Monster Mash

Maiden-upsetting... I like that. Sadly, I'd say I fit this description all too well. *Weep!*

Happy Halloween, everybody.

The Sarcasm Continues

Everyone recognizes that NHL hockey players are spoiled and rich and generally cry-babies. They care only for themselves and lining their pockets. All NHL fans should be ashamed of supporting such people.

[/end sarcasm]

Good on ya, Stevie.

10 Years

Today is the ten year anniversary of the Quebec Seperation Referendum. 54,288 votes were the difference for the "No" campaign.

Thankfully, after the referendum, the country undertook a vastly successful Canadian Unity program that resulted in a largely divided country coming together under a patriotic banner.

And I for one am sure glad all this seperation and sovreignty business is water under the bridge. Canada sure has fallen come a long way in the last decade.

It's coming

Yesterday morning I went to start my car and noticed something on my new vehicle I had not seen before:





I have seen frost a couple of times, but this was bona fide snow. Snow!!!

I've known for a while that it was coming. The mountains surrounding Smithers are covered with white stuff (beautiful, I might add). And it has finally found it's way into the valley. Although it did not last yesterday, I suspect we'll be getting a small dump in the next little while that may stick around for a full day.

Oh for the love of....

First Michele, now Ray has decided to hang up the ol' keyboard.

All this, and Canucks got pasted tonight by the Av's.

Tomorrow is my day off. I will be in mourning.

Good luck Ray, I hope we can get together someday. Thanks so much for being the ringleader of the Red Ensign Brigade for the last year or so. Your efforts have been appreciated, and your presence in the 'sphere will be missed.

*sniff*

Stretch

M'heh. Serves you right for getting knocked up :-)

We all tried to warn you, but you just wouldn't listen.

Shocking

Michele Catalano has closed up A Small Victory.

By the sounds of it, she will still be very busy, but the blog itself is gone-zo.

What a tragedy. ASV was one of the first blogs I began reading three years ago. Yesterday she wrote a post about how it had been five years since she had started blogging. Five Years. No wonder she decided to give it up.

Five years ago blogs were practically unheard of. Michele offered readers a little bit of everything - rants, raves, political commentary, family photos, stories, music... the list goes on. Her words and works after September 11, 2001 were particularily poignant, and she continued to remember the attacks every anniversary since.

There is no doubt that she influenced me a great deal. I wish her the best of luck in all she does.

HHOF

If Valeri Kharlamov goes to the Hockey Hall of Fame, then Paul Henderson better get the nod as well.

It is a travesty that he is not there.

The Hero of 1972.

"In the final seconds of that game, I stood up at the bench and called Pete Mahovlich off the ice. I'd never done such a thing before," wrote Henderson in Brian McFarlane's book Team Canada 1972: Where Are They Now?, and undoubtedly told over a million times elsewhere.

"I jumped on the and rushed straight for their net (sic). I had this strange feeling that I could score the winning goal. I had a great chance just before I scored, but Cournoyer's pass went behind me. Then I was tripped up and crashed into the boards behind the net. I leaped up and moved in front, just in time to see Esposito take a shot at Tretiak from inside the faceoff circle. The rebound came right to my stick and I tried to slide the puck past Tretiak. Damn! He got a piece of it. But a second rebound came right to me. This time I flipped the puck over him and into the net."

But, are you really surprised?

Nope, nothing to see here, move along.

It's not like anything THAT important is happening.

Excuse me, Miss....

GET YOUR ASS TO THE FRONT OF THE LIMOSINE gold-plated, diamond-studded heaven-bound chariot NOW!!!!!!!

No riding in the back for you, missy.

Stanley Cup Ring to Sir George

Ai Bang Mai Ni

M'heh. Now that's funny. Number Seven is my favourite.

Stanley Cup Ring to Samantha.

Red Ensign Standard #30

Nicholas has raised the latest edition of the Red Ensign Standard, and has done a fine job indeed.

He was gracious enough to include a few links to yours truly, who's posts over the last few weeks have been rather sparse.

You would do well to read the whole thing, and click a few of those links.

Great Idea

Andrew Anderson at Bound by Gravity:

Remembrance Day falls on a single calendar day, however the act of remembrance should not be constrained to that brief twenty-four hour period and then tossed aside for another year - especially not for those of us, like myself, who are too young to have lived through the horrors of war. Learning about Canada's military past is important - far more so than the mere lip service that our education system gives it suggests. Learning about our veterans, from those who fought in the Boer War to those returning from Afghanistan today, will help serve as a guide for the future.

Now that's the kind of Sunday morning sermon I can really get excited about.

Amen, Andrew.

