Deity?

So it seems that the good Prince Philip is considered to be a god by the Yaohnanen tribe who live on one of the Vanuatu islands in the south pacific.

Now I don’t know about you but I grew up in the cold, damp industrial belt of Scotland, cussing at the English and keeping warm by laughing at his sheer idiocy

That said, this has all the makings of another great quote.

I sit and wait.

Haiku

I was having a coffee and watching people at one of those Lottery terminals yesterday and for no apparent reason I wrote a haiku poem there and then.

Line up for your luck
It waits for you on paper
for only two bucks

now that’s talent.

I choo choose…

…not to detail the horror that was the Hab’s 5-2 loss to the Devils last night.

…8th place in the conference, 2 pts ahead of the Islanders and the Laffs and 3 pts ahead the Rangers, but with all three teams having 2 games in hand.

And Kovalev is out for 3 weeks…

…god knows what’s up with Huet and his troublesome hamstring.

These be dark days.

Dark dark days.

Valentines…

Gentlemen – it may have taken 36 years but I think I’ve figured out the hidden secret to a successful Valentines surprise:

1. Ensure that it is snowing hideously
2. Run like a maniac to the train station (all romantic stories involve a train station)
3. Stand at the ticket machine for 3 minutes before realising it’s out of order
4. Pacify crazy woman who is screaming that the machine won’t give her a ticket
5. Purchase ticket to destination
6. Get bunted by every schoolkid in Montreal
7. Get out of train and make way to busy bus terminal
8. Take leap of faith by getting onto unknown bus.
9. Get off bus a stop too early and realise that you have to walk through -20 degree blowing snow for 0.5 kilometer, twice passing the very bus that had been carrying you. I think I grew a new forehead – I forgot my toque.
10. Fall into coffee shop, order coffee
11. Text wife to tell her to be at said coffee shop in 15 minutes
12. Surprise wife by being there to drive her home in shitty snow and ice and to maintain sanity while other drivers drive like it’s a sunny day in Miami.
13. Agree that the only possible food to eat on this day is General Toa chicken from The Wok Cafe and Hunan Dumlings from “Soup and Noodles”. Already pre-arranged, but check to be absolutely sure that you are still absolutely compatible in the food choosing department. It’s cold and a long way home by public transport otherwise.

Nothing, repeat NOTHING, beats the ol’ ’surprise’.

Weekend Drivel…

Ottawa 5 – Habs 3

Didn’t see the game. Saw the Highlights. Ray Emery should serve time for stealing the game and for GBH of Maxim Lapierre. All the other teams that shouldn’t have won got points.

I didn’t see the game because I was laying hardwood floors at sister in law’s house.

I know what you’re thinking: “But hey, P, the game started at 7, and you still weren’t done?”

No – we started at 10:30 am and finally wrapped up 11 hours later. On a room 11ft by 14 feet.

11 hours of standing up, kneeling, squatting, nailing, hammering, sawing, swearing, slipping and man-talking. (Wash rinse and repeat. Many, many times)  

Making progress 2 inches at a time.

I’m not complaining – I love doing that stuff – give me a hammer, a saw and some nails and I’ll go quite happily to make a chest of drawers or a door frame or a fine armoir… yesterdays experience reminded me how HORRIBLY out of shape I am.

For today I feel old. I mean “old man of the hills” old. Even my ass cheeks feel arthritic.

 Me ‘n’ her went looking for paint samples for the nursery today and I swear that people were wondering why she brought her great granddad. I needed a winch to get out of the car.

Shame on me.

The Grammy’s started.

Jamie Foxx, Justin Timberlake and MJ Blige got more TV time than The Police who rattled out a low key, uninspired version of “Roxanne”, before running offstage to party tantrically.

Welcome back, sons of entitlement. You blew our minds.

Zzzzzz.

Tomorrow is jobhuntingbootcamp day 1.

I was told by stern schoolmistress, Charlene, that I have to wear something appropriate for jobhunting…

Survivor 14 – Fiji

 

 Holy What?

13 Survivor’s already? That’s $13,000,000 plus the additional $1,000,000 they gave to Rupert for being a good guy!

 Anyhoo, Survivor Fiji kicked off last night causing massive conflicts with The Game (see below), Grey’s Anatomy (meh) and C.S.I., but that’s what video recorders are for.

(PVR? WHAT? HUH?)

Jeff Probst was his usual Peter Pan self, leading the children to Neverland – although he did inform us that one person actually quit before filming due to ‘fear of the unknown’.

Hello? McFly?

I kind of liked the fact that the group got an opportunity to meet each other and feel each other out before being seperated into their respective tribes – I think that there were a few relationships formed – good and bad and chuckled when Boston Rocky and Flyboy Dreamz set to during the night.

Although it’s WAAAYYY to soon to be making any predictions it’s not too soon to be making observations.

Are Boston Rocky and Erica THAT stupid, after conceiving of their master plan…

“What a tangled web we weave”

…that they would go and vote for different people? I see a short future for both. Rocky gone in first 6. Erica before.

Yau-man = “silent assassin”.

