Die Hard Three

The journey leading up to this career change has not been without its bumps in the road. It’s a pretty big deal to leave a job after fifteen years, even for someone as resilient as me. For example, today I got pretty emotional at work. I was having lunch with my friends, just like I do most days, when all of a sudden I realized that I am really, really going to miss my paycheques. It started to sink in that I’ve grown to depend on them for almost everything. From the routine to the rare, they’ve been there to help me through the best and the worst.

For example, in 2006, my paycheque helped get me two tickets to the Men’s World Cup Soccer final in Berlin Germany. There’s no way I would have been able to get those tickets on my own. In fact it wasn’t just the finals, the whole tournament was a blast – visiting all those different cities, watching all those different games. This trip really earned its moniker “Greatest Time Ever” (TM). And none of this would have happened without my salaried paycheque.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are the not-so-fond memories. In the summer of 2004 I was in the middle of this huge renovation project and during a supply run I broke the transaxle on my father’s 1992 Ford Ranger pickup truck. I was desperate. I had a student moving into an unfinished room in less than a week and the walls weren’t even up. With nowhere else to turn, my paycheque was there for me. It paid for a mechanic to make the necessary repairs and within 48 hours the truck was back operating at 100% capacity.

I could write for pages with additional examples but I’m not going to. Because even though I understand that I’m going to be ok without my paycheques, I also know that deep down in my heart I’m going to miss them dearly.

My first ever paycheque got me this.

For those of you who read my April 1 post and were too lazy calculate the date I’m leaving work, it’s May 17, 2013.

Many people have been asking me how I chose this specific date as my last day. To be honest, there never really was any other option – May 17 is easily the single greatest day of the year – bar none. Allow me to list the reasons:

1. It’s the beginning of nice summer weather
2. It’s part of a long weekend (Canadian protectorates only)
3. On this particular May 17 (2013) we get our first new Star Trek film in four years called Star Trek Into: Darkness
4. It’s the final day for Justin Bieber to collect his monkey from German customs officials.
5. Also this year my fourth-favourite Nordic country is turning 199 years old.

But most importantly it’s the anniversary of the day back in 1995 when I saw for the very first time the film after which this blog is named.

What a glorious day that was – Wednesday May 17, 1995. School was finished for the semester, summer was in full swing, and Twentieth Century Fox was about to release the third instalment of its popular Die Hard franchise: Die Hard With a Vengeance.

There was some serious hype leading up to its release. Jeremy Irons was playing the villain, Samuel L. Jackson was fresh off his Oscar-nominated performance in Pulp Fiction, and John McTiernan was back at the helm directing. I remember going to see a Jay’s game in April and there were about a hundred advance one-sheets for the film lining the skywalk to the stadium. In a word – awesome.

With that much hype I had to see it first, before everyone else. When I was sixteen I managed to score two double passes to see an advance screening of Die Hard 2: Die Harder in a radio call-in contest. But for Die Hard with a Vengeance, despite all my trying, I found myself ticketless a mere hours before the screening. So the night of the Ottawa premiere (two days ahead of the official release) I pretended to be a reporter for a local weekly alternative newspaper on assignment to review the film and they let me and my buddy Eric in for free.

Now at these local movie premieres they usually give away promotional materials to members of the audience. Sometimes they ask trivia questions but most times they just stick a fridge magnet under some of the seats and the person sitting there gets the teeshirt / hat / poster / whatever. But for some reason this time they put a sticker under the *armrest* and they gave out prizes to the two people sharing the armrest. So as luck would have it the armrest between me and Eric had a sticker under it and we both scored a Die Hard with a Vengeance baseball cap, teeshirt, and button.

Truly a glorious day – maybe the most glorious. And since then I’ve been trying to find a May 17 that lives up to that one. Let’s see how we do with the 2013 edition.

Glorious.

