It's kind of weird, but I've had odd thoughts of Dean flitting through my head over the past couple days.
He had just bought a house and moved his parents in with him from where they had been living in Whitecourt, about an hour outside of Edmonton. I thought it so strange that he would do that. "Dean, you're supposed to move out to get away from your folks at the earliest opportunity, not move them in to your house!" He said that it was more customary for Chinese families to do that sort of thing.
He exhibited a sort of childish pride in his collection of magnets that adorned the freezer door in our shared apartment in Ft. McMurray. Every time anybody had a birthday (or wanted to make up an excuse to celebrate), he'd be one of the first on board to head out to the local den of iniquity; from which he always returned with a new addition. Signed, of course. My sole contribution to the freezer was a Fraser family crest magnet. I insisted on keeping it there to add a little class to an otherwise puerile mosaic. It looked a litte out of place beside, "To Dean, breast wishes, Candi." (I've had a slight aversion to establishments of ill-repute since my university days; a fact I documented in detail here last week.)
His brother is nine years his senior, married, and Dean often spoke of how he enjoyed spending time with his nephew. I never knew him to have a girlfriend over the past few years, and he'd also often say how, though he enjoyed seeing his family, there was no sense of urgency on his part to start one of his own.
Working and living together in a city over 400 kilometres from our homes saw us establish a highly predictable routine; acted out in what would generously be called spartan surroundings. Dean slept on an inflatable bed, I slept on a fold-out futon and Chris made do with the single bed he trucked up that he'd had since grade school. The kitchen table was surrounded by white plastic lawn chairs and there was a noticable regression in comfort as you scanned the layout of the living room: nearest the main door, Chris had his spanky black leather La-Z-Boy recliner (a Christmas gift to himself), I ensconced myself in my ugly green Sklar Pepplar swivel rocking chair (it's older than I am but it's the most comfortable thing ever; I was nursed in it, so I guess you could call me attached), and Dean had a double fold-out black vinyl camping lawn chair. Chris had a wooden TV tray, mine was plastic, and then Dean borrowed whichever one wasn't being used at the time. This menagerie was then arrayed around the TV, which was regularly tuned to the TBS Laugh Pack on weekday evenings. That, or we'd laugh ourselves into hysterics watching Kenny Blankenship and Vic Romano on MXC: The Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.
When that wasn't quite enough to sate our appetite for the mundane, we'd walk across the parking lot to the Moxie's restaurant for beer 'n' wings. (And an involuntary pack of cigarettes from sitting in the bar.) Moxie's is rather unique in having a beer tower. (Or perhaps not so unique, but it was sure a big hit in a town as staid as Ft. McMurray; which is to say not at all.) When a litre of beer just won't do, order yourself a metre of beer. The waitress brings this tall, plastic tower filled with amber liquid that you can dispense into your pint glass yourself. Splitting one between three guys masticating their way through several piles of hot wings is just about right for a pleasant stumble back to the apartment afterwards. I recall one evening that I downed most of a beer tower myself and did not enjoy my next day at work. At all.
But more often than that it would be the routine in the living room around disparate dinners and shared commiseration regarding long days, time spent away from family and how the latest addition to the scope of work makes it look like we'll be working eleven days on / three days off for an extra five months. A part of me misses that now.
