I mentioned earlier that this installment would contain a discussion of curling. Well, it would except that I still haven’t figured it out. I can tell you a few things about it though, and they are as follows.

1. This sport makes little or no sense to the untrained observer.

2. In light of point #1, I will still try to make some sense.

3. The game is played by two teams on ice, who slide rocks and attempt to get them inside a designated area to score points. Imagine shuffleboard on ice. Sort of.

4. You must yell a lot to play this game. The four players on each team are always yelling at each other. Words such as ‘heavy’, ‘hard’, ‘hurry’, ‘good’, ‘whoa’, and ‘clean’ in addition to others are thrown about a lot. At first, I found myself aroused hearing these words shouted at me, as I was watching womens curling at the time. I thought I must have stumbled onto some combination wintersports/adult channel and was hoping that up next would be the lesbian naked pairs figure skating. Then I realized, quite to my dismay, that they were using these words with regards to the game. What each word means in relation to the game is still somewhat a mystery to me. I still enjoyed the yelling though, does that make me naughty?

5. A game consists of what I have determined to be 8 or 10 ‘ends’ or periods, which makes no sense either. If you play one ‘end’, how can you play 7 more? Isn’t the ‘end’ the END?

6. There is ALWAYS curling on tv in Canada.

7. Curling on TV is habit forming. It sucks you in. There is no action, no fast movement, no snappy music, but it’s like falling asleep to the air conditionerit sort of hypnotizes you. It sends messages to your brain that say “Come. Sit. Watch me for hours. Try to solve the riddle that is curling. Do or do not, there is no try. I am the walrus.”

8. I, and you, are not smart enough to play this game. The announcers discuss strategy and positioning in terms that would make MacArthur drool. I assumed they were just banging rocks around, but OH NO, every bump has a purpose, every play a whole hidden agenda. You cannot be privvy to this information unless you are a player, and to be a player, you have to be a master of motion, dynamics, physics and chemistry. At first glance it looks like a bunch of goofballs throwing rocks around on the ice and yelling like idiots, but don’t be fooled, it is the majesty and the mystery that is curling.

Now, if there is anyone out there that is a curler (is that even the right term?), don’t take offense to my little dissertation. I am only one of the lowly ones, the ‘unknowers’ that don’t partake in your sport. I play hockey. Which in your opinion may be just guys skating around beating each other with sticks, but to me it’s so much more. To me it’s guys beating each other with sticks, but also swearing a lot and drinking too much beer afterwards. That’s what takes it to the next level.

For all of you back in the States, my friends that are reading this and are unfamiliar with curling, let me just sum up by saying this:

You’ll know as soon as I do.
Until then, stay tuned as I will continue to report on the strange customs of your neighbour to the north. (Such as spelling neighboor with a ‘u’.)

I get asked this alot.

My buddy Ryan said the other day that we should go play hockey sometime at lunch at the park up the street.

“There’s ice right up the street?” I said, incredulous.

“Yeah.” He tells me. “At the park.”

Today we went 2 blocks from my office and pulled up to a huge (4 tennis courts), near perfect sheet of ice. Apparently the City of Fredericton maintains the ice, flooding it every night and plowing it when it snows.

“Holy shit!” I says to him. “This is just HERE?! All the time?”

“Yeah.” He says nonchalantly. “There’s a couple other spots in parks around the city too.”

“And THEY clean and flood it all the time? Just like that…” I said in amazement.

We then proceeded to spend our lunch hour playing shinny hockey with the 6 other dudes who just happened to show up.

THAT is why I moved back to Canada.

It was the ghost.

The picture above says volumes about what it’s like at my house. Only when you have kids of a small age can you walk around a corner to find this and no one in sight. I think I’m just a tenant here, someone else must be in charge.

Not so angry any more. Not really any time for it. Got emails for that one from expected – and unexpected sources. Thanks to all for the moral support. You can cut it out now. No more goofy dancing animal ‘feel better’ e-cards. I wanna puke.

Huge push on at work to get the big website done…it’s now 2 months overdue with the Fall book season looming. It’s turned out to be a much larger endeavour than anyone involved thought. Just about the best thing to come out of it is my discovery of The Gaslight Anthem via Ryan, the guy who’s coding the whole site, and consequently, probably chewing asprin by the handful. When the things actually done, I’ll post a link here. I’ve yet to determine how I will celebrate it’s successful launch. I feel it defintely deserves controlled substances of some kind.

When I checked in tonite, I’ve got 156 comments awaiting moderation. Safe money is that there’s 156 comments trying to sell me either porn or male enhancement items, but if by some chance you’re in there, sorry, I haven’t checked the comments lately and I won’t tonite on my stupid slow dialup, cause I’d like to get to sleep at some point. I’ll try to remember tomorra.

