Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
3043 visits from 1282 visitors yesterday. I wonder if you post an item about a Chinese dissident whether that triggers the Chinese government’s bots. Anyway, biggest day – and even on a Monday when I am elected only Mr. Fourth. Wooo. If you are actually human and stop by here, please sign the guest-book-like thingie.
I was so sensible. Even boring. Watched a bad bowl game. Sipped a teaspoon or two of sherry. Drifted to sleep listening to the KMOX in St. Louis countdown from the next time zone west. That is it! I under-did it.
Yet, getting up too early to catch the Liverpool v. Chelsea game it is still time for a milky tea. And rubbing the head with tiger balm. I’d put it on toast. For a time, when I were a lad, my cure was club soda washing down vanilla ice cream sandwiches. Then it was sardines and hot sauce after sticking to brews I made myself. Now it is under-doing it. And napping.
The office is quiet as I am it for staff at the start of today and today only lasts until noon. New Year’s Eve is best like this. Never been a greatest night ever even with the firmest of plans. My favorite bad New Year’s party was around 1986 when friends of friends of friends stiffed me for a bunch of tickets for something, hollaring ensured, mascara ran and I stayed in only to have Howie Chen show up and talk me into going out to the Flamingo after all to see I can’t recall who but maybe the Hopping Penguins. We leave the house around 11:50 and a cab is driving by. Cab stops. Drivers says “who the hell thinks they are going to flag a cab at ten minutes to miidnight on New Year’s Eve?” We say “who the hell is looking for fares?” Laughs and tips. After that, I remember Kenny who used to tend at the old Gingers was behind the bar and all was well.
When I was a kid, the folks had a party at the manse for the no-alcohol set but, being Scots, sherry is not no-alcohol and, when a large component of a trifle – actually called “sherry trifle” in our cookery – it is more of a food group. The aim New Year’s morning was to be the first kid up to gorge on homemade sausage rolls and sherry trifle at eleven years old and then lay around snoozing with the first inklings of buzzery. Speaking of buzzery, I read that Ian is getting drunk tonight and Rob spliffed up last night. Both have their reasons. Ian will be a Dad in 2005 and Rob learned that his daughter Hope had moved on to Laos after all, leaving the Thai beaches a day or two before the tragedy. Being a Dad involves a few stiff drinks on occassion it appears.
It has been a good year with us. The immigrations – ours in 2003 and my parents in 2004 – to the start of the big river from its mouth has paid off in many ways which I won’t bother listing except to say that being five minutes drive from a cardiac surgery unit was an extremely good call for my Dad. It is odd seeing the soles of his feet pink. It was a good year for family reunions and 2005 bodes well for that again. Getting back into soccer was one of the best things I have done for myself in years and many short trips with the kids the best we have done ourselves.
Being well, watered and together is good. There are few goods gooder.
I watched the Grey Cup last night and was happy to see the Argos win with style. Odd that BC chose to go with the back-up quarterback, expecially as the other one won the league MVP. Dickenson’s choke on two time delays ruining a two-point conversion opportunity followed my a missed kick for one point pretty much lost the game or at least blew the last opportunity for them to win the game. No rouge.
The Grey Cup always brings out memories. Colour TV at Mrs. Hawkins around 1972 watching Angelo Mosca and the Ti-cats win. The fact that once CBC and CVT used to both show the game at the same time – when Canada existed in a pre-cable, two channel universe. I was reminded of 1983 when I was in the Roost at Fish’s above the library at Kings in the fall of third year. The Argos had not win since the 50s and our jumping up and down with every play sent the evening library staff up the stairs to tell us to be quiet. I don’t think that we had considered the power of a librarian’s shooshing powers to extend beyond the library. I was also reminded by my father, after a short funny bit on the broadcast with June Calderwood teaching the art of the field goal, that I had mooned her as a tot in a Toronto waterfront park in the summer 1965. She was in a lawnchair sunning. I was in a diaper half way down me arse on a breakaway from the picnic blanket. I apparently have a winter version of roughly the same story involving less skin, a toboggan and Allen MacPhee.
Nice as always to see someone my age win the game’s MVP – the “other Allen” drilled some sweet passes and even the Argo back-up did well while he was in expecially with a very natty soft rainbow pass to the sideline. It was not all about the punt and field goal after all. Nice also to realize admitting you watch the CFL is not like admitting you lick cat feet.
If you have no clue what this is about, here is a link. Don’t expect the diaper reference to be there.
I am under a denial of interest attack. Why can’t people in Ohio all vote before noon? Is it too much to ask?
On the upside the Daily Show is doing an hour long special.
Update: Gmail lives again.
Update: Why isn’t Alaska’s Peter Tosh memorial ballot measure being reported during this two hour break in anything interesting? Here is what it is about:
Would legalize the cultivation, use and sale of marijuana for persons 21 and older; the state and local government would regulate marijuana like alcohol and tobacco; doctors would be able to prescribe drugs to all patients, including children; public use laws could be enacted by the government as well as laws in the interest of public safety.
