Through The Mist Darkly

A kid in his bedroom, a guitar, a computer and a camera. Put them together and what do you get? The Canon in D by Pachebel in a version you have to see to believe.

The Canon is one of my favorite pieces of music and stands as a touchstone of my life. I’ve listened to it as the sun goes down at our cottage, I’ve heard it at my father’s funeral and I hear it whenever I want to de-stress. All in all, I probably have about 20 versions of it scattered around and, although it’s much more uptempo than normal, this rendition fits right in.

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The Kansas City Star brings us the top (or bottom) 10 minor-league baseball promotions.

The Nashua (N.H.) Pride commemorated the 32nd anniversary of Watergate by giving out 1,000 Richard Nixon bobbleheads. Anyone named Woodward or Bernstein got in free.

The Charleston RiverDogs tried to play the quietest game ever on “Silent Night” in 2003. There was no talking for the first five innings, and fans wore duct tape over their mouths. Fans held posters that said “YEAH!,” “BOO!” and “HEY, BEER MAN!”

This season, the Southwest Michigan Devil Rays sent three lucky fans home with their own grounds crew. The Devil Rays sent their grounds crew to the winners’ houses to cut the lawn, weed the garden and take care of the driveway.

At the Altoona Curve’s annual “Awful Night” this season, the Curve strove once again to do everything to make the experience for fans as awful as possible. They sold bottomless beer cups. Fans could purchase the bottom for 13 cents.

On “Pre-planned Funeral Night,” the Hagerstown Suns gave away a full prepaid funeral valued at $6,500. Two thousand fans entered the contest.

This year, the Western Michigan Whitecaps held a $1,000 cash drop from a helicopter for kids ages 5-12. Unfortunately, the stunt backfired, as two 7-year-olds were injured in the mad rush for cash and had to go to the hospital.

The Charleston RiverDogs had Tonya Harding Mini Bat Night, which commemorated “the incident” with fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan by handing out bats.

The RiverDogs hit the jackpot again with “Nobody Night” in 2002. Trying to set the record for professional baseball’s lowest attendance (zero), fans were locked out of a RiverDogs game until the fifth inning, when it became official.

Several teams have tried over the years to give out a free vasectomy on Father’s Day. But the Catholic Church always intervenes, and the event has never actually come to fruition.

The Bisbee- Douglas Copper Kings took advantage of baseball legend Ted Williams’ body being cryogenically frozen in 2003 by giving out frozen popsicles to the first 500 fans.

I guess you have to get your attendance numbers somehow.

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Hot. Damm hot! It’s hard to dispute Global Warming when the temperature is hovering at 33 degrees with the humidity making it feel more like 40.

Environment Canada says that 2006 is, so far, the warmest year on record and I believe them. Played golf at 6am today and by 7:00 it was already getting steamy. Both air conditioners, a dehumidifer and a fan are running to keep the house barely comfortable and I’m sure the electric meter is spinning fast enough to generate its own power if we could somehow harness it. Hmmm…. there’s an idea!

Toronto has 10 “official” beaches and only 2 of them are open because of all the shit floating around. Ok, they call it “fecal matter”. Perhaps they should take the gloves off and call it what it is. Seems the torrential downpours of last week just caused the waste treatment plants to give up and dump the crap right into the sewers which drain right into the same lake that supplies Toronto the majority of its drinking water. Not that I’d swim in Lake Ontario or drink Toronto tap water unless I was really desperate.

Hot weather and I have never gotten along; I’m more of a Spring and Fall kind of guy. Makes me wonder why I ever left Vancouver. Oh yeah, I remember, the whole town is full of what is floating in the lake right now. Smug bastards who look down their noses at you when you mention you were born in Ontario. Half of them have never made it all the way down the freeway to Hope and yet they feel knowledgable enough to pass judgement on the rest of the world. Scenery’s nice as long as you don’t have to listen to the population. When you’ve lived in or travelled to as many places as I have, that narrow provinical attitude gets old really fast. A lot of Americans have that same fault but they’re grand enough to extend the view to cover the 48 contiguous States.

Where was I? Hot. Damm hot!! Tonight, I’ll sleep in our air conditioned bedroom and tomorrow I;ll take my air conditioned Jeep to my air conditioned office and we’ll all complain about the heat and do our very best to stay indoors. Hard to believe that in 5 months we’ll be getting ready for Christmas and probably bitching about how cold it is. Weather - without it, Canadians don’t have much to talk about.

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I get 500 comments a week 999 1/2 of them are spam. So, no more comments.

If you like, hate or want to say something - drop me an email, I’ll update the post to give you your soapbox.

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After a day of very violent thunderstorms, a double rainbow appears over the Greater Toronto Area.

Unfortunately, an 8 year old boy was swept into a swollen creek at the height of the storm. The latest news states that he has been found but no status on his condition has been given. Sadly, they could not save his life.

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Congratulations to the Azzurri on their win today in the World Cup finals! (Click the image to see it in all its glory - an Adidas ad)

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We live in Brampton, part of the Greater Toronto Area and in an area known as The Region Of Peel. One of the best things about living in Peel has always been our waste collection service. The recycling rate here is extremely high and the residents do a great job of diverting plastics, glass, paper, cardboard and waste from going to the landfill. So, it comes as a complete shock to me that the powers-that-be have decided that our yard waste pickup will now be every 2 weeks instead of weekly.

This is being done to save money, of course, but this has to be the most misguided decision I can think of. How many people are going to refuse to wait and will sneak lawn clippings and weeds into the green bags for weekly pickup? Who wants bags of yard waste hanging around, getting wet and starting to stink?

Region Of Peel - you’ve made a stupid decision that is going to undo some of the tremendous work you’ve done over the years promoting recycling. Is it really worth the savings in the long run?

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The flooring is done. A few shopping trips. Perfection!

Before:

During:

After:

What a difference. (More pictures available here.)

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This is the actual color of the carpet that is being replaced tomorrow by some beautiful laminate flooring. The 2006 renovations will be completed in 2 days. It been a long 7 weeks to get to here and we’re looking forward to getting the house put back together. Once again, we’re forced to move one room into another.

Pieces of the living room are all over the house with the couch and chair filling all the space we had in the kitchen. The house is over 30 years old and just two months from being paid off. It will look so good when it’s finished.

One last look at the carpet. The next pictures I post will show it going, going, gone!

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139 years ago, a band of misfit, malcontents and drunks created a place called Canada. Today we celebrate that event with our yearly fit of patriotism and flag flying. Families from hundreds of birthplaces from around the world will join together in parks all across this wonderful country and wonder where we’re headed. We’ll eat too much, drink one more than we should and OOH and AAH at the fireworks tonight. Today, we will all be Canadians.

Tomorrow we’ll revert back to our hyphenated heritage and head out to the mall to make up for the shopping day we lost because of the holiday. Just us who are stuck in the city. The lakes, parks and cottages are full of happy sunburnt faces and per-capita consumption of beer will rise a pint or two.

The Canada of 2006 is a country of diversity and promise. It’s also a country of conclaves, economic disparity and a lack of national direction. We won’t worry about that this weekend. Happy Birthday Canada!!

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