A recent article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal looked at NHL regular season games from 1997-2004 and found that 559 physician reported concussions occurred. This is a lot of concussions. We know the problem is ongoing. Concussions occur for a lot of reasons - falls, legal checks, fighting, getting pucks in the head. What is most troubling, though is the deliberate head-hunting that goes on in the League. Even NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan's strong statement of long suspensions for these types seems to be ineffective in curbing these types of hits.
I would argue that one reason the suspensions have been ineffective is because a lot of them are being perpetrated by third- and fourth-liners or seventh defencemen. Not to understate the impact these players have on the outcome of the game, but they are easier to replace than a top-six forward or top four defenceman. The solution, to me, would be to make sure the whole team pays for the miscreants. How do you accomplish this? My modest proposal would be to force the team to play with a shortened bench for the duration of the suspension. A team is allowed to dress 20 players for a game. Under my proposal, a team with a suspended player of whatever duration would not be allowed to replace that player, forcing them to dress only 19 players for the term of the suspension. The system will effectively become self-policing with no player wanting to put their teams in that position and, I imagine, coaching staff and management would put that kind of player on a tight leash.
Dinosaurs of the game like Don Cherry and Mike Milbury, who played in an era where you drank after games and all summer long and skated your way back into shape during camp and the season. would have you believe that punishing these head shots more harshly would effectively take hitting out of the game. I think this is a red herring. I use Chris Neil of the Ottawa Senators as an example. He is still laying BIG hits on the opposition and has never once been suspended for a dirty hit.
I look forward to hearing from you hockey fans about head shots in general, my proposal specifically or other views on how to deal with the head shot issue.
Friday, 13 January 2012
Thursday, 12 January 2012
Big Screen Televisions
We recently bought a 60" Plasma HD T.V. Holy mackerel (what makes a mackerel holy anyway?). This television replaced our 32" standard definition television. I liken this switch to moving up from driving a Lada to a Ferrari; to wrestling with your 5 year-old then stepping in the ring with Ali at his prime; to writing with a Bic ballpoint and changing to a solid gold Mont Blanc fountain pen. You get the idea. The experience is sublime.
The lads from the Geek Squad were over yesterday to install this Leviathan of digital awesomeness. When they were done, they set up the television for me. As Geek #1 punched his way through all the set-up screens, I'm thinking, "This is pretty cool." The he switched to an actual channel that shows what programming is coming up and I'm all. "Wow!" Then he switched to a sports highlights show that just happened to be showing hockey highlights and, I'm embarrassed to say, I became suddenly incontinent. You could see much more of the ice than standard def t.v. You could actually follow the puck without losing sight of it. You could see the pores the players' faces. Geek #2 must have seen the sudden rapture on my face, because he started giggling like a little school girl. We stood there side-by-side, jaws slack watching the action. This young nerd spends his days installing these things and still, he admitted to me, he gets a bang out of seeing us HD virgins get our first blast of uber-crisp bigness.
That night, my family and I watched our beloved Ottawa Senators deliver a sound thrashing to the much loathed Pittsburgh Penguins. My wife must have gotten tired of me saying to her "this is amazing, eh? This is amazing, eh? This is amazing, eh?" Clearly, though, guys get far more enjoyment out these things, because all she could muster in return was, "It's fine." And not like I might say Halle Berry is FINE but just plain ol' unadorned "fine". Maybe women really are from Venus and men from Mars.
Hockey is my biggest true love, but I'm beginning to think my childhood interest in other sports like football, basketball and, most of all, baseball may be renewed. Seeing the games on a big screen is even better than being there in person because you can see so much of the field the game is played on, but much closer, like you're on the field with the players.
This was a great investment. I look forward to watching all manner of programs - sitting on my couch, mouth agape, a hint of drool spilling over the top of my bottom lip. This bad boy puts the ID in idiot box. You'll have to excuse me, I hear House Hunters International coming on...
