It's been a month since I really sat down and wrote about all the lame things happening in my life, so rather than construct a compelling narrative, I'm going to phone it in:

• Holly and Ryan finally had their baby and we went to visit them at the hospital. Her name is Mya and she's super cute.
• The Machinist is a pretty good show but is most remarkable for the fact that Christian Bale slimmed down to less than skin and bones for the role (it's really quite the sight).
• The time was finally right for Sofi and I to sign up at the gym again, this time on a more permanent basis. It's funny that after many months of not going to the gym I haven't weighed so little in close to a decade. On the downside, I still weigh a lot.
• I finally got around to watching American Beauty, which has been on my computer for years. It was a quality show - ranking up there with the best I have ever seen. It's a real Death of a Salesman for the boomer generation.
• I went out for drinks after work last month and there was a sales rep handing out free Heineken so everyone at the table got a free pint
• I have perfected the art of waffle-making with the waffle maker I got from the Chinese gift exchange at Christmas and it's what I usually have for breakfast.
• We used a coupon we got from Hali and Clayton at East Side Mario's - it was mostly good food with generous portions. It's also a chain so everything was the same as the first time I ate at one in Pennsylvania.
• Sofi and I are trying to sit down and plan what to do with our home. Step 1 - get rid of our ridiculously old and destroyed couch. We have been shopping for furniture already (I fell in love with an awesome chair) but are going to wait until we have a proper home furnishing/decor plan.
• I am a good worker and do lots of things in my spare time for work that I don't have to.
• My ass still hurts from falling down snowboarding. I think I might have seriously injured myself.
• I (somehow) broke a blade on one of my hockey skates so I went out a bought a brand-new pair for the first time in something like 13 years. They hurt like a bitch but it feels good to have a new pair. They were expensive but if they last half as long as my last pair I'll be made in the shade.
• Our dryer door has been broken for something like two years. We have been holding it shut with an old stool that Blair gave me the entire time, and it's been a huge pain in the ass. I fixed it the other day by picking up a $3 part from the fine folks at Re-Appliable Parts on Dewdney Ave E. I highly recommend this place if you need to fix any of your major household appliances!
• When I started playing hockey this year, I budgeted about $300 for ice time plus small amounts of cash for a couple new sticks, tape, and a new pair of socks. I have since spent over $100 on sticks alone. I break a lot of sticks and I don't know what to do.
• Two of my best buddies have recently come back into my life. Johnny K. is back in town managing a restaurant a few blocks away from my house and Darcy showed up out of the blue to watch the Super Bowl with us at Jerrod's folks' place. Good friends are hard to come by, so hopefully these guys won't turn into strangers again.
• Blair and Kyla just moved into their new house and I helped paint the place a little bit and I lifted exactly one couch inside. I drank more beer than I was worth.
• I took Sofi to La Bodega for V-Day and everything about that place was fantastic.
• I am constantly surprised at the strength of the Latino community in Regina. There are a ton of them in the city and they have cool things like weekly radio shows and have fancy social occasions all the time. We went to one at the Abstractions Cafe a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun.
• My PVR is the greatest thing since sliced bread and has totally changed my life. This past weekend I learned how to burn DVDs, so now I can burn a DVD of any show that's on TV that I want. It's fantastic.
• Janson and Kara's wedding is coming up soon and the three of us got together to discuss it a little at the Mill last week. I am going to be the MC and will do my best to not make them hate me while at the same time insult Tyler at every possible occasion.
• My Dad loves steak so we took him to Vic's Steakhouse in the Regina Inn for his birthday on Mike's recommendation. The food was great and I would highly recommend it, but the place closed its doors for the last time last weekend!

RAGE RAGE RAGE

A message from your friend and mine, Colby Smith:

Just an FYI that I am going to be on tv. I am lining the Giants game on Sportsnet, Tuesday night. It's at 7pm pacific.

Snowboarding in Asessippi

On Thursday night after work, Jerrod, Brad, and Blair picked me up in our borrowed mini-van (thanks Rick!) and we hit the road for Russell, Manitoba and our ski weekend at Asessippi. It was an uneventful drive marked by Brad's horrible driving, the intense cold, the satellite tunes, and intense alcohol consumption. We made it there around 10:30pm and settled into the basement suite of our bed and breakfast to continue drinking and preparing our gear for the following morning.

