The week from Awesome hell...

I've been meaning to sit down at home and write a new entry for a couple days but it just isn't possible, I don't have any time at home...plus my computer is broken. I can't open Internet Explorer or even My Computer. Anyway, back to awesome week.



Velvet Revolver at The Saddledome, Calgary, March 28, 2005

I've been to a major arena everyday for the last four days. Sunday I saw one of the CIS semi-finals at the Rexall Place in Edmonton, Saskatchewan smoked Western Ontario 3-0. Monday night was Velvet Revolver at the Saddledome. Those guys sure know how to put on a show. Three Days Grace performed the opening act and then we had an intermission. I went with Nevin, Lucas, and Ben. Ben was sitting by a couple of girls but not saying much...of anything so during the intermission I stole his seat and talked up a storm with a couple of nurses from Mount Royal. I wish I could play like Slash. That guy is unbelievable witha guitar. Scoot was pretty impressive too.

Tuesday I took the day off of work. It was strangely productive. I finished my laundry, ironing, cleaned most of the house (my room needed a lot), washed the car, got a hair cut, went tanning, got groceries a Costco, and was home in time to take Nevin and Mike to the Hitmen game. It was the third game of the series versus the Lethbridge Hurricanes (they split the first two games 1-1) and the Hitmen were playing pretty solid. Lethbridge seemed like a better team but they just weren't taking any shots. The shots were 20-4 after the first period for the Hitmen and they took the game 4-1.

Yesterday I was planning on working on my essay through lunch but I just can't turn down free meals. I went to The Catch on Stephen Ave with a few other students and an engineer. That place is great, I recommend the tuna. I think I ate about $45 worth of food and had two glasses of red wine...good recipe for falling asleep at the 1:30 meeting (which we were a bit late for). Anyway, Lucas hasn't been feeling very good so he said I could have his ticket to the Hitmen game that night. Crap! Still haven't started my essay. I decided that I'd just put in a quick hour at work and finish the rest today but that was all it took. One hour, six pages, email...send! Off to the hockey game. Last night's game was much more intenst. The Hitmen tied it up late in the third and we were still there at 10:00 for the second overtime period. About halfway through Andrew Ladd finally took a nice rebound and found the back of the net. The Lethbridge goalie was pretty amazing, the shots in the first overtime period were about 22-3 or something for the Hitmen, completely dominated.

So yeah, pretty good week so far. Curling at 2:00 today, Dave and I are going to lead the team to victory. Then off to play 3-on-3 hockey with my dad. Tomorrow I'm going straight home from work and takig off to Camore for the weekend. Yeah, this oil and gas gig is okay, Jeff you HAVE to get down here next time. Congrats on the job in Edmonton though bro. You're going to have an amazing summer up there.

PS: THE BEARS WON THE TITLE! Can't believe I didn't mention that earlier. They took out Saskatchewan on Monday night. Jeff probably mentioned that in one of his comments. So what's this story about gettig hit by a puck?

I'm moving to Sin City...

This movie comes out on Friday and looks freaking awesome.



Too bad I have to go have fun in Canmore...maybe they have a good theatre out there. I'll see it sometime soon anyway. Nevin's on his way home from PV right now and is going to pick up myself and the sickly Lucas from work. VELVET REVOLVER tonight! This week is awesome. I'm taking tomorrow off so I should have time to write more and explain the awesomeness that is this past weekend and this coming week. Hopefully I'll also be telling you how the U of A Bears are the new CIS Champions in hockey! They play the U of S Huskies tonight at Rexall Place in Edmonton, my bros are going to the game.

Oh, and I get my barbeque tonight! Peace.

Surviving with three brothers...