The lads from the Geek Squad were over yesterday to install this Leviathan of digital awesomeness. When they were done, they set up the television for me. As Geek #1 punched his way through all the set-up screens, I'm thinking, "This is pretty cool." The he switched to an actual channel that shows what programming is coming up and I'm all. "Wow!" Then he switched to a sports highlights show that just happened to be showing hockey highlights and, I'm embarrassed to say, I became suddenly incontinent. You could see much more of the ice than standard def t.v. You could actually follow the puck without losing sight of it. You could see the pores the players' faces. Geek #2 must have seen the sudden rapture on my face, because he started giggling like a little school girl. We stood there side-by-side, jaws slack watching the action. This young nerd spends his days installing these things and still, he admitted to me, he gets a bang out of seeing us HD virgins get our first blast of uber-crisp bigness.
That night, my family and I watched our beloved Ottawa Senators deliver a sound thrashing to the much loathed Pittsburgh Penguins. My wife must have gotten tired of me saying to her "this is amazing, eh? This is amazing, eh? This is amazing, eh?" Clearly, though, guys get far more enjoyment out these things, because all she could muster in return was, "It's fine." And not like I might say Halle Berry is FINE but just plain ol' unadorned "fine". Maybe women really are from Venus and men from Mars.
Hockey is my biggest true love, but I'm beginning to think my childhood interest in other sports like football, basketball and, most of all, baseball may be renewed. Seeing the games on a big screen is even better than being there in person because you can see so much of the field the game is played on, but much closer, like you're on the field with the players.
This was a great investment. I look forward to watching all manner of programs - sitting on my couch, mouth agape, a hint of drool spilling over the top of my bottom lip. This bad boy puts the ID in idiot box. You'll have to excuse me, I hear House Hunters International coming on...
Monday, 9 January 2012
Project 52: Week 1 Update
I'm finding Project 52 quite a motivating endeavour and I have made some progress during my first week:
2. Buy and learn how to play guitar with my daughter, the Bean - learn to play, wait for it, Stairway to Heaven (remember the scene in Wayne's World?): Guitars bought, enrolled for lessons. I'll be strumming those soulful notes in no time.
4. Get into shape to run 10K: I have begun exercising again, using mostly my Nordic Track ski machine, which, in case you're interested, provides a super workout.
6. Make a cane: Shaped the main body of the cane out of a piece of ash I had.
39: Go to one of Shaun's bonfires: Done. Shaun and his wife Sue were delightful hosts. The Bean and I enjoyed it very much.
2. Buy and learn how to play guitar with my daughter, the Bean - learn to play, wait for it, Stairway to Heaven (remember the scene in Wayne's World?): Guitars bought, enrolled for lessons. I'll be strumming those soulful notes in no time.
4. Get into shape to run 10K: I have begun exercising again, using mostly my Nordic Track ski machine, which, in case you're interested, provides a super workout.
6. Make a cane: Shaped the main body of the cane out of a piece of ash I had.
39: Go to one of Shaun's bonfires: Done. Shaun and his wife Sue were delightful hosts. The Bean and I enjoyed it very much.
Sunday, 8 January 2012
The Early Days of Kate's Cancer
As I have written about before, those early days after Kate's breast cancer diagnosis were the most difficult of our lives, not that I want to speak on Kate's behalf. We didn't really know what we were faced with, but what we did now was that Kate was very sick. Our GP was the lucky fellow who got to break the news to us. We could tell he was devastated. He had had Kate as a patient for nearly 20 years, me for almost ten and the Bean since she was born. Before we left the appointment, he got on the phone with the Ottawa Women's Breast Health Centre, which got us into the system of cancer care. He hugged Kate long and hard with tears welling up.
The people over at the Breast Health Centre ordered more imaging, tests, biopsies to confirm the diagnosis and and referred Kate to Medical Oncology at the Ottawa Cancer Centre and gave us that first taste of hope. This was treatable over the longer term.
