Just Go With It

I just took Jen to see the new Adam Sandler flick Just Go With It.  While the premise of the movie was just about as dumb as you can get, it managed to be pretty funny.  Sandler did end up doing some of his stupid voices, which is always annoying, but that didn't ruin the movie.

The characters and much of the dialogue was pretty clever and I found myself laughing out loud many times during the movie.  Now, it must be noted that I generally like Adam Sandler's humour and style.  However, there were many people laughing out loud throughout the theater.

I also have to say, that while the movie focuses on the hot body of Brooklyn Decker (see every trailer),  Jennifer Aniston at 42 was certainly holding her own.  That woman is aging very gracefully.  Unfortunately, most of her Friends co-stars are not faring so well.

On the whole, I would recommend this movie to people that aren't overly concerned with artistic vision, but do want to laugh at some silly jokes and outrageous situations.

Happy Birthday to Me

Last week I had my 40th birthday.  I had been dreading this one for quite a while.  Most birthdays I would not even notice if it weren't for my wife.  She likes birthdays more than I do.  Anyway, I don't know what I didn't like about this birthday, but I was not looking forward to it.  Maybe it was that my life was over half over.  Not that I'm unhappy where I'm at, but wow, the fuel gauge is down to half empty, I'd better get my butt in gear and actually accomplish something.

My wife held a wonderful party with my friends and I had a great time.  We had lots of food, drinks and laughs.

We even tried out the Kinect for the Xbox 360.  One of my friends brought it over and we jumped, ducked, swatted and generally looked like fools for a couple of hours.  The Kinect is an amazing piece of hardware, but in my opinion, they don't have the software to go with it yet.  The game that we used was fun, but he novelty would wear off quickly and the Kinect would gather dust on top of the TV.  So, I think I'll keep the $150 in my pocket until there are better games.

So, I'm now 40 and working on another 40.  According to the pension people, I'll still be working for all of them!

The Law of Hockey and My F@#$ing Cat Pt. 2

First, I thought I should pass on something I learned from one of my Grade 1 hockey players.  In the dressing room yesterday, W's mom noticed that his brother had gone onto the ice without his neck protector.  She suggested that W take it out to his brother when he went onto the ice himself.  W got very agitated and hollered that his brother had to have the neck protector on right then because it was against the law of hockey to be on the ice without it.  I didn't know that.

My cat was at it again.  I went to hockey last week and when I put on my jersey it smelt pretty ripe.  Now, I'm not going to get on here and try and tell you that hockey equipment doesn't smell bad.  In fact, it smells like ass.  But my jersey had been washed just recently and it smelled like ass x2. 

So, I gave the jersey a bigger sniff.  I know.  When something smells bad, why do we take a big breath?  Anyway, I smelled harder and thought I caught a familiar scent.  So, I took out my other jersey from the bottom of my bag and didn't have to even take a small whiff.  The acrid smell of cat pee jumped out and punched me in the nose.  The other jersey was wet.  Really wet.  Luckily, the jersey I was wearing had only caught a bit of overspray on one sleeve.

That's right.  My old friend had taken a massive leak in the bottom of my hockey bag.

Well, I played that whole game smelling of cat pee.  Unfortunately, as my body temperature creeped up, so did the stink-o-meter.

I can tell you that I can't prove which one of my little freeloaders did the deed, but I can sure guess.  I KNOW it was the little bugger that had me wiener deep in the snow not that long ago.

Northern Machismo

There's something about the folk in the north that has been bugging me on and off for the past four years.  The problem is with the typical northerner's psyche.  There is this idea that they can endure anything because they are "tough".  For example, it was snowing and drifting like crazy last night and this morning and the school buses in our district were still running.  The buses in the district to the south were shut down.  When you talk to people in the schools, the reason you get is that we are tougher and we can handle these weather conditions.  I think it is important for people to differentiate between tough or brave and foolhardy.  In their desire to appear tough and rugged, many northerners only succeed in making foolish choices.

Another example of how tough northerners are, is when it comes to cold.  When it is crazy cold outside (somewhere south of minus retarded), you hear many say that it's not that cold outside.  We are tough up here and if you just dress for it, you can handle it.  Now these are usually the same people that will start their vehicles over an hour ahead of leaving home.  There is no mechanical reason to let a vehicle run that long, they just like to get into a warm car.  It is nothing to see long rows of gigantic trucks idling outside the movie theater or hockey rink while the owners are inside for the duration.  Why do the pollute the atmosphere so?  Well, what kind of tough guy (or girl) wants to set their delicate ass on a cold seat?

My F$@#ing Cat

Well, I just spent the last 45 minutes wandering our neighbourhood calling for a cat that had gone out early this afternoon and hadn't been heard from since.  My wife is much fonder of this cat than I am.  She was quite distraught at the missing feline.  So, out we went and wandered the snowy streets, looking like fools, calling out a cat's name.  Unfortunately, we saw nothing and heard nothing while out and about.

