random thoughts

My brother Slader just became a father yesterday, giving birth figuratively to baby Brooklyn. I say figuratively because Steph was the one to actually birth Brooklyn. Good work, Steph and I can't wait to see the little bundle o' joy.

One thing though, Slader: I think Brooklyn may be trying to tell you something. She decided to pick March 15, 2011 as her day of birth. Now, on the surface, that's an amazing day: the sun is starting to make real inroads into the day again, the Snow King Festival is in full force and, hell, the playoffs are almost at our feet. But, I have a feeling that Brooklyn is trying to tell you something by having picked March 15, 2011.

She's gonna be a Canucks fan, dogg. It's right there to see-din....

Brooklyn was born during the afternoon of March 15, 2011, when the Edmonton Oilers were dead last - DEAD LAST - in the NHL with 55 points and the Vancouver Canucks - for the first time in franchise history, this late in the season, I might add for gravitas - were 1st in the league with 101 points. If that isn't a message, I don't know what is?

Now when I told DA the news, his immediate reaction was that you were bringing Brooklyn into the world at the lowest point in franchise history so that she wouldn't remember these times and she'd only start to really get into things as guys like Eberle, Hall and Paajarvi were nearing their primes and Hemsky was in his, but I don't know if I buy it.

I think she might just be a Canucklehead. Don't take it too hard, Slader. It could be worse. She could be a Flames fan.

I'm kidding guys. Can't wait to see y'all.

With this in mind, here's a little random time capsule of March 15, 2011 - one day late...

GOOD: The seagulls are back. I always love the sound of seagulls in March. It means this shat we call winter is almost over. All that snow that murdered my shoes five nights ago has basically been eroded away to sad little outcrops of greyish-ice by two and a half days of WARM rain. Still, the City of Montreal managed to wake me up at 3 a.m. yesterday by clearing my street with alarms, loaders, snow-blowers, dump-trucks and flashing lights, even though it was raining and the snow was trickling into the storm drains.

BAD: St. Patrick's Day is approaching and one unfortunate symptom of this yearly pissfest in Montreal is how the McGill/downtown area is invaded by douchebag American 18 to 20-year-olds here on Spring Break. I've been here for less than two years and noticed that the young drunks are louder and more abrasive during this week/weekend than other times of the year. While I find it annoying to have to walk to work through the crowds of shade-wearing guys and girls -talking about even more inane things than I talk about - who hang outside the Hilton on Sherbrooke because they all have money and can afford to drop hundreds per night to get shit-tanked in a foreign city while they are in school, I can't fault them because, if I was 18 and could get drunk legally in an awesome student city three years before I could at home, I'd be there as often as possible.

Still doesn't excuse the douchiness.

GOOD: Nothing funnier than watching a down-and-out white gangster complain about his lot in life. Extra points if he's a ginger.

BAD: Nate Dogg died. He died of lung cancer, right? Yeah? Okay, so as a legacy project, his family should go back through his entire catalogue and edit every song he's ever done to try to persuade kids from smoking.

"Hey Hey Hey Hey......... Smoke-free every day."

No?

GOOD: McGill girls. Seriously, I wish I'd come here for school. Like I said about girls at Columbia so many years ago (okay, 18 months) McGill girls have their own look: They are like between 5'2" and 5'5", with black hair and slightly tanned. I feel like I could point out a McGill girl from a suspect line just based on this stereotype. Yep, I'm officially a weird, old guy.

BAD: Losing that hour this weekend. Didn't this feel like the shortest weekend ever? Really, it was 5 p.m. Saturday before I'd even taken a breath. And that was before Spring Back.

GOOD: As a result of that lost hour, the days are ending later and I've actually walked home from work with the sun at my back a couple times this week. It's mad how amazing it makes me feel. It's bringing this weird kind of depth back to things, like I looked at an apartment complex that I walk by on Berri every day and it just looked different... like maybe it was the fact that I actually looked at it, instead of rushing past it in a cold hurry. Anyways, I'm about a month away from hanging out in parks again. I can't be happier.

BAD: CBC Montreal. I check out their website at least ten times a day at the coal mine and, lately, it's just been sad. They've had stories about the city going on a pothole blitz and it was one of laziest, most useless things I've ever read. It was like they rewrote a press release. And I've been applying there for every opening they have and can't even get a response and it just makes me sulk. Come on, guys. Give me a shot!

But today takes the cake: They had a BREAKING NEWS story about an earthquake striking the Montreal-area. We all know that earthquake stories are big business right now, but come on, this thing registered a 4.3. That's like a fart in a bathtub. We really are pussies here in Canada.

What's happening in Japan is horrifying. It really hits home, I find, because this disaster occurred in probably the most prepared and well-organized society on the planet and all the planning and precaution still couldn't forecast something of this magnitude.

When I saw the videos of the tsunami slowly but relentlessly invading the towns and cities in Japan, I couldn't help but think how small and trivial humans are in the grand scheme of the universe. A tremor in the earth just overwhelms land with water, carelessly and without reason, like a kid splashing around in a puddle and regardless of what we do, the wave can't be stopped and houses, cars and lives just get swept up in the ceaseless wave. It's just all so bizarre.

I've worked with a bunch of great people from Japan and I'm hoping that the situation quickly becomes controllable again and life starts to get back to some sort of normalcy again.