Talk about Renovations!

What do you think? Not bad huh? A little bit of paint and trim and you can make even an old blog look like new!

Okay, okay. You got me, it's not a renovation. I haven't been up nights, working till the wee hours trying to get the last bit of mudding done, or the final piece of moulding over there in the corner to fit just right. No, I haven't been painting and finishing stuff. Nothing like that really.

In fact, I didn't even think of remodelling.

I just moved.

That's right. Moved.

You see, I'm not really here. I'm actually over there but you just can't tell the difference yet. Confused? Sorry. It's about to become clear (I hope!)

You see when I started writing this I didn't know where it was going to take me, or where we'd end up. I wanted to document the changes we were proposing for the house, and I have, but I've also discovered that I need a voice to let those other randomreidings out, and at times they can overshadow the renovation stuff. They are very important to me, but so is the house project, and so I've decided to carve off the renovation chronicles and give them their own space - someplace where it will be easier to follow the progress and see what's what.


Chicobuilds

That's what I've called it.

I've copied over the posts from randomreidings that are about the house or mostly about the house, and that's where the new information and pictures and bitching about the project will take place.

Back here, I'll free up some room to explore other things, like why some people think it's okay to throw cigarette butts out their car window. Or why KFC thinks 2 chicken filets, 2 slices of bacon and 2 slices of cheese is actually a meal? and why you couldn't have made up a better name for Weinergate if you tried! Who knows? I may even get back to more snarky commentary if the spirit moves me.

I hope its the spirit and not all that pineapple...

Let me know what you think, what you've liked about the past, and what you'd like to see in the future. Challenge me, make me think, and let's see what kind of trouble we can get into together.

C'mon, let's go stir it up.

A Bunch of Little Things

It's been a mixed bag of late-Spring weather this past week or so - days that seemed much like summer gave way to rolling thunderstorms that lit up the evening sky with purples and greens and left behind streets littered with branches and then we got days of steady dreary rains - the kind we certainly do not need as swollen rivers are still an issue and bloated beaches have claimed the cottages and houses that line their shores.  But it all serves the greater purpose I suppose, as the lilacs out front can attest, as they shot up at least two feet with the mixed blessing that is our weather.

We spent last weekend in the brutal summer heat washing and sanding and staining the deck, and it looks better than new - well, maybe not quite that good, but it's certainly better than what it was before the back breaking work.  It's now a cafe au lait type of colour, and not the aging silver-grey that those green pressure-treated deck boards turn when you leave them to their own devices.  I made up a pair of crumbles with the rhubarb I picked - one with blueberries, the other with strawberries, and I'm not sure which was better - if I had to choose I think I'd go with the blueberries though it's not fair to force one into such dilemmas.  I'm not sure you can find a more refreshing dessert after a days work than a rhubarb crumble with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting through its golden crusted toppings.  But if you'd like to share a recipe, I'm sure I'd be up for the challenge!

Of course the boy was no where to be seen during the deck renewal process - and I can't really blame him - it's not exactly kid-friendly work, nor is the job of sufficient size to warrant an extra set of complaining hands.  Though to his credit he did help me dispose of half the pile of branches as I fed them into the hopper of the yard shredder.  Honestly that machine scares the hell out of me - maybe I'm a bit more cautious after having had the table saw and my middle finger become so well acquainted - but still, no God-fearing person in their right mind would knowingly feed branches into a hopper that suddenly latches onto the woody stem and swiftly swirls it around and around while the hidden spinning knives inside its belly mince the shards into bite size wood bits and deposits them at its feet.

That's just wrong.  Or incredibly cool if you're twelve. I think he was disappointed I wouldn't let him feed the beast. Or over heated. Or both.  He asked if he could get a glass of water.  That was the last I saw of him all afternoon...

I called the City on Thursday, wondering if our building permit was stuck in the bureaucratic vortex of the Planning Department downtown, like so many of my commercial ones, and Joanne answered and asked me if I had a sixth sense, because it had just arrived on her desk from upstairs! I told her I had a feeling it was ready - and she filled me in on the outstanding balance and I said I'd be down before 4:30 to pick it up.  She called back a few minutes later to say that she couldn't locate the plans that were to accompany the permit - but if I wanted I could still get the permit and pay for it.  I thanked her for the heads-up and said I'd be down late Thursday or first thing Friday.  It's nice to have the level of personal service I get when I deal with the folks in the Planning Department - I know many of them by name, and some, like Joanne who it turns out is the next door neighbour to a family relation, have become like family themselves, and we share stories when we meet and catch up while I wait for my appointments with the permit techs.  On our way down to get the permit she called once more to say she had found the missing plans, and when I picked everything up from her, I thanked her for her help, and she laughed as she shared the spectacle of a great deal of the office staff buzzing around looking for "Reid's Plans"  I'm not sure many people have had that kind of personal attention from this staff - but I'm very grateful for it.

