Monthly Archives: March 2007

Bugs get me wet.

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Colembolla are tiny little creatures that live by the trillions in moist soils all across the world. We have all been touched by the plight of these misfortunate buggies, but most likely in a manner that would suprise. Kids, dogs, parents and duckies frolic all day long throughout parks, fields and forests, crushing these little arthropods by the dozens with every step. Of course when the sun goes down the souls of the fallen travel up through the blades of grass and into the ionosphere. There they bolster the ranks of ozone or karma or aurora borealis or something – I can’t remember. The important thing is that much like slimer of ghostbuster fame, the souls leave a little drop of wetness on every physical object that they float up through. The next morning the grass is slick with the protoplasmic dew of the collembolla.

And now where I make money. I say we load water bombers with a liquid slurry of colembolla and raid, then plaster wide swaths of forest in advance of large fires, creating what I will call dewbreaks. Or maybe collemblockas.

The Countdown Continues!

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Huzzah!! My new passport came in the mail today, so I’m officially on my way April 4th at about 3pm. I could kiss you all I’m so happy! :D

To top things off my brother IS coming along. We travelled very well together on our Cuba trip last year, and I’m stoked to spend 3 weeks with him across the pond. Add to that my new and improved MP3 collection and I’m all set!

By the way, if you haven’t seen “Stranger Than Fiction” yet I highly recommend it. I realize Will Ferrell isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but he does an excellent job in this film. Now if only I can find myself a copy of Children of Men…

I finally did it!

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Well, the first step in my 4 country European backpacking trip is finally complete: my flight tickets have been purchased! I’ll be flying to London on April 4th, and back on the 28th, with stops in Northern France, Belgium and Holland in between. Of course this is all pending the timely arrival of my new passport, but the rough itinerary is:

  • few days in London to get my legs under me
  • a week or so in and around Lille, Rouen, Caen and Paris, France
  • a day or so each in Ieper and Brussels, Belgium
  • a week or more in Holland, with stops in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague and Apeldoorn
  • back to London for one last drunken blowout (or two)

Hopefully my brother will be able to come along, otherwise it’ll be yours truly going scary solo. Time to start counting down the days!! :D

Sledge Hockey

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My day today (a Saturday when neither jennyk or I are working) should consist of 3 major parts:

  • going for a long walk — we were going to head over to the Westside where we will be living next year but I think instead we will just walk to the following event
  • attending the World Sledge Hockey Challenge Gold Medal game between Canada and the reigning World Champions, Norway
  • hopefully playing some board games… maybe a little Globetrotters! I will tempt you all into playing a game of this some magic satchel night! *** Travel Bonus

When jennyk and I discovered that the Sledge Hockey World Challenge was going to be in Kelowna, we both thought it would be something fun to go see. As with most events that don’t get a tonne of media coverage combined with our easy-going (read disorganized) lifestyle we almost remembered too late and missed the whole event. But we are going, only to one game mind you, but we are going. We got tickets to the gold medal game not knowing which two teams would be competing but we couldn’t have asked for a better matchup: Canada vs. Norway.

Now it turns out that not only are Norway the current World Champions but their captain Rolf Einar Pederson is the tournament’s leading scorer and has 9 of Norway’s 12 goals (and assisted on 2 of the 3 he didn’t score). In the round robin game between these teams, Canada charged back from a 2-0 deficit after 2 periods to win the game 4-3 in extra time. Here’s hoping we get to see another close game with the Canadian’s edging out a victory!

I’ve never watched a full game of sledge hockey but it is supposed to be an exciting and very physical game. And from what I have seen on TV, this definitely seems to be the case. How physical is sledge hockey? Well, these are the penalties from the 1st period of Wednesday’s game between these two teams.

02:03 NOR 9 Morten Vaernes (Boarding-2 minutes)
05:09 NOR 8 Stig Tore Svee (T-Boning-2 minutes)
05:52 CAN 18 Billy Bridges (Roughing-2 minutes)
09:45 CAN 29 Graeme Murray (Boarding-2 minutes)
12:35 CAN 18 Billy Bridges (Interference-2 minutes)
13:04 NOR 7 Eskil Hagen (Slashing-2 minutes)
14:42 CAN 17 Jean Labonté (Elbowing-2 minutes)

Not a lot of hooking and holding calls there, eh? Just the rough stuff. Should be fun. And after all, it’s St. Patrick’s Day and what is St. Paddy’s without a little violence?

Survive by email – Round 1

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The first ever Survive! by email game is now complete, and aside from a few minor hiccups along the way things went pretty smoothly.

Sadly, I was not able to carry over my real world winning streak into the realm of the intertubes, but I blame random.org entirely for my poor player placement. This lead to my inability to get anyone off the island until quite late in the game, and only two people to safety. One more turn and I would have rescued my most “valuable” people, but alas the island exploded before the turn came back around to me.

Enough about my excuses, on to the results!

Continue reading →

Challenge!

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Ask your opponent if he or she accepts your challenge. If your opponent declines (or if both Benches are full), draw 2 cards. If your opponent accepts, each of you searches your decks for any number of Basic Pokémon cards and puts them face down onto your Benches. (A player can't do this if his or her Bench is full.) When you both have finished, shuffle your decks and turn those cards face up.

My challenge to Scott and Josh is this: build a new header for the Teal theme. Those giant ninja eyes are freakin’ me out!

fancy new threads…

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The blog has some fancy new pants it is trying out. Those that post here / plan to post here should comment on it.

I set it up to be a random color scheme each time the page loads, the “wide” view so that more of the screen is used, and some other fancy stuff.

I also did some editing on the previous posts to clean things up a bit. Oh, and I put up some actual valid info on the next magic satchel night.

checkitoutcheckitoutcheckitout.

a journey of a thousand miles…

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begins with a single step.

A journey towards 2000 miles began today.

In January I set certain goals for myself – not resolutions because those never work out – to make 2007 a bit more memorable than years past.

The goal this post is referring to is to commute / ride over 3000km this year (2000 miles / 3218km would do the trick). I have no intention of stopping once next winter hits, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

I actually had no intention of stopping this winter, but knee surgery and a lack of post surgery motivation pretty much killed that idea. But I digress… Continue reading →