back in the bay... i mean, beside the bay

So I was just in Toronto for a conference this week and I'm back today. The conference was pretty good and it was nice to see some people I haven't seen for a while, but I don't think Toronto's really the place for me. I'm really not cool enough for Queen Street. Ah well. I also managed to set up a few weeks of work for next summer. Eight more months... and I'm done! Crazy.

And on the Griffin front... Current nicknames include Griff, The Griffster, Griffindor, Griffindog, McGriff, Crime Dog, Puppy of Doom and The Little Pooper. Andy is planning to invent Puppy Games, involving a series of obstacles which apparently are going to involve vine swinging, sword fighting and lots of hot lava pits to avoid falling into. (Think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.) It all seems a bit ambitious to me, but Andy's started training Griffin for this; so far Griffin has learned to sit. Sometimes.

hey! pictures!

So I just figured out that I can post pictures on this page. Cool. Here's a recent one of Griffin, who is now 3 months old. He's really a very good puppy. He chews like mad, but pretty much sticks to his own toys -- and he's got a pretty good selection. Rubber, rope, rawhide, stuffed animal, plastic... No shortage of variety here. Housebreaking is going fairly well. He has never pooped in the house (knock on wood) but still occasionally pees inside, mostly just before he goes to bed. However, he digs. Not all that much, but there are a bunch of pits that have been dug out from the side of the house. We fill them in, but he's persistent.

In other news, I just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, which blew my mind. It's a novel about philosophy, mostly, that was published 30 years ago. So good. Not that I really understood all of it, but it was great.

Going to Toronto this week.

Griffin is 3 months old 

back in the game

So here I am back in Thunder Bay. It was a great summer in Kenora, but it's nice to be home. Let's see, what's new...

Andy moved to TBay to start his masters, which is in prostate cancer research. It's keeping him pretty busy. He started playing hockey in the LU league and that seems pretty fun.

I started playing hockey too. I'm not on the Wolves anymore (actually, most of the Wolves aren't Wolves anymore -- they're Hawks), and since I've been back, my new team (The Wild) is 0-2. But hopefully things will pick up.

And the biggest news... Griffin! He's our new puppy. He's 10 weeks old now, part American Eskimo and part various terrier. Very cute. 7.4 pounds this week, up from 4.6 pounds three weeks ago. Housebreaking is going pretty well, although sometimes late in the evenings he'll run to the door and pee before we get there. Could be worse -- at least it's linoleum. His favourite toy is his rawhide bone, followed closely by his stuffed beaver (read into that what you will). He's learning to play fetch with his ball. Really, he's just adorable.

life in the big city

[Cue from commercial. Adopt Diana Swain/Lindsay Arnone voice.]

So you've made plans for the weekend. Tee times are booked, gardens need planting, Beat the Skeeters is on, beer is cold and the barbeque is going to be grilling like mad. Well, break all these plans and prepare to head for Kenora... it's Swingin' Seniors Celebration Day! Yes, seniors are coming from as far away as Gimli to partake in the dancing and live music, featuring bands such as The A-Flats, Other Mothers' Sons and the Sunset Country Handbells. Local orthopedics wards have been duly notified. For more details, please see the story in the Kenora Enterprise. Don't forget to read about Zeus, Kenora's own pot-bellied pig!

In other news... Joining the twenty-first century this weekend was my car, the last VW in the world to come with a tape deck. A cd/mp3 player was installed during a visit to Winnipeg. Final results are still pending, but preliminary data indicates the drive from Winnipeg to Kenora is much more tolerable when one can actually listen to music rather than trying to find a radio station out in the wilderness that is the Trans-Canada Highway.

The Story Of The Most Exciting Thing That Happened To Me While I Was In Flin Flon A Couple Of Years Ago

So I finally get home on Friday night after working a full day post-call and am looking for something to do. I decide to go for a drive, since I've barely driven my car since I got here. I'm cruising down the Saskatchewan Highway To The Middle Of Nowhere a few miles out of town when I see two horses standing beside the highway. No saddles, no people, nothing. I thought that was a bit odd.

About a hundred yards down the highway was an entrance to a ranch. I shifted my keen deductive mind into high gear and concluded that the horses had probably escaped from the ranch, so I turned into the driveway to tell someone there about their horses. Well, about 50 feet into the driveway, the ground turns into mud about a foot deep. Not seeing any sign of people at the ranch, and having no desire whatsoever to push my car out of this swamp, I decide to turn around. It's a narrow driveway, though, so I have to do this slowly.

