Boston Pizza's pizza slogan should be "It seems like a good idea at the time". Just feeling fantastic this morning. I'm in Toronto - I took the MEGABUS to Toronto from Kingston. I really don't like the bus - but the train was $140 and this was $36. My logic kicked in and said "I could save $100 if I take the bus". And that seems great until I actually get on the bus. I would have paid $500 to take any mode of transportation. The guy next to me was a student who decided to do work for the whole trip. He's right-handed so he kept elbowing me as he wrote. I was thinking of punching him but then it would have been awkward for the remainder of the three hours. I got here on Wednesday and performed for Marriott associates at a hotel at Yonge and Bloor. Easily one of the best shows of my life. After the show my buddy Chris and I headed out to Dakota Tavern to see a Stones coverband which was pretty cool. I got a text while we were there saying that a bunch of people from the show went into the elevator and got stuck in there for over an hour. THAT'S why I take the stairs. I'm not sure what happened for the rest of the evening but we wound up at Fran's Restaurant at 2:30am. The health kick is being slightly delayed. Thursday - my former fabulous neighbor Rhonda got me free tickets to the Jays game. I got 4 tickets so I gave them out to a few guys who I apparently didn't tell that the tickets were free. All of them brought money for the tickets. Yes, it did go through my head that if I took this money it would justify me buying a train ticket back to Kingston. But I couldn't do it. I got a beer and a hot dog at the game. $19.00. Thank you for that Toronto. Thursday and Friday were shows at Absolute Comedy on Yonge Street and I'm here until Sunday.

Jaden is just over a month old now and she's slowly adjusting to sleep through the night. Right now she's sleeping from about 11pm until 6am so it is a start. I'm getting a lot more sleep than Kathleen but I'm still not getting much. Da baby has started to smile now so that's great - she's doing a little something new every day which is awesome.

Off to Brockville on Thursday and that's it for comedy this week. I said that I would take March off to stay home with Jaden and Kathleen so I've done pretty good by only doing 3 shows.

Shows coming up:

March 24 - Brockville

April 7-10 - Absolute Comedy Toronto

April 26-May 1 - Absolute Comedy Ottawa

June 18 - some place near Bobcaygeon - that's right - it's so remote that Bobcaygeon is the reference point

June 23-25 - Cottage Comedy Festival

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be spending it at the Ministry of Transportation office and Health Canada office as both of my cards expire and I did not realize it. I told Kat that I didn't receive anything in the mail about it and she told me that I did. I checked....and I did. Fun times!

Well it is 2am on a work night. No - I didn't go out......I was hanging out with Miss Jaden while Kat got some sleep. So she slept on my stomach for about 2 1/2 hours. It can't get much better than that in life.
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Miss Jaden Corey Ella Hope! Born Feb 15 at 3am.

I will put up more pics in a bit. Just haven't had the energy to put a blog together since she was born. Beauty girl and Ethan loves her (as do we obviously).

New goal on the blog. My quest to 170 pounds. I am at 178 right now and I'm looking to take the next step.

And by step.....on Wednesday, for the first time in a long time, I'm going to jog. I don't care what the weather is like - I'm doing it (as long as it is not snowing, raining and it has to be perfectly sunny out).

Also - to assist with this I am cutting out beer for 30 days - not even one. Along with this - no fast food for 30 days.

I'm finished day 3 of no beer and day 2 of no fast food. Should be a hoot. I don't even know why I go to McDonalds. I finish a junior chicken burger in 2 minutes - hardly even seems worth it. But they are so good....
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No sign of baby. We are impatiently waiting.
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Ethan's birthday is today. We thought the baby might arrive on the same day as him but it looks like it won't. There are still 3 1/2 hours left...but doubtful. I'm no doctor but I think I can eyeball labour now.

Ethan had fun - had both families over to celebrate his 3rd bday. The last one before his world changes. Well - our worlds. I keep asking Kathleen what it was like when Ethan was a baby. I don't know how that is all blank in my head....but I have a feeling that I blocked it out of my memory on purpose.

My package arrived today. Kathleen asked me to order this thing we saw on an Infomercial called U-Glue. It's an adhesive that could do anything. A guy stuck it on his ceiling and attached his chin-up bar to it and did chin-ups (obviously). Amazing! We have this green plastic frog that we bought to hold Ethan's toys and that adhesive didn't work well so we thought U-Glue would be the answer.

