Details

The people have asked for details, and here they are (although a bit late - the full update is to follow). This is the message I sent Marie on Facebook to commence "Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister 2: The Date That Would Not End Even Though Both Parties Wanted It To".

"Ola Marie,

Every night I lie awake, tossing and turning, thinking of our night together in Whistler. Of our meal, or our drive around the town - the lake, the ski area car park. Or later, at your house, when I lay waiting for you, ready for romance.

Maybe we went too fast, maybe we wanted too much. Maybe we looked for too many answers, when the power of love comes only from questions.

And so I find myself in Whistler once more, wondering if there is a second chance for us. For love.

My phone is broken, but my heart beats strong. Tell me when you are free. I cannot wait to see you again.

Love always,
Juan"

To which I received a mixed response. She accepted my friend request (which I would have advised against), but she did not reply.

More details to come.

Our Love Does Not Need A Second Chance

I was going to write about how I ended up in Rossland and all the things I've done since landing in Canada (don't worry, it's a short list), but let's be honest. Pretty much everyone reading this blog is only interested in my abortive romance with Maud's Hot Sister.

I will be honest. Things are not going well on the Maud's Hot Sister front. And not for want of trying. In Whistler, it took no time at all to assemble all the necessary elements for wooing: A rudimentary knowledge of Mr Big's seminal romantic-rock classic I'm The One Who Wants To Be With You, a collection of friends to provide alternating moral support and coercive social pressure according to my somewhat variable motivation, a sweater vest, Maud's Hot Sister's address, the complicitude of Maud's Hot Sister's Sister (Maud) and, perhaps most importantly, a backup singer with a voice of pure gold to hide in a bush and sing the harmony/backup parts that make Mr Big's hit so loin stirring good.

Indeed, all of the pieces of the puzzle were in place to provide a surprise rendition of one of modern music's greatest songs to Maud's Hot Sister while she listened from the balcony of her own house. Short of turning up in her bed scantily clad and surrounded by candles and rose petals it was the most romantic thing I could think of that was free, and I've already tried the other option.

The only piece missing was Maud's Hot Sister. Who was in Vancouver THE WHOLE TIME. I can't help but think that someone should have alerted me to this possibility. I don't take this dating business lightly - I could have gone to a lot of trouble and considerable expense for nothing.

The apparent up-side of Maud's Hot Sister being in Vancouver was that she was heading to Rossland a few days after I arrived and it synched up pretty well with my plans. And so, on Wednesday, rather than candles and bubble baths and sustained self loathing, I met Maud's Hot Sister at a Starbucks in Vancouver and the two of us set out on the 9-ish hour drive to Rossland.

In the uplifting feel-good comedy that will eventually be made about my life, this car trip will be represented as a montage with some kind of folksy adult contemporary soundtrack and gently shifting images of the two of us smiling at each other, looking at the the beautiful scenery, maybe sharing a stack of pancakes that later generations will look back on as an example of poor role-modelling for healthy food choices.

But none of those things happened. Oh God how I yearned for pancakes. For the sweet release of ice cream and maple syrup. For diabetes.

In reality, it was a long, tiring and inefficient journey with innumerable small stops and some super sketchy driving over a mountain pass in a snow storm. In keeping with the tradition of me driving terrible vehicles in Canada, our ride had bald all season tyres (which means not winter tyres, which means terrifying) and headlights that didn't have either high-beam or low-beam. I couldn't work out which was missing, which in itself is something of a worry. Also, the driver's side seat belt didn't really work.

Anyway, we left late so we slept the night in the back of the car near the top of the sketchy mountain pass. The next morning the storm had cleared out and we stopped in Princeton, then Keremeos, then Oosoyous, and then again in Oosoyous in a different place. Look it up on Google Maps people, there pretty much aren't two distinct places in Oosoyous you can stop, and yet...

The romance between Maud's Hot Sister and I has survived many setbacks. It thrived despite being conducted for most of its life through second-degree text messaging. It persisted in spite of my obviously spurious claims to be half-Costa Rican, my flat out lies about dancing or speaking Spanish, my terrible haircut, my lack of a white suit. Most significantly, it survived in spite of the mutual disinterest of both parties and the fact that it was completely fictional in every important respect. But it could not survive the drive from Vancouver to Rossland. In our 20 hour approximation of a 9 hour journey we went straight from the thrill and excitement of new love and dating to the grim, jaded habit of infatuation held too fast for too long.

