Recurring feature alert! I've done this before where I do five quick hits on my five most common topics on this blog and why not, let's do it again.
Here's a few quick hits on my most popular topics...
Hockey Uhm, it's July 28. This does not bode well for this aspect of the Pop Topics recurring feature. Luckily the Reddit hockey sub-reddit has lots of posts to keep a fan interested. Here's one on "The Ten Ugliest Hockey Players of All-Time" and I'm proud to say I picked #1 before clicking the link!
Libraryland "Libraries get a mall make-over" highlights a trend for locating public libraries in malls and I've gotta say, RPL has been on this trend for fifteen years when we first put a library in a local mall. (Er, that date may not be exactly right. I wasn't around then...) Plus we're doing the co-locating thing all over the place - we've got one branch from the same era in a city facility that also has an indoor pool, we've just broken ground on a re-located branch that will become part of an inner-city community centre and another will be part of a shared facility that has a wide range of community organizations in it including public health, police, schools and more.
Pace Cuteness Let's see...this wasn't Pace directly but we thought it was funny when he came home with some art from daycare labeled "Paste" by a casual worker they had in that day. We knew "Pace" was a fairly unique name but never expected it to be mis-heard like that! This probably doesn't count as "cute" either but when we were heading out of town last weekend, Pace immediately recognized McDonald's, thought Superstore was Wal-Mart and today, saw a Domino's logo on top of a car and happily exclaimed, "Pizza delivery car." His brand awareness probably provides way too much insight into the crap we do as consumers!
Politics I love this take-down of the Tea Baggers. They don't get mad at some of the most outrageous acts in the history of their nation but try to offer people the ability to go to a doctor when they need to and look out!
The best part is that the Toronto Maple Laffs now have the longest Stanley Cup drought in the NHL. And the way that team's going, the Kitchener-Waterloo Blackberries have a better chance of winning a cup before the Laffs do!
Each year at the start of the NHL playoffs, I usually do my predictions for the first round. (I miss the old playoff system when you could see the entire playoff brackets all the way through instead of the new system where seeding can impact who plays who each round.)
So yeah, even knowing the winners, I'm going to try not to be biased here and put who I wanted to win (as always, I choose who I *want* to win, not who I think will win which is another thing that makes my predictions somewhat unique!)
Washington vs. Montreal (Montreal) Pittsburgh vs. Ottawa (Pittsburgh) Buffalo vs. Boston (Boston) Philadelphia vs. New Jersey (Philly)
San Jose vs. Colorado (San Jose) Phoenix vs. Detroit (Detroit) Vancouver vs. Los Angeles (Vancouver) Chicago vs. Nashville (Chicago)
What's that? 50%. Which I think is about how I usually score. Oh well. Go Montreal - although no Canadian team has won since 1993, it's pretty cool that in the last six years, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa have all made it to the Finals. If Montreal does, that's even more cool that Vancouver and Toronto would be the only Canadian teams who haven't! And if there's a Canadian team that has to win it, I'd prefer it to be one with a stylized "C" on their jersey - Montreal, if not Calgary.
(And how pathetic were the Flames tonight to allow Henrik Sedin to get four points and a strangle hold on the NHL scoring lead? C'mon Ovechkin - you can do better than a career 65 pointer who made the majority of his points this year with second assists - even if you've played 11 games less due to injuries and suspensions.)
Hockey I really hate the Canucks and think it would be a travesty if one of the Sedin sisters won the Hart Trophy. I mean, a guy with a career average of 65 points a season gets a bunch of assists and is now one of the best players in the game? Right. Love him or hate him, Ovechkin is great for the game - dominant and entertaining - and it's best for the game if he wins the Art Ross, the Hart and the Rocket Richard trophy. Oh, and one other trophy too because when the Flames are finally put out of their misery and out of the playoffs, I think I might throw in behind the Caps as my pick for the Cup.
Libraryland
Frankly, I'm worried about libraries -- not because I think e-books
will replace their dead tree counterparts specifically, but rather
because the library as an institution is an anathema to today's notions
of intellectual property. It's a loophole left over from a more
permissive and libertarian era.
An interesting comment about libraries in a Reddit thread about a 1995 article by anti-Internet commentator, Clifford Stoll (which is also worth a read) about how the Internet isn't and never will be the nirvana that others were predicting. (Yeah right. Although to be fair, I've read both of his books and his first, "Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage" is really good, especially if you came of age in the era of BBS's and Telnet in the pre-Internet days like I did. "Silicone Snake Oil", on the other hand, is pretty crappy and may even have been inspired by his Newsweek article for all I know.)
Pace Cuteness Shea and I bought a laser pointer so we could expend the absolute minimum amount of energy while entertaining the cat. What I didn't realise is that Pace would end up getting down on all fours and chasing it around too!
Politics Jaime Garcia's Facebook fan page has all the latest on his most recent activities including shots of his steak fundraiser, Jaime at the NDP convention and the billboard ads he has out in the constituency. Check it out and consider becoming a fan!
I mentioned yesterday that after taking Pace to his first Pat's game,
it seemed like he may have gotten bitten by the hockey bug. Today has
already confirmed it. From demanding his "hockey shirt" (jersey) the
moment he woke up to playing ball hockey in the living room non-stop
throughout the day, I think we've got a fan/player in the making!
Some highlights: - after he takes a shot, he thinks he needs to run and tackle me (maybe confusing hockey and football a bit?) - he also likes to do a full 360 after shooting (maybe confusing hockey and figure skating a bit? ) - he says he
prefers to score goals to stopping them but it's still fun to get him
to try to fall down in front the nerf fall we're using (usually about
five seconds after the ball has slowly rolled past him) - Shea was
playing net at one point and goes "Why do I feel like this is the first
of many, many times I'll be doing this." (Because it is.) - he's got a pretty good shot for a little guy. Lucky we're using a nerf ball as he even managed to raise it a couple times! - when I try to
sneak onto the couch and get on the computer, he commands "On the ice,
daddy!" and points to the carpeted floor with his stick (maybe he'll be
a coach instead of a player?) - Shea's not happy about this but somewhere in there, I also taught him how to throw a punch.
I was offered tickets to tonight's Pats game so ended up taking Shea, Pace as well as my parents to what was Pace's first live hockey game. It was a pretty good one - early Pats lead with a couple goals by Jordan Eberle followed by a Broncos comeback then scoreless OT and a shootout loss.
I was explaining different things about the game to Pace, trying to use terminology and references he would understand. Bodychecks were "crashes", the Broncos were "the bad guys" (although since their logo is a horse, Pace initially wanted to cheer for them!) and the penalty box was "time out". (To use the same joke when I uploaded the following photo to Facebook from the game - "time out being a reference that I think Pace understood only too well!")
Fun times - I think we may look back on this as the day that Pace officially got bitten by the hockey bug. When we got home, he grabbed a couple mini-sticks I had and ran around the living room swatting a ball and diving all over the place. Lord (Stanley) help us!
Not only are we seeing "Best of" lists for the year but also for the decade as 2009 comes to a close. Of course, the one I came across that I've chosen to highlight is "Best Hockey Fights of the Decade." Never let it be said that this blog isn't educational AND entertaining!
) Plus we're doing the co-locating thing all over the place - we've got one branch from the same era in a city facility that also has an indoor pool, we've just broken ground on a re-located branch that will become part of an inner-city community centre and another will be part of a shared facility that has a wide range of community organizations in it including public health, police, schools and more. 
