No words needed

Here they are. The playoffs.

My heart wants this:

But my damn brain gets in the way:

Go Habs Go!

Here are a few sure signs that spring is here! Oh boy!

HotDogDude is back

There’s playoff talk in the air

But most importantly:

The Africa Project is done!!!

Yikes, it’s February 1! How did that happen? Fortunately, I was just reading Poppy’s blog and saw that she was guest posting here yesterday and remembers – Hey, I’M supposed to guest blog at Mike’s, too. And hey, that’s on February 1. And hey, that’s, um, TODAY! Which led me to ask, “Do they even have blogs in Canada?”

So thank you, Poppy! I’ve always loved her pwnies and swallows.

So I’m Karl and Mike (that’s Michelle in Canadian) basically begged me to guest blog here while he’s on safari in Africa. OK, maybe I begged him, but I figured while he’s hunting and skinning baby lions, he’d need all the help he could get at LeSombre.

I’ve been to Canada twice, and when I was a kid I watched virtually anything and everything Bob & Doug McKenzie, so I’m pretty much an expert on all things Great White North.

Canadians have a big red maple leave as their country’s flag, which is sort of like if we States folks had a blade of grass on our flag. Still, you might be surprised to learn a number of facts about Canada.

1. Canada was founded in 1943 by Jonathan Toque, who accidentally went over the border when he was in Buffalo, New York, to use the bathroom against a maple tree. Suddenly, he realized he was in another country and decided to stay and become King.
2. Incidentally, that’s where the Canadian hat’s name comes from, the toque. They prefer to spell it “tuque,” though, because if there’s anything Canadian’s love, it’s the letter “u.” They’re in love with extraneous vowels of any sort, really. That’s why in Canada, the country’s name is actually Caaanuadiaaa.
3. Canada is like twice the size of Texas. Pretty big, in other words. It’d take you approximately 16 days of walking to make it from the eastern coast of Nova Scotia to the western coast of, um, Toronto.
4. It snows every day in Canada and the temperature rarely gets above 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Babies usually pop out of their moms already wearing parkas and mittens. And you don’t have to cut the umbilical cord, either. You just smack it with a spatula and it shatters.
5. Canadia rocques. They’ve produced some amazing musical artists in their almost 70 years of existence. Rush, of course. And also the Barenaked Ladies – who I’ve seen 9 times in concert – and Sarah Maclaughailainoue. We don’t count Celine Dion, though, who is currently wanted for Crimes Against the State of Canada.
6. Hockey was invented in Canada by a bunch of angry white dudes who were ice fishing with sticks. When they realized that every fish they caught was frozen solid, they started batting them around the ice with said sticks. The rest is history.
7. There’s a small French club in Canada that consists of thirteen members. They’re known as the French Canadians. Mike is one of these wimpy Canadians who like to look down their noses at all the non-French-speaking people. It’s amazing he let me guest blog here, now that I think about it.
8. French currency comes straight out of the Monopoly game. It’s all funny looking and each bill is a different color with people you wouldn’t even recognize on the face. They have wacky coins, too, that have names like “Looney,” “Tooney,” and “Flippatoppawoony.” It’s all pretty much worthless, except in Tim Horton shops and this odd store called Canada Tire, which sells everything except for tires, oddly enough.
9. Tim Horton’s real name was Timothy Horton Dunkin, who founded Dunkin Donuts in the United States and moved to Canada after losing a bet during a curling match.
10. By the way, Canadian housewives invented the “sport” of curling while they were sweeping an ice rink for their hockey-playing husbands. How curling became an Olympic sport is anyone’s guess.
11. The national animal of Canada is the beaver. Their national bird is the vajayjay.
12. “Anne of Green Gables” takes place on Canada’s Prince Edward Island, and is the story of some little Canadian waif who became the country’s leading porn star.
13. Canada has approximately 1,467 political parties and each citizen is allowed to vote 1,467 times per election. This makes Canadian elections last a very long time with around 1,467 runoffs every election cycle. They still don’t have a Prime Minister.

There, that’s pretty much everything I know about Canada. Good thing I paid attention in ninth grade. Or should I say Grade 9?

Well, yesterday was my first day back at work.

It was a dark day.

This is on my way to work.

This is back from work.