And so, dear friends, I announce to you the end of my first great attempt at wooing. Yes, perhaps there is time for love to flourish again. Maybe we can arrange a romantic interlude the All-U-Can-Eat Spaghetti night at the local diner. But really, I think that it's time to move on. There's a whole world of people with hot sisters out there. It's time to make another lucky girl extremely confused and uncomfortable.

Back in Action

Dear friends, this blog is rising from its peaceful slumber in a time of great personal distress. And in times of great personal distress, I turn to the internet for succor, for the wisdom to sooth my troubled soul.

Let's say that you were going overseas, perhaps to North America, and during your trip you might hypothetically be going to Whistler. Now consider that in this purely hypothetical situation Whistler might be the home of a person who is the sister of another person who is well known to you. And to continue our speculation, purely for the sake of consideration, with no necessary relation to the real world, let us mull over the possibility that some time ago you might have taken this person, the sister of the person know by you - the one who lives in Whistler (hypothetically) - on a date which was spectacular in both its awkwardness and in unlikeliness to result in any kind of romantic liaison.

In this purely hypothetical situation, it is not really worth speculating about whether or not your should take the sister, who might, for the sake of argument, be considered hot, on a second date. Clearly, you should. Far more fruitful grounds for speculation would be to ask where you should take her on said date, and what you should wear. And what you should do if she has a boyfriend. That last question seems quite pertinent in our purely academic exercise in abstract thought.

So, I turn to you, wise and noble internet blog readers, to guide me in this time of personal (hypothetical) distress. Where should I take Maud's Hot Sister and what should I wear? A sushi dinner date is out - we've done that and I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights thinking about the bill. A movie is cheap and informal, so I wouldn't need a suit, but it would also go for TWO HOURS and there would be an implied duty to pull some kind of "yawn and casually put your arm over the other person's shoulder" move which I am unequivocally uncomfortable with. Where do people go on dates? What do they do? What do they wear? Why does anyone ever think it will be a good idea?

And finally, sweet internet, if you can think of any good reason why I shouldn't take Maud's Hot Sister on a date, please tell me what it is. At this stage I'm of the opinion that to return to Whistler and not even try to take Maud's Hot Sister on a second date would be unconscionably cowardly. That, of course, doesn't mean that I think it would be pleasant or a good idea.

Although there are a few things going in my favor. I have a vastly superior haircut, I don't have a van that won't start in the rain, and I have plenty of time to shop around my home town for a white suit if that proves to the be wooing weapon of choice.

Also, in other news (since I'm actually posting I might as well get everything out of my system), I recently met up with an old school friend who works for Walmart. It was wonderful to be able to express my gratitude to him for the generosity of his fine organisation showed me during my extended stay in their car park in Penticton (and one other night spent in their car park in Kelowna - which has wonderful views if you're ever out that way). Also, Walmart was the supplier of my much loved octopus towel, which I will be reunited with soon. He also suggested that if I visit him in San Francisco he would be able to take me to the Walmart head office and maybe even find me someone vaguely important to thank in person. I expect that that won't be possible until my next trip to North America, but I look forward to the opportunity immensely.

And for those of you who care, I'll be heading to Canada and the US on the 1st of Feb, coming back to Canberra in time for frisbee training on the 19th.

The Denouement

Every now and then I feel somewhat self conscious about posting on this blog because I know my parents will read whatever I write. A friend once expressed surprise that I was willing to write about supposedly scary things like climbing around on a stationary chairlift, given that it might freak out my parents. After many years of that kind of behavior from all three of their children, of which I am the youngest, I am confident that they are accustomed to such exploits. Besides, driving my van around is vastly more dangerous and terrifying than anything else I have done in Canada. Instead, I am concerned that my parents will look upon my exploits in other fields of life - like work, friendships and specifically humor - with consternation and disapproval. This is one of those times.

On Wednesday night, Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister concluded with a daring foray into enemy territory. Given the extensive groundwork I had conducted at our date on Tuesday night, and my sense of missed opportunity at having not "made a move" (whatever the hell that is) during our romantic drive around Whistler post-dinner, I planned a decisive final step in my wooing.