That initial hope, though, was dashed over the ensuing days and weeks. Kate became increasingly symptomatic and was very sick indeed. She had a hard time keeping food down and her mobility was getting worse and worse as her cancer-riddled vertebrae began to fracture. If I am being honest, I didn't think she was going to make it to her first appointment with the medical oncologist. We had a pre-scheduled appointment with our GP, and when we went to see him, I fairly near begged him to see if he could get her into see an oncologist before her scheduled appointment which was still two weeks away. Turns out, I didn't need to beg, he worked the phone and ended with assurances that they would see what they could do. By the time we got home, we had a message that she could see an oncologist in two days.
The day of our appointment, Kate was even sicker than usual. She was in a lot of pain and vomiting frequently. When we finally met the Oncologist, Dr. G, he told us that the news wasn't good in that a stage four diagnosis was never good, but he thought there was a good chance, though no guarantees, that the cancer could be brought to heel and treated as a chronic disease. He is an endearing man. with a dark beard and hair and that day was sporting a red plaid flannel shirt and black jeans. He looked for all the world like a lumberjack. Both Kate and I liked him immediately.
First things were first at that initial appointment and Dr. G began trying to get her nausea and pain under control. As the day progressed, Kate remained violently ill and was in and out of sleep as the doctors tried to control the pain. Kate was in a gurney the whole day before she was feeling well enough, though still not great, to be released. Meanwhile, Dr. G had arranged to start Kate on chemo therapy the very next day.
The next day, still vomiting frequently, we showed up for Kate's first chemo session. One of the first drugs they started her on had nothing to do with killing the cancer. Dr. G explained the day before that Kate was hypercalcemic, meaning that she had excess calcium in her bloodstream. This was a result of the cancer metastases attacking her bones, and could be part of the culprit for her nausea. So they were giving her a drug originally designed for patients with osteoporosis called Pamidronate. The goal was to repatriate to her bones all that calcium circulating in her blood. That part of the treatment went well.
Next, they started her on Herceptin, a biological concoction that binds to the Her2 receptors on the cancer cells and keeps them from dividing. That, too, went well. Next, though, they started her on another drug called Paclitaxel. Within seconds of starting her on that, her face and arms started turning an alarming shade of deep pink. They had to abort the treatment. Turns out, reactions to the medium the Paclitaxel is dissolved in is fairly common. This was on a Friday. They rescheduled the remainder of the treatment for the following Monday and started introducing the drug at a slower rate, which did the trick.
The most amazing part of that first Friday treatment, though, was that Kate's nausea disappeared, the Pamidronate doing its job. Also, while she was undergoing that first round of treatment, she met with a RN, Nurse J, who was able to get her pain to a tolerable level. Nurse J has continued working with Kate and the pain is fairly well controlled now. Also amazing is that with just that one round of treatment, the primary lump in Kate's right breast shrunk noticeably.
Finally, the fear subsided quite a bit and we began to hope that, yes, this might go our way after all. Those first few days, though, with Kate so incredibly sick, I had to consider the unimaginable. That's a place I hope to never have to go again.
If you want to read more about Kate's experience with breast cancer, please visit the blog she has started on the subject:
http://katebreastcancer.blogspot.com/
The people over at the Breast Health Centre ordered more imaging, tests, biopsies to confirm the diagnosis and and referred Kate to Medical Oncology at the Ottawa Cancer Centre and gave us that first taste of hope. This was treatable over the longer term.
That initial hope, though, was dashed over the ensuing days and weeks. Kate became increasingly symptomatic and was very sick indeed. She had a hard time keeping food down and her mobility was getting worse and worse as her cancer-riddled vertebrae began to fracture. If I am being honest, I didn't think she was going to make it to her first appointment with the medical oncologist. We had a pre-scheduled appointment with our GP, and when we went to see him, I fairly near begged him to see if he could get her into see an oncologist before her scheduled appointment which was still two weeks away. Turns out, I didn't need to beg, he worked the phone and ended with assurances that they would see what they could do. By the time we got home, we had a message that she could see an oncologist in two days.
