The Saskatchewan Roughriders are 4-0 with a comeback victory over Montreal.  Not only that but it is the second win in a row by our third string QB.  How is Kerry Joseph doing?

The Parliament buildings need $1 billion in repairs and renovations to keep them structurally sound.

High wire fencing has been erected at a north corner of the Centre Block to prevent Hill pedestrians and visitors from coming too close to crumbling mortar and the danger of falling bits of stone from the walls and towers.

The southeast corner of the West Block has been shrouded in white all-weather construction sheeting for more than a year.

For the second summer in a row, brown see-through webbing is wrapped around other towers, looking like giant nylon socks over stone.

The webbing is also a protection against crumbling mortar and stone.

I feel the same way about 24 Sussex Drive.  If it needs the work to be done, it needs to be done.  I know there is a Canadian humility at play here as well as the politics but I think it is okay to be proud of your country once in a while and they can be articulated by maintaining our national symbols.

While I was up at the lake, Dennis lent me his copy of Put Your Life on a Diet: Lessons Learned from Living in 140 sq Feet by Gregory Johnson.  I read it a couple times now and I liked it a lot.   After a divorce, the author found himself living in a small studio apartment and later in a Tumbleweed Tiny House Company built house that he refers to as the mobile hermitage.  The premise is that while we live in a consumption based society, we don't have consume like everyone else does and by living differently, it frees us up to explore other areas in life.

Wendy and I have always lived in a small house (it is a little hard to be married and raise kids in 150 sq feet) and I personally prefer to be on the grid rather than off it but at the same time he is correct in that we need very little to live happily with.  Too often what we own ends up owning us and we start to make life decisions based on what is right for our possessions rather than what is good for us.  

The book looks at how we consume in five main areas

1. housing
2. food
3. technology
4. utilities
5. transportation

Of the five areas, the sections on housing, food and tech interested me the most.  While living in 140 square feet isn't practical for many of us, there is a lot in the book worth pondering and adopting.  I found his best arguments to be based around how we get caught in the trap of living in bigger spaces which require us to buy more stuff and then we need even more space because we have all of this stuff.  If you feel trapped at times but the culture we live in, this is a good book to read as it shows there is a different way to live.  While context is important to understand while figuring all of this out, there is enough in the book for anyone to be able to read and rethink how we go about this thing called life.

Of course the running joke was that if I had read this book before we started to paint the cabin, we would have only had to scrape down half of the cabin OR we could turn it into a duplex :-)

"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty." -- Mother Theresa

My submission for Photo Friday: Flight.  A Boeing 747 at the Denver International Airport.

It's been two years this week I have been working at the Salvation Army Community Centre.  Two years, three different jobs, three executive directors, two evacuations helped with, one coyote housed, and sadly I have developed the taste for Tim Horton's coffee.  All in all I am glad I took the job (which oddly enough I hired for the same position today) and have a pretty good two years here.  The coolest part is today my desk is piled high with papers and plans for the future.  They are the kind of plans that wake me up at night in a good way so the immediate future seems even more enjoyable.

• Now THIS is a cabin.  Even worse, the designer lives on a salvaged car ferry when he isn't at the cabin.  Way too cool.
• A log RV.  Not much more can be said. via

When I read this article on GM, it was like reading about a friend who has a terminal illness but is in denial over how bad it is.

The scraped down look of the cabin...

The after version of the cabin

Thanks to everyone that helped out, it was a great way to spend a weekend. 

As an aside Wendy posted this today, lakeside lots just south of Arlington Beach are starting at $199,900.  Wow.

The photo set for the weekend can be found here.

Brothers, originally uploaded by Jordon.

A quick photo of Mark feeding Oliver.

Abandoned home quarter, originally uploaded by Jordon.

While heading back from Arlington Beach yesterday I stopped and took a couple of photographs of this deteriorating farm house on the road from Cymric to Arlington.

There is a farm house near the lake that has a really creepy and sad story to it (whether it is true or not I don't know) which always makes me wonder what happened to this home quarter. While it is probably pretty boring (retired or built a newer house on another plot of land), taking Mark to places like this helps with the telling of ghost stories that are a part of every trip to the lake.