Note: Andrew is inviting folks to contribute stories to his blog leading up to Remembrance day. If you've got a story to share, his blog is a great place to share it!

Sailing the Seas of Cheese

M'heh.

QUEBEC, Canada (10 Oct 2005) -- A Quebec cheese company has lost its sunken cheese.

Sacre Bleu!

La Fromagerie Boivin was attempting to make its cheese taste better by submerging it underwater.

Last year the company dropped 800 kg of cheese into the Saguenay fjord, north of Quebec City.

Being 50 metres underwater was supposed to produce a cheese that would taste unique. But the company is having trouble finding its sunken cheese.

Unique taste, indeed. Probably a tad on the salty side, I'd say.

But the company has given up even though the cheese is worth more than $50,000.

"It got too expensive," said cheesemaker Luc Boivin. "At some point, you can't be crazy."

Crazy enough to put fifty grand worth of cheese into a large, fast moving river, but not crazy enough to go looking for it when it goes missing? I guess there are limits to insanity.

Erik Olsen seems to think there are happy fish in those waters, but I suspect the happy fish are in the Atlantic Ocean.

Or they are busy collecting on the insurance. After all, the cheese had been deemed unfit for retail sale.

It was essentially valueless. Unless, of course, you really really like novelty cheese.

Note: Prize awarded to whoever knows the significance of the title of this post; that is, where it comes from.

Thanks, Sami!

Last night, my best friend and I continued our tradition of watching the Canuck pay-per-view hockey games at the Fireside Pub in the Hudson Bay Lodge. The best thing about watching at the Lodge is they have cool prizes you can win if a Canuck player scores a goal. Prior to the start of the game, the staff hand out player cards to everyone in attendance. If the player you receive scores a goal, you get to pick a prize from their prize table. Some of the prizes include hats, shirts, cups, a free pitcher of Okanagan Springs Pale Ale, and other standard pub fare. Last night, Sami Salo scored on a howitzer from the point, and since I was holding his card, it was my turn to pick a prize. I scanned the table for a quick second, and thought about grabbing a cup, or even getting the free pitcher of beer (m'heh), but then something fascinating caught my eye, and I could not resist.


For Britain! 

The picture does not do the flask justice. What a great find.

Long live the Queen and God save the Commonwealth, I say.

Easy Beaverbrook, Griffith, Pitt, Nelson, and the rest of you fine folks at the Monarchist (16 or 17 of you now, I believe?!?!). Jealousy doesn't become any of you!

Da Da dum da dum dum dum

This brings back a veritable boatload of memories.

Stanley Cup Ring to my friend Cheez.

Glorious

Truly, there is a God after all.

Welcome back, guys.

Occam's Carbuncle and Rempelia Prime.

Even the Libs won't defend every crook

Former gov. gen. Clarkson criticizes Chrétien government

Not exactly who I'd expect to see criticizing the government.

Adrienne Clarkson is taking a shot at the federal government. The former governor general says she's upset the government didn't defend her when she was accused of lavish spending.

Ahhhhh, everything becomes clear now.

A trip Clarkson led two years ago through Russia, Finland, and Iceland cost taxpayers about $5 million.

Which is really only seven times David Dingwall's expense account, and the Liberals are defending him. I mean really now, what's the difference?

Clarkson said she was asked to make the trip by the Foreign Affairs Department, and that Jean Chrétien's government should have come to her defence.

Did the Foreign Affairs office ask her to spend five million dollars while overseas, that is the question I'd like an answer to.

Clarkson said it's the government's duty to defend the office of the governor general.

Well AC, perhaps if you had siphoned some of that money into the Liberal coffers, or promoted Canadian federalism while in St. Petersburg, you might have warranted some notice from the government. Joke's on you!

I wish this woman would just go away.

Finest Moment

What was the finest moment of last night's Oiler victory, you ask?

I can say for certainty which three moments were not the finest.

It was certainly not the lame-duck attempt by Markus Naslund in the shoot-out. A wrist shot to the five-hole??? Come on Markus, you just got had by the oldest goaltending trick in the book. The Markkanen giveth, and the Markkanen taketh away! I saw that one coming before Nazzy had even crossed the blue line.

Another certainty was Bertuzzi's lacklustre deke. I should be thankful thank he didn't just shoot the puck over the net, a la Eric Lindros. And the look on Bert's fact as he turned back towards the Oiler netminder read something to the effect of "how did he get his pad in front of the puck like that?". Lesson to be learned here, kids: raise the puck!

But perhaps most depressing moment of the night was not what did happen, but what did not happen. Richard Park, the South Korean dynamo with lightening-fast legs who bagged a water bottle-flying breakaway goal in the pre-season against San Jose, was left to rot on the bench. In that game against San Jose, coach Marc Crawford picked Naslund, Bertuzzi, and Park in the shootout (in that order). None of them scored.