So it's all systems go for the renovation now - time to book the trades and verify the window and door orders; revisit the plans and make sure the elevations and layouts are going to work as I designed them so many months ago.  This past Saturday was spent in the yard with a string line, measuring tape, marking paint, flagging tape, a bundle of lath for stakes and my copy of the plans - already folded and worn and marked up the way a set of blueprints should be. So far so good. I'll post soon with the beginning pics.

Sunday was Father's Day, and around here that also means its Manitoba Marathon Day - so it was an early rise and shine for 2 of us - Karen and I registered in the 10K this year - due to her less than hoped for performance at last year's half marathon where she hit the wall at mile 7; and my first ever instance of plantar fasciitis a few months ago - we decided that while we maybe couldn't run, we certainly could walk, and so we joined 14000 other runners and walkers and helped make the day another amazing success!  Kudos to the amazing army of volunteers who make the event such a fun and fantastic way to spend Father's Day. In keeping with our family tradition - we returned home and woke the boy and went out for breakfast and enjoyed the pleasure of his company.

Tonight after dinner we watched some old trip video of our first visit to Orlando back in 2001. I can't believe the mini-man was ever that small, or that cute!    It was so much fun revisiting those days: our first ever visit to the Magic Kingdom with him in his stroller, having to carry him and hold him during the afternoon parade; the way his face lit up at all the magic and make believe around him (and yeah, us too!) and it was so tremendously satisfying to see the deep bonds he shared with us back then - the ones we take for granted these days in the midst of teenagerdom and a never-ending growth spurt, but which we know will always reside there, in part because of the times we've shared together and the decisions we've consciously made to strengthen those bonds important to us all.  He watched the 2 1/2 year old him with a mix of pride and embarrassment (we've all been there before) and allowed his mother to miss that part of him that she's lost forever but which she keeps alive in her heart, and when she needed a hug he was there to give it to her.

You sometimes wonder during weeks like these, where so many things are happening at once, whether anything you're doing is really making a difference.  Is spending a Saturday staining the deck or weeding the flowers or shredding trees really what we should be doing, or could we be doing something more worthy with our time? Is this renovation going to take us to where we need to be, or are we just chasing our tails trying to capture something eluding us?  Before tonight I don't know that I could have told you, but after I sat out by the fire and listened to the quiet evening and watched the family of blue jays playing together through the treetops, I thought about that little boy in the video, holding hands with his mommy as they played in the resort pool with the "Big Water" fountains shooting up to shrieks of pure delight, as they turn and wave to "Daddy" and the video camera, his entire face lit up in one gigantic genuine smile,   everything is exactly how it's supposed to be, and I wouldn't change one little thing.

Have a great week!

Summer Evenings

It's a Thursday evening in the beginning of June, and even though it isn't summer, you can feel it out there in the long shadows as you go out after 10 and feel the heat radiating back up at you from the pavement, the sky dark, the sun hidden behind the western horizon, and a slice of white moon hides in the leaves of the giant maple out behind the back yard fence.

I went back out to the car to get the rhubarb I'd cut from Paul's plants earlier this evening, when we stopped to borrow the pressure washer and the wood chipper - tools for a productive June weekend if ever there were any.  He'd had them out waiting for us as Karen and I pulled into the driveway, there they were, standing in front of the garage waiting for a purpose.

As I loaded them into the back of the car, Karen visited with Paul and Blue, his dog, and then we ventured through the garage, past my chainsaw and 1/2" drill - both borrowed earlier for projects he had undertaken when work was slower - through the workshop with its long wooden counters and shelves more bare than workshop shelves should be allowed; past the row of nails holding shovels and rakes and hand tools, and out into his large backyard with ample grassed areas for a dog to run and chase a ball.

I threw the old ratty tennis ball for Blue, but maybe being new to this, not knowing the unspoken rules, I didn't follow their set routine - I threw the ball across the yard towards the tall spruce in the north corner - Blue instinctively ran for the western edge of the yard, his head turning from side to side, searching for what didn't come that way at all.  He stopped.  And I had to walk across the grass to the far side to retrieve the ball.

Something about having to fetch the ball you've thrown for a dog is just so wrong.

