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!