Yeah, I managed to do it but being the oldest really helped. Actually, I'd say it was more being the biggest. I'm going up to Edmonton tonight to see Jeff and Terry. It's been a while since I've seen either of them so it'll be great to get up there and knock around for the weekend. Peter can't make it up though. He has a little something going on over in Italy. He left yesterday at noon so I think he should be there by now. I wonder what time it is in Italy? Just check the handy cell phone here...4:00 PM. So he's probably super tired from the extreme time change but I'm sure he's enjoying his afternoon. So yeah, the Tenove bro's, doing great things. I took a little time to update my Brothers page that I made on geocities a while ago. Make sure you scroll down in the boxes to see all of the pictures.

In other news Brendan has finally come to Calgary. He was photographing a band last night and then came to chat with us. I think he's still sleeping in the spare room...who am I kidding, it's 8:00 AM, of course he's sleeping. 8 hours until I hit the road North! Have a great Easter weekend everyone! And remember, when eating a chocolate Easter bunny, start with the ears.

Flickr, where have you been all my life...

I'd like to give a shout out to my homies, Ray-ray and Chuck...and a big thanks to Brendan. He recently started posting his photos on a site called Flickr and I was impressed with the format. I've not got my own account and this thing rules. It's all I can do to not spend the rest of the day making pages on this site. I really want to but I'm busy...and all my pictures are saved on my computer at home. So for now, enjoy this short taste of what's to come.



Sylvan Lake, South Dakota, August 2004

A healthy mix...

That's what I would call my school schedule for the upcoming semesters. It's my fourth (and last) year and I get to choose some pretty neat electives. I have a couple that may not be much fun but I'm sure will be very useful like Business Law and Marketing. I'm also taking some awesome classes like Bio Medical engineering and Drilling & Completions. My complementary is going to be a real fluff class, Ancient Science, Technology, and Medicine, focusing on Greece and Rome. There really wasn't much else to choose from for complementaries, at least ones that would still fit in my schedule. My winter isn't as nice, mostly made up of mandatory classes, but oh well, I'll be more focused on getting done by then anyway.

I'm living in the present though. Had a good weekend. Decided last minute to go see a Roughneck's lacrosse game and ended up getting really good seats, snowboarding in Sunshine was okay on Saturday, the Whiskey was a lot of fun Saturday night. Sunday I just took it easy, destroyed Dan in a few bouts of squash and finished with a nice long soak in the sauna. We also had a good poker game Saturday night. I was out pretty early but Nevin and Kolla duked it out for a while.



The final hand

The betting was fierce in the last hand and quickly both players were all in. Nevin nailed his two pair on the flop and Mike was stuck with pocket queens. All Mike needed was for the table to pair. The fourth card was an eight and then on the river Mike got his second eight. His two pair beat Nevin's two pair and the game was over.



The big wiener!

So Nevin, Dan, and I all owed Mike a drink at the bar that night. Ah, cheap poker, I like it.

Tonight I was down in Okotoks watching Matt and Thomas Melbourne play with the Bisons. They're in the playoff finals against Airdrie. Today is also Matt's 22nd birthday. Isn't there a name for that birthday? Like turning 22 on the 22nd? I drove down by myself and expected to watch the game by myself. I ran into Matt's mom in the second intermission and she asked if I was looking for my dad. What? My dad? Apparently he and bunch of his hockey team had come up with Terry, Matt's dad, to see the game. (It's also Terry's birthday today but I'm guessing he's not 22) I found them taking a beer break in the curling lounge. Dad was pretty surprised to see me. Oh yeah, and they won...3-1. If they win in Airdrie on Thursday it's all over and they're off to provincials. Good work boys!

I'm halfway done the work week, going to finish strong.

Green, green, GREEN!! I can't take it anymore...

Happy hung-over day-after-St.Patty's-Day to you. Okay, so I'm not exactly hungover but my lungs hurt. Smoke sucks. The Unicorn was awesome last night except for the smoke. I signed up for young singles dating service. Before you laugh just know that I did it to get the free green shot glass that they were giving away. It came on a necklace I could wear around my neck. I also had a really cheap green plastic bowler hat on. It wasn't the most expensive night but it cleaned out my poor wallet.



CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario

I did get some work done last night. I've finally got a good template going for my online photo album. It's kind of plain but that's all I want. Fancy=time...I don't have time. I'm just going to leave the link the same on my blog page but I'll change the text to let you know when a new trip has been posted. All righty, going to Taco Time (the awesome one) in 10 minutes. Let's see what else I can finish before then. Have a great weekend people.

Oh, if anyone wants to come out snowboarding to Sunshine with us tomorrow, give me a call tonight. If you want to go out skiing to Sunshine you're out of luck!

They made a movie once...

AUGHHHH!!! I hate this thing. I've been writing a long entry for about the last 20 mins and it somehow highlighted the whole thing so that when I kept typing...IT ALL WENT AWAY. I should really do these things in word and then copy and paste them. Damn there being no auto-save on the internet.

Anyway, cool stuff to talk about. I've been looking back through some pictures from Kingston, just doing the memory lane thing. A lot of good stuff happened over there and it just makes me excited to be on another work there here in Calgary. This summer is going to absolutely rule.



Quebec City, May Long Weekend 2004

So...this week has seen a lot of changes to my methods, both at work and away. You may have noticed that I haven't written a blog in a few days and that this one is coming to you at 11:30 PM. I just don't have time anymore. I had a meeting with my boss and my co-op coordinator on Tuesday morning and it really lit a fire under my ass. I realized just how competitive it is going to be to get hired at Talisman after graduation. I really have to prove myself. That plus I just got a whole bunch of work, cool stuff, but a lot...and deadlines to go with them. Plus I have a university essay due at the end of the month. I don't normally like these essays but this one should be good. I have to go and interview some people who have worked in the field that I want to be in after I graduate. So I've been setting up meetings with drilling engineers to see how they started out. How long they've been working, what they did, what helped them. I'm finding out some really cool stuff and they all seem to have amazing stories. Engineers with amazing stories?? Yes, you heard me right. These are just interesting people. I know I'm in the right field.



Waterfall outside of Quebec City, May Long Weekend 2004

I've also been getting more active after work. Monday I went to the gym for the regular work out but also played hockey that night (scored one goal). I got to talking to the goalie at the game and he said he usually played with another team and that lately they'd been short enough guys and that I should come play with them soon. I said sure. Tuesday I was walking to the gym and again and Dan, the goalie, called and said they needed me that night. Sweet, I'm there. So another two workout day (scored three goals, first hat trick of the season). Very sore. Today I took it easy, I just played an hour long squash match with Nevin. We managed to get in 9 games before being ready to collapse (Nevin kicked my ass in the first two but I took straight sets after that, just needed to warm up). Tomorrow...taking it easy, for real. It's St. Patty's day, the official day of NOT working hard. I'm going to bend the rules a bit at work and bust my ass again but I'll be leaving a bit early (Shhh, don't tell anyone) to make sure I get into one of the great pubs in Calgary's downtown area.

I guess if I'm going to be able to do all of that tomorrow I'd better get some sleep tonight. Thanks for reading, sorry I couldn't have written more....(stupid freaking keyboard...if you were a man I'd punch you in the face). Peace.

My roommates are assholes...

Yes, you heard me, absolute jerks. Here's the background on the subject. We all have birthdays during this workterm (we temporarily moved Lucas's from October to sometime this summer) and we decided it would be nice to get each other gifts since we're raking in the cash. It's been a few days since my birthday but I didn't think anything of it. Then Lucas and Mike start emailing me yesterday, saying they didn't find anything they thought I wanted so they just scrapped the whole idea. I told them not to worry, I'd think of something, like paying for a weekend bender for me (probably the cheapest present they'd ever have to give). Naw, they're just going to do nothing.