We got up in time for our 9AM breakfast and got all geared up for what was quite possibly the coldest day of the year. We didn't notice because we were well prepared, but the ladies at the convenience store said it was -53C. They were also kind enough to call the ski hill for us and then let us know that the hill was closed. Closed?!? Yes, it was that cold. We retreated back to the B&B to "discuss" what our best course of option was. Brad wisely decided to call the hill himself and they told him that the hill had just opened, although not all the lifts were running. That was good enough for us and we headed out. When we got there, it was just fine. It was super cold so there was nobody there, but we were bundled up and in perfect position to have a great day. I did a fuckload of falling down for most of the day but caught onto this snowboarding business fast enough for my tastes. We took frequent breaks at the chalet (read: bar) which also helped us make the most of the day :)

The rest of the weekend was more of the same, except it warmed up big time. When we weren't living it up on the hill, we were having drinks in the chalet or back at the B&B at night. We even treated ourselves to a great (and expensive for Jerrod) meal on Saturday night. For my part, I managed to stave off illness through excessive medicinal (read: alcohol) consumption and by the end of the weekend had a pretty good handle on the basics of snowboarding. That's not to say that I didn't fall down a billion times and am completely sore in every part of my body right now, but I digress.

I have to highlight the place we stayed at: Boulton Manor. If you are looking for a place to stay in Russell, I can't recommend it enough. It's a big old house with tons of room and fantastic hosts. Don't be fooled by other hotels or B&B's that offer a "continental breakfast". Throughout the entire weekend, we had huge and delicious hand-made breakfasts featuring such delicacies as hashbrowns, ham, bacon, eggs, sausages, toast, muffins, cheese, fruit cups, crepes(!), yogurt, juices of all kinds - and all more than we could eat. The place itself is just as close to the ski hill as any other hotels in any of the other surrounding communities. Fantastic food, friendly hosts, and reasonable prices make Boulton Manor the place to stay for a ski weekend at Asessippi!

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. It felt so good to do a road trip for what feels like (and has been) years. We will definitely do it again next year!

Also, I'm a gay cowboy.

I'm leaving town tonight with Brad, Blair, and Jerrod to head to Asessippi for a weekend of snowboarding.

Seriously, though, since it's a vacation I am already sick (I only get sick when I'm on vacation, without fail), it is going to be the coldest weekend of the year, and I've never been snowboarding so basically I'm going to spend the entire weekend on my ass in one way or another. Have fun without me!

My DNS provider, Hammernode, is going dark starting on Wednesday, so I've had to find someone new to host my DNS record. Translation: you might have trouble connecting to this site for the next day or two. If you can see this message, my website is either back up and running or hasn't been broken yet.

It was a fantastic service and other providers will have to work hard to fill the void. Can anyone recommend a free DNS service for me to use? I'm too lazy / stupid to bother running one myself :)

My wife will be appearing on the Regina Community Radio program "Asi es la voz de America Latina" this evening from 6 to 7PM. Feel free to tune in!

FYI: the show is entirely in Spanish, so unless you're l33t, you won't understand it.

While you all wait for me to enlighten the masses, you might be interested in checking out Worth1000's photoshopping contest, "If Canadians Ruled"!

H/T: Boing Boing

My server's IP address is getting switched tonight by Cable Regina, so this site is gonna be up and down for a bit over the next while. If you can see this, great. If you can't, well, I guess you'll just have to wait for this to sort itself out.

Province to loan up to $15M to Meadow Lake pulp mill

Over the years, the Saskatchewan government has invested $800 million in the venture through loans. Last year the government confirmed that following write-downs, its investment is now worth nothing.

That's so fucked up it deserves upside-down Spanish punctuation marks:

¿¡¿$800 million?!?

I am seriously interested in hearing why spending this kind of money on a retarded investment that employs less than 200 people when we're more than $12 billion in debt is anything but a completely ridiculous idea.

Your tax dollars at work, folks! Please remember this come election time and vote the NDP out of office - that is, if you haven't moved away by then like everyone else has.