Freelance is ramping up a bit again. Dollars is good. I’m all about the benjamins. Julia and Emma never put gas in the car when they use it and it’s a drag filling that thing up.

Colin’s almost walking now. He pushes everything around, which is nice. Nothing like stumbling through the minefield of toys in the middle of the night to take a leak. He takes it real personal when you step on one in the night too, he wakes up hollering which doesn’t really improve things any.

Awhile back I had a bit of fun gutting a portion of my basement. Mmmmm, yummy mold growing in the walls on the drywall. Highly recommended for the respiratory system of the buildings occupants. We’ve embarked on quite a few home improvement projects – cause we don’t have enough to do as it is. There’s 3 on the go now…the basement, the terraced rock flowerbed in the back and the bathroom that’s been about 97% done for months but needs a bit to be finished. If I finish it though, that will leave Lyn nothing to hassle me about, so I can’t very well leave her empty handed.

We’re also getting a house energy audit. Here in Canada, a guy certified by the government will come to your house, tell you just how screwed up and inefficient it is, then you have 18 months to fix as much as you can, and they’ll reimburse you a percentage of your costs based on what you get done. My guess is he’ll look at this house and just say I’d be better off starting from scratch – or wait – no, I take that back. I’m sure the dog kennel can stay.

So up here in Canada the 1st of July is ‘Canada Day’ which equates to the Fourth of July in the US. We took the kids into town to see the fireworks. In good Canadian tradition, I bought ‘em each a two-four and sent ‘em down by the river to check ‘em out – ‘cept for Bubba of course – he’s too young for that yet. They showed up fine the next morning, no worse for wear and said they’d made alot of new Canadian friends. Mission, accomplished. Happy 4th to all my Stateside readers.

The garden is in now. everything planted. Should be ready to harvest mid November. Whoops. Our fence finally showed up from the ‘Good Ole Boy Depot’ and now I have to put that up lickity split before the critters eat what little veggies we managed to get in the ground. I’m pretty much screwed though, at this rate, if they don’t eat it in the garden, it appears they’re gonna get it once it’s in the house (see the entry on mice, above).

A note about web browsers…
…and how much they suck. I’ve spent alot of time tweaking this thing (as my frequent visitors can attest, probably with much frustration) and had made all efforts to make it ‘look pretty’ in both Safari(mac) and Exploder(PC) even though I loathe PCs. Well the other day, I downloaded Firefox on my Mac to check a freelance project and thought, “Hey, I’ll check out how the blog looks on it.” Much to my distress, it was totally hosed, with content bleeding into the sidebar and text overlapping – just a total f’ing mess. Seems that my wigetized sidebar in WordPress wasn’t playing nice with Firefox. That will only make sense to like 3 of you, if that, but it pissed me off, none-the-less. I’ve fixed it for now and I think I’m just going to go backwards and attempt to make things ridiculously simple so this thing plays nice on whatever you’re viewing it with. Feedback is always welcome if things look screwy on your end – let me know. I live in a vacuum here people – throw me a bone.

Rode the fixie into work today. Nice. I’d forgotten what that was like. Funny, it was around 9 (48F) degrees this morning, but it was getting sunny and I knew from the weatherchannel that it was going to warm up today so I didn’t hesitate to wear shorts on the bike and just throw on a long sleeve wooly. I had to laugh cause coming out of winter (when it’s still dark at departure and you know it’s going to be cold all day) my steadfast rule was no shorts under 10 (50F) degrees, so I’d probably have worn tights. All a matter of perspective I guess. Weather and seasons sure can mess with your head though.

It doesn’t taste to swell neither.

Behold, I’ve posted some photos from the past weekend’s birthday festivities. Check them out here.

I’ve also posted a few choice ones to the flickr page..

Spring has sprung.

We’re packing up and getting out.

I’ve accepted a job in Frederiction, New Brunswick, Canada and we’re headed north the end of the month. Here is a link to my new place of employ. I’m pretty psyched about it and I think it will be a good time.

Lyn and I have already pretty much bought a house (fingers crossed/paperwork pending). I’ve included a few choice shots below. Of note is the aerial photo which shows the 800ft ride through the woods to the Rails to Trails trail that I will leisurely spin the 9 miles to work. It’s a cleared trail that winds leisurely along the Naashwaksis river and it’s nice scenery. Sure it’ll be dark this winter, but it will be awesome in the spring/fall. Don’t worry, the fake deer in the front yard are gonna go….

I’m sure that your foaming at the mouth for more info and junk, but frankly I’m too in the weeds. I will try to document the move over the next month so stay tuned.

I’ve been away a long time. Readership is down, the sponsors are grumbling. Well, not really, but anyway.