The box came and.....it says in the instructions that it can only hold up to 3 pounds. 3. Pounds. I'm not positive - but I'm pretty sure the guy in the commercial weighed more than 3 pounds. Maybe he had one-dimensional disease - I don't know. But we got screwed.

This will not deter me from buying the slap-chop though.

I am terrible at Jeopardy. Anytime the term "Poets" or "Geology" pops up my brain shuts down. I will guess Edgar Allen Poe for all quotes - haven't been right yet. And "big rock" for Geology.

Shows coming up:
Feb 20 & 24 - private events in Toronto
Feb 26 - Cannington

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I think Ethan had a coffee and couldn't really sit still. He only had a half-hour nap at school but it didn't really show.

His rendition of of the C is for Cookie song.

Watching Super Bowl - no update on baby yet! Here's a video clip from a show last week. I have posted this on YouTube -

http://www.youtube.com/user/BHoe?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/uC02j1qNwaM

I've been pretty good at switching up the videos on there. I'm sure when the second baby comes that will be put on hold.

Here's a write-up from the show we did last Saturday at the Waterdown Lions Club.

I was on Kingston local TV today promoting The Boob Tour. Was pretty fun actually and the guy that interviewed me may do a spot on the upcoming amateur night.

I cut Ethan's hair today - I missed so many spots......

This is updated via my blackberry - good old technology.
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I just heard today that another comic left Yuk Yuks, the biggest comedy club company in Canada. I don't know if he left on his own merit or not but it's none of my business anyway.

They are the biggest comedy club in Canada and it's either you work for them or work on the independent scene. I've worked on the independent scene my whole career. When I started in Ottawa I worked the open-mic nights at the Yuks club in Ottawa. I asked for an opening spot and never got one. I may not have deserved one - I do not know. I didn't think of it as a career back then - it was just something fun to do every second Wednesday.

When Kathleen and I moved to Toronto I decided to give it a real shot. We both quit our jobs in Ottawa and moved out here so I could do comedy and she would be closer to Peterborough where her family was from. Hey - if you're ever moving - try to get a transfer....don't just quit your job. Lesson learned.

I did try out the New Talent nights at the Yuk Yuks in Toronto and met Mark Breslin who watched my set. He gave me a speech, which I'm sure he's told many times, about there being a all of these comedians trying to squeeze out of a bottle and many are caught in the bottle-neck. OK, so I don't remember how the story completely went but I got the gist of it. The gist was - he wasn't going to put me on his roster anytime soon. Which is fine - I'd rather someone be honest with me up front instead of saying "call next Tuesday" or something like that. Much better to know right away - that was in 2003 as I remember that I pretty well just moved there.

Although I did find it a little weird as Mark did mention to me that he was happy to see that I did not make fun of him on a comedy website that we went on which was www.torontocomedy.com. He said that he didn't read it but his lawyers did. My eyes just kind of stayed on the door - hoping someone would come in to break up this conversation. Maybe just get up and leave and receive the dead fish handshake goodbye.

So I went the Independent route. Which I'm VERY happy I did. I love working the clubs and the one-nighters that I do and I can book my own shows without any consequences.

There are pros and cons to both.

A lot of people bash Yuk Yuks - especially people that don't work for them anymore - but I have never had a problem with them. They do have quite an advantage over the indie scene. Ontario alone has at least 8 clubs so that is 8-16 weeks of work right there. Absolute Comedy has 2 clubs so that would be 2-4 weeks of work a year. I do love Absolute though - it's such a fun club - especially the Ottawa one. www.absolutecomedy.ca

Working for Yuks would be a great way to start. You get SO much more stage time. I may be doing one show on a Saturday night while someone else is doing 5 shows over the same weekend. But, due to a couple of reasons, I have absolutely zero desire to work for them. I'd be happy to do their clubs but I wouldn't sign onto their roster if I was asked.

I can see a lot of people outgrowing Yuk Yuks and moving on to their own thing but I doubt any one of them regret ever working there. I could be wrong - but I never have been before.

We got 2 great feedback emails from the shows on the weekend and we will be booked by the groups again so that's awesome.

Tomorrow I will be on CKWS in Kingston doing a TV interview to promote the show happening at Time To Laugh Comedy Club on Wednesday. The show is run by James Uloth and is called The Boob Tour. Should be a hoot.

I missed 2 days in a row on my blog BUT I do have a valid excuse. Well...not completely valid - but we had 2 shows on the weekend. Great shows I must say.

