The Sweep

Another year has come and gone for my best buddy Jeff. I told one person (Remo) at breakfast on Wednesday that it was Jeff's birthday. Jeff typically comes down to breakfast at the last second to grab a coffee and a "dart" before jumping into the "Christmas Jeep" to get to work. This morning though, Remo jumped up with his whole table to wish Jeff a happy birthday. Jeff thanked me for embarrassing him but I know that he meant "thank you, gracefully."

Maybe, by happenstance, Joe decided to make chili for us that Wednesday night. In true Italian "Iron Chef" fashion he thought that one large pot of chili would not be enough to feed the eight of us. So he also baked pork strip loins wrapped in prosciutto. He said it was the first time he tried that recipe and we were glad to be around to experiment on. I was sad that we didn't have enough time to get Jeff a birthday cake but honestly, we were all stuffed! There was room enough for wine and brandy though. We has such a good time that we went to Jeannie's room to wind down a bit. While there we found her "stash." At least that's what I called it. I guess Jeannie is tired of the same old breakfast from what is now called our "Coast" hotel that she bags oatmeal or granola in snack bags. I decided to entertain everybody by grabbing a bag of this stuff and pretending to do a few lines of it! I thought it was funny but Jeannie just thought I was drunk. Jeannie was right! Both Joe and I wished that we could have stayed "home" to do laundry the next day.

With permission from Remo, we were treated to his old fight footage after dinner. He is a retired lightweight boxing champion and now working at Bell. It is hard to believe that this happy, mild mannered, gentle man would jump into a ring and beat the crap out of his opponents. It is against my own blog rules to publish his last name because I would really like to let you know that we are in the presence of a true celebrity but I will protect his privacy and his celebrity. I am just so proud to know this guy!

Many of our wives have corrected us when we say we have gone "home" after work. I guess it's just habit to say you are going home after work. We are trying to train ourselves to say that we are back in our condo or hotel. Joe says that we should say "chalet" because after all, we do have a "love lounge." I think I like that!


As if on cue, our venue received it's Olympic rings. I tried to tell Jeff that in lieu of a cake, I arranged to have the rings placed for his birthday but he wouldn't believe me. Everything now seems to be in place. We have our rings and we have this white chimney looking thing just outside of our celebration square. The chimney looks like a giant torch and was placed there quietly enough a couple of weeks ago. There hasn't been much said about it to us but if there is not a flame on top of it during the Games then as Russell Peters would say, "come on, be a man! Do the right thing!" Personally, I would use his line (if there is no flame), "somebody gonna get ahurt, real bad!"

Our venue has been turned over to the RCMP for the weekend. Their officers (including their dogs) are combing over everything. We have a large room full of empty boxes of HDTVs, IP phones, WIFI nodes etc. The mounties said that they would go through all of them. Maurizio asked that as they go through them, could they count them as well since he lost count at about 195 HDTVs. On top of the RCMP scouring around, we have bus loads of VANOC, security, armed forces and cleaning staff buzzing back and forth. We have nicknamed the cleaning staff our "smurfs" since they have been uniformed in blue outfits and walk around in large packs of blue. I always comment to Jeff that my day is not made unless I see "Pat" among them. But that is another story you will have to hear in person only, please, as it does not translate properly into print!

We are done for the most part except for some odds and ends. Whenever we say we are done the phone rings and we hear Alexa agreeing to adding an IP phone here or moving an HDTV there. She has volunteered to saying it is all her fault that we are not yet totally complete. We found a wool glove on our venue and since nobody claimed it we have made a sign of it. (3 R's, these are the green games after all) The sign resides on the wall to the right of Alexa's computer and it has the index finger (be nice, the index finger is the one you point with, not the one you use for the Trudeau salute) pointing toward Alexa. It says in bold hot pink and lime green, "HER FAULT!" I guess we're not done until March 26th.

On a side note, I spent most of Friday afternoon trying to get my accreditation pass. I joked that I would be able to get a few days off (to ski) once the security sweep is done and our "load-in" pass becomes invalid. Maurizio said that he would ensure I got into the venue by getting me "day passes" if he had to. After the initial accreditation ordeal, getting a daily day pass and then going through security would just be a nightmare! Hopefully, I won't have to go that route. The skiing would be nice though as we have worked continuously since January 2.