As described by live tweet, while Marie was distracted by one housemate (Robi), Maud and I stole the white roses I had given her when I arrived and laid a path of petals up the stairs and into Marie's boudoir. I also found some candles and light these in strategic locations on the stairway and in the bedroom. Then, Robi and Fleur triggered an exodus from the living room, claiming to be ready for bed, and put some Barry White on the stereo (which, thankfully, could handle his resonant baritone voice). I'm not quite sure how it all worked, but somehow this was enough to get Marie out of the living room and near enough to the stairway that she realised something was afoot. With increasing embarrassment, she climbed the stairs and entered her bedroom to find me lying on her bed, tastefully clad in a bathrobe (probably also hers) and socks (definitely mine) and surrounded by flower petals. Her response was to laugh uproariously and throw her small fluffy dog onto the bed, which killed to mood somewhat. She did later promise to remember the experience forever, which I am choosing to take as a compliment.

Having "made a move" sufficient to cover for my cowardice in the car the previous night, I resumed my pants and left the room. Mission accomplished.

There are photos, but they're quite alarming, and in the interests of my parents I have wisely placed them on twitter where anyone who wants to see them will no doubt find a way to track them down. I am trusting the confusingness of the internet to insulate my parents from what might be a fairly traumatic experience.

With my work in Whistler completed, I left town yesterday to return to Penticton in the sunny (LOL) Okanagan region. It is, of course, dreary and miserably here today. The van refused to start in the morning, which would have made for an awkward additional night at Maud's Hot Sister's house, but thankfully it roared to life in the afternoon and still seems to be running OK despite the damp conditions.

As an aside, the whole Maud's Hot Sister thing has had a remarkable effect on readership of this blog. The Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister post has finally replaced the post about Dave Pitchford as the most read entry, which was sad on several levels. And on Thursday (my time) there were more page views than the whole blog got in any of the months from August (when it started) to December 2011. Thanks everyone for your interest and moral support, it kept me going in those tough moments where my sense of dignity or financial prudence seemed likely to triumph.

Finally, if anyone else has a hot sister that needs to be romanced by a socially awkward and romantically disinclined man, let me know. And don't say Tom's hot sister, because I know her and that would be creepy. Hilarious, but creepy.

Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister

The revelations outlined in the previous post gave me a modicum of comfort going into the big date. If Maud's Hot Sister wasn't the kind of person who sent lewd text messages to potential suitors via her sister as I originally thought, she was probably also not the kind of person who would do something unseemly in a Whistler restaurant. Maud mentioned that her sister liked sushi, and Nagomi Sushi was on the Whistler restaurant guide that was in the "Low $" category, so I made a booking for 7:30.

After a few hours at the gym and swimming at the Whistler recreation centre to get my body in top condition for the rigours of the night ahead, I went home to get ready. I shaved with an actual razor and removed ALL THE HAIR FROM THE BOTTOM HALF OF MY FACE for the second time in probably 4 years, showered, put on my suit and was ready to leave at a punctual 7:20.

Somehow, Maud's Hot Sister's preparations for the date became a team effort, and I waited until 7:50 for her to emerge from the upstairs bedroom to the considerable excitement of my housemates Maud and Fleur. Although this was stressful and I was worried about my booking, it did give me valuable time to make twitter updates to share the experience with y'all.

Marie and I, ready to depart.

In the end, I needn't have worried, because although the sushi place gave every indication of being super busy when I called to book, they were less than half-full. I should mention that I lost some style points on the way over, because Marie ended up driving me in her car after we decided we couldn't necessarily rely on the van to get us there and back.

Because I'm a gentleman who thrives under pressure, I ordered for both of us. For appetisers we had goma-ae (spinach in a sesame oil dressing) and takoyaki balls (deep-fried  octopus in batter).

Mains were local wild albacore tuna sashimi; red snapper, wild sockeye salmon and grilled eel nigiri sushi; and tuna and scallop sushi rolls.

Maud's Hot Sister tucks into a delicious scallop roll.

Since suffering is dish best served cold and over an extended period of time, we shared a green tea creme brulee for dessert.