• Maybe that Eric Tillman guy knew what he is doing.  The Riders are now 3-0 with a win by their starting QB, backup QB, and third string QB.
• Bombardier has a new regional jet that is both fuel efficient and emits less emissions.  To bad there won't be any solvent airlines left to buy it.
• How cola sales predict political stability
• How do houses do as a long or short term investment?
• A map showing the growth of Wal-Mart across the United States over the years

Last night I finally felt awake enough to do some reading about Stephane Dion's carbon tax, err, Green Shift, err, The Green Shift.  First of all I think it is naive to tax carbon producers and think they won't pass on the tax burden to the consumers which in the end will be a carbon tax.  While my gut instinct is that it will be hard on the Alberta economy, I haven't seen anything more than numbers by angry Calgary columnists so I will reserve my judgement.  Also while the NEP was blamed for the 80s oil slump in Alberta, the bigger problem was world crude prices, high interest rates, and inflation.  Perhaps the Saskatchewan and Alberta economies can afford a carbon tax and still do well.

The one thing that surprised away about it is that there is not going to be a tax on gasoline for our cars while there will be on natural gas to heat my home.  A major part of the fighting global warming is going to be shifting from driving so much and moving to public transports, trains, walking, biking, solar powered Segways which only work when it is sunny... you get the idea.  Oddly enough the entire plan doesn't address much of that at all.  Since it is going to be revenue neutral, there won't be the incentives to help Canadians upgrade furnaces, add better insulation to their homes, redo windows, upgrade to Chevy Volts, and those sort of things.  I would love to see an investment in VIA Rail (how about making it less expensive the flying), make the GO Trains cheaper, public transportation, and reclaiming wetlands and forests, a commitment to nuclear energy, or even wind power (say what you want about Americans but they know how to come up with really big ideas).  I hate to say it but it seems rather weak rather than a bold plan but what do I know, I am from the west and the Liberals haven't seriously contested my riding since before the Rt. Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn was interested in politics.

In the most mediocre Canadian contest.  I am serious.  Join the campaign.  It's going nowhere that spectacular.  Brent Gretzky is only mediocre because of his brother.  Warren Kinsella has FOUR well known books and drives a nicer classic car than I do.  Alan Thicke?  Way, way nicer hair than any of us.  He is a D list celebrity already.  You won't see me courtside at L.A. Clippers games, that is Alan Thicke territory.

I am from Saskatchewan.  We define mediocrity.  A 9-9 football season is a good but not great season for the Riders and that Grey Cup thing last year was only because we messed up and hired Eric Tillman as our G.M.  Saskatoon, nice but not great city.  My blog is good but not great.  I define mediocrity.

• Kottke has a good post on the idea that kids make unhappy parents :: Eight years into this parenting thing and 8 days into kid number two, I may a bit overtired but I am very happy with our choice to become parents.
• Senator Jim Webb didn't like the vetting process that the Obama team put him through so has "undeclared" for being VP.
• Pray at the Pump :: The church may have hit a new rock bottom.
• Shocking News! :: Dick Cheney tried to hide the health effects in climate change.  Of course the Onion uncovers even a bigger controversy being covered up.
• Business Week has an interesting profile on Putin and his turn from the west.
• The Pentagon wants to help you make your blockbuster about Iraq.
• Obama's Iraq Problem :: It's easy to say that he will end the war but how will end the war.
• Saving Michael Vick's dogs
• Cutting down pollution in China for the games means worldwide production shortages around the world for some items :: The more one things about it, the more one realizes how big the problem of global warming and pollution is.  Our entire western economy is based on pollution.
• The Onion foresaw the 600 Starbucks store shutdown back in February.
• Obama's iPod playlist, the oPod
• The L.A. Clippers got Falked

Well today the residents of Sandy Bay left the Cosmo Civic Centre in Saskatoon, boarded three busses and started the 8 hour drive back home which ended the evacuation from the community.  Before the busses had left the Cosmo Civic Centre parking lot, the Salvation Army Community Centre had packed up our stuff and were heading back to the Centre via a Tim Horton's for some much needed vitamin supplement (vitamin: caffeine).  Shortly after that I was back home taking a much wanted nap.