Asshole	Asshole	Asshole

So...to continute the story. I get home from the gym last night, my dad's up for the evening since he's at a two-day course at the U of C, and I'm just chilling with him on the couch with a beer. Lucas walks in and says something like "oh, guess we did find something for your birthday after all" and drops an Ipod-mini box on my lap. I didn't believe them at first, thought that they'd just found a box, but it had the plastic wrap on it still. So I tear it open. Yup, an Ipod-mini: silver, sleek, and a touching inscription on the back "Mike, we worship you, we miss your smile...we miss your laugh...we miss your musk." Okay, okay, that's not what it said (Lucas is laughing his bag off now though), it was "Michael Tenove...Calgary House '05". Almost brought a tear to the eye. Thanks guys, I love it. And maybe you're not complete assholes, but I can call you that because I already got my gift. You guys still have to be good! Luke even loaded it up with some new music last night while Dad and I were watching my cousin Reece's final hockey game (they lost in overtime).

So yeah, it is a beautiful morning in Calgary (other than a bit of wind). I'm just happy and ready to work hard until the end of the week. Thanks a gain roomies. Lucas's b-day is next (apparently) and he says he also likes Ipod's...he wishes. I have my own ideas. Have a great weekend everyone, I'll be in Nanton tonight watching my brother's team win the Southern Alberta Midgen league. Peace.

Dan breaks out on the air guitar scene...

I've decided that I need to make some more My Travels pages with pictures from where I go. I'm not going to do that now though. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow...we'll see. What it means is that I'm going to post less pictures in my blog (still have a few good ones) but I'll put more up in album collections on the My Travels site. After seeing Brendan's photo page again (yes, I visit it often) I decided that more how I'll do it, just with slightly bigger photos and more captions.



This is a hilarious photo B-man took of Dan at Wabamun Lake last September. Brendan and I were out there giving our cameras a nice job. Dan was showing us his air guitar talents...or lack of. I remember having a pretty awesome game of Rummy-O later that night. Heather was also out there. Dan was trying to pass out on the couch after each turn. At least I think that was the same weekend. You can see the rest of the pictures on Brendan's site.



It just makes me want to get out with my camera more. Who knew that bird crap on a dirty old board could look so cool on film. It's basically spring in Calgary now, there's so many nice things to take pictures of. Some night I'm going take my camera out to get some pictures of Calgary's downtown skyline at night. I still don't know how that night setting works but I'll learn.

Oh, and I'm not going up to Edmonton until Easter, March 25th. Just in case you were wondering.

Will robots take over the world?

My friend Eric sent me this webpage link months ago when I was still in Kingston. It's the story of Manna. I only read the first chapter in Kingston and then stopped for some strange reason. Recently I found myself with a little bit of time and looked it up again. I'm kicking myself now for not finishing it then...it's amazing. It's not really about how robots take over the world, like the Matrix, but more some good points on how automation may be evolving. It's told in the form of short stories and, well, it's great. Let's just say that now I really want to move to Australia.



Asimo...by Honda

Brendan, I highly, highly recommend this page to you. I just know you're going to find it fascinating. I have a feeling that you would be a Vite.

Going for a run when I get home today. I've really been slacking on the "getting in shape" plan for a couple days so it's time to get back at it. I'm suffering from sweating-my-ass-off-at-the-gym withdrawal. It's a weird feeling.

What were you doing on this day in 1983?

Anyone? No good memories? Well to tell you the truth, I don't remember anything from this date either but I know my mom sure does. It's probably one of the greatest days of her life! If you don't know that is the day that little Mikey was born at the High River hospital. I know my parents have all kinds of great stories about my birthdays over the years. I'm even giving my mom the go ahead to share a few of those is she wants. Of the birthdays that I remember though, this is definitely one of the most memorable even though I spent it doing many things I've already done before: hockey, gopher hunting, and hosting a huge house party. (For another good birthday story, look in my archives for last March)



Ah, brothers. I remember these times well. Once Ben's foot heals I think he's going to drown Lucas

This weekend my parents were away in Montana, Peter was staying with a friend, and Jeff and Terry were still up in Edmonton, so I had the whole place in Nanton to myself. A few of us drove down Friday night so that I could watch Pete play game one of their Midget playoff finals. Their team dominated the whole game and won 9-1. Peter was on fire in the third period, really mucking it up infront of the net. Too bad they lost yesterday, they have to go to a deciding game three.

