And in the end, it wasn't such a bad day...

Let me set this up by explaining the night before (Saturday):

We've been getting pounded by snow for over 24 hours. It's bad out there. No one is going anywhere tonight.

Tomorrow, a video game comes out that a pretty significant number of gamers across North America (myself included - though I'm not much of a gamer anymore) have been waiting for for over 5 years. Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It's the main reason I bought my Nintendo Wii. I plan to buy that tomorrow, after I get my Wii back from my cousin's (who I lent it to for the last month). I'll get them to bring it to their hockey game (which I'll watch). We're also having a big family dinner tomorrow night. And, I said I would get a bunch of work done from home this weekend that has some pretty short deadlines going into next week. I'll be sure to get the work done in the morning and early afternoon; I think the hockey game is at 4; dinner will be around 6:30/7; and so the rest of the night can be spent chilling out and playing Brawl!

My day yesterday:

Woken up at 9:30am.. 'Dan, can you please get up and please go help your mother shovel the driveway?' ... Sure, of course...

8 hours of sleep. Nice. 9:30am... If I shovel this out quickly I'll still be able to get a good start on my work before the afternoon. Where's the coffee at?

Oh wait. Daylight savings time you say? It's really 10:30? Okay fuck the coffee I'll grab that after. Let's do this!

'Oh look at Norm and Kim's driveway. They're buried! And she's out there all by herself. We should go over and help her.' ... Sure, of course. We are good neighbours.

11:30am... Called up the cousins. The game starts at 1:30pm!?? Shit.

Get showered. Get ready. Pick up a friend of mine. Head to EB games to buy Smash Bros. (not letting this one go). No time for lunch, pizza at the arena it is.

We got there 10 minutes late.

We won 6-4!

'We've got to go to this hockey party [for the other cousin], would you mind taking Mitchell home?' ...Sure, of course...

Actually, you know what? We're going to kidnap him and bring him to dinner with us. Besides, he too is almost as excited for Smash Bros. as we are anyway. (by this point; it was very apparent that I was going to sacrifice getting work done in order to get some play time in before dinner)

We are T-minus 3 minutes from my house... I can almost feel the controller vibrating in my hand already as I'm driving...

And that's when some crazy person started swinging his grocery bags in the middle of the road. Like a crazy person.

So naturally, the woman in the SUV in front of me hesitates, then decides to SLAM on the brakes.

Her brakes turn out to be much, much better than mine. And I, slide right into the back of her car.

At a low enough rate of speed.

Damage was minimal. Nobody was hurt. The woman was cool and apologetic herself. She won't be calling insurance, but I'll still be paying for her damage. And mine.

So now it's about 4pm. I drop my friend off and we finally make it home. We tell the crash story 5 times. We set my Nintendo Wii back up (in it's rightful place on top of the TV heh).

Pop the disc in, watch it spin... hear it spin... watch it spin... watching it.... watching it...

"Unable to read disc. Please consult your manual."

Well fuck.

Cousin and I jump back in the car and head back down to the EB, while people in the house jump online searching for possible problems/solutions (my Wii is modded you see; so there was a bit of concern over this).

Get to EB around 4:30... grab their 2nd last copy of the game. Apparently, more than a few people have been having this problem.

Missed 3 calls on my cell phone that doesn't ring. 'Can you pick up a lime from the grocery store?', 'A lime? A single lime?', 'Yeah', 'No!'

Get back home... try the new copy of the game. Still doesn't work.

Try it again. Still nothing. Again. Nothing. Again. And again. And again. And again.

As it turns out, this is the first game to be burned on a dual-layer DVD for the Wii, and according to Nintendo, a little bit of dust or smoke on/around the laser that reads the discs will prevent it from work. Ship your Wii to them (for free) and they'll fix it and ship it back. Well that is convenient. Or would be, if not for the mod. And the fact that I want to play this NOW. Not 6-8 weeks from now. Why did no one warn us of this when we were buying the game? Apparently this was a major problem in Japan too when the game was released there a few months back. And if you think that EB games is going to be nice about it and give me my money back? Well, you've just never shopped at EB games, have you? Fuckers.

Anyway, turkey dinner time (free, thanks to my work). At this point, I have given up on the game (for the day); and am wondering why I've spent so much money on my Wii at all over the year. And cursing my damn phone for having me miss 2 MORE calls (first call back, 'Sorry man, about to have dinner, will call you afterwards if I'm around.' second one, 'Sure man, about to have dinner but I'll call you afterwards and will come drop off the money I owe you').

Dinner was excellent! My mom is a great cook!

After dinner I had to drive my cousin home. My sister and her boyfriend who live in the city need a lift to the subway station. Sure, of course!..

Go over to my buddy's place. Drop of the cash. Chill for a short while. It's now approaching 9pm... Shit! I still have SO much work to do...I need to get home!

So it's now about 9:30pm...and someone I really want to talk to is online but I've got to work so she says go work so I'm hoping she'll stay around until I'm done.

And she did :)

And not only that, but my good friend Dan who's in Australia also came online and let me in on some fantastic news! (that I'm not allowed to share)

In the end I ended up getting about an hour/hour and 1/2 worth of work done. Not enough; but better than nothing.

Went to bed feeling pretty good around 11:30pm...fell asleep probably around 1:30am.