Head Tale - Yet Another Library Student's Blog About Me
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July 2006
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View Article  A Weekend of Athletics (Other People) and Socializing (Me)
This weekend was probably my busiest social weekend since getting to London...

Friday night, we went to Christina's party as I believe I already mentioned.  The athletics of other people alluded to in the title of this post were the group of crazy buggers who played bocce ball in the dark...

 
...while I held the flashlight (and was not doing a very good job of it from the aim in this photo!) 

Saturday, we went for Korean BBQ and sushi with David and Sabina (which was awesome except for the part where Sabina got worried because she thought I was going to stick my face into the tabletop barbeque and start licking the grill since I was enjoying the food so much.)  Then on to the Wilco show at Centennial Hall which was great plus we even caught a bit of the final band at SunFest afterwards.  Uhm, the athletics of other people this night has to go to the guys who were dancing in front of us off and on throughout the concert leading to a funny exchange between David and I about whether any of them would pause briefly in mid-air, like Wil E. Coyote, if we pushed they fell off the balcony. 

Then Sunday, two guesses what the athletics of other people were.  Yep, World Cup finals babee!  A group of library students went to watch the Final at a nearby pub and, as you can imagine, being library students, we nearly started a riot with the Italy fans at the next table.  But after the Zidane headbutt, the Italy fans were afraid to start anything in case we used similar tactics on them. 

Here's a photo of the group of hooligans...look at them, coiled, ready to lash out at the slightly provocation!  I said "SHHHHHH! dammit - the game's on!"



And just for the heck of it, here's a shot of the sunset from Christina's balcony on Friday night. 



Oh, Classmate of the Day goes to ME!!  Why not?  I'm working on my Individual Study project and that thing has ballooned up to 60 plus pages (it was supposed to come in around 30-40.)  How crazy is that?  I deserve some credit for how much blasted work I've put into this thing.  It's an honest-to-God monster. 

View Article  One Red Paper Clip = A House in Saskatchewan
A 26 year old guy from Montreal has managed to "trade up" from a single red paper clip to his end goal of a house which, in the final trade, ended up being in Kipling, Saskatchewan.  He takes possession on July 12 and is planning "Saskatchewan's Biggest Housewarming Party" for the September long weekend with an open invitation for anyone who wants to show up. 

For anybody who's reading this back in Saskatchewan (or anywhere - anyone from FIMS up for a 26-hour drive to attend?), I encourage you to take advantage of this offer and plan a good old-fashioned road tour to Kipling for that weekend.  (Of course, the town only has 1100 people and one 25-room hotel so you might want to pack a tent or make plans to stay with friends in a nearby community.)

Kipling is about 100 km from my hometown (80 km from Shea's hometown) and in fact, when I had a summer job selling cable TV subscriptions during college, Kipling was one of the towns I worked in.  It's actually a great little community and the highlight of my week there happened one evening  right before I finished for the night.  I went to a house where an elderly lady was working in her yard.  I gave her my sales pitch and she put me off but we ended up talking some more for some reason and it turned out that she'd worked for Tommy Douglas during the formative days of the CCF. 

(I went back and found exactly what I'd written in my journal at the time:

Nothing significant [in Kipling today] except I met one 92 year old lady, right at my last house of the night.  She ended up talking at me for about half an hour as mosquitoes chowed on my plasma.  Talked about how her husband loved her 'absolutely and completely' and advised me to do that with my wife someday if I wanted her to love me like that in return.  She told of her husband building her the house we were standing in front of and dedicating this "castle to his queen".  I'll admit that how she said it actually made me tear up a bit.  She told a few other stories about her family and also how she's sewn dresses for people "north, south, east and west" and made a fair living at it.  She talked about how her family (along with many other fine English families) had built Kipling into a beautiful community and how she had been involved with Tommy Douglas and the formation of the CCF!  I promised I'd go back and see her and part of me would like to sit and have a cup of tea with her.  I don't know if I will have time though.

I never did go back.  If that lady was 92 back in July 1994, I assume she's not alive anymore.  But it's pretty crazy to think back to that brief connection.  How one random encounter over ten years ago has stayed with me to this day.  And how things always seem to come full circle in ways you'd never expect. 
My web site dedicated to four great Canadian singer-songwriters (but currently only featuring guitar tab for two of them - Fred Eaglesmith and Hawksley Workman.)

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