Since I last posted, a lot changed.  On Sunday I got a call to be at the Centre for a meeting where I found out that I was taking over the food service operations at the Cosmo for the next seven days which was  fine and dandy except I have never done anything like that and I don't have my safe food handling certificate.  The good news is that I was taking over from someone that was really competent and she gave me an amazing job description.  With some help from the bulk of the staff and volunteers who were at the SaskTel Sports Centre (they had 590 people there), we made it through at Cosmo (we had about 120 people there).   Thankfully a couple hours later the weather forecast changes, the fire and smoke had abated and people were told they were going to go home on Tuesday.  That took the anxiety out of the whole place, from the supporting organizations to the evacuees and the end result was that everyone was in a pretty good mood.  That mood was further boosted by Fire Creek Gas station brining in 160 large pieces of fresh off the grill bannock which was loved by everyone.  I was persuaded to give bannock a try and I don't think I had ever had it before but I liked it.

One thing to note.  Yesterday I was wearing a green shirt and one of the kids runs up to me and told me I was a pretty big guy.  He looked at my shirt and said, "You are big and green like Shrek!"  His dad heard him and said, "That's Mr. Shrek to you."  So for the last two days, every meal or snack time he would call me "Mr. Shrek".  Today about a dozen kids under five years of age were calling me "Mr. Shrek".  I don't know if they got the reference, just overhead me being called that, or think I am an ogre but they were polite and solicited a laugh from whoever heard them so it was okay.

It was up at 5:30, at the site by 7:00 a.m.  There all day until I came home around 11:00 p.m.  I wish I could have slept when I got home but the neuropathy is killing me right now to the point where the Neuragen can't deal with it.   I know that the long hours make it worse but I think it is just another cycle of a lot of pain right now. 

A quick list of what I learned...

• No matter how professionally dressed and educated, give a ring pop to a person who is overtired enough and they will put it on their finger and wear it as proudly as the kids.  They also will lick it for the sugar rush.
• Coffee perks work better with coffee grounds inside them.
• Never carry your bottle of Aquafina into a conversation with public health officials.  It just starts a long conversation about the commercialization of water that you may not want to have.  My explanation of "I don't like the way city water tastes" doesn't really end the conversation either.

I wish I could have tomorrow off but I have to get some funding applications finished this week but it is off to the lake for a bit this weekend.

• J.P. Riccardi throws in the towel, just like he has over the last six years.
• 50 things that are blamed on the rising cost of oil.

I am not going to be blogging much as the next couple of days are all going to be spent at the SaskTel Soccer Centre dealing with the almost 1000 evacuees coming to Saskatoon from up north as they flee the forest fires.  Most of the evacuees are women and children along with the sick and the elderly.  Most able bodied men are still trying to save their communities from the fires. 

The Salvation Army is serving food in two different locations.  The SaskTel Sports Centre and Cosmo Civic Centre.  So far it has been going okay and despite the heat at the Soccer Centre, people are handling it well.   At both sites, there are people from the Heath Region, Social Services, the Red Cross, and us.  On top of that, a bunch of Saskatoon City police officers are volunteering.  On top of doing whatever needs to be done, they are a hit with the kids giving out free stuff which has been quite the hit with some of them down there.

My job this week is the equivalent of the guy who wore the red shirt on Star Trek, I do whatever I am told and if there is an alien attack or a warp drive malfunctions, I get killed first.  I was a little surprised that was in my job description but they insist it is.

If you are in Saskatoon and would like to help us out, please contact Crystal down at the Centre at 242-6833 during 8:30 and 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday.  Crystal will give you some idea of when we need help, what location, and help get you registered so you can gain access to the facility.

to believe how bad it really is.  I have no sympathy for the landlord on this one at all.  The smell walking by it is enough to make one gag, even in winter.