That's when I saw the rhubarb.  Growing low behind the house, away from the deck and the flower bed in the centre of the yard; out of sight from the sitting room's large, floor-to-ceiling, sliding patio doors, it's dark large leaves shielding the red and green stalks from the sun.  Paul went to get a knife so I could choose enough for a crisp or a pie or a crumble - I haven't decided which - and I chose the larger, older stems - knowing most people prefer the sweeter, less tart, more slender young ones.

Its habit from my youth, when as kids we'd take rhubarb and eat it raw right from the patch, dipping the cut end in a small bowl of white sugar, and savouring the jolt of contrasting tastes.  Those older, larger canes provided more area for the sugar to stick and cake around the edges, and you learned quickly how long to leave the pieces in the bowl, and how to turn them just so, to pack a good thick crusty layer on the end.

Back home, almost ready for bed, I remembered the rhubarb in the car, so I brought it in and cleaned it.  Standing at the kitchen sink, the window dark with only the street light's pale yellow illumination giving outside objects any shape.  I washed it down and cut it into more or less equal sized cubes and packed them away in a Tupperware bowl and snapped the lid shut and slid them into the fridge for the night.  A simple domestic ritual, preparing fresh fruit for a meal to be made the next day - something your parents likely did when you were a child, and it seemed normal, regular, common back then, expected to a degree.  After an evening spent weeding or tilling or tending the garden and yard, the final act before settling in for the night took place in the kitchen, usually centred around the sink and its dark window.  The sweet, quiet, summer air wafting slowly through the open window screen, the distant hum of the day receding.

I popped a cube of the cut rhubarb into my mouth, hesitating at first, but drawn in, knowing what to expect, but still excited to find out, and as that tangy tartness hit my tongue, childhood memories of summers past flooded in.

When the days lasted forever and you rode your bike all over town, hanging out with your friends and filling the hours with laughter and fun, being called in when the sky got too dark to see anymore, knowing you were getting away with something special, staying up past your normal winter and school driven bedtime.

Those days were sweet, like the sugar we dipped the rhubarb in, and while the years have brought us more responsibilities and concerns, like the tangy rhubarb tartness that stands you up and lets you know you're alive, we carry on with simple domestic rituals as we take our parent's places, knowing that the crisp, or pie or crumble will taste that much sweeter after a June evening spent working in the yard pressure washing the deck, or chipping the pile of trimmed tree branches.

I wonder if the boy wants some rhubarb and a small bowl of sugar?

Hockey in June?

It hasn't been a quiet week in Winnipeg, my hometown, out there on the edge of the prairie: well, okay, it has on most levels, but on a sporting world note its been anything but.

15 years ago, this city lost a Major League sport's franchise due to a myriad of factors - ownership group, weak Canadian dollar, out of date facility, lack of ancillary revenue beyond tickets, and yes, in the last days of the Lame-Duck season, fan apathy - this isn't news - The Winnipeg Jets were sold after mounting losses in 1996 and relocated to Phoenix, where the losses continued, but the fan base and and potential exposure to the American market were much, much larger.

Professional sports is a business.  It pays to be reminded of that and see it in black and white every now and then.  It's a business, where people make a living, and profit is the bottom line, hopefully.  While the team on the field, court, diamond, or ice may wear your city's name on their uniform, it is a money based affiliation; a supply and demand of talent and hopefully that talent translates into success versus opponents while generating attention and interest amongst citizens of the home city who are required in the equation to pay for the enterprise and create the sought-after profits.

In a society longing for heroes and idols, the players become larger than life, and in this day of constant media, one is able to know almost everything there is to know about them, their every move followed and documented; team wins and losses are made to be important issues - followed with an intense appetite by the team's fans; and rivalries are formed between other teams in the league creating a war mentality between opposing communities; an "us vs them" way of relating to each other; a culture of constant foes and preparing for battles.

Of course the media play an integral part of the process, following the teams as they traverse the globe, hyping the contests, reporting the 'breaking news' of the day, keeping the product in the public eye daily creating the demand for tickets, all the while posing as journalists.  Watching the nightly sportscast for scores and updates, you forget that the results are merely the outcomes of athletic events and not actual battles between the armies of the cities they represent.  Our gladiator ancestors would be proud!

Civic pride and self image can and does get twisted into the process, especially in the rivalry sense between neighbouring cities, and the mudslinging and name calling helps fuel the drive to 'beat' the opponent.  Victory is sweet and celebrated by all; League champions are feted with parades and celebrations on a scale seen rarely these days.  Keys to the city are passed; visits to heads of state are scheduled and for a few months, the players are worshipped for 'bringing home' the trophy; for delivering to the home city the prestige, the recognition, and the bragging rights that come with winning National titles.

