I used six weeks as a time frame to create this widget but the hospital said 4-6 weeks so who knows, I might get lucky and heal fast. (Of course, I could also trip and fall on the snow or in the bathroom or something and screw things up even worse.) To help things along, I've drank more milk this weekend than in probably the past month total. And I'm going to try to stay away from bone-sapping caffeine products like Pepsi and chocolate. So we'll see how it goes.
I don't really believe in karma or fate or messages from above. But I suspect I was getting pretty cocky about my ability to get up and walk around and this is some sort of message that I better not take that for granted in the future. (I told Shea this afternoon, “I wish I was out raking leaves right now. Seriously!”)
Anyhow, this is the widget I'll be keeping my eye on for the foreseeable future…
[Edit: I just realised that “Saturday Snap” was probably never more appropriate as a title!]
No, not it does not! Just that none of the other options (bright orange, glow-in-the-dark white, camouflage) appealed to daddy's highly evolved sense of fashion.
Man, thinking more about it – I played rec hockey with this team for almost ten years from either first or second year of undergrad till when Shea and I moved to Calgary in 2001. Then I played again all of last year. During all those years, we played all winter, many summers, at least one and often two games per week from October to March. In fact, our home ice time used to be on a Friday so there were more occasions than I care to remember where I'd go to hockey after having had a beer or four. But I've never had a serious injury in all that time. The odd bruise or slight twist or tweak of some body part, sure. But a broken bone?? Aaaarrrgghhhh!
SaskProgressive.com, a web site dedicated to highlighting progressive candidates and pressing issues in Saskatchewan's upcoming municipal elections has officially launched.
The press release is below. (Full disclosure: I'm one of the “five guys with a web site” referenced in the press release and was involved in the initial planning of the site and have full administrative privileges.)
— ATTENTION ALL SASKATCHEWAN PROGRESSIVES
Saskatchewan municipal elections are coming up later this month.
In
many cases, bland platforms will make it very difficult for voters to
determine what candidates really stand for. SaskProgressive.com is here
to help.
Now I’m not saying anything against the
cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with
dignity. They passed good laws – that is, laws that were good for cats.
But the laws that were good for cats weren’t very good for mice . . . .
The trouble wasn’t with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that
they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after
cats instead of mice.
Do you know which candidate or candidates
in your municipality share your progressive values? Do you know which
candidates are on your side? Can you tell the cats from the mice?
Our mission at SaskProgressive.com is to help you figure that out.
SaskProgressive.com
is a cooperative effort to identify those candidates for mayor, council
or school board who reflect our values, who will stand up for the needs
of citizens, not the greed of developers.
At SaskProgressive.com
you will be able to click on your municipality / school division and
see which candidates share your progressive values.
To make this
work, we’re going to need your help. We already know about some
progressives who are running for mayor, council or school board – but
we don’t know them all.
If you are a candidate in the upcoming
election and you believe you share our values – or if you know about a
candidate who ought to be on our list – go to SaskProgressive.com and
use the contact form to tell us about your campaign and to provide a
link to your campaign website.
-30-
SaskProgressive.com is a cooperative effort by five guys with a website.
ESPN recently did a poll of various sports scientists and other experts to rank the most difficult sports using a variety of factors – strength, flexibility, endurance, hand-eye coordination, etc. etc. In the end, boxing came out as the top sport across all categories but was followed closely by ice hockey.
Which leads to my next sad piece of news. I stupidly managed to break my leg last night playing rec league hockey. It’s one of those unfortunate accidents that was probably totally preventable in hindsight but happened so quickly at the time, you never see it coming.
I was playing forward and one of our defense missed me with a hard pass to get out of our zone. Their defenseman turned to chase down the puck and I followed after him. (Here’s where the hindsight comes in.) We have no refs to blow down icings so if I’d just backed off and let him skate down the ice and get the puck, especially since there was only ten minutes left in the game and we were losing pretty badly anyhow so even if I got a goal, it wouldn’t change anything.
But I gave chase pretty hard – I think in my head thinking “Well, the game’s almost over – let’s get one last good skate in” – and of course as I come down the ice at full throttle, he retrieves the puck and turns left. I go to turn right away from him but lose an edge crashing *really* heavy into the boards. I lay stunned for a second as players from both teams gather to ask if I’m okay.