When I was in Italy back in 2011 I drank three coffees. Not at the same time of course; that would be ridiculous. I know you won’t believe it, but to this day those three coffees remain the only ones I’ve ever had in my entire life. Until…

Today I was waiting to meet a friend for supper and I found myself *forced* to purchase something from The Planet Coffee (the store not the planet – thank God: can you imagine the import duties?). I say “forced” because they have a “no outside food and drink” policy (a policy that is in desperate need of revision, btw). Case in point – when challenged while eating my MacDonald’s french fries (yum!), I calmly explained how I was exempt from their rule because the conjunction “and” in their sign means that someone is allowed to bring in food “or” drink from the outside, but not both.

I think the exact words she used were, “You’ve been here for two hours, you need to buy something or get out.”

Fine.

So I asked for a recommendation and she gave me a Maple Way. It was pretty good. I guess. When I finished I remained at a loss for why people have such a passion for coffee. I mean, there are clearly way more interesting things to get way more excited about. Jigsaw puzzles for example. Last night me and the GF started a thousand-piece non-Softclick (TM) Ravensburger. Got the edge done. And most of the castle. I bet you ten dollars I have it all finished by the time I have to appear in court on Friday.

So this coffee did not make me high like the ones in Italy, but I will keep an eye on my energy levels for the rest of the night. I’m planning on tackling the water before going to bed and the caffeine should help.

Last time I got a lot of positive feedback on my coffee posts and this makes me wonder if I should write one for every single coffee I drink for the rest of my life. I think that would be pretty interesting, especially if I become addicted like the rest of you. Then at the end I can put all the posts together and publish a book called “Dances With Javmocha – An Epic Tale of One Man’s Losing Battle with Writer’s Block”.

According to all the so-called, self-proclaimed, armchair “experts” who read my blog, the term “bucket list” comes from the english-language expression “to kick the bucket”. For those of you whom have never heard this before, it means “to die” or just “die”.

In a previous post I mentioned that I have a bucket list-type list. What I failed to say was that mine is called my “pre-death list”. I named it this so my readers don’t need to have detailed knowledge of obscure english-language idioms to understand what I’m writing about.

Anyway, enough talking about lists, it’s time to list the list.

Jason’s Pre-Death List

• Cook a full-on turkey dinner meal for either Christmas or Thanksgiving including various pies for dessert
• Visit Nordkapp
• Visit Antarctica
• See the Northern Lights (full-on)
• Sleep outside in the full-on winter (Canadian or Finnish, none of those fake winters that are found in many parts of the world)
• Desert safari (Sahara or Gobi)
• Dessert safari (cheesecakes or pies)
• Get my karate black belt 
• Solve the Keith Haring Double Retrospect
• Complete all the items on my pre-death list
• Experience the Trans-Siberian (orchestra and railway) – not at the same time, bonus if
• Paint a self-portrait
• Build a house
• Build a better house

Guess which will be the first item crossed off the list!

So I’ve been receiving a steady stream of feedback on yesterday’s post. Most comments have been a variation of “you’ve misunderstood the basic concept of bucket lists” and “what you’re describing is a ‘hat list’ not a ‘bucket list’, stupid”.

The bulk of these detractors site a movie conveniently called, “The Bucket List”. I’d never heard of this film before today but apparently it was very popular. I just looked it up on the Internet and it said that Morgan Freeman was in it – which is strange cause I’ve seen all his other movies and televisions programs (including all 780 episodes of The Electric Company). According to the web, The Bucket List is about “two incontinent old geezers who set off on a bunch of adventures before they meet death”.

The more I read about this film the more I understand why I have never seen it – it sounds terrible. If I know Hollywood (and I do) they’re going to set up the story so that we (the audience) grow to like the characters and then at the end of the movie they both die.