I’ve been busy away from the computer as of the last few weeks. Well, for one, I was just plain out of town for 10 days. Drove up North to the land of ‘eh’s’ and Alpine to visit the in-laws. Lyn and the kids went up 2 weeks early. I drove up with the dog and hung out for a week or so, then we drove back. Alot of driving. I didn’t even take the computer with me. Good times. I didn’t take a bike either though and now that I’m back home I’m feeling it.

After all, what does one do on vacation? Nothing. Eat. Drink. Schedule some time for more nothing. Nothing disguised as sightseeing. Don’t forget to eat and drink some more.

So I got back here with an additional few pounds and found out that some sort of anomaly had occurred and it appeared that from now on it was going to be 1,000 degrees outside all the time. I didn’t think this was too much fun.

Apparently not much of the household did either. Since our return, every member of the family has been stricken with some sort of ailment. I had a cold the 1st few days back (Yes, a cold, in the 110 degree weather. Oh, the irony.) Both kids have been under the weather a bit with flu-y/cold-y symptoms. Lyn’s had muscle and joint pain and now Emma’s got some sort of cough that doctors can’t figure out – it’s either allergies, asthma, or possibly acid-reflux. I told her that those late poker nights with the girls drinking beer and eating wings would do her in, but she doesn’t listen. So hard headed.

It begs the question, “What sort of mold/funk is growing in our house?” I tend to think that this, combined with the radically high temps/humidity is the source of our ailments.

Our house (which we rent, dontchaknow) is no doubt a veritable playland of bacteria and funk, a virtual ‘viral Disneyland’ I’m sure. Why just last week a nice family of germs from South Dakota were here to take in the sights and the rides. They said they enjoyed themselves very much, liked the ‘Hairy Dog Coaster’ and said that although the people were very friendly, they’re all in way too much of a hurry and they can’t drive.

I say this because at one point it was determined – by us – that water from outside when it rained was actually leaking into the house and running amok in the walls. this was determined after one particular spot in the kitchen ceiling literally sprung a leak and upon further inspection we determined that a good 6 square feet of the drywall in the ceiling was ‘soft and/or spongy’ as if wet. Hmm. That can’t be good.

Water. Inside the walls. mixing with drywall and insulation. And of course bugs, dust, the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. It’s like a Studio 54 for germs. Anyway, we notified the landlord and they replied with a swift, proportional response.

They had a friend of theirs come out and do a little ‘creative caulking’ on the outside of the house.

Now I’m no stranger to the magical powers of caulk, and have espoused such in this very blog, but I’m pretty sure that when you have buckets of water running through the interiors of your walls, that really needs to come out, and I’m not even an expert in ‘wall funkification’.

Lyn and I debated the issue seriously:

She said, “There could be funk in the walls, endangering us and the children.”
“Well, we can’t afford to live anywhere else…”, I replied.
“Yea, I know.” She said.
“Let’s blame Bush,” I offered.
“Alright!” She replied.

That somehow made it all better. And, in all probability, if you really dug deep I bet he could in some way really be responsible.

I’ve decided to offset the cost of finding somewhere else to live by selling my own bumper stickers. Check these out, they’ll soon be available online:

Order now! Quantities limited!

Thanks to Gaz for the Bush portraiture.

In the meantime, I’m out to the West coast for a week for a family reunion.

Catch ya later.

I am steadily continuing with my better half to make all the nessecary wedding plans, which some of you may or may not know is a freaking Pandora’s box of it’s own. It seems that for every detail that is finally solidified, three more pop into question, such as ” What color do we make the silly string that’s on the car of the married couple? Should it match the groom’s eyes or the bride’s flowers? And what about the garbage bags in the reception hall? What color should they be?” At this point we should have just gone to Vegas and done the drive thru thing. Kudos to my friend Andy for having extreme foresight there…

I continue on my quest to try and understand the things that make Canadians well, Canadians. Let’s see if you can get your head around this one. The town I live in contains a plethora of businesses, all of which close at 5 pm. Everyone works until exactly 4:30 pm. That means that once you get off work you pretty much have no chance of getting anywhere you need to be before it closes. So what does everyone end up doing? They do it ALL on the weekends. You can only imagine what 800 redneck old people on the roads on a Saturday will do to one’s disposition. Ok, maybe this is a small town thing, not nessecarily a Canadian thing, but I don’t really want to argue semantics here. You guys can do that with Andy.

For those interested, my dog is doing well, and will be going to get fixed (ouch) soon. No more bang bang long time for him. He does continue to astound us with the depths of his stupidity, such as walking into doors, chasing his tail to no end, and choking himself indefinitely when on the leash for a walk. Did I mention that he starts obedience school in September? Oh yeah baby, I’m hoping that they will show me how to train him to fetch a sandwich from the kitchen like that dog on t.v.