Awkward dinner topics included: Whether the chopsticks were Chinese or Japanese, the philosophy of hairdressing, Canadian waiting staff, whether some of the other people at the farewell party that I crashed the night before by arriving unannounced to ask Marie on a date were actually planning to hit on Marie later that evening, and whether it was weird to wear a cream jacket to a pretty low-key sushi restaurant in Whistler. I will confess that I didn't really understand much of what Marie was talking about, but my years of retail experience mean I can nod and smile like a volunteer at an old-folks-home.

I had heard on the radio a few days earlier that one of the most influential factors in a first date was the generosity of the tip, so I left a substantial one. I also felt guilty about coming into a restaurant late, making a number of small and confusing orders, and openly discussing how much we didn't like North American service culture, so I tried to make up for that. I'm not sure how the whole "generous tip gets the ladies" approach is supposed to work. Upon seeing the bill, I just wanted to slide under the table and splash acid on my face. There didn't seem to be a way to discretely pay the bill and draw attention to the tip I was paying without a) discussing the size of the bill, and thus shed the thin vestige of denial that was holding back my tears and b) appearing pretty crass in front of my date. So I suspect that the tip didn't work as hard in my favour as it was supposed to.

Marie isn't that blurry in real life.

After our date, we went for a drive around the sights of Whistler. We visited the car park at the ski resort to see the view of the town (it was obscured by trees), the sliding centre (the luge and bobsled track, at which Marie competes and officiates), and two of the many lakes around the town. I suspect that if this had been a normal date, this would have been the part where I was supposed to make my move. Making a move would have probably made me the greatest human being to have ever lived, but I didn't for two reasons. First, I really really didn't want to, and second, I can't even conceive of how such a move would be made. Surely no one reasonably expects me to just dive over to the other side of the car and start smooching. The little storage compartment between the seats would be in the way, for a start.

OK, I'd better go get ready for the grand finale. Over and out.

An Important Clarification

OK, before I post the details of my big date last night, I should mention a major piece of the puzzle that I found out the night before last. Avid followers of this sorry tale will recall that Maud's Hot Sister and I had been involved in something approximating a heterosexual version of remote gay chicken, with communication being conducted via text messages sent to and from Maud. The whole question of using your sister to remotely hit on your housemate, as Marie appeared to be doing, was one of the most perplexing aspects of this whole scenario. The question of just what kind of person asks their sister to ask their housemate about the size of the housemate's naughty bits is one that I have mused over in many of the quiet hours in the last few weeks.

It turns out that Marie had no idea that Maud was relaying her questions to me (and then, in most cases, simply fabricating answers) and was apparently mortified to discover that her sister had taken a supposedly private joke between the two of them and shared it with her housemates. So it may be true that blood runs thicker than water, but the compulsion to meddle in the love-lives of one's housemates runs thicker than blood, perhaps like a very thick and nutritious smoothie.

This meant that one of the most terrifying (and unlikely and confusing) possibilities for my unenthusiastic attempt at wooing was off the table. Maud's Hot Sister had not managed to defy reality and come to the conclusion that I was in fact a hot, well endowed Latino man named Juan. Since sleeping with Maud's Hot Sister was not something I actually wanted to do (but would have seriously considered in light of its enormous LOL value), this significantly reduced the risks associated with actually heading to Whister and commencing Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister. Of course, I didn't know that until I was already well committed to the operation, so I still deserve respect and maybe some kind of ongoing payment from the government.

Another implication of this change is that it's still possible for me to reclaim ownership of this joke. Of course, attempting to regain control of the joke was the slippery slope that got me into this quagmire, but circumstances have changed, and I really believe that I can make everyone else uncomfortable instead of me if I play my cards right. If Marie never intended to make me uncomfortable with her remarkably forward text messages, then she's basically been on the receiving end of awkward hilarity the whole time. In fact, at this stage, it's Maud who comes out looking the most devious and cunning of us all.

That means that tonight presents an opportunity for one final assault in Operation Date Maud's Hot Sister. If I can push everyone else out of their comfort zone, I will maximize the LOLs and emerge victorious from what has been a fairly bruising encounter. Tonight, after all, is Wednesday night. And as the prophets say, "Wednesday night is the night we make love."

Cross Lingual Haircuts: A tale of sorrow and loss

Yesterday I spent the day trawling the thrift stores (known in Australia as op-shops) of Vancouver in search of a white suit. Sadly, there wasn't anything suitable to be found (pun completely intended. Oh my God. I think I need to lie down), and I settled for a cream jacket and a nice pair of pants. The lady at the checkout of the thrift store was pretty impressed by my selection and suggested that I must be headed somewhere nice in the outfit, at which I laughed nervously and did a poor job of concealing my terror.

