Mmmmmmmm, 5 day weekend, what to do what to do? Well I think I will start with a little web slinging action from Sam Rami's Spiderman 2, I wonder if Ivan Rami, and Stan Lee have there requisite cameos? Then a good nights sleep and its Canada Day! So I shall celebrate my Canadian pride with some sleeping in, reading, and video games, followed by a 3 hour drive to the cottage. Sweet sweet cottage, well its been a family dream to own a cottage for years, Erin's (for those who just tuned in Erin is my fiancé) parents own a beautiful cottage on Georgian Bay, just about 20-30 minutes past Perry Sound. The cottage is a 3 story A-Frame that stands at the mouth of a small bay, at the bottom of a big bay on Georgian bay. Actually there may or may not be one additional level of bay in between, but the last two bays in the bay hierarchy are Dent Bay and Carling bay (I think.) All these bays aside, the cottage is nice and high with a beautiful view of the bay(s,) and no neighbours crammed up your nose, there are neighbours, just not too close. So I will fritter away Friday and Saturday in cottage style, with lots of sleep, great food, swimming sun and a few light chores. I think I am on task to change the 15 smoke detectors around the place. Just for good measure I think I will add in some video game playing to my task list, I don't want to miss anything important. So if you suckers are reading this, then I hope where ever you are connected to the internet is as nice as mine, and that hopefully your weekend is as good as mine.
Georgian Geoff of the Bays
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Rod's Place
I had a chance last weekend to visit my school buddy Rod at his new house, new to him the house is one hundred years old I'm told. I must say I was surprised, first off his property backs right on to the escarpment in Grimsby Ontario making for a nice backyard. His neighbour had this cool layered thing going with a sauna or something, and Rod said he and his soon to be Wife will be following suit. The deck, the outside of the house, and the garage are awesome. They are mostly new, clean and in great repair. The inside is well laid out, but needs a lot of work; good thing Rod is a handyman, because his floors are going to take forever. Ancient painted and repainted hard wood that is rotted in places is going to be quite the challenge, but if all goes well he should have the place in great shape by the wedding, which is in November. My only negative about the whole trip is that the city planners of Grimsby aught to be taken out back and beaten with a 2x4. Who puts a billion unmarked turns in Main Street? Its freaking MAIN STREET people, the MAIN street of the town, the Street which acts as the MAIN source of traffic and reference for your city, and yet you twist it all up and don't tell people what's going on. I think you have a better chance of finding the end of the rainbow, or at least getting a box of lucky charms before you would find the end of that street. City planers, what can I say, GET A CLUE?
Road induced rage, as opposed to driver induced rage they name is Main Street.
Road induced rage, as opposed to driver induced rage they name is Main Street.
The Majestic Butter tart
Here is the teaser and the link to a great article in today's Toronto Star about the butter tart, yet another Canadian delicacy.
Patriotic pastry
Oh, Canada. You confound us in our search for a unified culinary identity. The regions are so individual and the myriad cultures so diverse, it seems impossible. However, there are a few dishes that are definitely Canadian. And the flakiest, the ooziest and the sweetest of these is the butter tart.
My Weekend Plans
Mmmmmmmm, 5 day weekend, what to do what to do? Well I think I will start with a little web slinging action from Sam Rami's Spiderman 2, I wonder if Ivan Rami, and Stan Lee have there requisite cameos? Then a good nights sleep and its Canada Day! So I shall celebrate my Canadian pride with some sleeping in, reading, and video games, followed by a 3 hour drive to the cottage. Sweet sweet cottage, well its been a family dream to own a cottage for years, Erin's (for those who just tuned in Erin is my fiancé) parents own a beautiful cottage on Georgian Bay, just about 20-30 minutes past Perry Sound. The cottage is a 3 story A-Frame that stands at the mouth of a small bay, at the bottom of a big bay on Georgian bay. Actually there may or may not be one additional level of bay in between, but the last two bays in the bay hierarchy are Dent Bay and Carling bay (I think.) All these bays aside, the cottage is nice and high with a beautiful view of the bay(s,) and no neighbours crammed up your nose, there are neighbours, just not too close. So I will fritter away Friday and Saturday in cottage style, with lots of sleep, great food, swimming sun and a few light chores. I think I am on task to change the 15 smoke detectors around the place. Just for good measure I think I will add in some video game playing to my task list, I don't want to miss anything important. So if you suckers are reading this, then I hope where ever you are connected to the internet is as nice as mine, and that hopefully your weekend is as good as mine.
