"A million monkeys banging on a million typewriters for a million years will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare."

So some of you know (and probably don't care) that I finished my CMA designation this summer. As of September I could officially stick the letters behind my name.

Well being the glutton for punishment that I am, I'm pursuing another, more obscure certification. Even some accountants haven't heard of it: Certified Internal Auditor, or CIA for short. Reason being is that I will most likely be starting a new job in Audit (within the same company) next month and my experience is a bit lacking in this area. That, and I'm shooting for a business card that needs to be six inches wide to fit all the letters behind my name. Heh.

The books were shipped to me last week. Get a load of Chapter 1:

Internal Auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined aproach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governable processes.

It gets worse from there. I just hope the actual job doesn't make me cry like reading this book is doing.

I had a tee time booked for this morning at 7:15am. Got my ass out of bed, changed, did a Tim's run and had just arrived at my friend's house at 6:30 when the lightning started. Metal golf clubs don't make good umbrellas so we called it off.

I drove home, downed my coffee and went back to bed. Wouldn't you know it, but by the time 7:15 rolled around the sky had cleared and it ended up being a beautiful morning. Stupid hurricane remnants.

I slept in till noon just for spite. That, and I'm lazy.

Today was Dave's bachelor party out in Oshawa. The day involved a round of golf with players of varying skill, dinner, drinks and muff diving.

Actually it was a good send-off even without the drunken debauchery that normally takes place at these things. The "muff diver" was a shot I bought Dave at the bar, as suggested by our very helpful waitress. Basically a B-52 where they stick the shot glass inside a tumber and surround it with whipped cream. Too bad he cheated and used his hands.

This weekend I volunteered and played in a hockey tournament sponsoring Easter Seals. Even though the only team we beat was the Goodlife Fitness girls team, it was still fun. Alexei Ponikarovsky was there signing autographs and later hung out with us for awhile.

Apparently I'm famous, too. The local Hamilton tv station was there covering the event and they got me on the news taking the cermonial faceoff. I guess no one explained to the captain of the Goodlife team what a ceremonial faceoff was, because she knocked the ball clear away from me, and afterwards left me standing there with my outstreched hand. Those girls didn't come to mess around I guess.

Alright people have been bugging me for highlights from my trip to Venezuela. Here are the coolest parts of my trip:

by dumb luck having a bunch of friends from Canada and Australia working in Caracas the same week I had booked for my trip, crashing in their hotel for free

the beach at isla sombrero and the crazy boat ride there

bars at seem to never close

Canaima National Park

hiking two and a half hours through the jungle to get to the bottom of Angel Falls, the tallest in the world

Caracas from above

Some not so cool stuff:

twisting my ankle

getting completely soaked during a three hour ride in this boat in Canaima

praying to the porcelain god after realizing that Venezuelan drinks are stiffer than up here

All in all a great time was had by all. What made it even nicer was the fact that Venezuela isn't really a big tourist destination yet, so I could wander about freely without fear of being harassed. Also got to practice my Spanish... I'm getting much better at it. If I insulted anyone this time it wasn't accidental.