The Unusual

Went to Osoyoos this last weekend for a great golf tournament held by Osoyoos Credit Union. 3 of us have been going for a few years now and enjoy the people who put it on and the course. This year we managed to get onto Fairview Mountain for a round of golf on Monday. We had arrived at the 10th tee when 3 deer strode out onto the green. Sometimes it just can't get any better.

If you miss CBC check out CBC Unplugged. There is a podcast there that was on the SFU radio station this morning. They had a number of CBC radio and TV types being interviewed and their impressions of the lockout. It was interesting to hear what they had to say because these points are not being made in the the mainstream media. I wonder why?

Was out at Burnaby Mountain today and shot a better round than Sunday's but still it was bad. How can you shoot a par at one hole and get a triple bogey the next? It doesn't seem natural. And why does one keep trying to hit the ball a mile knowing that if you just slowed down to a very controlled swing you would hit it straight and probably be only shorter by 20 yards? Maybe that is the difference between a good golfer and the rest of us, they relax and don't allow the testosterone to take over.

Gapingvoid has got one of the funniest "cards" I have ever seen.

Texada Island

We drove up to Powell River and then took the ferry across to Texada Island. It was the first time for me but Marjun and my mother-in-law had spent the summer there in 1957. The first thing they noticed was the paved roads. It certainly is not your typical Gulf Island. Large and not a lot of people. You sometimes feel that Saltspring, Gibsons, Sechelt, and other vacation spots really bring out the Coney Island feel in the summer. Texada is just laid back and natural. We spent the night at The Retreat just south of Gillies Bay. It was plain, simple and just what we wanted. We saw more small deer that cats or dogs. The Tree Frog restaurant at Gillies Bay is excellent, as good as any place I've eaten recently. We went fishing at Bob's Lake after getting a little lost the day before trying to find it and end up at Shingle Beach. If you want a quiet, rustic and not-a-lot-of-people type holiday this is the place. We certainly think it was worth the ferry rides and drive.

Style and pleats

There is a ongoing discussion on Darren's site on pleats. Seems most don't like them. Must be the times we live in because everyone's kids will probably like them. Style always seems to go in a cycle. The problem is that the style that you first grew up with was usually made much better. My grade 2 teacher always said it didn't matter what anyone wore as long as it was clean. Everyone needs a good mechanic, a good dentist, a good barber, and a good tailor.

After a phone call to the US Consulate to find out what my mother-in-law (Danish) and my wife (also Danish but a landed immigrant here in Canada) needed to spend 3 days in Washington state, we decided it wasn't worth the headache to visit the land of the free. I have never heard of supplying a bank statement and a day by day intinerary of your visit to name a few of the conditions. Boy it is getting a little strange. What was that Door's song - Strange Days? Just the melody speaks of how you feel after you hear of their conditions for a visit. Anyway we decided to head up to Powell River and take the trip over to Texada Island. Never been there so it will be more like an adventure. I mean how can you get lost when the only way back is by ferry?

Home again

Got home Friday from the beach. The solitude for 3 days was refreshing. It is very interesting when you are completely by yourself and your days evolve to eating when you are hungry, sleeping when you are tired, reading and writing when you feel like it and spending time with your feet in the saltwater listening to the surf roll in. There is just something about salt water, tides and the clean fresh air.

I am just finnishing a book by Don Watson called Gobbledygook. This should be required ready for anybody in management or going to school to earn a business degree. Amazingly Margaret Wente wrote a column in Saturday's Globe & Mail about the book in which I had to agree with her (probably the first time). Here's an interesting quote from the book:

Businesses can be forgiven their neologisms, but not their technocratic sludge. If they can find the means to downsize, prioritize, and implement quality function deployment they can find better words to describe what they are doing. Their failure becomes most acute when they try to bend the language into an instrument of persuasion. The fact is, of course, it can't be bent. It is incapable of carrying mood or emotion. It can neither admonish or praise.

Yup, sometimes spin is spin and the shit of a bull is just that, bullshit. (please pardon the unsophisticated term but it does carry the mood).

The beach

This should have been my view today but there always seems a ton of stuff to get done. Canadian Tire, the Library, fill up the propane tanks, and before you know it the day is done. Tomorrow at this time I will be enjoying this view.

The plants outside needed a huge watering today. The leaves on a number of trees are turning yellow and falling off. It does look like the heat is taking its toll.

The news about the Cheakamaus River and the recent chemical spill by a railway car is probably the sickest news I have heard in a long time. They say 95% of the fish stock in the river was killed. This month the Pinks were to come back and there were signs that the run was just starting. If the river hasn't cleaned itself enough what will happen to that run? If there is a time that someone should pay, be it CN or some other corporate environmental misfit it is now. If a private citizen lets a litre of bleach spill into a fish bearing creek the repercussions are serious. The same must hold true of corporations that create similar problems but in a much larger scale. What is this going to cost us? What damage will be done that cannot be repaired? What ever happened to a watchful eye on the commons that belong to us all?

Blogs...by definition

This morning on the way to work I was considering exactly what a blog is and what types there are and why they are being read. There are various categories (here we go--the development of a program to categorize all the blogs out there!) that you tend to read regularily. I have about 15 technical web pages/blogs that are read each day, then a group of blogs from bloggers that I have met or have contact with from Northern Voice, then a group that are GTD specific, then the last large group of various bloggers who are interesting. Some of these I may have met at Gnomedex. All the groups are setup as tabbled bookmarks in Safari.

A blogger doesn't have to blog everyday. There are some that are so interesting that you go back for a few months even if they haven't updated. At about the 3rd month I move them over to a inactive blog list. The key ingredients for a readable blog seem to be pertinent information and/or a personable writing style that is honest and usually insightful. I may not agree with them but I understand their position.

A good blog is like a good letter to the editor. Our household reads the Globe and Mails letters to the editors everyday and they make up some interesting dinner table discussions. A good blog seems to follow the same idea.

Some blogs are not that great. They should defined as linklists. Lots of links to other places but no opinion about what the link is or what they really think of it. You know the kind:

Here is a great site you cant miss...lots of neat stuff.

There is usually about 10 of these neat sites listed. You gotta think what is THIS all about?

Blog lists are cconstantly being edited with more added and a few being culled. There isn't much you can't find now with the likes of Technorati. But everyone knew that already, right?

Old Friends

Yesterday we were down at the "cottage" to have a small get together with 3 old friends. All of us have known each other since 1966 (at least) so that is close to 40 years. As soon as we got together it was catch up time with old names and places, then just ramblings about everything such as old sayings, great movies, sports, and well, just about everything under the sun. We had a quick soccer game which showed us our diminished athletic ability. At one point in a conversation Skinny and I came to the conclusion that friends and family were the most inmportant things in life and that we had striven for so much else 20 and 30 years ago.
This morning I thought of two people who weren't there and imagined how their personalities would have added to our get together. But as you get older you tend to only be able to remember those you no longer can be with. Death is the final separation. That seems to add to how important life right now really is.