Bo Knows Best

This feature piece at ESPN.com is a great look at the man; Bo Jackson.

"...and those who remember a healthy Bo will remember the equivalent of his Nintendo Tecmo Super Bowl replicant, the most potent video-game running back in history, utterly unstoppable to the point of being ridiculous."

This article is an enjoyable character read. Whether you were (are) a fan or not.

Has it been 20 years already?

/not since my last bo jackson thread. Heh. Bo Knows Tecmo!

Midnight Madness

Downtown Medicine Hat has had a rough summer, over all. Fire after fire. Like the phoenix tho... just watch!

This Thursday night is Midnight Madness, an evening of excitement, and Christmas shopping fervor that fires up the season for me, like black Sunday does for those americans down south. It's a time to celebrate the business' we have in our city centre.

Midnight Madness is a time to shop. i'll be downtown this Thursday night, November 29th, 2007. i'll be bobbing in and out of storefronts, getting my Christmas list checked off, saying hi and enjoying the atmosphere. Downtown does that. It can invigorate you... All you want for Christmas is Downtown!

/that last sentence was (is?) the CCDA slogan (or a butchered facsimile), since before it was the CCDA. Back before it was the DBA it was called the DBRZ (or was it the other way around?) Anyways, back then i had the good fortune of serving that board in promoting and strengthening the City Centre, our Medicine Hat downtown.

See you downtown Thursday!

//i wonder if i can grab a hot apple cider in the Gaslight Plaza? or pick up some popcorn along the 600 block of 3rd street like years past? At least the snow is out, and the chill is in the air. That always helps the night along!

You MUST check this webpage out, MidnightMadness2007 lists tons of specials and events. The local firemen are raising funds for the burn unit during the festivities!

Ahh, i almost forgot to mention the ice sculptures... look for them.

95th Grey Cup

I know some people who went to Toronto today. Not the players, but the fans. Rider fans all of them. I fear for the watermelon market here in Canada!

i'll eat some crow at work tomorrow. i publicly stated Blue & Gold would win todays game. The Gunslinger (Dinwiddie) started his first ever CFL game in the Coup de Grey. That could have gone either way; he's either a monster quarterback, or human and fallable. Not to put the whole game on Din's back, but he was the latter with brief flashes of the former. I was holding out hope that they might win, and with 2 minutes left in the game, they were poised to do just that. It was not that year for Stegall. One more year Milt, one more year for your Hall of Fame career... get that ring. The Bomber defense was amazing, and with Glenn back as QB, or another year of experience for Dinwiddie, the Bombers can compete for the 96th, in Montreal next November.

I talked about story lines a lot, and especially why, as a Lions fan i was rooting for the Bombers. How about Kerry Joseph's story. Not just his testimony as an active member of AIA, but his playing flag football down in the states a couple of years ago. Well done KJ, your running game is what broke the bomber defense down time and time again.

African Reminders

Prime Minister Harper is in Uganda these days, discussing climate change controls with the commonwealth countries.

Swiped from that globe & mail article (linked above) was this pic here;



poignant. It reminds me of the time i've been blessed to spend on the African continent. The people we've grown close to and the work we've been honoured to do.

Coop is preparing for a potential return trip in April 2008. This trip would, like our most recent trip, be another with CFL athletes.

Alberta Funds Housing

This was a good week. in fact, this was a great week for Housing in Alberta.

"More than $60 million will be invested in affordable housing projects in 15 Alberta municipalities. " - Municipal Affairs & Housing - Alberta

Medicine Hat is home to one of those 15 projects awarded gravely needed funds to increase the available affordable housing stock in our City. The Medicine Hat Community Housing Society will be developing a brand new site in Southlands. Watch for Classic Communities to be a strong partner in this project moving forward.

Beyond that $60 million tho, and what happens next. Who steps up from the for-profit sector and provides attainable housing?

2 articles this week in the Rocky Mountain Outlook were focused on a new builder in the Canmore Alberta market: Classic Communities.

The Medicine Hat News recently parroted the closing comment for one article. Thank you for that, it IS worth repeating:

"Those communities are bound to greet CCL with the same hospitality Canmore exhibited. The RMO article ended with a clear message to the Medicine Hat builder.
“Welcome to Canmore, CCL.”

It has been a great week for Alberta, and this next years pace for CCL is going to be brisk. Good times.

era: Grounded

I really shouldn't ever wonder what it is i'm doing. But when i do, this grounds me. This right here.

Chris Cornell

Chris Cornell: 'Sunshower'

You may remember him from Soundgarden.


Chris Cornell: 'Spoonman'

/That was a youthful flashback. It sounds somewhat, less heavy now, maybe i'm not as angst filled as i might have been during my teens. Yeah, or maybe Chris has relaxed some too.

Dangermouse Had the Flu

I've noticed, you might have as well, that the frequency of posts on medhatblog has dropped some since the Civic Election.
I read now that Dangermouse had the flu, and it sounds like a flu epic proportions.

I'm glad i don't have a flu, tho i suppose my reason for not posting at the same time as Danger is less impressive now. Thanks for that.

Battle Friction

I am re reading one of my favorite marketing tombs. In it (and near the front too, which is nice) the author (William A. Cohen) says this:

(regarding flexibility) "An old maxim says that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Von Clausewitz called the difference between what was planned and what was actually encountered in combat *battle friction*. Every corporate strategist must be prepared for battle friction. This is accomplished by building flexibility into the plan in such a way that risk and uncertainty are allowed for to the maximum extent possible. Thus a change of direction, once engaged in the marketplace, is not only possible but fairly easy to accomplish."

