Friday 13th

We got a call Friday morning from the auto body shop telling us that they had a loaner car ready for us.  This was great news considering the fact that we had been using the old Accent for the past month.  The Accent was never meant to go any further than taking me to hockey in Taylor (about 20km away).  We've been lucky that the old beast has hung in there.

We left right after school and were about 1/3 of the way home when a big pickup truck (is there any other kind up here) screamed by us.  Suddenly with the sound like a shotgun blast the driver's side window disintegrated.  No lie.  One minute the window was there, then the next it was all over me and and the floor of the car.  A rock had shot up from the speeding truck and shattered the window. 

So we drove the rest of the drive home with the heat cranked and the cold winter wind howling through the car.  Let me tell you that it is not ideal to be driving down the highway with the window down.  We were lucky in the fact that it was only -2 instead of the gusting wind and -35 degrees it is today.

Needless to say we are having a bad run of luck with vehicles in the past little while.

Head Lamps and Flashlights

Part of living in the north is waiting until after 9 am for the sun to show up.  Of course, school starts before 9.  The buses show up at 8:30, so the kids must play in the dark.  It is so dark at that time, that the playscape at the far end of the playground is off limits to the kids before school because we can't see the kids to supervise them.

Anyway, I noticed the other day that there are lots of kids showing up with head lamps and flashlights so they can see where they're going on the playground in the morning.  It's kind of funny watching all of the lights bobbing around out in the dark.  Some of the lights look like they're floating in the air when the kids are on the equipment.

It's very strange what becomes standard equipment up here.

Man Yoga

At the strong urging of my wife, I went to a new class that is being offered at her gym.  The new class is yoga for men.  With a bit of trepidation I agreed to go.  I am an extremely inflexible person (physically) and I wondered how the whole stretchy yoga thing would go.

Jen needed the car, so she dropped me off.  The whole evening just about finished before it started.  The instructor said we needed four people to hold the class, but we only had two.  Luckily, she agreed to hold the class with only two folks, or I would have had to go down to the union shop and interrupt their meeting to get keys to the house from my wife.  Disaster averted.

I gotta tell ya, that yoga is tougher than it looks and it looks pretty tough.  I would just get into a pose and think that it was tough but doable, and then the instructor would come by and twist me just a little bit further.  I must say that I had to grimace a bit and bite the bullet to hold some of those poses.  When I was told to squat down and put my palms on the floor, I suggested that maybe my knees were a better option.  I just can't go any lower than that.

The worst part was the little bit of gas that I developed toward the end of the class.  That was of course when the instructor had us sticking our asses in the air.  It is really distracting when you have to hold yourself in a way you are not used to and use muscles you're not used to using and meanwhile you must concentrate on clenching your sphincter.  I must admit that it was a bit stressful.  When there are only two people in the class, there's not many ways to hide a slip.

In the end, my body felt pretty used up in a way that was different than it ever has in the past. I think that I'll give this yoga thing another couple of tries before I make up my mind, but it's looking good.

Oh, yeah.  I went out and let a ginormous fart when we finished.  That's how I spell relief.

Massive Brain Fart

I felt like I was so smart when I jumped on the Best Buy website to take advantage of their Boxing Week sale on Christmas Eve.  However, I was a little more sleepy than I thought.  Add to this, the fact that I had to wait in a virtual line to check out.  I waited for 30 minutes to check out and during that time, I may have dosed a bit more heavily than I had realized.  My intention was to purchase a video game, a couple of HDMI cables and a BluRay player.  Unfortunately, just a little too late I realized that I had purchased only one cable and TWO BluRay players.  I was pissed and there was no way to change it once I found out.

Long story short, I have two BluRay players and need only one.  Now I have to wait until I can make it to Grande Prairie to return it.  "I am so smart.  Smrt, I mean smart..."

Resolution Time

It's that time of year again.  I was never a resolution type of guy before, but the past few years, I've decided to try and pick one or two things that I would like to improve upon.  Maybe I've become a little more introspective or maybe I just want to do what all the cool kids are doing.

Last year I tried to work on my "positivity".  I was happy with the progress I made, but not satisfied with the end result, so I've decided to keep the resolution for a second year in a row.  I've noticed that being positive makes me feel happier and I hope, makes me a little more pleasant to be around.  I've also noticed that it's really hard to be positive when you've been overwhelmingly negative for the large majority of you life.  So, there is still work to do, and I'll keep up the fight for another year.

While not really a resolution, I'm definitely going to try and get back on track with my blogging.  I got busy and then I got jealous of my free time and the blogging got the short end of the stick.  This year, I want to be more regular in reporting what is happening in the northern wilds.

Happy New Year everyone and I hope you have a great year.

Goodbye Dignity, Hello Movember

I've decided to participate in Movember this year.  If you hadn't heard, Movember is a worldwide event where men grow mustaches during the month of November in order to raise money for and awareness of prostate cancer.  I decided on the Fu Man Chu style.  I figured that if I was going to look like a dork I was going to look like a huge dork.  It turns out that I look like a dork that would like to be in porn movies.  Jen has trouble talking to me without laughing sometimes.  All of this to protect men's poopers.

The Rapture

About a month ago I scratched an itch that had been bothering me for a while.  I had finally saved up enough money to get myself a new TV.  That's right, I joined the flat screen revolution about a decade late.  But, better late than never.  It was an exciting day when I finally took the plunge and emptied my personal savings account.  Most of 3 months of working a second job went into that TV and it h as been worth every penny.  I chose a 46" Samsung LCD and haven't regretted it.

There were some bumps along the way of course.  There was the hour or so it took for me to figure out that the HD channels were up in the stratosphere of my PVR.  I couldn't figure out why my picture was so small.  When you turn the channel on the receiver it says both SD and HD are ok, so I thought they must come in on the same feed.  Yeah, I know that was pretty dumb, but I eventually recovered.

I still have a 27" tube television sitting in my basement.  I would really like to make that go away.

I have subscribed to the Center Ice package and have been loving all of the HD hockey I've been watching.  Of course, I don't always like what I'm seeing on the ice and I have to make my displeasure known to the players and the universe as a whole.  I can hear my wife laughing upstairs.  That really wrecks the effect.

The downside of having a great TV is wanting to watch said TV more often.  I have been watching the TV too much.  I have a fever and the only cure is more TV.