While I'm making this seventeen-point turn, the horses have come wandering back to watch me. They are now standing right in the middle of the driveway. Now, I'm a city kid through and through. I know exactly two things about horses: first, they're A LOT bigger than me and my little Golf, and second, they can get spooked. So I calmly consider my options. Going backward into the swamp was no good. Going forward into the horses was no good. Honking at them seemed like a BAD idea. And there was NO WAY I was getting out of the car. So I sit and wait for them to keep wandering along.

Well, my car was apparently the most interesting thing they'd seen all day, so they wandered over to get a closer look and sniff my engine. And they stayed there. I once again reviewed my options. Going back was still out. Going forward was even more out. Honking was looking like an even worse option than before. And I was even more definitely NOT GETTING OUT of the car. So I continued to wait for them to lose interest.

But they didn't. Now, I realize that the Golf is an attractive vehicle, but this was getting ridiculous. I sat there for about ten minutes before a Mountie drove up. He stopped on the other side of the highway and, either being much braver than me or else knowing more about horses, got out and started inching his way towards me and the horses. (I'd taken to calling them Dumb and Dumber by that point.) And they started inching their way away from him. However, they were now right beside my car. No worries, though - my window was rolled up! Nothing can get me with the window rolled up! The cop motions for me to roll down my window, but there was no way I was doing that with 1500 pounds of spookable animal ten inches away from my face.

So the cop continues to inch towards Dumb and Dumber, and they continue to inch towards the back of my car. Finally I feel like my rolling down the window isn't going to cause the horses to trample me and my car into a pancake, and the only thing the cop has to say is, "Uh... you know anything 'bout these horses?" I was about to ask him the same thing, but since I could now leave I elected to shake my head, wish him a good evening... and get the hell out of there.

on the road again

Here I am in my palatial new apartment in Kenora. It's huge - 2 bedrooms, in-suite laundry (speaking of which, I better get on that), even cable tv. My living room overlooks the bay, downtown Kenora and our dock, and my balcony is soon to have it's very own barbeque. This is sweet, except that it POURED rain all day long.

It's going to be a good summer.

made it back

So we survived our little jaunt through the woods with most of our ligaments intact, though most of us are missing at least a little skin from our feet. The trail was hillier than I remembered, but at least it didn't rain until Monday afternoon.

And our fame is spreading! Turns out they're using the same poster on bus shelters around Thunder Bay (and probably other cities), so we're up all over town!

we're famous!!

So we made it onto the promotional poster for 2004's Live from the Rock Folk Festival! You can see us on their webpage - just scroll down to the bottom of the page, and on the left end of the ribbon of pictures, that's Clare, me and Alyssa huddled under a blanket! (It was raining.) And the poster is up all over town! We're famous! I expect to start signing autographs and having to duck the paparazzi any second now.

The picture was taken at last year's Live from the Rock festival in August. (Slogan: "Get all folked up at Red Rock!" At least, it was the slogan until the dorks with no sense of humour complained.) It was Red Rock's first ever folk fest and the organizers really did a terrific job. I'm hoping to make it back this year. The best act we saw there was this guy named Mark Reeves, who's from Winnipeg. He was great! If you can find it, his album sure is a pretty name is amazing, and the title track is a riot. A bit risque - our program director felt we were much too young to listen to this song. You can see him on stage 4 pictures down from us - the guy in the light blue shirt and the backwards hat playing the guitar.

hiking, hockey and kenora

So, four more days till we hit the bush. Food is well in hand after running two dehydrators at all hours of the day and night for the past week. Most of my gear is spread all over my living room floor, though, and I can't find my big pot. Went for a day hike along Pigeon River, which forms part of the US-Canadian border (there was a marked contrast between the forest on each side of the river - the American trees were exercising their Second Amendment rights). Boy, am I glad the Canadian Shield in eastern Manitoba is less hilly than it is out here.

So the Calgary-San Jose series... why can't either of them win at home? Currently the score is 3-0 Calgary in game five, with about ten minutes left. What a quirky series - you have to stay up till the wee hours to see the visiting team smoke the home team.

Two more weeks till I head to Kenora for five months. Not that I'm ready to move by any means, but I'm sure looking forward to it. Gee, Lake of the Woods in summer... rough gig. I suppose I should start thinking about what I need to bring - sandals, sunscreen, roller blades...

cooking for the bush

So I've got two giant stock pots of chili on the stove, a bag of meat marinating in the fridge and a big pile of fruit sitting on the counter. All of this is awaiting its turn in the two dehydrators I've got going. You guessed it, a hiking trip is coming up. (You may have noticed a theme in my recent posts. Expect it to continue.)

The thing is, this time I'm planning the menu. That's a new one - usually my job is just to carry stuff. So, in an attempt to live up to Jason and Mel's standards, here's our menu for hiking the Mantario Trail in two weeks (66 km of fun!).