The day of our appointment, Kate was even sicker than usual. She was in a lot of pain and vomiting frequently. When we finally met the Oncologist, Dr. G, he told us that the news wasn't good in that a stage four diagnosis was never good, but he thought there was a good chance, though no guarantees, that the cancer could be brought to heel and treated as a chronic disease. He is an endearing man. with a dark beard and hair and that day was sporting a red plaid flannel shirt and black jeans. He looked for all the world like a lumberjack. Both Kate and I liked him immediately.
First things were first at that initial appointment and Dr. G began trying to get her nausea and pain under control. As the day progressed, Kate remained violently ill and was in and out of sleep as the doctors tried to control the pain. Kate was in a gurney the whole day before she was feeling well enough, though still not great, to be released. Meanwhile, Dr. G had arranged to start Kate on chemo therapy the very next day.
The next day, still vomiting frequently, we showed up for Kate's first chemo session. One of the first drugs they started her on had nothing to do with killing the cancer. Dr. G explained the day before that Kate was hypercalcemic, meaning that she had excess calcium in her bloodstream. This was a result of the cancer metastases attacking her bones, and could be part of the culprit for her nausea. So they were giving her a drug originally designed for patients with osteoporosis called Pamidronate. The goal was to repatriate to her bones all that calcium circulating in her blood. That part of the treatment went well.
Next, they started her on Herceptin, a biological concoction that binds to the Her2 receptors on the cancer cells and keeps them from dividing. That, too, went well. Next, though, they started her on another drug called Paclitaxel. Within seconds of starting her on that, her face and arms started turning an alarming shade of deep pink. They had to abort the treatment. Turns out, reactions to the medium the Paclitaxel is dissolved in is fairly common. This was on a Friday. They rescheduled the remainder of the treatment for the following Monday and started introducing the drug at a slower rate, which did the trick.
The most amazing part of that first Friday treatment, though, was that Kate's nausea disappeared, the Pamidronate doing its job. Also, while she was undergoing that first round of treatment, she met with a RN, Nurse J, who was able to get her pain to a tolerable level. Nurse J has continued working with Kate and the pain is fairly well controlled now. Also amazing is that with just that one round of treatment, the primary lump in Kate's right breast shrunk noticeably.
Finally, the fear subsided quite a bit and we began to hope that, yes, this might go our way after all. Those first few days, though, with Kate so incredibly sick, I had to consider the unimaginable. That's a place I hope to never have to go again.
If you want to read more about Kate's experience with breast cancer, please visit the blog she has started on the subject:
http://katebreastcancer.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
Pranks
Today I went to a wildlife park about an hour north-east of Ottawa with my family and a couple of my daughter's friends. The kids in the back were talking about various pranks they had pulled over their still short lives. This got me to thinking a little but about some capers my friends and I pulled.
Some were a little lame, and in retrospect, kind of stupid. Like the time my friend (who shares a name with a famous clown that shills for a major fast food chain) and I (who coincidently was voted class clown for my graduating class) assaulted (with emphasis on the syllable with "ass" in it) our highschool english teacher with a water balloon. The teacher in question gets an A+ for not turning us in. Sadly, he went on to commit suicide the following year. Nothing funny about that.
Much later, I was working at Agriculture and Agrifood Canada (AAFC) in a group that could best be described as a dysfunctional daycare. In a good way. Our Director General (DG) was this petite 50-something woman who was former warden of some of Canada's meanest penitentiaries. The Warden was more ring leader than boss. She herself masterminded a number of pranks, and we perpetrated a number of them knowing that our erstwhile boss would have our backs. In order to protect the innocent, I won't detail those pranks here, but I raise it because it was at this job that I met The Doberman. He was a partner in crime and we quickly became friends.