/As an aside,my computer, i am told, is horribly out of date. Don't get me wrong, the computer still works, i can blog from it, i play some games on it, Renee uses it for her latest facebook escapades, so it works, and it has a fantastic custom case (totally rad, or something). I digress, CoD4 is coming out this month, and i fear that my computer might experience extreme battle friction if i were to try and play said game on this old jalopy of a rig. Sad really.



//Did you watch that trailer? I'm buying a new rig.

Road to the Grey Cup 2007

Today is a prime example of why the games are played. Only one team wins, triumphs over the other, or in the case of the East & West finals of the CFL; One team from each game advances to the Grey Cup next week in T-dot.
I was going to go... K.D. was arranging tickets. I canceled the trip a few weeks back. My schedule got big, fast... and i didn't want to spend an extended weekend away.
I called Lions versus Bombers in the Cup. I Called that before the final week of the regular season. I called it because, pro sports are all about story lines, and the story lines for those two teams were stories i could support. Stories i could get excited about, and jump around in front of a tv about (or jump around a stadium, if i were in person at the game.)
Today started with the Bombers handily dispatching the Argo's. Handily. Stegall & The Minister of Defense move on to the big game. Stegall for the very first time. That is a winning story-line. I had the good fortune to be introduced to both these gentlemen during the festivities of Grey Cup 2005. The fact that Glenn broke his arm today hurts. It hurts him of course, but it also hurts the Bombers. It didn't hurt this game, but it will affect their chances of a Grey Cup victory. Mind you, Dinwiddie (sp?) did fine as the back-up QB (I wonder if he was teased as a young man?)
The Lions started todays game against The Roughies almost as ineptly as the Stamps a week before. It did not look good. It did not turn out good either. Lots of locals are excited now, planning on wearing bright green into Toronto next weekend. On second thought, i'm really gonna miss that game, i think.

Ahh, i do love the CFL.

Sirens' Song

It has begun, again.
i remember receiving numerous invitations by mail over the last year. They were frequent, and then finally they stopped. Everyone i knew who would join had, and they couldn't coax me into the club. Or so i thought.

Not even Microsoft buying a piece of the cultish action could sway me.

I haven't joined, but i have received another invitation, and this one strikes a little close to home. The Sirens' Song; Renee has joined facebook, Renee is enjoying facebook, and Renee would like me to join facebook too. Ugh.

I'll cave, i so often do (but i will hold out as long as possible... this is where it often gets interesting). I remember avoiding the movie Titanic like the plague that it was. I made a public point of *not* watching the movie while everyone else watched it over and over again (i really can be quite childish i suppose). Girls have an innate ability to make you do stuff. The Sirens' Song.

Bloggus Interuptus

You might think that i'd forgotten about the blog (not true) or that maybe i've tired of blogging over the last 3 or 4 years (absolutely not true) but i'd rather you thought that i have been avoiding the blog in a cunning attempt to convince the blog spammers that my pages (including this one) are no longer nearly as worthy of spam as they were two weeks ago (also not true, but it sounds good).

This bloggus Interuptus (lack of blogging over a prolonged period of time, this has happened before) was partly due to an exceptionally busy work schedule (evenings and out of towns a plenty), home schedule and good old fashioned yard work, which ensures i'm asleep sooner than i'd generally like on the weekends.

I didn't forget. I've been thinking about blog posts a lot, and i'm at the point now where if i don't start posting again stat, i fear i'll burst at the seams.

Just last week i watched Calgary fall to Saskatchewan... that was a bitter pill, but i am looking forward to watching Sask fall to British Columbia this weekend. Then all will be right in the West.

Vanilla Flavoured Spam

I just manually deleted 18 comments on my blog. Spam comments, most often promoting websites that i wouldn't frequent or recommend. It's comment spam, plain & simple, and in this day and age it's rampant.
I have over 80 comments left to delete. All on one post of mine, a post from November 24, 2004. That's Two Thousand and Four. That is a few years ago. Why comment spammers have decided my post about Vanilla Sky is worthy of a spam bomb i don't know... but while i manually delete these comments, i need to keep my sanity (no easy task) and so, i'm calling it Vanilla Spam... er... anyways, thanks for reading.

Drop-In Basketball is Still ON

Drop in Basketball has been going, and going strong in spite of my lack of attention. Tonight was my first night out this fall... and it was a good run. I sure have a lot of rust to shake off.

Monday nights... feel free to drop in!

Brand Patriarch

Brand Rosendal was born in 1921 in Barneveld, Netherlands; the third of 11 children. He has told riveting stories of how he matured to manhood amid Hollands Occupancy during WW2. Brand married in 1946, and emigrated to Western Canada in 1950. With eight children of his own, Brands family has grown almost exponentially. It has been my particular honour to have married into Brands' family.

Brand, for as long as i have known him, has been warm & welcoming, stern, trustworthy & supportive. He has served the role of Patriarch impeccably well i would suspect.
Today, just days after he has passed on to be with the Lord, i was proud to partake in the celebration of his remarkable life while family members mourned their loss.

Era-bear visited Brand early this year, with pictures for posterity.

Brand was a remarkable man, one worthy of his namesake to be sure.