Breakfast: Oatmeal, dried fruit, instant hashbrowns, beef jerky.

Lunch: Crackers, cheese, oysters or sardines, hummus, pitas, peanut butter, granola bars, beef jerky, trail mix.

Dinner: Chili, stew, and something else that the Winnipeg squad is going to make for us.

Snacks: Berries and anything you can catch in the bush.

So my dehydrator is going to be going full steam for the next few days. You can dehydrate pretty much anything, and I plan to do just that.

You know what would be really nice out in the bush? A nice glass of wine. The trouble is, wine is way too heavy. (If you're carrying likker into the bush, it better be 80-proof or better.) Maybe I should dehydrate a nice red...

out to the bush

Back in Winnipeg this week, technically for a conference, but that ended two days ago and I'm here till the first of May. And come early June I'll be in Kenora for five months! It'll be great! I can come in for Bomber games!

So what have I been doing, you ask? Well... first of all, the ethnic food scene is pretty limited in Thunder Bay, unless of course you're looking for Finnish pancakes, so we've hit Ethiopian and Thai, with plans for sushi and maybe Indian this week. Plus, plans for Mantario (66 km of fun!) were solidified. Specifically, it was decided that we are indeed going and we do indeed want to eat while we're out there. And since we're going with Jason and Mel, campers extraordinaire, we will eat better on the trail than I normally do at home. Heck, we'll eat better than in a number of restaurants I can think of (Jeffery's on Henderson springs readily to mind). Did I mention the time we were on a canoe trip with Jason and Mel and had ice cream on the second night? It was quite possibly the finest moment in the history of humans living in tents. Sure beat that night, when the rain hit and a river wound up pouring right through Andrew Dixon's sleeping bag.

Everything I know about camping I learned from Jason and Mel. Particularly the bit about setting up one's tent away from the dry riverbed.

game sevens everywhere

Wow, look at all those game sevens... Montreal/Boston, Calgary/Vancouver, Ottawa/Toronto. Gonna be a fun couple of days.

I'm finishing Richard Clarke's book on U.S. counterterrorism in the past few years. He is quite obviously a hardcore Democrat and tends to gush over Clinton a bit too much for my taste, but it's an interesting insight into what happens outside of the public eye in the national security scene.

And, for the first time in a year and a half, both my brothers and I will be in Winnipeg all at the same time! It's only for one night, as I'm coming in on Wednesday and Dan and Jon are heading out to MON, BC (MON = Middle of Nowhere) to plant trees all summer on Thursday morning, but hey. Hard to believe it's been eighteen months since we were all at home at the same time.

it's playoff time

You know, I hardly watch hockey at all for pretty much all of the regular season, but come playoff time I find myself glued to the tv. Living in Ontario means that I'm supposed to worship the Leafs, of course, but being a loyal alienated Westerner, I'm going for the Sens in that series. I'm a lot more interested in the Vancouver-Calgary series, though. The Flames kind of remind me of the Jets, but I'd still prefer to see the Oilers.

It must be hard to not be a hockey fan at this time of year, especially if you only get two channels and one of them is CBC. I like how everything else just gets dumped from their schedule - including The National - and maybe gets squeezed in between periods. Don Cherry gets more air time these days than Peter Mansbridge.

Speaking of CBC, who do you think is The Greatest Canadian? (You can post comments by clicking on the Squawkbox link right below this - it took me forever to get that working, so please use it!)

the poutine challenge

There's this greasy spoon a few blocks from my house, and it has The Poutine Challenge. The challenge is to eat a giant poutine -- 10 big potatoes, a big hunk of grated cheese and a litre, yes, a litre of gravy -- in less than an hour. In the few months this place has been open, they've had over 350 people try it, and the only one who made it was the first guy who showed up.

So last night after playing some ulti, Andy and Troy both decided to take the challenge. Despite their glorious efforts, both gave up after about half an hour without eating even half of the giant plate of grease. Alas. The potato gods win again.

adding to the family

Andy and I went looking for a pet today. Both of us are dog people, and we want a dog, but we're thinking that maybe we want to take off and travel for a few months at a time, so a fifteen-year commitment to a dog might not be in the cards right now. So, another pet...

Perhaps a small, aquarium-type pet. A gerbil, some fish, maybe... a snake? Andy thinks that would be great and that people would be lining up to take care of it while we're on our hypothetical adventure, although I have reservations. Let's think about how this conversation would go:

Me/Andy: Hi there. So, umm, feel like taking care of a snake for a few months?

Person In Their Right Mind: YUCK!!