After I left AAFC, The Doberman and I stayed in touch and we became less partners in pranks and more each other's victim. One of the things we did while working together was that while our colleague was away we put a ballon with a weird angry face drawn on it in the neck of her snowsuit that she left hanging in her office. Lame, I know. But months after I left for another job, I got an envelope at my new office and found inside the flaccid balloon, looking for all the world like an evil tribal shrunken head. Hilarious, though I guess you had to be there.
Fast forward a few years and my wife Kate is looking through her childhood stash of Barbies to show my daughter. Many of them had been disarticulated - a jumble of legs, arms and torsos and many heads with weird haircuts giving them a maniacal look. Remebering The Doberman's funny joke with the deflated balloon, I thought, "wouldn't it be funny to pack up some of these doll parts and send them anonymously to him?" I giggled for days at the though of him opening the envelope and seeing the parts and thinking WTF? A few days later, the Doberman calls with a slight quaver in his voice asking if I had sent him Barbie parts. I strung him along for a while until he told me his wife was a little freaked out and he sounded not unworried himself. I finally confessed. I felt pretty bad, but I really thought he would recognize my hand behind the prank and I guess I didn't see doll parts as the threat to life and limb that some may have interpreted it as. I was forgiven, I think.
Another time, The Doberman was taking a weekend woodworking course at the local college. I happened to be near the college one Saturday morning and I thought I'd stop by the college and see if he was free for a coffee. I got there just as he was leaving the shop class. I quickly ducked behind a bush and followed him to the parking lot and to his car. He opened the back door of his car and leaned in to put the beatifully machined parts of his project on the seat. That's when I jumped behind him, pushed him into the car and muttered threateningly into his ear that "you better give me all your money or you're dead," or something along those lines. To his credit, he remained calm while he twisted his head, saw it was me and said "oh, hey." "Oh, hey?," are you kidding me? Not the reaction I was hoping for, but in retrospect, I could have induced a heart attack in the poor man.
I was retelling these stories, and some others, to my brothers, no slouches in the prank department themselves, and even they had thought I had stepped over the line. So, I apologize often to The Doberman for amusing myself at his expense and have began atoning for what will be the rest of my life. He is a very good friend, a guy for whom I would unhesitatingly take a bullet.
I would love to hear about any pranks you've put into motion or have been the victin of and have been able to laugh about.
Some were a little lame, and in retrospect, kind of stupid. Like the time my friend (who shares a name with a famous clown that shills for a major fast food chain) and I (who coincidently was voted class clown for my graduating class) assaulted (with emphasis on the syllable with "ass" in it) our highschool english teacher with a water balloon. The teacher in question gets an A+ for not turning us in. Sadly, he went on to commit suicide the following year. Nothing funny about that.
Much later, I was working at Agriculture and Agrifood Canada (AAFC) in a group that could best be described as a dysfunctional daycare. In a good way. Our Director General (DG) was this petite 50-something woman who was former warden of some of Canada's meanest penitentiaries. The Warden was more ring leader than boss. She herself masterminded a number of pranks, and we perpetrated a number of them knowing that our erstwhile boss would have our backs. In order to protect the innocent, I won't detail those pranks here, but I raise it because it was at this job that I met The Doberman. He was a partner in crime and we quickly became friends.
After I left AAFC, The Doberman and I stayed in touch and we became less partners in pranks and more each other's victim. One of the things we did while working together was that while our colleague was away we put a ballon with a weird angry face drawn on it in the neck of her snowsuit that she left hanging in her office. Lame, I know. But months after I left for another job, I got an envelope at my new office and found inside the flaccid balloon, looking for all the world like an evil tribal shrunken head. Hilarious, though I guess you had to be there.