Georgian Geoff of the Bays
Georgian Geoff of the Bays
Canada (cont)
Continuing on my sojourn into Canada and Canadian culture I shall examine the beer. The beer is good, in variety and volume; if libations were a bullion currency then the Canadian standard is gold, or maybe platinum. Expert beer consumer Chris Ness has this to say, "it's the middle road, its not quite German quality, but it is better then American beer. You can also get some bad Mexican beer." Really isn't that what's important, I mean who wants to be as crazy and single minded to the devotion of beer craft as the Germans? If we were where would me find the time to have such a high nation sex average (time / year) or time to partake of the nectar of the grain? Yet we do strive for a level of quality far above that of our southern cousins, because they drink shit! So raise your bottles, cans or kegs in salute this weekend, and drink Canadian Gold.
Canada
As Canada day is approaching the annual migration of city dweller to weekend dock rat takes place, I thought I might share my feelings on this fair land of ours. In light of recent elections I have found my Canadian pride and nationalism rekindled, especially by the Bloc Quebecquois. I wonder if there is anything else so distinctly Canadian is having an official political party devoted towards breaking up the country. I mean in any other country you would be committing an act of treason, look at Chechnya. I think in the US as long as you stay on your plot of land, and only come out in the open once in a while to burn a flag, and buy big big big guns you are tolerated, but if you actually started to openly try and divide the country you would probably find yourself in court on treason charges, and my guess is that in some states that carries the death penalty. In Canada mind you, it is a very different story, so different in fact that 12% of the population can elect 18 % of the federal members of parliament. In fact if you take into account the eligible voters who aren't worth a damn (see Minority Government) only 7.2% of the population elected the Bloc into 54 ridings. So here we have this federal party of whiners telling us that Quebec is hard done by and abused by the rest of Canada, and they want Sovereignty. Now I hope Canadian's will recall that Sovereignty as defined by the last referendum lets them keep their Citizenship, passports, currency, and a bunch of other Canadian niceties, but they get self-government. Well, I think it's a load of bullocks, and if Citizens don't like Canada they can migrate, but Quebec is a part of Canada, a part of our history and a part of our national character, and without Quebec we wouldn't have Poutine, and then we might as well just be the 51st State. So fie on you Gilles Duceppe, because I am willing to fight for my right to put cheese curds and gravy on fries!
To say that is the only reason I like Canada is an injustice to Canada and myself, so here are some other things I love about our fair land. Our national/provincial parks, trails and wildlife preserves, if you haven't noticed, Canada is just teaming with nature. To start with we are the second largest country in the world, but population wise we are far from it, and with most of us living with one hour of the border, that makes Canada one seriously empty place. In that emptiness I find beauty that for some has only been shared through the brush strokes of folk like Tom Thompson and the rest of the Group of Seven. At times Canada is sharp, and rugged, great mountains rise like teeth high into the sky, white topped and beautiful. Then Canada can go to the opposite with its majestic forests, and waterways like those of Algonquin Park. I am not a hard-core camper and as such much of Canada isn't open to me, but even when standing at the doors to this great land I am overcome by is wonder. At times the only way I can express the diversity of Canada's nature is with the songs of the Canadian comedy band the Arrogant Worms. In such songs like Rocks and Trees:
Cause we've got rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and water.
Or Canada is Really big:
our mountains are very pointy, our prairies are not
the rest is kind of bumpy, but man do we have a lot!
(we've got a lot of land, we've got a whole lot of land)
And the list of patriotic comedy ditties just goes on and on and on. That's another thing about Canada, we can laugh at ourselves and say boy aren't we silly, everyone one has a few jibes, a few laughs and then we move on. Its not like we need some massive documentary that rips off book titles to get our political views across in a hostile manner.
Well my train just pulled in, so off to work I go, I hope this makes it clear I think Canada is great, but if not I have all Canada to drink Canadian beer, sit on a dock in majestic lake country ponder and blog about it.
