Before we get this party started:

First base, I am happy to report that 2010 Calendar sales of “the misadventures of Rugged Fox” are through the roof. So far, other than the one I bought for myself, I have sold one more to a soon-to-be very happy couple in Winnipeg. Something tells me this fabulous Calendar is fast becoming a collector’s item.

Stealing second, to answer everyone’s apparent question about il postino: yes, he is gay. After posting the last update on him in which he told me I was adorable and had a great ass (alright maybe he didn’t say that last part, but it was a given he was thinking it), my phone was vibrating off the table with phone calls asking if he was actually gay. For the record, I do not fall in love with straight men (anymore), I just picture them on top of me naked in my bedroom. What il postino and I have is real… please take this moment to laugh. That reminds me, I simply must do a ring check next time he drops by. Don’t let me forget!

Sliding into third, another kitchen dance party is coming soon to Rugged Fox! For a sneak preview of what is about to grace your computer screen in the coming weeks, click here. I am currently rehearsing the video’s complex choreography and trying to find a white low-cut one-piece with matching rimmed sunglasses.

And now for home base.

So on Friday night at my new job, also known as Starbucks, I was reading my training manuals in the lobby when I decided to pause for a moment to strike up a conversation with a girl seated beside me. With her laptop wide open and textbooks spread out before her, she looked as if she was in dire need of a good-looking distraction, hence me. Ensuring my legs were crossed first so she wouldn’t think I was trying to get in hers, I inquired as to what she could possibly be studying on a Friday night that would keep her in.

            “I am studying to become a doctor,” she said casually, having successfully picked up on the fact that I was not about to ask for her phone number.

            “That’s massive,” I said, thinking ‘if you only you were gay and my gender.’

             “What are you studying for?” she then asked me, shooting a complete curve ball.

            Stalling for a moment, I looked down at my manuals, and then mustering the most-confident smile I could, I raised my head and said, “I am studying to become a shift supervisor.”

Returning home that night with a bottle of red and Diane Lane on the W network, I began to think about the ways in which a job (or for that matter “title”) can define a person.

            When I became Buddhist for ten minutes last summer (as soon as I discovered monks can’t drink that was pretty much that), I read a passage in some new-age book stating that: in our lives, we should strive to find work that positively impacts the world and people around us. Reduced to its simplest terms, the logic follows that one should not be a murderer, because killing people is bad energy; but rather a person should be a doctor, because it saves lives. Pursuing a career as a server at the time I first read this, a chord struck with me.

            After spending every Friday for the last six months serving the cast of Gossip Girl and the new 90210 in the trendy Kitsilano, I began to lose sight of myself in my role as a servant. After uncorking expensive bottle after expensive bottle after expensive bottle of wine for people each night who would barely look me in the eye, I became invisible not only to those I was serving, but also to myself. I was no longer “Rugged Fox,” but rather,“Can I get another?” Bending over backwards for men whose black AMEX cards weighed more than I could bench press, I ultimately reached the point in which I felt what I was doing was no longer good. It was then that I realized that no matter how much money a person makes in this life, if they don’t feel good about themselves each morning they wake up, they have nothing.

            Is it just me or did this just get deep? Time to return to more shallow waters!

            And so it came to me, three-quarters of the way through Under the Tuscan Sun and the bottle of red wine in my lap, that whatever you do in this life, you have to feel good about it. And whether “what you do” falls between the hours of 9-5 or outside that, when you are sketching in your notebook, taking care of loved ones, or simply just being you – then at the end of the day, that is all that matters.

            And as for the doctor and shift supervisor-me, I came to the conclusion that night, that other than an extra-digit in salary and change in uniform, we are not so different; because in a sense, we are both saving lives. Cause see, when it comes right down to it, I am what happens before Grey’s Anatomy. And if it wasn’t for the fact that I was up at 5:00 a.m. to prepare venti-triple shot lattes, then my doctor friend would never stand a chance of making it through her scheduled five-hour open-heart surgery.