Fast forward a few years and my wife Kate is looking through her childhood stash of Barbies to show my daughter. Many of them had been disarticulated - a jumble of legs, arms and torsos and many heads with weird haircuts giving them a maniacal look. Remebering The Doberman's funny joke with the deflated balloon, I thought, "wouldn't it be funny to pack up some of these doll parts and send them anonymously to him?" I giggled for days at the though of him opening the envelope and seeing the parts and thinking WTF? A few days later, the Doberman calls with a slight quaver in his voice asking if I had sent him Barbie parts. I strung him along for a while until he told me his wife was a little freaked out and he sounded not unworried himself. I finally confessed. I felt pretty bad, but I really thought he would recognize my hand behind the prank and I guess I didn't see doll parts as the threat to life and limb that some may have interpreted it as. I was forgiven, I think.
Another time, The Doberman was taking a weekend woodworking course at the local college. I happened to be near the college one Saturday morning and I thought I'd stop by the college and see if he was free for a coffee. I got there just as he was leaving the shop class. I quickly ducked behind a bush and followed him to the parking lot and to his car. He opened the back door of his car and leaned in to put the beatifully machined parts of his project on the seat. That's when I jumped behind him, pushed him into the car and muttered threateningly into his ear that "you better give me all your money or you're dead," or something along those lines. To his credit, he remained calm while he twisted his head, saw it was me and said "oh, hey." "Oh, hey?," are you kidding me? Not the reaction I was hoping for, but in retrospect, I could have induced a heart attack in the poor man.
I was retelling these stories, and some others, to my brothers, no slouches in the prank department themselves, and even they had thought I had stepped over the line. So, I apologize often to The Doberman for amusing myself at his expense and have began atoning for what will be the rest of my life. He is a very good friend, a guy for whom I would unhesitatingly take a bullet.
I would love to hear about any pranks you've put into motion or have been the victin of and have been able to laugh about.
Monday, 2 January 2012
Hockey Talk
I love the game of hockey. It has everything going for it: speed and grace combined with bone- crushing physicality. One thing I could do without, though, is hockey speak. Watching the highlights shows, player interviews and even the broadcasts. Yeesh.
One ongoing sin from the world of highlights and game broadcasts is the use of the word "frame" instead of the proper term "period." This drives me to distraction. Hockey has periods, baseball has innings, football has quarters, soccer has halves and bowling, and only bowling, has frames. Hockey is definitely NOT bowling. Another annoying development of highlights shows is when a player scores a goal in the top of the net and they describe it as going "top cheese." And don't get me started on referring to goals as "markers." Scrap that, please.
They may as well do away with player interviews because when is the last time a player has had anything insightful to say? "We have to go out there and get more shots on net, get some guys in front of the net and score some goals;" or "we gotta play a full 60 minutes;" "we just gotta go out there and play our game;" "we gotta simplify our game." Sorry, boys. What you really gotta do is find something original to say. Where's Jeremy Roenik when you need him? Better stick with the coach interviews, they generally have more interesting things to say. New York Rangers coach John Tortorella alone is worth watching. You just know that one day the poor man is going to have a stroke during a post-game press scrum.
Young players are funny to listen to because everything is so "surreal". You'd think the NHL had a LSD problem on its hands with all the surreality. Google "hockey quotes surreal" and you'll get 151,000 hits. You'd think the game was played in a Salvador Dali painting.
Forgive me for whining but I get like that when I'm tired. I really do LOVE the game. As long as hockey is being played, soccer does not deserve the title of "The Beautiful Game." Well, time for bed and surreal dreams of pink elephants playing their own game in front of the net for sixty minutes putting pucks top cheese in the third frame with 00:03 left.
One ongoing sin from the world of highlights and game broadcasts is the use of the word "frame" instead of the proper term "period." This drives me to distraction. Hockey has periods, baseball has innings, football has quarters, soccer has halves and bowling, and only bowling, has frames. Hockey is definitely NOT bowling. Another annoying development of highlights shows is when a player scores a goal in the top of the net and they describe it as going "top cheese." And don't get me started on referring to goals as "markers." Scrap that, please.