If you want to win a shootout, do you use the same formula that has already failed?

The next shootout line-up should look like this: Park, Morrison, and Daniel Sedin.
At least until the big boys have some serious breakaway practice sessions.

Credit the the Oil, they did something they haven't been able to do much of against the Canucks in recent years - get two points. They will not get two points next time.

And if I were Colby, I'd be hoping that sprained MCL suffered by Smyth in the first period will not keep him out of the line-up for long. The Oil aren't going to get very far relying on guys named "Rafi" and "Ales".

A Giant Victory

The White Sox have swept the Red Sox in the opening round of the American League playoffs.

I wonder if Michele of A Small Victory is happy?

Ummmm, yep, I'd say she is.

Hey, Thanks.

I've been deathly ill all week. It was so bad that I ended up taking two and a half days off work this week. Today I was running at about 75%, and was fortunate that I did not have to put in a regular, full day of work.

This afternoon I cleaned the carpets in the home of an elderly gentleman. It wasn't the first time I had been there, but it was the first time I noticed the pictures on his kitchen wall. One was a letter of recognition from the British government, dated 1946, thanking the man for his efforts defending England during WW2. Another one was an official RAF document with the insignia of his company (and gosh darnit if I can remember the name... curse this poor memory of mine). Two other pictures each contained a large group of people standing in front of what appeared to be large bomber aircraft, and another smaller company in front of another bomber. He noticed me looking at them, and so I asked him about them.

He told me that he was a radar engineer during the war. He was trained in Vancouver (UBC, actually), spent some time in Ontario, two months in Texas, and it was overseas for him. He spent most of the war either on Iceland, or in the northern part of Ireland. His job was to monitor and repair radar stations, as well as the radar on allied aircraft. The bombers I saw in the photos were Lancaster bombers. They were huge. In fact, that is probably the most apt term to describe them: huge. Huge in everyway, not only their size, but also their effectiveness and durability. The Avro Lancasters dropped two-thirds of all RAF bombs from 1941-1945. Pretty impressive stuff.

And this elderly man, who now cannot walk without assistance from a wheeled device, helped defend England and her allies from destruction at the hands of Hitler's Germany.

After every job I do at a customer's home, I say a hearty "thank you". I do not think I have ever meant it more than when I said it today.

Hey, thanks. Thanks a lot.

And Before I Forget

The Brigade has lost Babbling Brooks, who has taken a leave of absence from the blogging circuit (hopefully temporary). But we have gained two new members, Italics Mine and Rootleweb.

Be sure to swing by and say hello. Good quality blogs, indeed.

Darn Military anyways

After much snooping investigative reporting, I discovered that the convoy that flew over Smithers last week was in fact a military one. The large aircraft in the middle was a fuel tanker, and the escorts were military jets of some sort (F-15's or F-16's? I don't have a clue). Sadly, no Bush or Cheney in the Bulkley Valley this time. The planes were on their way to Alaska, and the reports were that a large chopper was to be following them soon. My friends who work at Central Mountain Air sources on the inside told me that the helicopter would be landing in Smithers for a short time on Sunday, then departing again for Alaska.

So a friend and I went down to the Central Mountain Air hanger and snooped around did a bit more investigating. Unfortunately, the chopper did not end up landing in Smithers (big surprise there). But I found out that while the military escort flew overheard last week, it jammed all the cell phone signals for the better part of the day.

I wondered why my cell phone didn't work, and thought maybe it had something to do with the Telus labour dispute. Guess not.

Can the U.S. military really just do that sort of thing? I suppose it makes sense, because you wouldn't want potentially classified material being picked up by someone's cell phone. But doesn't it seem a little overboard that they would crush the whole network? Part of my work includes emergency restoration from water and fire damage. Pretty important stuff, especially if it is you who just had the flood in your basement. But what about doctors? Yeesh... I'd had to be that guy who needs his appendix removed or his broken leg set in place and has to wait a day because no one can get a hold of the on-call doctor.

Hopefully none of that actually happened.

This Just In

I just witnessed a jumbo jet fly over Smithers with six escorts (three on either side). It figures the ONE time I do not have my camera with me something out of the ordinary would take place.

Anyone have any ideas what is going on? I haven't heard about any air shows in the area.

They weren't flying very high, but were high enough that I couldn't really see the escorts. But I definitely saw the big plane. It was substantially larger than the others, like a 747 passenger plane. All seven planes left a white smoke trail behind them, so it's not like they were hiding.

I bet it was Air Force One flying to Northern BC. Bush and Cheney are probably going to do some fishin'.