Me/Andy: Aw, come on. You only have to give it some mice once a week. It's low maintenance!!

PITRM (while madly crossing us off the Christmas card list): NOT LOW ENOUGH!!

To be fair, I polled a few people and got a universal NO response to looking after pretty much any kind of reptile. So I'm vetoing the snake plan.

game three to red... boo

So Red came back to win two games in a row, beating us 3-0 on Wednesday night. We played quite well, but had a couple of "oops" that cost us goals. Ah well, just wait till next year. And on Thursday night was the first ever physicians vs residents game, which was really a lot of fun. I'm not sure what the score was, but it was pretty close.

So other than hockey... this week is our mandatory, which is when all the residents come back from across northwestern Ontario and beyond for a few days of edumicational stuff. However, more importantly we have all kinds of stuff like hockey and wine tastings and curling. Have we got our priorities straight or what?

Andy is here this week. We brought him in to be a ringer for the hockey game, but that backfired as he wound up playing for the physicians!

game two to red

Yeah, so two in a row for the Wolves wasn't to be. Oh well. Now we'll be playing with passion in game three, as we lost tonight 1-0. Not our best effort; we were held in only by our goalie. We were too sloppy clearing the puck out of our end and went 0-for-1 on the power play (the penalty was drawn by yours truly - hey, I'll take my moments wherever I can find them). It wasn't so bad, though, as they went 0-for-1 as well.

Game three (in our best-of-three final) goes Wednesday. In true playoff tradition, I have refrained from shaving. And it's worked so far, plus it helps me stay warm.

game one to the wolves

Yup, we pulled it off. Two goals in the first period and the decidedly pro-Wolves crowd were enough to carry us to a 2-1 victory. Game 2 of the best-of-three final goes tomorrow night. Red will probably come out strong, like they usually do; however they have a tendency to fade rather quickly and then surge again at the end of the game. The question is, will they be annoyed enough to not fade?

all the news that's fit to print... nah, not really

So the best-of-three final starts tomorrow night, and it's the Wolves against Red. And by Red I mean the team that wears red jerseys, who may or may not actually be called Red. It's going to be tough, folks - Red has won a lot of games and are riding a hot goalie through the playoffs. But we've given them trouble in the past, and they've never blown us out, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, though, I've got three whole days off. Of course, my sleep schedule is still completely out of whack from working midnights earlier this week. I'm getting plenty of sleep, just at weird hours - the other day I slept from 9 am to 4 pm, then went back to bed at 2 am and woke up at 5. I have NEVER been unable to get back to sleep at 5 am. It's not that bad, except that (a) at some point I'm sure I'll start working days again, and (b) there's not much open in Thunder Bay after midnight except for A&P and the clubs. I should start doing my grocery shopping at 3 am. Bet the line ups are nothing.

In other news... starting a book called Ignorant Armies by CBC guy Gwynne Dyer, about the war in Iraq. Pretty sure it's going to be anti-war, but it was published last fall before Bush started taking a lot of heat about his weapons of mass hysteria, so it'll be interesting to compare the congressional proceedings to Dyer's slant on the mess. Also in other news... nah, that's pretty much it.

0430

4.30 am is a funny time of day with a lot of uncertainty about it. It's not a time when people (some people, anyway) are usually up. Why on earth would anyone want to be any place but a nice warm bed at that time? What time of day is it - late night or early morning? And that 4.30-at-work-since-midnight-need-to-eat meal - it's not supper, it's not breakfast... could it be supfast? That's as legitimate as brunch, if you ask me. It's okay to eat supper food like peanut chicken, or breakfast food like cereal - don't let anybody ever tell you different. And caffeine, don't forget the caffeine.

This is what my brain comes up with after working all night, in case you couldn't tell. Tangential, n'est pas?

pulled it off

Apparently wolves are pretty lucky - we pulled off a 2-1 win against the Maroons (who wear black) last night. It wasn't pretty, but we'll take it. The final is next weekend against Red, who won all three of their round robin games.

By the way, if you've read Life of Pi, let me know what you think of the island section of the book. I really can't figure that part out.

sunday sunday sunday

Hockey playoffs tomorrow night! Lost our first round-robin game 2-1 (glorious chance to tie with 3 minutes left, but it went off the post), but won the second 3-2 (winning goal scored by... number 9) against our arch-nemesis, Double Trouble. Tonight is game 3 against Red, who naturally wear black jerseys. The top 2 teams in the playoffs have a best-of-three final.

It's a quirky league... Red wears black, the Maroons wear red, and Double Trouble wears maroon. Got that? I don't. We're the only sensible ones in the league - we're the Wolves, and we wear green.