The Life of Brad: September 2013 - Work Hard, Play Hard

September 2013, lots of business, some manual labour, a modelling job and of course some play to balance it out in the form of the Calgary Corporate Challenge. With good weather to be had in Calgary during September what else should a guy do, but work hard and play hard. Bonus: I even got to take in an NHL game live for the first time in years.

That's not my kid!
Shot in August the photos finally came out in September and were displayed in the biggest newspaper in Calgary for 2 weekends straight. Good exposure, bad pay cheque, but fun all the same. Not sure I would believe those were my kids though?

I'm more like the hired chef than the father

Worse part about this photo is
I had a cracked rib at the time

I got Shingles...
for my Garage
On the heels of the big house repaint that I coughed up the cash for in August the outside wasn't quite complete yet. The roof of the house and especially the garage were in need of fresh shingles to bring the place up to snuff. Having a desire to do some hard labour I convinced my office chair warming buddies to join me re-shingling the garage roof, first. All going well everyone would be up for doing the house roof the following weekend (there was even talk of doing it the same day as the garage, haha). No rain and we would do it all...Yeah right!

Brendan "Piece of cake! Let's do the house too."

Man shingles are heavy! That's 23
bundles at 36kg/ea (80 lbs)

Mike, Tom and Alge on roof,
Brad, Brendan, and Bill watching

Lead by the real Pro Algernon, the boys ripped the old shingles off in no time. Had the one side before the rain hit us and I stopped the job.

Work stoppage due to heavy rain

A guy can only live on this planet for so long before he starts getting in to renovations, at least that's what all my friends are doing so I figured I better catch up! It took us two days, but we finally got it. I think I put in 2 x 10 hour days, which I did enjoy. Total cost: Material - $1200, Garbage bin - $250, Food and Beer - $250, Experience - Priceless!

Rain cover, not so water tight

Alge freestyling the shims on the roof!

Brendan in an awkward spot

All Done! A satisfying accomplishment for sure.

$250 in returns!

But what about the House? Considering it took our amateur team two days to finish my garage roof I decided there was no need to mess around and brought in a Pro team who did triple the work we did in only 8 hours. That's why we have Pros out there.

Straight away I knew these guys had done this before spending the extra dollars to get a crane to put the shingles on the roof. During the delivery I was inside the house and you wouldn't believe how loud it was. I thought the roof was going to collapse.

Big lift.

Get to work, morning ripping

Bundles need to be spread out so
they don't go through the roof.

Looking sharp

Very nice

That garage looks pretty good too

In the "Trenchless"... Engineering
Well engulf in our Trenchless groups' workload trying to develop a speciality in HDD (Horizontal Direction Drilling) and Micro Tunnelling I found myself working alone at the office many nights. Don't cry for me, I needed the money to fund next year's my movie project and wanted to learn this speciality. It is all part of The Life Of Brad.

Each day I choose a new character to represent me for
the day marked by the orange tab.

My team, spot me?

Something to get through a
phone conference

Calgary Corporate Challenge
Good to get some "Play" in, and the CCC definitely brings that out. Good fun and good comradery between companies. As per usual like the past couple of years I once again aimed for a Gold in foosball, joined the dart team and hoped to get through the first round of bocce ball.

And just like years before I ended up with my 3rd silver medal in 3 years in foosball, didn't get through the first round of bocce (got waxed by Atco), and...fluked out to win a silver in darts when we were expected to finish 8th! Quite hilarious when they announced our name in surprise mentioning last years' Gold medalist got 4th this year.

Going to darts with an aggressive attitude paid off

Darts Silver Medalists
Me, Jen, Joseph, Peter
(missing Trevor)

Horseshoe team

Nexen Ned, Yikes

Serious foosballers? Nah.

This years' team was in the biggest
division, but it was the best
chance to win Gold, damn it!

Bocce team and fans

Couple Silvers to round out
CCC 2013 and the only ones
Worley earned. I think that's why
they hired me, haha.

National Hockey League (NHL)
September is the start of hockey and Calgary happens to have a Professional level team along with 29 other larger cities in North America. The Calgary Flames have been around since the beginning of the 80's and haven't made too much of an impact in the last 20 years after winning the Stanley Cup in 1989 and probably won't for another 20, but who knows. Regardless of their level this year they seem to have a good working man's effort and win the close games. The good and the bad of it is I'm actually a fan of the team north of Calgary, the Edmonton Oilers who are major rivals with Calgary and have 5 Stanley Cups in the same amount of time. I guess growing up I was drawn to their higher skill and wins.

Mid September and my Hockey Captain Ash invited me to join him for an Edmonton vs Calgary pre-season game. Good times. Pricey beers, but a well worth exchange for a free ticket which can range from $40 to $300+ depending where you sit. Go Oil!

Oh Canada sang before every game

Good seats thanks to Ash

The Ice cleaning girls who get to work between whistles.
An American addition to the game.

Oilers and Flames in pre-season

Points of interest - Reusing/recycling - Garage Sales / Bottle depots
In order to keep the environment clean I try to reuse as much as I can and when I can't I sell it on to someone at my Fall garage sale instead of throwing it in the garbage.

On a sunny day its nice to open the garage and invite
people in for a chat and an attempt to sell your goods.

I love it when people buy something
without thinking about the drive
home. Reminds me of some of the
crazy loads I have seen people
carrying on motos and bikes in lots
of other countries.

As for Recycling. In Canada we have a strong system for bottles, cans and even milk containers now. The system works because we pay such large deposits forcing us to hang on to them instead of throwing them away. Hence the need for Bottle Depots. Some interesting relics in that place for sure.