Anyway, after the suit buying I went to get a real haircut from a haircutting professional. I have had several haircuts in Canada, but they've been from me, my housemate Robi, and at one stage I even got a trim from Maud's Hot Sister (who is, incidentally, a hairdresser). This combination of haircutting styles and levels of competence had resulted in a hairstyle which oscillated between completely amazing and pretty damn awful depending on how much time and hairgel I wanted to expend each day.

On a good day, it looked like this:

And the goal was to turn it into this:

Getting a haircut is a baffling and unpleasant process. I have to surrender control of my head to someone else, who will ask me questions in incomprehensible hairdresser lingo that I don't even remotely understand, and then charge me for the experience. Every answer I give to their questions is fraught with danger. Will this cost more? Is that a code for giving me a perm? One once asked me if I wanted layers. Layers of what? I said no, and that seemed to indicate to them that the haircut was over. That experience cost me $25.

Given that I don't expect to understand anything a hairdresser says, I don't feel compelled to go to hairdresser who speaks English. Pretty much the best haircut I've ever had was in Japan. Admittedly, he just cut my hair to a uniform 2.5cm in length, which was exactly what I wanted, but he also trimmed the bits around my ears, which was an added bonus.

And so it was that I went to a Chinese hairdresser in Vancouver. They spoke no English and I spoke no Chinese. Upon my arrival in their salon, it didn't seem to occur to them at all that I was actually a customer. After some confusion they swung into full-scale team haircut action. I tried to communicate that I wanted my hair trimmed on the sides, cut short at the back and then left long at the front. Things started out well, the sides were trimmed, and the back was cut short. Then, with little fanfare and a stern expression, my hairdresser cut a short strip into the front. Gone were my dreams of a Morrissey-like pouf at the front of my head. This was a serious hair salon, for serious people and serious haircuts.

I must admit that this had a strong deflationary effect on me. This whole romancing Maud's Hot Sister enterprise has been something of a grim duty that I must see through to the bitter end. Coming out with a cool haircut was the one part of this process that I was looking forward to. Well, such youthful fancies must be set aside, because now I look like this:

Which would be great if I was trying to get work as a defense contractor, but I'm trying to romance a lady. Oh, and so you don't get worked up, that's not my new suit. I'm saving the suit for my date tonight.

Mission Incomprehensible

OK, so I just managed to slip into Marie's house, get a shower, eat a small quantity of cereal and get out again without her even realising I'm in her postcode. I had all three of my housemates helping me out with this process, so don't go thinking I'm a ninja or anything. Besides, a true ninja would have finished the bowl of cereal.

Today, I'm going to find a white suit (which will involve driving to Vancouver if necessary), get a haircut to look like this guy (I'm already halfway there - it just needs a professional tidy-up), book a restaurant for my hot date tonight and get ready for some sweet awkward romance.

To do this I have: A van full of smelly smelly clothes that doesn't start reliably in the rain (it is helpfully raining like a mofo), a mobile phone that has a broken button that turns the volume down constantly (which not only makes it difficult to hear people, it also drains the battery and occasionally freaks out the whole phone and renders all the other buttons inoperable), a laptop whose screen needs to be set to careful angles or the screen flickers like those Sonic the Hedgehog games before Sega found out they were triggering epilepsy in kids and mellowed them out, and three housemates who are ruthlessly effective and terrifyingly committed to this plan.

I'll tweet some live updates (well, probably not, but I'll try), so check out twitter for more details (you're all asleep, why am I bothering?).

Doing it for the LOLz

I must confess to a serious blogging omission over the last few months. I realise that you guys don't expect any kind of detailed exposition of my life, but I figure that you probably do want to know about anything funny or foolish or awkward that I have been engaged in during my travels. On that front, there is a pretty significant story that I probably should have told you earlier, but for a variety of reasons it never happened.

Don't get me wrong - I didn't mean to conceal this story from you all, but it's a difficult situation to explain, and will be especially hard to capture in writing. I will do my best, but please be understanding. This story builds on a number of themes that have developed during my time in Canada, so I'll link those in for people who haven't read the back catalogue. So here goes:

I have, for some months now, been involved in a kind of awkward false romance with Maud's Hot Sister.