Of course, being a big tough hockey player, I get up, “yeah, I’m okay” and hobble off. I sit on our bench, hoping that it’s just a really bad sprain but knowing on some level that’s probably not the case. The game ends and I even go out to do the end-of-game handshakes (again, stupid) then make my way gingerly off the ice. I get my equipment and skates off and it appears that there’s a DENT in my leg, above my ankle just over where my skate covers.
Oh-oh!
I pack up and again, being a tough guy, carry my equipment out to our van rather than asking someone to carry it for me. I drive home and now my ankle’s swollen up and climbing the stairs into our house (the equipment stays in the van!) nearly kills me. I wake up Shea and we debate going to the hospital but she’s scheduled for a busy day at work the next day plus we’d have to wake up Pace and drag him out for what could be a few hours in Emergency. So she gets me an ice bag and I crash out instead.
Up this morning and take Pace to his daycare then go to the clinic for X-Rays which confirm that it’s a break. Fuck. That means a cast and all the crap that goes with it – lack of mobility, worries about how to move around if more snow comes, not being able to help out around the house as easily.
But yeah, the next six to eight weeks are *not* going to be fun but hopefully they go fast.
(Funny story – Shea was taking me to get my cast and I go “I wish I had a time machine so I could push a button and be six weeks in the future with all of this over” and she goes, “If you had a time machine, why not just go back one day and be less of an idiot?” Good point.)
Shea posted a hilarious anti-breastfeeding article pro-Nestle Fake Milk Formula to her Facebook status with the usual heavy response to anytime this type of topic comes up – from both pro-breastfeeding moms and those who weren't able to or aren't as worked up about the prevalance of formula in our society.
It made me think, what are the most controversial topics you can bring up with someone to guarantee a good argument (or awkward silences): – religion/atheism – politics – abortion – euthanasia – parenting – breastfeeding – social programs (pick one) – economic programs (pick one) – pornography – sex – gambling – anything to do with races/gender issues/sexual orientation and all that fun stuff – why the Leafs suck so badly (okay, nobody disagrees about this! )
So anyhow, that's a long way of saying that I hope Shea posts this article about the completely different attitude towards breastfeeding that exists way around the world in Mongolia (although if you did a study, I'm sure the attitudes in Mongolia are much more common worldwide than the typical North American way of doing things – baby breastfeeds for maybe 3-6 months if they're lucky or else mom says she just wasn't able to do it – which might be true but you shouldn't admit in the same article that you “didn't realise how much work breastfeeding would be” or mention that being able to leave baby with grandma and grandpa for a night out is a nice bonus as was the case in the article Shea posted to her Facebook.)
If you're fortunate enough not to know, Glenn Beck is the latest TV talking head in the US in the Bill O'Reilly/Rush Limbaugh mould (mold?). He's getting a lot of attention recently, posting the largest viewership gains of any cable news host and being the driving force behind the Tea Bag protests (“Hey Bevis, Heh, He said Tea-bagger. Heh-heh. Heh.”)
This article talks about Beck's attempts to have the site taken down (and why that approach may backfire) as well as providing some deeper thoughts on web memes, trademark law and what is permissible in terms of satire of public figures.
The Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science (WILIS) study is a major research project happening at the University of North Carolina.
Here's a blurb from their web site's “About Us” page:
“Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science (WILIS)
project is designed to study the career patterns of graduates of LIS
programs. In general, LIS programs have lacked the time and resources
to track their graduates. As a result, stakeholders do not have an
adequate understanding of what happens to LIS graduates over the long
term. LIS educators, in particular, do not have consistent data on the
extent to which their programs meet students’ expectations, prepare
them for the workplace or meet continuing learning needs. Such an
understanding would assist in educating and managing the LIS workforce
more effectively.”
The University of Western Ontario is one of the participating schools and I was one of the grads asked to take the survey which I did tonight.
Came across this photo on the official Sask Library Association page on Flickr – a shot of the judges for the Library Olympics event which was held after the Awards Banquet with one judge in particular showing a high level of enthusiasm.
And bonus SaturdaySnap…one of the participants in the “Best Shush!” event:
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