wars? What's that?” questions.

Seriously girls, this isn't rocket science, it's Han Solo.

Photography credits go to Ashley S, she be ballin'