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musings of mark since 2001

   Kind of an old fashioned (before global warming) winter day out there today followed by lots of wind and rain last night. The deer are looking rather forlorn just standing in the rain, but that’s just my view and for all I know to them, it just feels like a nice way to clean their coats. It’s the grayness of the day that does it, the lights stay on indoors all day if you want to see what you are doing. This latest spell of weather is predicted to last a couple days, but it’s still a far cry from 10 years ago when winter meant weeks and weeks of low hanging clouds and fine Scottish mists. Feels more like a rain forest again here for a little while.

   Thanksgiving Day for the USA today, memories of sitting in front of the TV practically all day breaking only to gorge at a table fit for a king and then naps digesting it all. Seems a long way away from that here on Bowen Island as the hawks soar about our little cove chasing the crows. I had turkey on Canada’s day back in October, but hanging around the farm we spent the time talking and laughing as there isn’t a TV and consequently no one fell asleep from the calming effects of tryptophan. It was a cold day too, so going out on the porch for a smoke and moving around a bit made it easy to enjoy the amino acid made famous on this day rather than sleeping it off.

   First snowfall of 2003 on Bowen Island, and BCTV is showing images of the other (bigger) island slightly to the west of us and what struck me was the shot of the highway with obviously very slick, snowy surfaces. A car goes by, and not 1/2 second later goes a pick-up truck. I know other people don’t stay at least two seconds behind the other cars like I do, but it’s still shocking to see road conditions like they are and people following each other at 100kph and barely far enough behind them to see the brake lights come on. Thank goodness the speed limit all over the island here is 40kph tops, because it was so foggy with big wet flakes coming down on top that I was barely going 15 clicks on the way home, let alone the speed limit at 30 or 40kph.

Amazing how much news doesn’t get reported, I always thought that a 7.5 earthquake was fairly large no matter where it was, this one’s pretty close to home too:
EARTHQUAKE DATA:

EARTHQUAKE DATA PRELIMINARY MAGNITUDE – 7.5 LOCATION – 50.8N 178.4E – 55 MILES SW OF AMCHITKA-AK. 225 MILES SW OF ADAK-AK. TIME – 2143 AST 11/16/2003 2243 PST 11/16/2003 0643 UTC 11/17/2003

   Ran across this page saved from the web and followed the link and it’s still active: 57 Things You Probably Already Figured Out About Me
   Not sure if this is an original quote, but Google leads to a couple pages worth following up on if you would like to read some writing about the fellow that immortalized on the Microsoft MSDN website: “Don’t belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace.”

It just sort of fitting type of link when watching Trailer Park Boys tonight and the second episode was the one where Bubbles got to be the guitar manager for Rush, kinda makes you proud to be a Canadian but sadly everyone sells out as I personally can’t visit the Rush site myself using the same browser that I’m composing this missive with, hint: it’s not Internet Explorer and that’s not a good thing.