My name is Geoff, and I have a Canadian problem
"Hi Geoff"
To say that is the only reason I like Canada is an injustice to Canada and myself, so here are some other things I love about our fair land. Our national/provincial parks, trails and wildlife preserves, if you haven't noticed, Canada is just teaming with nature. To start with we are the second largest country in the world, but population wise we are far from it, and with most of us living with one hour of the border, that makes Canada one seriously empty place. In that emptiness I find beauty that for some has only been shared through the brush strokes of folk like Tom Thompson and the rest of the Group of Seven. At times Canada is sharp, and rugged, great mountains rise like teeth high into the sky, white topped and beautiful. Then Canada can go to the opposite with its majestic forests, and waterways like those of Algonquin Park. I am not a hard-core camper and as such much of Canada isn't open to me, but even when standing at the doors to this great land I am overcome by is wonder. At times the only way I can express the diversity of Canada's nature is with the songs of the Canadian comedy band the Arrogant Worms. In such songs like Rocks and Trees:
Cause we've got rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks,
and water.
Or Canada is Really big:
our mountains are very pointy, our prairies are not
the rest is kind of bumpy, but man do we have a lot!
(we've got a lot of land, we've got a whole lot of land)
And the list of patriotic comedy ditties just goes on and on and on. That's another thing about Canada, we can laugh at ourselves and say boy aren't we silly, everyone one has a few jibes, a few laughs and then we move on. Its not like we need some massive documentary that rips off book titles to get our political views across in a hostile manner.
Well my train just pulled in, so off to work I go, I hope this makes it clear I think Canada is great, but if not I have all Canada to drink Canadian beer, sit on a dock in majestic lake country ponder and blog about it.
My name is Geoff, and I have a Canadian problem
"Hi Geoff"
Blogging and word
I would just like to say that Microsoft Word is not blog friendly. In fact while preparing my blog entries from within word I find myself at the mercy of the auto correct feature. Part of it is words tendency to replace apostrophes and quotation marks with stylized equivalent. I suppose that in a word document it is kind of nice to have your 66 99 and 6 9 style punctuation. The problem I have is when they are copied into a pure text editor they are properly displayed, but when they are submitted in the blogger.com's web form, they become horribly mutated and discombobulated entities. Like so "" = “” and '' = ‘’. Don’t get me wrong, I like word, this is just a pet peeve of mine. It just means that my entries require reformatting before posting.
The Punctuationator
The Punctuationator
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Minority Government
Well P.M. is still the PM, but other then that everything else has changed. No longer will the Liberals control the house, instead they will have to fight for every inch, and compromise with the other factions. Honestly, I think this is great! I know I have said that I stand behind Paul, that statement is true, but I think in this case, that with the Liberals having a clear minority, it allows them to lead a mandate down the middle of socialist, ecenomic and ecological change. With the checks and balances added by the other stake holders Mr. Martin will have his hands full, and maybe the government will collapse in 12-24 months, but the exciting chance for change in that time can't be ignored. Money for defense, cuts to bloated federal departments, health care, and maybe some excitement in the land of civil liberties, who knows, anything and everything might happen. So common kiddies hold on your seats (for those incumbents who were lucky enough,) and lets see where this country is going.
As an aside, for you worthless shits who didn't vote, yeah you know who you are you 40%, if I catch you bitching about anything that happens between now and your next opportunity to vote, I am going to tell you to stuff it. You had your chance to vote, and only that vote give you the right to my attention. You could have spoiled your ballot, or did a protest vote, or officially abstained, but doing nothing was not an option. You should have gone down to your polling station and made your mark where ever that may be, but for not doing that, you have dropped to the lowest level of my regard, I value the opinion of a Marxist over you, because at least he had the courage to voice his opinion. So between now and then even if the they pass a law to double taxes to all the people who didn't vote I don't want to hear a word out of you, because you don't have a say, you forfeited that privilege!
As an aside, for you worthless shits who didn't vote, yeah you know who you are you 40%, if I catch you bitching about anything that happens between now and your next opportunity to vote, I am going to tell you to stuff it. You had your chance to vote, and only that vote give you the right to my attention. You could have spoiled your ballot, or did a protest vote, or officially abstained, but doing nothing was not an option. You should have gone down to your polling station and made your mark where ever that may be, but for not doing that, you have dropped to the lowest level of my regard, I value the opinion of a Marxist over you, because at least he had the courage to voice his opinion. So between now and then even if the they pass a law to double taxes to all the people who didn't vote I don't want to hear a word out of you, because you don't have a say, you forfeited that privilege!
Lighting effect
Isn't that cool how the light caught the reflective parts on the shoes?
Well I think it is.
Well I think it is.
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