As I write this I am about to punch out from the office for a full week. This will be my first full week's vacation since I entered the work world. I'm not going to lie; I'm pretty excited about the prospect.
I have a busy weekend with Riverjam on the go tonight, a quasi-reunion set for Saturday, and a rugby game kicking off Canada Day on Sunday. A party will surely follow that and at that point my vacation will be in full swing. I've got lots of plans after that but my real goal is to do something every day that make someone, somewhere say "That's pretty fucking cool". I think it's attainable...wish me luck!
I had planned on posting on the arrival of summer and my favourite day of the year; the longest day of the year. Unfortunately I didn't have time before taking off for a long weekend on a bus with the fellas. So instead of writing about the longest day of the year I am writing about the longest night of the year.
We had a two game road trip to Ottawa and Montreal. We left for Ottawa at 4:30 on Thursday and arrived, a little cramped, at 3:30am. We hit the sack and woke up feeling much better. We didn't fare so well against Ottawa but I did get to see Mom so it didn't feel so bad. We hit the town for a bit and I even ran into some old friends:We had to be good though so we made it back to the bus to meet our midnight curfew. Unfortunately we had some mechanical difficulties right out front of a tavern in Gatineau. The next morning we played a quick game of touch on Parliament Hill and then hit the road for Sin City. I have never been to Montreal and experienced less then I did on this trip. In terms of trips to one of my favourite cities, this was a wasted one (and not in the way that some of the others have been). We relaxed when we arrived, grabbed a meal and hit the sack. We got up the next day played a game (a tie, 24 - 24) and hit the road for home.
This was night was the longest night of the year, but not really in a bad way. In fact it was pretty great. We have a lot of new faces on the Provincial team this year so it was good to have a chance to experience the classic bus piss-up with them. Good times, although my body would suggest otherwise after playind two games in 3 days between squeezing myself into a bus. The Pros still vastly outweigh the Cons.
As I mentioned in my last post I spent some QT at Grand Lake on Sunday. What I didn't mention is that in the time spent there was none of that highest quality time spent rocking in the hammock. It was set up and whispering my name on the wind (I'm pretty sure) but I made the mistake of putting off my time in the hammock district until after our walk to the point. Well, the rains came and washed that idea away. I am vowing now to get back to the cottage sooner then later to spend some of that all important horizontal hammock time.
I don't need anything beyond a heartbeat to thoroughly enjoy the hammock but one things that couldn't hurt is a good book. For that I am going to refer to this handy guide to summer reading that I found. Summer is the lightest time of the year so it's the perfect time for light reading.
Pace out.
PS - North this is basically your homework for your summer vacation.
A few years ago over a few campfire beers the boys and I were looking around at each other trying to figure out why a group with such disparate interests has managed to remain close friends since high school. The answer: swimming. It hasn't changed too much although I tend to think that we are at our best if we at least get close to water. So that's what we did this weekend.
Friday night we celebrated Randy's birthday so I was impressed to be up early on Saturday morning. After lunch we hit the road for the Miramichi to the Colter's camp at Loggie Pool. The camp is straight out of a guidebook. It's former claim to fame is that it once played host to Prince Charles on a fishing expidition to New Brunswick. It's new claim to fame is that it was the host to Jamie Colter's stag party. There were two dozen guys there which would make you think the guy had some friends; not really, most of the people there were family. There was far too much booze, far too much food and far too much fun to be had. We tried our best to use it all up.We managed to get out of the woods at a decent hour on Sunday and back in town in time to head to Grand Lake to spend Father's day with the fam at the cottage. It was a gorgeous day and, as always, great hospitality from the hostess with the mostess, sister Sarah. We took a walk to the point around dinner and were warned of a gathering storm by some thunder in the distance. As we started back to the house it was a race. I'd call it a tie because we didn't get hit with the full brunt. We reconvened inside and had a great meal. We hit the road for home in the rain around 10. If I had to guess I would say I killed between 15 and 30 frogs on the way home. It's just like my bigoted science teacher used to say; stupid frogs.
Weekend + Water = Good times.
Pace out.
PS - Happy Birthday Mom! Happy Birthday Wheat! Happy Father's Day Dad! Congratulations Colter - it's not too late!
