A Spark, A Flame

I don't remember what grade I was in, though if I did the math I could easily figure it out, but I fondly remember the Calgary Winter Olympics of 1988. I remember Heidi and Howdy, the polar bear brother and sister mascots of the games. They were very cute and I remember getting coloring pages with them, all in various winter sports. If memory serves I spent extra close detail coloring the figure skating ones. I remember the Closing Ceremonies with all its pageantry. There was a sort of play on ice if you will, with lots of skaters dressed as Mounties on horses. A whole Cowboys and Indians kind of thing. It was Calgary after all and they love a good rodeo. I remember Kd Lang singing some crazy foot stomping song at the end of the evening. (Her version of Hallelujah at the Vancouver opening ceremonies was amazing though she looked more like Elton John) Oddly enough I don't remember the Opening Ceremonies of Calgary but I remember Terry Fox bringing in the Olympic Flame. I do remember watching skiing on TV and figure skating of course. Watching Brian Orser skate. I did a speech on him; our topic was our hero's. Pat Price did his on his dad. He won the competition. Pandering!!! But what I also remember was the Rabbit Lake Central School Grades 4,5 & 6 Olympics. I remember our torch relay. We had some sort of golden candle stick with a paper flame on the top and we "ran" it from the school to the rink. A distance of about 1/2 a mile, if you went the long way. I was in the front of the relay on my cross-country skis and yelled the words "switch" about every 15 seconds so that everyone in the class could have a turn "carrying the flame" and participating in the Olympic spirit. I don't remember all of our events but I think we did some form or Luge or Bobsled with our toboggans racing down a hill. We had a Cross-Country race, which I won thank you very much. I think there may have been a Curling match. I do remember Pairs Skating. I think my partner was Leslie Beacott or Robyn Plumber. I know that Adelle, crap I can't remember her last name, was paired with Michael McKenzie and they won gold. So I'm thinking I got silver. (bronze would just not be acceptable) I remember making medals out of paper with my class mates. (thank goodness someone had that box of 64 crayons) I also remember Speed Skating. Not sure if I placed in that one, although with figure skates you can get some good push-off of your "toe pick!" I remember it being a really fun day of competition but more importantly the spirit of comradery was there. We all came together as a class and organized something really fun. We celebrated wins together, and really there were no losers. In our own middle-of-nowhere way we felt like we were really there in Calgary competing and celebrating with Olympic Champions new and old. We felt a sense of pride for our country and for ourselves. Our teacher was a smart lady. She instilled in us the idea that anything was possible. Even though we were from a small town we could go anywhere and do anything. Thank you Mrs. Freathy.

Currently my roommate has a girl over. He has been trying, with little success, to win the heart of said fair maiden. Personally I think he has a one way ticket to Friendsville where they will most likely welcome him with open arms and christen him Mayor. They are watching Curling. Now I myself am a huge fan of the curl. (I'm pretty sure I medaled in the '88 games at Rabbit Lake) Though it may look boring as all hell, it is actually quite a fun sport, combining both skill and strategy. It involves a little physics too, which is always a plus in sport. What is very comical to me is the fact I can overhear him explain to her the finer points of Curling. She is doing the typical girl thing, pretending to act both ignorant and interested. He, on the other hand, knows nothing about Curling. A fact I know as I explained the game to him only this morning. He is using, verbatim, the same words I told him. I don't know what is funnier to me, the fact that they are watching Curling in the first place or that they are pretending to be truly interested in it. Its not exactly the sort of thing date material is made of. I'm guessing that "watching the Olympics" was the theme of said would be date in the first place. A good excuse to get someone to come over for sure. Further more, its not even live Curling they are watching, its the stuff off the DVR from earlier in the day. Its as if this was cleverly orchestrated. I see the plan now. My roommate decides to invite girly over to "watch the Olympics." Unfortunately, due to the morons in Vancouver, tonight's line up is not that interesting. Ice Dance, yawn!!! Skiing looks the same no matter how big or small the hill. And lets face it, Skeleton just looks silly, all be it dangerous. Thus the trap has been baited. Ask the Canadian all he knows about Curling this morning. Then DVR said Tundra Shuffleboard, invite girly over, and impress her with your expertise in the game of the sliding rock. She brought cookies; they ordered Tacos. It has all the makings of a great date. Problem, I'm home. So is the other roommate. I hear her say she has to go. I would to if someone invited me over to watch Curling. For most people its the winter equivalent of chess. I hear the front door close and a single set of footsteps walks back down the hall. The living room and hall lights turn off. Tonight there will be no medal ceremony for the athlete from New Jersey.

Dear Diary, I wonder if there are any of those cookies left?