Interesting to see that Utah’s same sex marriage proposition (as it were) passed without the popular wording “that marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman…or some women…related or otherwise”
Good Night: 198 Bush to 188 Kerry not counting another 18 for Kerry in Oregon and Washington. Which really makes it 198 Bush to 206 Kerry.
Miles to go. Larry King, who does not need sleep because he is an ALIEN, will be still talking at breakfast and Ohio will still be uncertain. Certainly it would be easier to be a Bush supporter at this moment than a Kerry one but it could all come down to the split allocation of electoral votes in Maine. What the hell did the neighbours do, portland? On the upside, the sofa is there for you and yours, our token political refugees.
Congratulations to Ian and Tessa who singlehandledly out-Ezekiel-ed the Mennonites of Lancaster County with tales from both the Book of Mormon and sin-centrals NY/Cali, swinging to the Democrats those confused but mightily good folk who run lovely train museums.
See you in the recounts.
…Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around…
The weird thing about They Might Be Giants is their lyrics provide the comebacks you really want to say during contract negotiations. You don’t really want to tell someone to go to h-e-double-hockey-sticks. You want to tell them to build a birdhouse in their soul. At least I do.
This weekend I was thinking – as I lay around putting off the filing of my 2003 income tax moving expenses and writing out the letter explaining it all – how valuable it is to be a sports fan generally but how useful it is to have played when a lad the sports you follow as an older larger lump. I have played soccer (and still do) as well as some basketball, a little Canadian football and less baseball. They tried to make me a javelin thrower in junior high, even though I could shot put farther than anyone – if they could see me now, they would have known their error. My personal playing of hockey was limited to the pond, road, table, floor and bubble varieties. It is similar to beer appreciation and home brewing, even a little HTML and blogging. Learn the elements of anything a little, it is hard not to have an appreciation for when others do it well.
So it was with some appreciation that I entered the weekend emotionally invested in a few games. On this side of the Atlantic, the battle of the red uniforms is between the most favoured Boston Red Sox and the ok-but-not-my-favorites St. Louis Cardinals. 
On the other, the big game today was between the red of beloved Arsenal and the cursed red devils of Manchester United. Well, you win some, you lose some – and Mel was good enough to let me know in a 1500 km phone call with 2 minutes to go that Arsenal lost 2-0 to her beloved Manchester United, the New York Yankees of the English Premier League, stopping my Gunner’s record-breaking unbeaten streak in the League at 49 games. Rumour is that the blue away uniforms for Arsenal are a curse and any sensible supplier of strip would go with yellow. But we are, after all, talking about Nike.
In happier news, the Red Sox won game one of the World Series last night in fine style 11-9 after taking a lead in the eighth inning. Game two is close as we speak (ok, now it is 6-1 Boston) but it is nice to walk around town having people say “Hey, Sox!” when they see the hat. 
CBC TV news did a great piece on the Maritimers’ love of the Sox and its base in the early days of radio and TV. Red Sox pitcher Shilling is playing tonight with a jury rigged ankle staying relatively in one piece through some experimental sewing by the staff doctor – suffice it to say that Red Sox is particularly appropriate. All in the effort to overcome a curse far bigger than that of the Arsenal blue away uniform – the curse of Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players ever, made the day he was traded away from Boston. This year. At my cousin’s wedding in Cape Cod last May, three or four generations of my family spoke of this year being the year for the Sox: “Hi. Haven’t seen you for twenty years. How about those Sox?”
Even with only three of my four teams playing now – the Leafs being idled only by the NHL lockout – October is rich for the fan. Even the Morton won this weekend to pull into a tie for third. It is good being a fan these days…even if that means Mel gets to make that call.
Through the powers that be, I have created another blog called A Good Beer Blog where, for now, I
will mirror all the beery posts here abouts but which I hope will turn into a
multi-author site along the lines of Switching to Glide with its
focus on Canadian music.
Further reports as news comes in.
Appparently it is coming out in a month. I had a weird experience with my glacial attempt at the original Half Life. I was half way down the collapsed building fighting evil things when 9/11 happened. I just couldn’t pick it up after. Maybe now I will be ready to beat shin-high brain/chicken monsters with a tire iron again. Maybe now that I have kids who can turn on the computer I won’t.
My interest in canals has been stoked this week with the delivery of Carol Sheriff’s book The Artificial River, about the socio-economic effects of the building and rebuilding Erie Canal from 1817 to 1862. Under a search for “canal blog” I found this wonderful site, Ship’s Blog.
There is something quite heartening knowing I can walk out the door here, get on a boat and sail to Ithaca or Burlington, Vt. I think I am going to have to undertake some canal based explorations of western New York next summer…all, of course, a blatant fraud, a front for the hunting out of micro brewers in the company of the little people but these are the skills that keep you going.