The first was in Belleville at the Empire Theatre - there were about 450 people at the show and they loved it. I booked the show but I was not onstage as I did the show last year. That's the rule - if you did it the year before then you don't do it again for at least about 5 years. Some comics don't follow that rule, do the shows themselves again and will eventually not get booked at the venue. So....long story short - I just went to watch.

The line-up was David Tsonos, Darryl Purvis and Ward Anderson. Fun times had by all - especially on the car ride back as we poked fun at Tsonos for about an hour and a half. He can take it - he's Ukranian or something like that.

I stayed the night in Belleville with the guys and they ended up ordering a pizza at 2:15. At 3am Darryl had fallen asleep and Dave cancelled the pizza. It was a little bit of a challenge to cancel the pizza at first as they ordered from Pizza Pizza but Dave kept calling Pizza Hut.

On Saturday morning I drove home at around 6:15, picked up some Timmy's for Ethan, Kat and I and hung out at the house for the afternoon. I left again around 2pm, picked up Darryl and Dave and made our way to Hamilton. We dropped Tsonos off on the way to the show as we had Dave Paterson booked on the Hamilton show.

That show was ALSO great. I didn't know how this show was going to turn out but they ended up selling out the venue. Darryl and I got there at around 6:30pm and I brought my speaker in as we had our own sound system. I thought it was for 120 people - but it was for 230 people. So our sound system would SUCK. It's good for about 150 people maximum. Luckily the Hall we were in had a sound system so after fiddling with it for an hour we finally got it going. That's why you should always get to the venue early. If we got there at 7:30 we would have been screwed. I thank Dave Paterson for pressing the magic button to get it going.

Dave and Darryl weren't happy with their sets but they did well. It's just hard to follow such an awesome, good-looking MC. Oh, and I went over time so I probably screwed them over. I was supposed to do 20 minutes off the top but i forgot to start my watch so I had no clue where I was for time. Turns out I did 30 minutes to start off the show. I had an awesome time though - Dave taped some of it so I'll post a clip in the next couple of days.

I drove back from Hamilton last night and got in around 2am. Ethan came into my room at 5am asking me if I wanted to play. Luckily he got the clue that I wasn't in a playing mood and he let me sleep until about 7. I know - sleeping in. We went outside for a little bit and he tried to help me make cookies.

I'm trying to get my blog to look somewhat cool so you'll see it change a few times over the next couple of weeks. I e-mailed Dayna to see how she got hers to look so good - you can click on her blog on the top-right of mine. I've also added my brother's website, Blanchard's and Dave Paterson's blog.

I just found out tonight that I may have to go and buy a new microphone. Not the biggest issue in the world but we do need one for Saturday so I'll have to run out pretty quick if we can't locate it. So - I need to learn in the next 16 hours what a good brand of microphone is. I know that ones that say "karaoke" are NOT good. There - I hope you learned something today.

Kathleen's last day of work is tomorrow - we're pumped up. We figure she'll have one or two weeks off and then.....BABY!

We've toyed around with names for the past couple of months and there is one that we both love. It just kind of came out of nowhere (and no - she won't be named "Rainbow") but it's a cool name, I've yelled it a few times to test it out and it is "mad approved", so we are good to go. We haven't told anyone the name yet and we are going to wait until the baby is born before we let everyone know.

Well - apparently I was only sick for one day. I called my buddy Chris because whenever something is going wrong with me - there's always something worse with him. It's not that he's trying to "one-up" me - he just doesn't have great luck.

I called him to tell him that I was sick and he told me his roof was leaking. Definitely having a worse day.

I helped my grandmother with tech support. She is the only person who thinks that I am a genius with a computer so I always try and do my best. She clicked on something and her e-mail disappeared so I worked on it and got her e-mail back. She gave me a box of Pringles for my assistance. Fair deal me thinks.

I somehow got sick. I woke up and thought I was going to throw up - perfect way to start off a Tuesday. I did lose 2 pounds though - who would have thought not eating would make you lose weight? What a brilliant concept!

I had the washer repairman over this morning as our washing machine wouldn't drain. I tried to fix it myself and quickly watched 30 litres of water pour onto the basement floor. Luckily there's no carpet in the laundry room (although I don't remember ever seeing carpet it any laundry room) so I just had to put down a few dozen towels and I was good to go. The washer repairman used a different tactic - know as his "experience" - and fixed it immediately. Good guy and gave me some great tips. First tip - don't try and fix it myself.

Kathleen is done work in 3 days - we're pretty pumped!