Saturday morning I got to strap the skates on with Nevin, Luke, and Ben and shoot around a bit at the Hub, ice to ourselves for an hour. Lunch at Sweet Queen, shooting gophers in the field for a couple hours, good afternoon. There's some funny stories from our gopher hunting, Ben missing from 20 feet while resting on a post...twice, Luke posting the shut out, Nevin making sure the ice in our creek doesn't get up and walk away with a half dozen bullets. After that we spent a good 6 hours or so in the pool. People started showing up around 5:00 and just kept coming. I spent most of my time in the hot tub but there were people playing ping pong, cooking up steaks, visiting around our "drink" island. It's just such a good party house.



This is part of the crowd that was down to celebrate



Kolla and Pete tried to pass Lord of the Rings in one day

People slowly started to wind down at night..er, early morning. We popped Anchorman in around 2:00 or 2:30 I think. That is the ultimate party movie right now. You can walk in at anytime, watch for a few seconds and start laughing right away. You don't need to know what's going on, just that, as Lucas would say, Will Ferrel is a genius.



Ada's just chillin'

Kolla was looking a little two lonely curled up on such a big couch, I had to go keep him company.



He'll hate me for posting this, guess he should have stayed awake

Sunday was really great too. Everyone that came down stayed over somewhere. I locked up the pool so no one tried to snooze in the hot tub but there were bodies all over the rest of the house. We just took it real easy. Ate a good breakfast, lounged in the pool sitting on tubes in the sun listening to Jack Johnson, playing piano (Tracey and Peter are really really good), and starting the process of cleaning up whenever we got bored of being bored.



I feel like taking a nap whenever I see this picture

I'm still a bit exhausted today from the weekend even though I got a good sleep last night. Everyone that came was really happy with the party and my parents were happy to see the place clean when they got home last night. Next time though we'll have to pool some money to send my parents to Banff for the weekend or something. Or maybe they'll just trade me houses for a weekend...or two. What do you think about that mom and dad?

Maybe I can be an NHL replacement player...

Think I have a chance. Apparently the league is starting to consider that option for next year. Many news people say this would be a huge mistake and no one would go to watch a bunch of crappy players. The truth is, I would welcome it. Here's what I think:

Fire the old players, Iggy, Smyth, everyone. Get replacement players. Sure a lot of the best players in the world are getting turfed but there is still plenty of talent out there that hasn't been tapped. Very quickly we'll have a few new stars that will emerge and be the big names of the new league. Crosby, whoever. Hopefully some of those European players that lost their jobs to f@(%ing greedy NHL players. These guys readily play with a reasonable salary cap (average salary of $1.7 million, hell I'd do it for $1 million) and then ticket prices can come down. If the tickets get down to a third of their original price, I'll to to 10 times the games I do now and I KNOW there are many more hockey fans out there like me. Rexall and the Saddledome will sell out all the time. Winnipeg and Quebec City could afford to get their teams back in the next expansion. Ultimately the NHLPA will fold because they're tired of sitting around and bitching and spending the millions they already have. Any of the old NHL players that managed to stay in shape can then start to make their way back into the new NHL. We'll have Iggy in Calgary again and I can actually afford to go watch him.

Anyway, we'll see what develops there over the summer. All I know is that I'm finally in Calgary during a year when they probably would have made another cup run and because of all the f@(%ing whiners, on both sides, I'm going to have to do other things than sit on my couch and watch hockey on TV every night. I'm going to have to go for jogs in the river valley, have friends over for evening barbecues, and generally be a happier, fitter person. F-YOU NHL!

Okay, I'm done...pulse is returning to normal. A few things have been going right this week. If you ever read Luke's blog then you already know that we played some pick up hockey with Baker Hughes yesterday at noon. Luke was on a line with BH's most well known sales rep, ex-Flames Lanny MacDonald. I was playing defence on the other team trying to cover Lanny. He's not that fast anymore but can still make me look pretty stupid. I had a couple of nice spin moves in the first bit but he saw through that pretty quick and took me out the next time I tried it. I did manage to break through for one goal though. End to end rush type thing, put it over the goalie's shoulder. We had free pizza and beer in the change room after the game too. Luke asked Lanny if we could go out for a few more Wednesday games and he said "sure, just come on out". Sweet.