When we got home, Jen went out on the deck one last time and called London's name.  She said she heard him.  After listening I determined he was somewhere in the back yard.  Now, we've had quite a bit of snow over the last couple of weeks.  I plowed out into the back yard.  The snow was up to my crotch!  I'm not a tall man, but that's still pretty deep snow!  I chugged through the wiener deep snow, only pausing long enough to listen for pathetic meows from the back corner of the yard.  Of course the  little idiot managed to get to the farthest point in the yard possible.  When I finally made it to the far corner, the cat was peaking out from behind a sheet of chip board the previous owners had left leaned up against the shed.  It turns out that he had taken the fence most of the way around the yard and then jumped down at the back.  That is when the fool cat realized that the snow is deep in the front AND the back of the house.  So, we carried him back into the house where he promptly showed us his ass and went to get something to eat and fall asleep.


Sometimes I really hate that f$@#ing cat.

Rural Hockey

Well, yesterday was the first tournament of the rural hockey season.  Students from 3 or 4 rural schools participate in an unofficial league that allows the kids that don't or can't play organized hockey in town to be on a team and play in meaningful games.  The arenas are largely outdoors (though one of the communities has a new $5 million dollar arena with artificial ice).  The games are played in a series of one day tournaments and there are no standings kept.  At the end of the season (usually the middle of March) there is a rural hockey tournament in Fort St. John where the kids get medals, ribbons, etc.  The RCMP used to sponsor and organize the tournament, but pulled out before last year's tournament.  As an aside, with the terrible reputation the RCMP has in BC right now, it really boggles the mind that the cops would give up such a good PR opportunity.  Anyway, the regional district and parents have stepped in to provide funding and organization.

I coach in the "C" division, which is for kids ages 5-9.  Yesterday's tournament was supposed to be held outdoors in Prespatou, but do to the warm weather the moved it into the new arena in the nearby community of Buick Creek.  Both of these communities are about an hour out of town, so it is a bit of a time commitment for me this year, but there was nobody else to do it and the kids have a real blast.  The last two years, I lived and worked in Prespatou, so the tournaments were all pretty close.

While the kids had a great time playing, we did not meet with much success.  We managed to score only 2 goals in two games and had about 20 or so scored against us.  The problem is a lack of skills and a lack of practice time.  We have only had one practice this year. Due to extremely cold temperatures, not having ice in the rink until the end of December and too much snow canceling buses, practice time has been hard to come by.  Now the weather has turned warm and the ice may be no good to practice on tomorrow.

Hopefully, we can get the kids into at least a competitive situation before the final tournament, so they can have a bit more fun and have something to look forward to next year.

Who Knew Hell Was This Cold?

After three and a half years in the frozen north the frequency of new experiences has gradually declined.  I usually have to go looking for them now, where before they seemed to find me with disturbing regularity.  Well, I had one of those new experiences the other day and it just found me.

We came out of school about 4:00 and it was a bitterly cold day.  The temperature was -23 and the windchill made it feel closer to -40.  As we were getting into the nicely warmed up car, Jen said that the tire was flat.  Now, Jen is always thinking the tire is flat, so I didn't put much stock in it.  However, I always go and check and this time it was actually flat.  I said some bad words right then.  I had more bad words to say when I realized I had forgotten my big gloves and only had a pair of small stretchy gloves.  So we begin digging out the spare and the jack out of the trunk.  Of course all of that stuff is stacked and packed in layers of foam containers and under layers of trunk and storage stuff.

The first step was to loosen the lug nuts.  Oh, yeah.  I forgot we had locking wheel lugs.  Well, I'll just sit in the car and read the instructions on how to get those bad boys off.  It turns out there is a special insert to put in your tire iron that fits into the end of the one locking nut on each tire to loosen it.  So, I make my way out into the freezing cold and pick up the tire iron and try to loosen the lug nuts.  Let me tell you that it is hard to get much leverage when you only have a six inch tire iron.  What were the idiots are Subaru thinking?  Well, after much grunting and groaning I finally loosened them and jacked up the car.  That is when I realized the tire wouldn't come off.  I figured I should go inside and warm up since I couldn't really feel my pinky fingers anymore.  After a warm up I went back out and kicked the shit out of the tire to loosen it.  That didn't work, so I got out the user manual for the car in case there was something I didn't know.  Nope.  It was just frozen.  Thankfully, the janitor came outside with a hunk of wood and he proceeded to beet the crap out of the tire until it came off.  We put on the donut and headed for home.

After a long drive home we had to find somewhere that was still open to fix our tire or we would be mooching a ride off someone the next day.  It was about 5:30 when we got into town and most places in FSJ close around 5:00, so were a little bit worried.  The first shop we went to couldn't get us in before they closed but nicely referred us to a shop that was open until 7:00.  We got the tire fixed and it turned out to be a sharp stone from the road.  Considering the amount of gravel on our roads during the winter, it's a wonder it hadn't happened sooner.  On the bright side, it was -32 when we came out from school the next day, so it could have been worse.