Friday, June 27, 2008

Rick Hillier makes Newfoundland proud.

General Rick Hillier named Memorial University chancellor

Awesome news. This is a man who represented the Canadian Forces with integrity and honesty. I am bursting with pride over this appointment.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

It will be sad to see her go.

I find it difficult to find new music that I enjoy. I hate the pelvic thrusting dance music, I don't enjoy the hatred and anger that rap seems to pilfer, and county music makes me feel like I am flossing my teeth with my spine.

A couple of summers ago I heard Amy Winehouse sing live on the BBC, and I was hooked. He voice is profoundly beautiful, and I love the style of music: it is a throw back to an age where talent ran the music business, not image and spin.

It is sad, but this young woman will likely be dead soon. Amy is barreling down the same road Brian Jones, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin , Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain; it's a dead end at two hundred miles an hour. If the drugs and alcohol don't kill her soon, they will surely end her career. The 24-year-old, a crack cocaine addict, is suffering from the early stages of the incurable lung disease Emphysema.

It is sad, this woman is a gifted singer. I have to wonder if she has anyone in her life that can stop her from killing herself. It is always hard to watch someone suffer- but it is damn frustrating when it is self inflicted.

Check her out live on the BBC last year:

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

No longer homeless.

We bought a house last week- I waited until the home inspection, financing and all the I dotting and T crossing was complete before I posted about it. Funny thing is, I expected to be ecstatic when we finally found something, but I wasn't. My reaction was really odd. I almost felt kinda let down.

We bought in another community. It means the drive to work now will be about 20 minutes, but I am hoping it will be worth it. The house backs on to a man made pond (for drainage) so there will be no homes behind us. There is a playground less than one minute away. The community is not very old; is mostly residential- and a lot of people want to move there. The basement is finished and will be a great place for the little guy to play. So on paper it is really good. I should have been doing the dance of joy; but I wasn't. Why not?

Well I haven't got it all figured out, but I am guessing now at a few of the reasons. Part of it is that I know I am headed for a huge lifestyle change. We are so spoiled where we live now, it is ten minutes away from Don's work, close to the GO if we want to head into Toronto, close to the lake. Close to an A&P, Wil's Montessori School. But the truth of the matter was, our house was too small, and houses more suited to our current needs in our neighborhood were out of our price range.

It was also our first home, and as much as we had problems with it, we did spend the last 8 years there, early married couple years...wink wink, nudge nudge. It is the home where I planted my first garden. The home I bought my son home to. The home I have shared with family and friends. The first place that was really ours.

We don't move until late August, so maybe as the date gets closer I will get more excited about leaving and starting to make a new life in a new home. Until then I will enjoy the place I where I live now, and get ready to pack it all up and start anew.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

How did this even make it to court?

"A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl's grounding, overturning her father's punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer."

WHAT? Are you kidding me? This man wasn't beating his kid with a lead pipe, he was grounding her from the computer because she went out of her way to defy his rules, put in place for her protection. He was actually being a concerned, involved parent, and there are damned few of them these days.

What knob took this case on? And more importantly: how the hell did he win it?

The way I see it, one or more of the following options must be true:

- this judge has no children
- this judge was toilet trained at gunpoint and resists any form of discipline
- this judge does copious amounts of crack
- this judge seeks to champion the rights of online pedophiles everywhere
- this judge sucked her way to the bench as brains and common sense are clearly lacking.

I am really at a loss here folks, I cannot understand this ruling. Any thoughts?

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Newfoundland Word For June!

Sleveen:

This is a word I heard my Granddad use often, and it is one of my favourite words in the Newfoundland dictionary. It means: "guileful fellow, a schemer, a trickster. A sly deceitful man; a mean fellow; rascal; a mischieyous child".

I have met a few of them in my time.