Can you imagine if I’d been tricked into going to see it for a first date? At the end I’d be there in the middle of a crowded theatre crying like a little girl while all the audience members around me awkwardly try to shuffle their way out of the cinema. And my date, who was new to the city, she couldn’t just leave – cause I was driving and she had no idea how to get home from the theatre. She had to wait in the lobby for twenty-five minutes while I tried to compose myself in the men’s room.

The only good thing about the whole debacle was that I got to see the movie for free (she paid for the movie and I was supposed to get the drinks) but that second part never happened.

Stadium cleanup? It’s on my list.

I’ve always been firmly against bucket listing. Don’t get me wrong, I endorse certain aspects of the practice but at the bottom it’s fundamentally flawed. Allow me to explain.

I’m one hundred percent in support of people making lists. For many of my projects the lists are the only things I actually end up completing. The list of tasks. The list of materials. The list of shops I need to visit. The list of the different lists I need to compile.

I am also a huge fan of doing things. This is probably the best part of bucket listing. I try to adhere to a system of continually participating in activities, watching events, acquiring experiences, and eating food. In fact right now I’m engaged in a quadruple-header of sorts. I’m attending a professional hockey game, writing my blog, practicing my German, and eating a huge burrito all at the same time.

It’s also important to do things before you die. Life is short and you have to make the most of it while you can. There are even some things you can only accomplish at specific times. For example, if you want to try underage drinking you have to do it before you turn of legal age.

Surprisingly, there is only one adverse aspect to bucket listing. It would seem after so many positives that it would be next to impossible for a single negative to counteract all that goodness. But because it’s so fundament to the practice, it nullifies all the previous points.

What I don’t like about bucket listing is the random factor. Take the following pretend, three-item bucket list:

1. Go see a professional soccer game in one of the top European leagues
2. Visit Europe
3. Visit New York City

Now if you were assigned this list in a normal manner, it would be a straightforward process of completing it. You would simply fly through New York on your way to Europe during the soccer season and go see a game. But when you bucket list you have no control over the order in which you have to complete your tasks. You run the risk of reaching into your bucket and pulling out the Visit Europe task and then after you visit Europe getting the New York task. Because there’s only one item left you’re going to feel like a real chump when you have to fly all the way back to Europe to go see the soccer game.

I’m not being a hypochondriac here – I also have a list of things I want to do before I die. But unlike those bucket listers, because I’m not selecting my activities at random, my system is way better. At the end of the day I stand a much greater chance of actually completing all the items on my list.

I don’t care if he’s here for a charity fundraiser, dressing up as General Motti three days after actor Richard LeParmentier passed away is not cool.

.

So as some of you may have heard, in a few weeks I’m going to be switching gears career-wise. Many people have told me my decision is not-wise but I don’t think that’s the case.

You remember how much energy I put into bringing all those toilets back from Germany? Well I’ve put almost as much thought into this life-altering decision. So here it is: I’m going to be leaving my high-paying, low-stress, super-secure, benefits-packing, pension-matching, windowless government job to follow my one true love: jigsaw puzzles.

I know what you’re all thinking,

“Jason, don’t be an idiot. You can’t follow a jigsaw puzzle. They’re stationary.”

Yeah, I know how puzzles work. I’ve been puzzling since before you had email. Puzzling ignorance aside, it was actually a pretty easy decision. Here is the logic:

1. Motor skills and mental abilities diminish with age.

2. Motor skills and mental abilities are needed to make jigsaw puzzles.

3. Ergo, I must puzzle now while my motor skills and mental abilities are reasonably intact.

When you think about it, there isn’t much room to manoeuvre – I don’t really have any choice in the matter. And all you free-willies out there who claim that “you always have a choice” – prove yourself right by choosing not to go into work for the rest of the week.

And those of you who are not working: choose to bake me a pie. Strawberry-rhubarb please.

So there you have it – forty-seven days from now I’ll be out celebrating with some friends trying to figure out how to wake up every morning without an alarm clock. But don’t worry about me, I already have a bunch of ideas on how to solve this problem.

and I’m looking forward to trying all of them.