I hear that they’re playing musical residents down there at the Youth Hostel. I wouldn’t worry. With Ricky being a former college student, I suspect they will have no problem finding any number of mindless frat idiots who need a place to put their beat up mattress, ghetto blaster, and ‘Girls of Budweiser’ calendar. MMM, high society living at it’s finest. Within a week or two, the 7-Eleven burrito wrappers should probably be three or four deep on the floor.

Well, I guess that’s about all I have to say for now. Domestic life up here is fairly tame, the only thing I really have to get mad about is the lame VJ’s and videos on MUCHMusic. If I see a Ricky Martin video one more time, I’m gonna be ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ while I’m putting my foot through the tv.

bukitnote : Originally posted on the Lapensee Youth Hostel Website, v. 3, ‘North’ section.

Let’s see, what else is new. I hear that another female (maybe a second by the time you read this) has moved into the Hostel. Don’t give up the fight boys! Don’t let them out number you, or soon there will be pastel towels in the bathroom!

I hear that mutual friend Lapo, has gone gay. It was bound to happen sooner or later, actually, I always knew that he had it in him. Quite literally.

I continue to make plans with Lyn for our impending nuptuials. I never realized how much stuff one has to buy to get married. Aren’t you supposed to get free stuff? It’s kind of like paying for your own birthday party. On a similar note, although I would love to have every one of my old friends at the event, I fully realize that for geographic and economical reasons, some of you may not be able to attend. The wedding is August 27th of this year. I’ll leave it up to you guys. If you would like to come, you are welcome. Send me an email and I will get you an invite and details on how to get here, cost, places to stay, other things to do while you’re here and other stuff. This way, I won’t be spending about 1000 bucks on invites that may only yield 3 attendees. Not that you all aren’t worth it. Haha. If you can’t come, I understand, but we simply can’t be friends anymore. Just kidding. We can still be friends, maybe, if you send a big enough gift.

I mentioned in the sidebar that this installment would contain a discussion of curling. Well, it would except that I still haven’t figured it out. I can tell you a few things about it though, and they are as follows.

1. This sport makes little or no sense to the untrained observer.

2. In light of point #1, I will still try to make some sense.

3. The game is played by two teams on ice, who slide rocks and attempt to get them inside a designated area to score points. Imagine shuffleboard on ice. Sort of.

4. You must yell a lot to play this game. The four players on each team are always yelling at each other. Words such as ‘heavy’, ‘hard’, ‘hurry’, ‘good’, ‘whoa’, and ‘clean’ in addition to others are thrown about a lot. At first, I found myself aroused hearing these words shouted at me, as I was watching womens curling at the time. I thought I must have stumbled onto some combination wintersports/adult channel and was hoping that up next would be the lesbian naked pairs figure skating. Then I realized, quite to my dismay, that they were using these words with regards to the game. What each word means in relation to the game is still somewhat a mystery to me. I still enjoyed the yelling though, does that make me naughty?

5. A game consists of what I have determined to be 8 or 10 ‘ends’ or periods, which makes no sense either. If you play one ‘end’, how can you play 7 more? Isn’t the ‘end’ the END?

6. There is ALWAYS curling on tv in Canada.

7. Curling on TV is habit forming. It sucks you in. There is no action, no fast movement, no snappy music, but it’s like falling asleep to the air conditionerit sort of hypnotizes you. It sends messages to your brain that say “Come. Sit. Watch me for hours. Try to solve the riddle that is curling. Do or do not, there is no try. I am the walrus.”

8. I, and you, are not smart enough to play this game. The announcers discuss strategy and positioning in terms that would make MacArthur drool. I assumed they were just banging rocks around, but OH NO, every bump has a purpose, every play a whole hidden agenda. You cannot be privvy to this information unless you are a player, and to be a player, you have to be a master of motion, dynamics, physics and chemistry. At first glance it looks like a bunch of goofballs throwing rocks around on the ice and yelling like idiots, but don’t be fooled, it is the majesty and the mystery that is curling.

Now, if there is anyone out there that is a curler (is that even the right term?), don’t take offense to my little dissertation. I am only one of the lowly ones, the ‘unknowers’ that don’t partake in your sport. I play hockey. Which in your opinion may be just guys skating around beating each other with sticks, but to me it’s so much more. To me it’s guys beating each other with sticks, but also swearing a lot and drinking too much beer afterwards. That’s what takes it to the next level.

For all of you back in the States, my friends that are reading this and are unfamiliar with curling, let me just sum up by saying this:

You’ll know as soon as I do.
Until then, stay tuned as I will continue to report on the strange customs of your neighbour to the north. (Such as spelling neighboor with a ‘u’.)

bukitnote : Originally posted on the Lapensee Youth Hostel Website, v. 3, ‘North’ section.