It all started in early February, when I found myself suddenly single in the sausage convention that is Rossland during winter. My housemates instantly recognised the opportunity this presented for hilarious housemate gossip and meddling, and set about trying to find me a lady to woo. I have never been one for wooing the ladies, and my misgivings about potential Rossland romance were amplified by the fact that there are no single women in Rossland, and even if they were, I would have been a long way down the system of single-Rossland-man seniority.

So I hit upon a diabolical plan to stave off any uninvited dating "assistance" from my housemates, while turning the awkwardness of the whole situation away from me and onto someone else. Fortunately, the perfect candidate had recently been presented to me in the form of my french housemate Maud's sister Marie. A few days after Marie ended her visit to Rossland to return to her home in Squamish, near Vancouver, I declared my undying love for her, dubbing her "Maud's Hot Sister". In one fell swoop I had neutralised any housemate meddling and made a hilarious joke that would make Maud uncomfortable.

And that blissful situation lasted for all of a few days. I had made a number of errors of judgement in formulating my plan. First, I had overlooked the unstoppable strength of the impulse to meddle in the romantic lives of one's housemates. Second, I had misjudged just how canny Maud would be at turning my joke against me. Before I knew it, my professed desire for Maud's Hot Sister had been communicated to said sister, by Maud, via text message.

This seemed wierd, but reasonably innocuous at the time. How wrong I was. This was, in fact, the first shaking of the tracks that implies the imminent arrival of the freight train of doom. To my relief, Maud's Hot Sister's reply was baffled and not particularly interested. But Maud wasn't about to let this golden opportunity in housemate meddling go begging.

Before I knew it, Maud commenced a concerted campaign of remote text message wooing on my behalf with her Hot Sister. Maud's Hot Sister's replies changed tone. She made objections like "I only like Latino men" or "He has to be able to dance". Realising that my defense from uninvited dating assistance was under threat, I made up increasingly ludicrous answers to her questions. I was half Costa-Rican, I spoke Spanish, I was an excellent dancer, My name was actually Juan, etc. I even sent her a picture of a long haired, well muscled, shirtless Latino man emerging from the sea with a signed invitation to dance written in Spanish that I found in an online phrasebook (this was, incidentally, the first and hopefully only time that I have google image searched "Hot Latino Men" at work). At some point in this process, my other housemates realised that rather than being an obstacle to Rossland based meddling, this was in fact a shining opportunity to engage in relationship meddling via text message. I continued to up the ante, assuming that at any moment Maud would reach a limit on how involved she was willing to get in her sister's love life. Eventually, I reasoned, she would no longer want to be a text message intermediary between her sister and her supposedly besotted housemate.

It was only when the questions from Marie (the Hot Sister) became disturbingly lewd that I realised that this was another substantial error of judgement. Maud faithfully relayed these questions and, I have a horrible suspicion, even fabricated answers when I strenuously refused to respond.

At this point, it became obvious to all parties involved that I had completely lost control of this joke.

But I am not the kind of man who turns around in the face of adversity. I had created an awkward joke, and it was now my responsibility to see it to its natural conclusion. The fact that my creation had turned against me was no reason to let down the people who now looked to me for LOLz.

The reason I'm writing all this now, is because I'm in a MacDonalds in Chilliwack, just outside Vancouver, on my way to Squamish, to see my housemates Robi, Fleur and Maud one last time before they back to Europe. And they are staying with Maud's Hot Sister, who I have been assured via text message, is ready and waiting.

Some new friends I made climbing at Skaha have given me a pineapple for good luck, and I've spent part of my day scouring thrift stores for a white suit to wear when I take Maud's Hot Sister out for dinner. Somehow I have settled on taking Marie out to dinner in a white suit as a kind of talisman that will see me safely through to the other side of this joke, although I'm somewhat terrified of what will happen even if I do find a white suit and manage to go ahead with the plan.

Wish me luck, friends. I am your ever faithful servant of the LOLz.

Oh - and sorry, but there's no time for proofreading or putting those links in right now, I just found a paralysis tick on my back, and I should probably leave the MacDonalds before I take my shirt off and try to get it off.