Eat your Veggies

A favorite childhood game of ours was Restaurant. Interestingly enough, we never had a name for our Restaurant, it was just playing Restaurant. When we were very little the game was played indoors, using different books as the meals being served. The entire upstairs of our house was turned into the dinning room, and we were waiters bringing various patrons their dinner of choice. I don't really remember having a kitchen in our restaurant and no one seemed to be the cook. Perhaps my brother Daniel was banished to the kitchen, but I really don't remember. I guess waitstaff life looked very glamorous to us. Ignorance really is bliss. I remember when McDonald's handed out play food as part of the happy meal. We then played McDonald's serving up our plastic fries, burgers, and McNuggets. Apart from that we never really had play food. We had real food. As we got a little older, I was maybe 8 or 9, Restaurant took on a whole new life. One of our childhood chores was cutting green beans. My mother canned a lot of green beans. She canned pretty much any vegetable that could go in a can. And fruit too. But they went in jars, not cans. Why do you call it canning when stuff is in jars? I digress. Green bean harvest was a big endeavour. First there was the picking of said beans, a feat unto itself. But the fun part, really, was cutting the beans. Each of us would get a little station set up, sometimes in front of the TV with the piano bench as your table, then you got one of the brown cutting boards, or the one shaped like a cat if you were lucky. With a large tub of beans on one side and two empty ice cream pails on the other you started off to work. Oh yeah, and we each had a knife. Yep, my knife wielding skills were honed at an early age. So you cut the ends off the beans, they went into one bucket, then cut the beans into about 1 inch pieces, and they went into the other bucket. And this continued for maybe 2 days. Such childhood fun. The point of this meandering side track; we were very handy with the knife at an early age. So back to Restaurant. We had a playhouse outside by the barn, filled with all kinds of toy dishes and such. We would get a pail or two of water from the well, (yes the well) maybe fill another with dirt or sand. Then pull up a bunch of grass, get some twigs and leaves from the bushes by our house and the take the wheelbarrow down to the garden to collect whatever vegetables my mother wasn't going to use. They had either gotten too big and tough, or were somewhat rotten. I remember carting back huge turnips, zucchinis, cabbages, beets, pumpkins and whatever green beans were left after the plants had been uprooted. We took our stash back to the playhouse and began carving up said veggies as if they were roast turkeys or huge sides of beef. I can remember mixing them with dirt and twigs and then plating our masterpieces to be served to our customers eagerly awaiting the delicacies our young chef minds had created. Of course in reality they looked like mud pies at best, but with a healthy imagination even the strangest plate of vegetables can become a feast fit for a king.

Yesterday I was running around midtown doing some errands and got hungry. I decided that I would go to Quiznos for lunch. They have really good salads there, particularly this one with warm steak and some kind of strong cheese, blue perhaps. They also have great sandwiches, but with my new diet, breads are really a treat, not an everyday item. So I had my mind set on my nice steak salad and I'd get some tomato basil soup, perfect lunch for a winter afternoon, and fit nicely within my diet. Well, they have since sent said steak salad to salad heaven. (say that 5 times fast) In fact the only salads on their "new" (code for crappy) menu all featured chicken or chili. I decided on the Chicken Taco Salad, since I can't have Ceasar dressing, the Chili Taco Salad did not look too appealing to me, and I wasn't sure if the Asian Chicken Salad had toasted almonds, a fate worse than death to me. What I got was a small bowl filled with cold chicken (one of my favorite parts of the Quiznos salad WAS the hot meat) shredded yellow cheddar cheese, a smear of some green pasty glob (containing very little if any avocado) a generous teaspoon, if that, of salsa and the devil himself, iceberg lettuce! I interject here that another favorite part of my Quiznos salad experiences in the past have been that the salad portion was actually mixed greens, a little romaine lettuce along with other lettuces, occasionally the purpley looking one. Sometimes if lucky you could find a piece of arugula. It would appear that part of their "new" salad menu now includes the one vegetable that should be stripped of its vegetable privileges altogether. Iceberg lettuce has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. It contains no fiber, no vitamins, nothing. It is basically water in crunchy form. I might as well have been served a bowl of chicken, salsa, cheese, green smear, and water. Now in a fast food place I suppose I can somewhat understand that we must use said "lettuce" as its beyond cheap. I have however been to many a restaurant where the cheapest item on the menu was $10 and ordered a house salad only to be served a plate of iceberg "lettuce," a wedge of tomato, and a slice of cucumber. I'm sorry but in what house does that constitute a salad. Even on our farm in the middle of nowhere we new better than to put Iceberg lettuce in a salad. Its only place is in the taco! I have actually embarrassed friends of mine while out for dinner, asking the waiter what kind of lettuce the salad comes on. If they reply it's Iceberg I gasp in disgust and kindly inform said waiter that it's not a vegetable at all and then order something else. Seriously, I'm all about eating healthy, but America we are being fooled!!! Revolt I tell you. Flee from it. Nothing good can come from the Iceberg. Did the Titanic teach us nothing!!!

Dear Diary, I cut my thumb the other day while slicing carrots. Perhaps I need that cat shaped cutting board for luck!