マガジン

On July 27^th 2013 Guelph hosted the 2^nd ever PPM Canada meeting, the first in 2 years. This PPM Magazine article will talk briefly about this meeting and some of the fun, humourous and entertaining aspects of the night.

Twelve of us signed up for the meeting, I’ll take some time now to introduce everyone:

1.       Bobby Jay – Returned to the stadium where he was a linebacker back in the day for the University of Guelph football team. Rumour has it that aside from wooing women, back in those days teams were allowed to use dinosaurs as linebackers; Guelph chose him instead.

2.       canucks357 – No comment, nothing good to say about the guy.

3.       lotnut2000 – Was kind enough to grace us with his presence and provide a name for the next meeting. His wife said as he was leaving “have fun at Dork Fest my little love muffin” so I think we have next meeting’s title: Dork Fest 2! (Side note: I may have made up the last 4 words in that quote.)

4.       saint2e – Everyone bowed in his presence, a legend of PPM Canada. Also had the quote of the meeting (see lessons section, #1).

5.       JoruneZephyr – Third time I’ve met with Ben on official PPM business. The first time was at the original PPM meeting, the second was in Los Angeles for a Ducks game. The good thing about this meeting was we had our story straight (see lessons section, #2).

6.       kanukisbrave – Seemed to be chirping Gary (djgurygury) for much of the night. Either he has a man-crush or he is bitter his colleague is in 5^th in I.1 handball to his last (at the time of writing this article).

7.       djgurygury – Provided a little Latin flair to the evening. Sadly, there was no flamboyant attire, he simply emanated his DJ prowess without even meaning to.

8.       pat2e – No relation to saint2e, Pat is a secret agent for an unknown country. His ability to avoid his face being caught on camera shows impeccable skills that all aspiring young agents can only dream of obtaining.

9.       georgejeanne – Hard to speak positively about a man who names his team after Toronto’s NHL franchise. However, truth be told, the Ontario Maple Leafs were at least able to not only make the playoffs but keep a 4-1 lead in the deciding final game! (Oh snap!)

10.   goldilocksdj – The meeting spawned a soccer and handball team. Thankfully, he was able to illustrate proper control over the English language. The same can not be said for his hockey team, the Canadian Hitmne.

11.   Nytemare – Sadly Sean lost his hockey team prior to the meeting, a team always in the thick of things in I.1. He has since started over and has his soccer team as well as a handball team created at dinner during the meeting. Send him some friendlies if you have a large arena, he can use some cash to expedite his hockey team’s return to form.

12.   monty203 – Son of georgejeanne, never asked if he supports a real NHL team. Very interested and hopeful to be next season’s U18 manager for Canada. Also couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of the cheerleaders. Has a striking resemblance to Klitz from the movie The Girl Next Door (highly recommended! just forget about the fact Dion Phaneuf is married to her now). Don't worry monty, watch the movie and you'll appreciate the resemblance once you've finished watching it!

Lessons:

1.       The first lesson learned from the meeting was that of strategy. saint2e pointed out (and I loosely quote): “We could have invited mikpj and paid for his trip from Montreal. Once here we could tie him up for 22 days and we would not have to worry about the Montreal Strippers anymore!” Certainly wise words from the philosopher of south-west Kitchener. That tactic may be employed come our 3^rd meeting, no comment on who the victim may be.

2.       When meeting people from PPM, have your stories line up. When in Los Angeles watching the Ducks play the Oilers we ate at a Chili’s close to the arena. The waitress was talking to us and said “Did you two guys meet online or something?” The hesitation and awkwardness of our reply could never be overturned. Since then we go with “we met through hockey.” I recommend getting your stories straight in the future as well.

3.       Randy (kanukisbrave) was talking handball and players when he used an interesting sentence or two. Completely normal in the realm of PPM. However, anyone walking by certainly would have had other ideas. Be very mindful of your choice of words when talking PPM in public. Using a sentence along the lines of “I got a good 15 year old last night. Great technique!” may be a bad idea to say. Instead use “I had a good prospect arrive from the academy last night. He has great technical skill for his age.” Thankfully no security agents or undercover officers were around at the time. It was a running joke the rest of the night though.

Now that I’ve introduced everyone and highlighted the key topics, I should mention what we actually did. We all met at Moxie’s (known for their choice of waitresses) and had dinner for a couple hours and chatted. The two images below show the scene from dinner.

From there we meandered over to the football stadium where we found our seats. The view wasn’t too bad though it was quite cramped for some of us (apologies Ben, she was taking up two seats to my left I swear).

Eventually the real entertainment showed up!

The game was better than the score reflected. I was unaware that Saskatchewan fans were to the CFL as Green Bay fans were to the NFL. In Green Bay their fans wear cheese on their head. Saskatchewan fans do the same with watermelon, or some variation of it as the guy in front of us was doing.

As the game went on the home team started to lose more and more but it was still smiles all around (apologies for image quality, panoramic images aren’t that great with moving targets – sorry Ben, you got the worst of that deal!).

The rain came next. It was quite interesting as we could see it slowly move across the stadium starting on the other side, it gave us a few valuable seconds to find shelter under ponchos. Or, in the case of saint2e, to brace ourselves for a sweatshirt turning into a sponge!

When the game finished we walked back to our vehicles at Moxie’s and in my opinion this was the best part. Not the fact we lost Gary (djgurygury) somewhere back at the stadium, though that was a bonus (jokes Gary!), but the torrential downpour of rain that ensued during our 25min walk back. I don’t think anyone had a single dry piece of clothes at that point, poncho or no poncho. Despite this everyone took it in stride and actually was quite the accent on a fun evening chatting PPM, sports and just hanging with the guys – or dorks depending on if your wife is Mrs. lotnut2000.