I got my tickets to see West Side Story in the mail today. Two tickets so I had to think of who I'd take as my date. I decided my mom would like to come up for this. She thought I was just doing it to make up for anything that gets wrecked at the house this weekend from the party. Damn...she saw right through my plan. Guess we have to clean up on Sunday. If I'm nice though maybe I can get a free meal out of it too, eh mother? Okay, meeting time. Here's one more picture from our trip to Banff. You can find the coolest pictures in the weirdest spots. I love photography for that.



(Little creek near Bow Falls in Banff)

Blue skies...shining on me...

Yeah, that was an awesome song from Patch Adams. Some days you just feel lucky. I know some would say I'm a pretty lucky guy anyway, but today I notice that I've been pretty lucky, just small things. Like winning tickets to go see West Side Story next Tuesday...it's like they new it was my birthday or something. They were giving away a hundred tickets or so within the company, and I was on the list. Then disaster struck. My winamp player went down...no music at work. :( I was sad but oddly efficient after that. Then this afternoon I tried restarting my computer to get it to work and now it works even better than before. Yesterday I could only play mp3's on it and most of the music I'd brought in on my memory card was windows media (wma) but today it's all working! No idea why, it just is. See, a lucky, unexplainable-without-a-computer-degree day.

I'm also coming off an eventful weekend. Friday we just hit BP's for supper and watched Boondock Saints, took it easy because Saturday morning we jetted off to Sunshine for a weekend of skiing. They still haven't had much snow there since that 48 cm day, nothing since before last Tuesday, so it was a bit icy. No worries, we can still have fun. The terrain park was still a blast although the sun and planets weren't quite aligned like they were for our pictures last week.



I also noticed that the steep, icy, black diamond run under the Angel chair would be just perfect for belly-boarding. Or more, belly-sliding, no snowboard involved. Ben and I were the only ones with enough balls to try this. Lucas freely admitted that his balls were absent that day. Ben and I stopped at the top of the run so that the rest could get into good viewing positions at the bottom. Then we jumped on our bellies and slid...fast.



I think Ben's coat was designed for fun like this as he was cruising at a much higher speed than me. I made the mistake of trying to stop myself with my board instead of just coming to a slow stop. You easly underestimate speed on your stomach and I ended up doing a couple of back flips worthy of bad marks from a French judge. Near the end of the day Ben did a bad tumble down a steep mogule run twisting his ankle. Some of our group saw him from the lift, laughing at "that retard walking with both skis and both poles in his hands". They didn't laugh so much when they realized it was Ben. I still didn't get to drive his car though.

That night we had a couple of rooms at the Douglas Fir Inn in Banff. We ate at the Rose and Crown downtown and quickly made it back to our rooms for some beer and hot tub, deadly combination. Sunday was supposed to be a ski day at Lake Louise but when I woke up at 10:00 the next morning I found the everyone was still asleep in their beds. Guess it wasn't meant to be. Instead we hit the shops in Banff for a bit, had a nice soak at the hot springs, and took some nice pictures of Bow Falls.



(Bow Falls, Banff, Alberta...they're frozen!)



Um...I don't exactly know what he's doing. Is he taking a picture of his? Naw...Lucas just likes to dream that he's well hung.

I love weekends like this. Little bit of action, little bit of rest. I also love being in Banff. There's just something different about the air and sun there, you feel athletic and healthy no matter what you drank the night before. We're taking a break from snowboarding this weekend, we made it out every weekend in February. "Dying's not on the menu!" Party at my place in Nanton instead. Email me for details!



Ben like's to eat dirt...says that mudstone goes down real smooth. I guess this is to try and get the taste out of his mouth.