Boo… um… just because the only two ‘Boo’s that I know are of the Radley variety and the animated Monsters Inc variety – both of which had a hell of a time if you recall. The omens aren’t good. And he lists his favourite small as ‘food’. Mook!

Pappa Smurf may well have enough love already to get him far.

Earl is a black Yul. His cogs are turning.

I did laugh out loud when, after being passively self-congratulatory, architect and ‘leader of the people’, Sylvia was sent, for her efforts to Exile Island, infested with thousand of black and white sea snakes, only to find that one of the two hidden immunity idols was, in fact, nowhere near her. That should wipe the smug smile off her face.

There is much to go on this show, villains to be named, genii to be recognised and I do like the camp situation – winners stay at the built one, losers to the tent city (…oh… wait… Apprentice?), but it may quell the “ditch the game to lose one of our own” tactics that has been creeping in in previous seasons. I have those I am already enjoying watching.. alas Jessica won’t be one of them… which as a red blooded man strikes me as a damn shame.

Caption for the above photo?

Habs 1 – Senators 4

It’s tough being a Habs fan. You never quite know which team you’re going to get on any given night:

Will it be the well organized penalty killing/powerplay machine with the aggressive forecheck and the artistes skating rings around their opponents?

 Or will it be last night’s team? The team that seems to have morphed out of option A since Christmas.

 I thought the Hab’s best player was Kovalev last night for once, but even he couldn’t find his scoring touch – or one of his linemates just got in the way.

But the Sens were really in a league above for the entire game. They skated hard, moved well and created chances. And just when the Habs seemed to be in the ascendancy, Emery made a save from a Mark Streit rocket that would have seen the score go 2-3. So what was at one time a solid and convincing 4th place in the Eastern Conference is now a very precarious 6th place and only 4 points from 9th place. Recent form suggests that that 4 points will chase us horribly quickly.

 Goal of the Game: Jason Spezza intercepts a pass from Saku in the Sens defensive zone and skates the length of the ice through 2 Habs to score.

Save of the Game: Ray Emery make’s a lighting fast glove save on a Mark Streit rocket late in the 2nd, killing all Hab’s momentum.

Gaffe of the Game: Huet let’s in a softy early in the 1st… it barely trickles over the line.

Player of the Game: Alfredsson. He’s just a classy player – involved in anything. I’d trade Ryder and Higgins for him.

Bright spot of the game: A bloodied Guillaume Latendresse scores a penalty shot with cotton sticking out of his nose.

The best part of all of this (MUCH SARCASM!) is that we get to do it all again at the Bell Centre on Saturday…

 Latest Trade Rumour: Sergei Samsonov and Craig Rivet (MTL) for Brian Smolinski and Adrian Aucoin (CHI)

Go Habs Go. Keep your stick on the ice.

Same old new…

I lost my job a while back – I was given my marching orders the day I got back from my honeymoon in Mexico after what I considered to be a massive misunderstanding…

 I was never given the opportunity to rectify or even disprove this misunderstanding and so I found myself in the situation I do at a time when I least expected it.

Needless to say I was pretty angry; angry at my previous company’s timing, angry at their complete lack of respect, angry at their lack of emotional intelligence and angry at their blatant disregard. In hindsight I’m not sorry that I’m not there any more and I should have at least challenged them, but at the time I was so shocked and up in the air that I wanted to retain some dignity and positivity.

I’m just not a very vindictive person.

Note to self – be more vindictive

I was also laid off 3 1/2 years ago and figured that I had learned a whole wealth of stuff about how to handle the ‘unemployed times’ ahead. And I think I have spent the last 4 months in a pretty positive frame of mind. I remember getting pretty disjointed and affected on that first stint, and I recall being pretty agitated a lot of the time, which was not a great state to be in when jobhunting.

So I’ve done very well in balancing job hunting with recreation – adding the some yang to the yin. As a result I’ve been in good shape.

That said. I do have a small “freeze” every time I apply for a new position or speak to someone informally about a potential opportunity. I want to put a positive spin on what happened. But I don’t know how.

Take it or leave it but Donald Trump always says that you should never speak badly of a previous employer regardless of any incident that has happened and I believe him – it stinks of disloyalty and whether I (the poor layman) want it or not, the company will continue without me, thus their say in any matter realting to me probably has more weight than mine…

I need to find a way to get over this, or to find a way to articulate myself better when describing what happened… to be honest I’m still a little stunned… by ‘ego’ or self confidence or whatever has taken a little bit of a bashing in the process – which is not something I struggle too much with normally. I have pretty thick skin.

I did enroll in a course run by the local Emploi Québec offices, where they teach you how to market yourself and cold call your way into the hidden job market – they claim to have an 80% success rate within four months. It involves a number of roleplays and some videotaping?? Regardless – It’s a good thing – it lets me practice those scenarios that I worry about with some honest and constructive feedback.

It’s a three week intensive course followed by …um… monthly followup thereafter.

…in the meantime – if anyone out there needs a dynamic service manager, with exceptional training, coaching, project and operations management skills….

Is it just me…

…or have The Sharks gotten smarter at harvesting people.

Food for thought.