Tomorrow night the Canadian Cancer Society is hosting it's annual Relay for Life. The Loyalists are trying to do their part once again and have set up a page on the Relay's online donation website to acccept donations from friends far and wide. So if you would like to help in this most worthy cause, that is near and dear to my heart, then you can click on this link and donate online. Thanks for you help!
I caught the tail end of this when I turned the basketball game on last night. It's still not quite as good as Marvie Gaye's version but it is pretty sweet. Plus, since it's instrumental, we don't have to listen to those silly words ;)
Ben Harper didn't help; the Cavs lost and this series is as good as over.
The CBC completed its Seven Wonders of Canada contest last week. The final list of Seven Wonders was decided by a panel of judges. It seems a bit strange to me that a panel of judges could overrule the online votes of the nation but there is really no way to police the online voting so I could have voted for Pamela Anderson's boobs a thousand times.
As it is they came up with a good list. I am sad that they did not find space for the Northern Lights or the Vimy Memorial (it's Canadian soil after all) but you can't please everyone. There is a good mix of nature and history and invention. The canoe remains my favourite choice.
Looking at the list it is clear that they made sure not to offend any region. I think they could skirted that problem entirely if they had just named the Trans-Canada highway as a wonder. It is the longest highway in the world and is truly Canada's main street. I have travelled (most of) its distance on three occasions and can think of no better way to get a feel for this vast country that we call home. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Shit...why didn't I vote.
The people's poll list the Bay of Fundy as the third highest vote getter but if I had to pick something close to home I would pick the sunset on the St.John River. Here's one from the weekend.
I can't say that I really like the thought of the Stanley Cup going to a place where next to no one give's a rats ass about hockey but I do think that a good BC boy like Scott Niedermeyer looks better hoisting it than that stinking Sweede Alfredson. In related news this will be remembered as the week that the Jackman boys learned how to swear. Piss, Shit, Damn!I wonder if Snoop was at the postgame party?
This year's Stanley Cup Playoffs have held about as much interest as reruns of the Vance and Coy season on The Dukes of Hazzarad. The NBA playoffs held my interest while Kid Canada was still playing but the prospect of the team with the least exciting star in the history of basketball choke the life out of the Cavs and the game's most exciting young player does not excite me in the slightest. The Spurs' "dynasty" is as watchable as the New Jersey Devils' "dynasty". Also, it's summer dammit.
So although I guess I did just waste some words on those (non)stories I will not go on, and instead will draw your attention to the following piece of mastery:
The song was a b-side but has become one of PJ's most beloved songs. But no one can say with any certainty what the hell Eddie is singing about - it turns out it doesn't really matter. This just makes it all the more interesting.
With both the Habs and Leafs season's long over, I've had no one to root for or against these NHL playoffs. I will get on the Ottawa bandwagon in so much as I hope they can at least extend the series a bit with a win tonight. They are in tough though because it seems as if Anaheim has the DoggFather's backing:
This was by far the best interview I have seen on Hockey Night in Canada in some time. I have a new respect for Scott Oake and think that the CBC should consider having Snoop and Don Cherry do Coach's Corner together.
I have a healthy respect for Snoop. He actually does have a youth football league and seemed to have a geniune appreciation for the game of hockey. It's still tough to swallow his good deeds knowing that he did produce porn.
The Duck went on to win the game proving, once again, that it a Doggy Dogg World and we just live in it.
This will be old news to anyone in Freddy these days but for those of you in far-off places this may be new news (or just news, I guess). Yesterday morning a deer walked into the building adjacent to the Legislature. Check the video out here:
The deer looks quite small and I was pretty amazed that it managed to jump throught that window to escape. You know you're in a rural town when...
This has actually provided loads of entertainment the last couple of days. I even had a contest with a couple of my turbo-busy goverment employee friends to come up with the best "deer walks into a bar" joke. This is the winning entry: A deer walks into a bar...bartender says “What can I get you deer?” to which the deer shoots back “Don’t get fresh with me, pal!.
It also made me wonder if this Cervidae Civil Disobedience is the first wave of the inevitable blowback of our habitat intrusion from the animal kingdom. It seems that we are indeed just marking time until the dolphins take over.