For the past 15 years this city has watched from the sidelines as the National Hockey League continued on without a team from these parts.  The fans tried to save their team back in the day, but were too little, too late in their outpouring of emotion and financial support. It wouldn't have and didn't matter: the system surrounding that team was flawed, and conditions needed to vastly different if an NHL franchise were to be successful here.  Those conditions weren't, so the team left to greener pastures. And we were told that it would be a cold day in hell before the NHl would ever return.

We went on with life, many disappointed in the loss of national media exposure, many internalizing the loss as a sign of inferiority choosing to view themselves and their city as 'less-than' a 'have-not' a second class place to live and do business.  The naysayers and doomsdayers predicted we'd be swept of the map, for we'd be nothing and were nothing without a big league team. Some took offence to that. Others ignored it and went to work to change the conditions that allowed the former team to leave.

A minor league team was brought in to hopefully satiate the appetite for pro hockey in the city, but this city's dark history of fear of progress and weariness of success kept many at home, too proud to support something they viewed as inferior to the real deal. Maybe it's just here, but the pessimistic, too proud, too negative group seems to be the most vocal, and enjoyed quashing any talk of moving on and moving upward, content to sit at home and wring their hands and wallow in their losses and their small minded image of themselves and their city.

15 years is a long time to hold grudges but when you're angry and lonely you can do it if you try hard enough.

After some growing pains the minor league team found its feet and with determined vision at the helm they ran their minor league business operation as good as and in some case better than the professional version, and built a new Arena downtown and quietly turned it into one of the busiest in the world. True Manitobans, they toiled unassumingly in the background and went about their business and kept to their vision and their ultimate goal of returning a professional team to the city.  They didn't threaten the League or try to hold them hostage, no, good Canadians that they are, they followed the rules and played along, meeting when asked, and saying nothing to the media, until it was time.

This past week it was time.

And they took centre stage (typically seeming uncomfortable doing so) and announced that they had succeeded in purchasing a team from Atlanta with intentions to relocate to Winnipeg in time to become part of next season's NHL.  For the past few years there had been much talk of bringing back the franchise that headed to the desert back in '96, and it seemed almost complete until the City of Glendale, AZ committed obscene amounts of public money to keep a struggling business afloat for one more year - rationalizing they would lose more money than the amount the pledged if the enterprise was allowed to leave.  But the NHL had more than one franchise in trouble, and the Atlanta group had owners willing to sell, their options exhausted.

The League stood at the podium during this week's press conference and the Commissioner stated the obvious when he said that this "... isn't going to work very well unless the building is sold out every night..." In the League's smallest market, the new team will play out of the smallest arena (15015 seats) in order to make it work there has to be demand for the supply. It's simple economics. The owners understood this though of course the small minded and constant naysayers across the globe used every social media website and comment section to laugh at Winnipeg for their audacity and foretold certain mediocrity.

After all, it's too cold here - the players won't want to play here; the city can't afford the big league: there's no corporate base to support the enterprise; the fans are too cheap, they won't buy tickets; good luck selling enough tickets in 3 weeks before the Board of Governors meetings, they all said.

Quietly, unassumingly, 2000 or so season ticket holders of the former minor league team purchased 7100 season tickets for the new NHL team in an organized prioritized 2 and a half days.  When the remaining 5900 season tickets were offered to the public yesterday, they sold out in 2 minutes. Paying deposits and agreeing to 4 and 5 year terms.

Too cold? Whatever.

No corporate base? Too cheap? Bite me.

At an average price of $82 a seat, (third highest in the League) Winnipegers guaranteed the new NHL franchise $50 million a season from ticket revenue alone.  Add in concession and merchandise sales?

Yeah.  I think the owners knew what they were doing, and who their market was, and how this city would support a properly run franchise.

This isn't a corporate sponsored team. This is a community fan-based supported team. That's important.  We love our hockey. In a way that most do not understand.  And that's okay.  You don't have to understand it to appreciate that we're passionate about it and willing to pay top dollar to watch it.  We are knowledgeable, and we may be demanding a winner quickly - but that goes hand in hand with breathing the game the way we do.  Any player worth his salt will enjoy playing here in front of these fans.  The Divas may pass on this small market with perceived limited marketing ability for their egos - fine, let 'em go.  The team will quietly find a way to win without them, and the fans will support them and make them their own.

We've missed the big time, and it shows.  The owners have done their part - they brought the game back to the fans.  The fans have done their part - overwhelmingly pledging their support and finances.  Now it's time to get a team name and identity and get to work putting the rest of the pieces together before October. It's good to be back.

And yes, I've got my season tickets.

Oh, and about hell needing to freeze over?  Cold enough for ya?