Friday the Thirteenth (Ales Hemsky Day)

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To many folks, Friday the Thirteenth is synonymous with bad omens. That, or cheesy teen slasher flicks. But by in large, when TGIF happens to coincide with the thirteenth day of the month, it can tarnish the thankfulness one may otherwise feel at the working week’s end. Now I’d freely admit to anyone who asked that I’m a pretty superstitious fellow. Just as an example, if I have a big exam to write, like a Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I’ll wear the same clothes to the exam that I’d worn while studying. When it comes to Friday the Thirteenth, however, I am not so superstitious that I must fill the bath with holy water and garlic and sit in it all day just to ensure nothing bad happens. Whoops, that’s to protect oneself from vampires. Well, I trust you get the general idea. Anyway, even though I feel mostly safe leaving the house on Friday the Thirteenth, due to my superstitious nature I still keep a leery eye out for anything untoward.

However, when I showed up to work and tore off the old date on my fantastic NHL desktop calendar to reveal Ales Hemsky as my player of the day, I felt worlds more confident that this Friday the Thirteenth would not cause me any major trouble. How could anything bad happen on Ales Hemsky Day? He’s an Oiler, a fantastic puck-handler, and a point-a-game player, second only to Super Shawn Horcoff in team scoring. Plus, in my virtual world of Xbox hockey, Hemsky is tied for the league lead in scoring. The league lead, people! So what this all meant for me was that I had received a good omen on a day largely noted for the other variety. It also got me to thinking that maybe my new NHL desktop calendar, as cool as it is just to look at, is also in a sense a horoscope, predicting what kind of it will be. For instance, if my player for the day is Saku Koivu, whom I admire and who plays for a team I cheer for, then I can expect to have a good day. On the other hand, if at the other end of the spectrum my player for the day is dirty, stinkin’ Eric Lindros of the despised Toronto Maple Leafs, then it would probably be better to start filling the bath with holy water and garlic. Oh, right, that’s for vampires. Then again, perhaps the argument can be made that Lindros is kind of like a soul-sucking vampire, draining the life out of any dressing room. Is the Ranger’s resurgence and the Big E’s departure a coincidence? I leave that open for debate.

Getting back to Friday the Thirteenth, or Ales Hemsky Day, if you will, it was a bit of a mixed bag of good and bad. I was obligated to attend four classes, but they weren’t as terrible as they could have been. At lunch I got extra fried shrimp, which made me a happy Ken. The rain that had begun mid-afternoon let up by the time I was ready to leave work to catch the bus. And while on the topic of buses, my connections worked out perfectly. After disembarking from my first bus, I only had to wait, like, two minutes for the bus I transfer onto rather than the 15 to 20 minutes I might ordinarily wait (sometimes fate conspires to make my first bus late and my second bus early, meaning I get to choke on exhaust fumes while waiting along the super busy Hiroshima expressway for the next bus to roll up. That really pisses me off). Plus, the second bus just happened to be a luxury coach with plushy, reclining seats. Talk about riding in style; I can’t believe they have buses like this in the public transport fleet. They need a few more I reckon. In the evening following a relaxing bus ride home, Ryan and I went to the gym for a light cardio workout then dined at The Shack, the venerated Hiroshima American-style bar/restaurant. We had to wait an extraordinarily long time for our chicken fajitas however, very unlike The Shack. It took almost an hour for our food to arrive. I mean, how long does it take to grill chicken and shred lettuce? And when our food did arrive, we were both dismayed to find that we’d been cheated on the cheese. However, for a Friday night, The Shack was fairly empty (making the reason for our late meal even more mysterious). While a quiet nightspot may not be a selling feature for some people, for Ryan and me, it was a bonus. We could easily converse and the air was pleasantly free from smoke for the most part. I don’t know where the typical Friday night Shack crowd was. Who knows, it being the thirteenth, maybe they were all home in garlicky, holy water filled bathtubs.

So it wasn’t a super fantastic day. I didn’t win the lottery, nor did I receive word that I had been named the next Canadian ambassador to Sweden and that my staff would consist only of members of the Swedish Bikini Team (but any day now, I’m certain). But just as it wasn’t a super fantastic day, neither was it a horrible, no good, rotten day. I mean, sure, our food was late and they skimped on the cheese, but work wasn’t so bad and I did get home earlier than usual. Furthermore, any day that you get to hang out with your buddies is a good one. Also, considering it was Friday the Thirteenth, my superstitious side figures that the day could have been a whole lot worse. My superstitious side also figures that somewhere out there in the vast cosmos, a celestial Hemsky was keeping the mischievous and fickle fates at bay with the same slick skill his real world counterpart uses to leave gapping-mouthed defensemen in his wake. All in all, things seemed to balance each other out pretty nicely I think.

Thanks Ales.

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Comments

[kelsey]

my ales hemsky day
my day invloved FREE BEER!!!!!!!!!!!!! with former students looking for that last bottle of cold boreal blonde. yum

[anonymous]

13th of August
thats my Ales Hemsky day because thats his birthday