Well, Kathleen and her parents are on the long road out to the east coast for John’s wedding. They were able to fit in a quick stop-over here in Kenora. Lots of great eats, drinks and converstation was to be had. Not to mention horseshoes, bocci and boating! Good times! Enjoy the road ahead guys!
Damn straight! Canada Post has finally conjured up an owl to drop the new Harry Potter book into our laps! The best part (and one that Darren apparently has missed out on) is that Mich will read it out aloud. I’ve suggested to Darren that he put Alice under the Imperious Curse - this would be a good way to convince her to read it to ya dude!
Foolishly I did the online preorder thing for the new HP book. Guaranteed delivery on Sat. the 21st! Or so I thought. Sadly, fine print has foiled our attempts to start reading the last book quickly and at a bargan price. The fine print said that this delivery was only guaranteed in 21 major cities in Canada. Unfortunately Kenora wasn’t on the list! So we are still awaiting an owl to come and drop the book into our laps. Sadly that will likely happen Monday at the very earliest. Doh! In the meantime it’s gonna be next to impossible not to see or hear some spoiler about how it all ends and who (two major characters) die. Grrrrrrrr.
Well, after a two day blast through the mountains and across the prairie, we are in Mich’s old stomping grounds, Kenora Ontario. Life’s been grand over here too; great weather, coffee, food and drink. Nice to catch up with Mich’s parents too. Anyway, Bev and Gerry live outta town and the internet here is a bit touch and go so no pics for now. I’ll endevour to fix that up eventually though. In the meantime we are loving life relaxing, playing horseshoes, trying to perfect our frisbee skills, getting some sunshine and reading lots!
From CBC.ca
In Sweden, a test market in the council of Tanum is recycling urine for use as fertilizer on farms. All new homes in the area are required by law to have special toilets that separate urine and pipe it into a holding tank that farmers access at regular intervals.
Experts say this is better for the environment because the special toilets use less water. And less energy is utilized at treatment facilities.
Most importantly, human urine has the most concentrated source of phosphorus, which is a vital ingredient in agricultural fertilizer.
Read the rest of this article on reusing water here.
I was pretty happy a few weekends ago up at Rum Cache lake with my buddies. We did pretty well, catching a fair number of fish. It wasn’t like the old times at Rum Cache though. It used to be a trophy lake, catch and release. There were some really BIG trout in there. Or so we thought…
Adam Konrad changed what we think of as a big trout on June 5 with a world record (not yet varified) catch out of Saskatchewan’s Lake Defienbaker. The fish weighed in at a staggering 43.6 pounds! And folks this is no fish story.
Click on the picture to get the rest of the story of how it happened, and the work that led up to this amazing catch.
I’m off to sell my fishing gear now.
After years of work and a global voting campaign, the New Seven Architectual Wonders of the World have been unveiled. They are:
Chichén Itzá, Mexico
Christ Redeemer, Brazil
The Great Wall, China
Machu Picchu, Peru
Petra, Jordan
The Roman Colloseum, Italy
The Taj Mahal, India
Pretty cool list. And sadly I can only say that I’ve visited one of them. Looks like we’ve got some travelling to do!
Anyway, visit the New Seven Wonders site for more info, pics, and to see which places didn’t make the cut after 100 million people voted.
FYI ‘Cause most of us can’t remember…
“The original seven wonders of the ancient world were concentrated in the Mediterranean and Middle East, but most have since ceased to exist. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria have all vanished. Only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains and will retain its status as a world wonder.”
And to round it out, here is a list of the World’s Seven Blunders> as chosen by Gandhi.
* Wealth without work
* Pleasure without conscience
* Knowledge without character
* Commerce without morality
* Science without humanity
* Worship without sacrifice
* Politics without principle
Over the years I’ve had numerous discussions with various people about Jon Krakauer’s book Into The Wild. Now I’m not really a fan of Krakauer’s writing - that is, I think his books read like longer versions of his magazine articles (ie. Outside mag). Maybe that isn’t fair, but that’s how I feel about it. Anyway, the stories he reports on are quite engaging and worth a read. Into the Wild certainly is. So it is with great interest that I just heard that it has been made into a feature film by Sean Penn. Now I think Penn is a great actor and film maker; a total artist. And to sweeten the deal, reportedly Eddie Vedder (from Pearl Jam) is doing the whole soundtrack with songs newly penned for the film. Very interesting. Upon hearing all of this, and having read the book, I instantly had a vision of the grainy, stark film that must be the product of this project.
Penn, of all people, especially with Vedder on board for music wouldn’t fall into the trap of “hollywoodizing” and romanticizing this story. Or would he? Guess I was wrong. Sometimes movie trailers are VERY different from what the film actuallly is. I hope that is true for this film. Most people I’ve spoken to about the book agree on some level that the protagonist Christopher McCandless, while a romantic at heart, was also a complete dumbass. I’m not getting that message from this trailer. I guess we’ll see. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still excited about this film and will be seeing it in the theater. I suppose that until then I’m just gonna have to be satisfied with Harry Potter (new book AND film).
So I’ve written before about Food Porn. Now I’ve got some “storm porn” for you. Late in June a twister swung through south eastern Manitoba. A friend of my mother in-law’s sent her some pics that he took near the town of Elie. Of course when we saw the shots we were amazed and fully horrified. Certainly this is the reaction a photographer would be looking for with such pictures.
Of course the other reaction that we had is “so how did he get those pics from inside the root cellar?” No offence dude, but this was a crazy move. Apparently there are those who agree with us.
Well it is cooking once more in Kamloops. I woke up to the voice on the radio promising me 37 degrees today. We reached that by 10 am. I worked on the deck until about noon before I figured it was too damn hot! At that point I cooled off with a nice cool shower before heading out to take Mich for a picnic on campus. I was reminded of Thailand in that while there you just cook in the sun and humidity. The little bungalos that you rent on the beach tend not to have hot water - and that is cool because you get into the shower and couldn’t even imagine using that “H” tap. Now Darren, before you comment with a “cold shower” comment… I was HOT, but not that kind of hot!
Anyway, I felt fine about stopping for the day because the second phase of construction is well underway with the beams and joists all in place. Now I just need to pick up the rest of the decking boards and start sucking stain fumes again!