They may as well do away with player interviews because when is the last time a player has had anything insightful to say? "We have to go out there and get more shots on net, get some guys in front of the net and score some goals;" or "we gotta play a full 60 minutes;" "we just gotta go out there and play our game;" "we gotta simplify our game." Sorry, boys. What you really gotta do is find something original to say. Where's Jeremy Roenik when you need him? Better stick with the coach interviews, they generally have more interesting things to say. New York Rangers coach John Tortorella alone is worth watching. You just know that one day the poor man is going to have a stroke during a post-game press scrum.
Young players are funny to listen to because everything is so "surreal". You'd think the NHL had a LSD problem on its hands with all the surreality. Google "hockey quotes surreal" and you'll get 151,000 hits. You'd think the game was played in a Salvador Dali painting.
Forgive me for whining but I get like that when I'm tired. I really do LOVE the game. As long as hockey is being played, soccer does not deserve the title of "The Beautiful Game." Well, time for bed and surreal dreams of pink elephants playing their own game in front of the net for sixty minutes putting pucks top cheese in the third frame with 00:03 left.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Project 52
An old childhood friend of mine, Kim, a blogger herself ( http://kim-thelunchbox.blogspot.com/) put me onto an interesting blog challenge called Project 52 (http://www.jenneethompson.com/p/project-52.html). The purpose of this blog seems to be to list 52 projects you wish to accomplish or goals you wish to reach in the coming year and provide weekly updates. I can do that. So here we go:
- Host a party when we get news that Kate's cancer is in remission.
- Buy and learn how to play guitar with my daughter, the Bean - learn to play, wait for it, Stairway to Heaven (remember the scene in Wayne's World?)
- Lose 35 lbs.
- Get into shape to run 10K.
- Build Tool chest for under my workbench.
- Make a cane.
- Resolve my depression.
- Learn how to sew and sew a couple of projects.
- Relearn how to draw.
- Look into making a documentary.
- Make a soufflé.
- Make a critical decision about my career (should I stay or should I go?)
- Refinish/Restore dining room furniture.
- Have our shower retiled.
- Never say no to an opportunity I can afford.
- Always try to make lemonade from lemons (i.e. turn a negative into a positive).
- Make a small trebuchet.
- Shoot off a rocket.
- Weave a basket.
- Read 10 of the unread books on my bookshelves.
- Watch the 1972 Summit Series on DVD.
- Look for and buy a nice mini-metal lathe at a super bargain basement price.
- Restore something mechanical.
- Carve a Celtic cross for my father-in-law.
- Carve lovespoons for the Bean and Kate.
- Learn Calligraphy.
- Make a woodworking plane.
- Make paper.
- Take a university course in art history.
- Try not to despise a particular neighbourhood family so much.
- Clean out gardens.
- Resod the backyard.
- Build a garden shed.
- Research my grandfather's WW II service record with the Veterans Guards of Canada.
- Write an article for a newspaper or magazine.
- Make woodworking prototypes for selling at craft shows next year.
- Blog the A-Z Challenge.
- Go to the Hudson Flea Market.
- Go to one of Shaun's bonfires.
- Re-learn how to take apart and rebuild small engines.
- Get a bicycle repair stand and do a full maintenance of my family's bikes.
- Learn how to download e-books from the Ottawa Public Library to my Kobo E-Reader.
- Learn how to play the harmonica.
- Brush up on some academic disciplines like math, physics, chemistry.
- Learn how to pay household bills.
- Grow gourds and do some gourd vessels.
- Start a new blog or blogs on local artists, artisans and craftsmen.
- Learn how to use Photoshop Elements.
- Start doing science experiments with the Bean.
- Build a crystal radio with the bean.
- Make some Ukrainian Easter eggs.
- Do the aircraft carrier model I got for Christmas three years ago.
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