Yes, that second picture is the Parliment with the lightshow on. You can make out projected snowflakes on the buildings. It’s actually quite nice.

If you follow me on Twitter – and if you don’t maybe you should? – you read this gem of a thought from me as I’m waiting for the bus in the market:

Wishful thinking: bringing your sunglasses at work when you get at work at 7:30 and leave at 17:20. Meh.

Work itself was not that bad. I still have a lot to do project-wise, and the Holiday Break didn’t make work magically disappear. In fact, day-to-day tasks kept accumulating during the 20 days I was out of the office.

Would you believe that some people made requests through our on-line form and/or sent e-mails on December 24 and 25? Would you believe that the same people would e-mail again on January 1st because nobody replied to their previous e-mail?  That seriously cracked me up.

I worked half the day with headphones on, ignoring the phone – for the most part, I have call display – and I was able to breeze through 145 course requests by lunch. As I’m writing this (22h45 Monday night) There’s 61 requests sitting in the queue. We had 145 in 22 days, and now we got 61 in 9 hours. Nah, Professors never wait until the last minute to plan their courses, right? RIGHT? LOL! Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

Had an impromptu meeting in the afternoon about a really important upcoming event – sorry about the vagueness – and I had the occasion to try out my new attitude of telling it like it is regardless. LovelyWife says that this is not a new attitude. I say it is: Yes I say stuff, but I normally refrain from saying things like “You should cover these expenses because [name] from your department made a huge mistake when he promised me to pay for it, and failed to inform me, over the course of 8 months, to tell me otherwise even though he knew he couldn’t deliver, and that I have about 15 emails I sent him to ask if anything had changed. Don’t ask me why I don’t have money for that.” 

All right, maybe I would say that. The new thing I said is this tidbit:

“When you decide to kick [name] out, I will apply for his job. He makes twice the money I make, and I can’t remember one of my projects where his involvement was positive. If you think about it, I’m sure you can’t think of one project of yours either. The way I see this, I’m more than qualified for that position.”

Anyways.

In other news

I spend the evening working on a super-secret project! You might know soon…

I’m listening to the team Canada post-game analysis – Canada won the gold for the 5th time in a row – and one guy said: “For Sweden to win, they would have had to take the lead and somehow maintain it”. That is priceless.

And on that note… Sleep. Because I get to do it all again tomorrow.

Well now.

My beloved Montreal Canadian* is now out of the Stanley Cup playoffs. I guess it’s back to real life now. Let’s see. What did I neglect in the past months?

• Buy a bicycle
• Get a haircut decent haircut
• Lose some weight
• Write Masters’ Essay
• Pay some bills
• Talk to the Zadorables & Lovely Wife (must remember their names first)
• Clean up basement
• Clean BBQ
• “Summerize” the house

Of course, I’m kidding about the bills, I have almost everything taken care of automatically. Ha!

Wow I have a lot to do before the next hockey season.

Of course, if I get half of this done I’ll be happy.

* that’s a hockey team.

Montreal finally defeated Boston in 7 games. Let me tell you that game nights at my house are somewhat stressful! Unfortunately, I will miss most of the next round, but since it’s because I’m flying to Cayo Coco (Cuba) for a week of R&R in the sun, I think I’ll survive.

Whoever we’re facing next: A Plague on your House!

I was writing this really clever post. It was funny, witty, charmy. It was pretty emotional too.

Turns out it was all im my head.

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That went on for 3,505 characters. Riveting.

I hear Lovely Wife: Mon chéri, you’re sleeping.

So I went to bed at 22h00. Just late enough to see that the Sens lost 4-0. K-Girl’s gonna be crushed.

A coworker of mine is an avid Sens fan. Since I’m a Habs fan, this leads to a lot of funny discussions at work. Basically we bug each other in a friendly fashion all the time. She’ll tell me my team sucks, and I’ll wish a plague on her house. We get along well because we both hate the Leafs. But then again who doesn’t?

So it’s now official, the Sens will be in the playoffs. So come on K-Girl, cheer up! Here’s something to help you raise your spirit a bit (I hope).

Of course, I made one for my desktop too.

Download the 1280×1024 file by clicking.

Oh and K-Girl: A Plague on your House. Say hi to Mark.