Well… it may not be the most ideal path to Olympic Gold, but the men’s hockey team managed to get past Germany last night, setting up a collision course with Russia.  Our track record against the Russians isn’t exactly great.  I believe TSN said that we’ve never beaten them in the Olympics.  That means that there’s always a first time, and 2010 is it!

8:30 tonight I’ll be glued to my TV.  Bring ‘em on.

As I was driving home last week, I heard the DJ mention that “Twitter” was crowned the Word of the Year for 2009.  ["Google" took home the top award for Word of the Decade].  So as I prepared to write a short blog post about this, I turned to the Word of the Decade’s search engine and discovered just as many page one references to “Twitter” as there were to another supposedly-popular word.  And what word was that?

“Unfriend”.

That’s a word that I don’t think that I have ever used in my life.  While neither of these words were even real words a couple of years ago, the popularity of social networking has given life to a whole new breed of language.  It would be difficult to argue that “Twitter” doesn’t deserve a mention for top words of 2009.  I’m not so sure about “unfriend” but I suspect that if you asked a younger generation of internet users (especially those with Facebook pages), “unfriend” probably doesn’t appear as out of place.

But for me, “Twitter” is definitely it.

I’ve noticed something quite remarkable on my radio lately… I’ve been listening to K100 again, and quite liking the music!  There are times that I get in the car and am halfway to wherever I’m going before I even realize that I’m on that station.  I used to use K100 as my secondary station, incase The Wave was playing something that I didn’t like.

But it wasn’t always like that…

Waaaaay back in the good ole days, the station of choice was a little AM radio station called CFBC.  It was a Top 40 station, and I loved it.  I’d listen to it all the time, especially on weekends when it played American Top 40.  Then one day it stopped playing music, and switched to the moldy-oldies.  I have a better appreciation for that music now, but at the time, I was none too thrilled.

That’s when C98 came around, and THEY were playing Top 40 music.. In stereo!  That lasted for a couple of years, until they decided to get into the classic rock theme… passing the Top 40 genre off to K100.  I believe that all these radio stations are now owned by the same company, so they can easily spread the different music genres around without going head to head with each other.

But then something interesting happened one day.  Commercials started to appear on TV.  They were teasers only. If I remember correctly, it showed a beach or waterfront, and water coming in.  That was it.  Then said something about something exciting coming, and gave a date.  That something was 97.3, The Wave, and it played Top 40 music, and went head to head with K100.

And won.

There was a time when I was away for a bit, and when I came back, the radio landscape had changed completely.  CFBC was still oldies, but C98 was now called Big John FM.. and sucked Big Time.  K100 didn’t know what kind of radio station it was anymore.  It literally changed its format every couple of months.  Sometimes it was playing late 70s early 80s fluff, with the occasional recent fluff song thrown in… then it went onto something else… they started playing Delilah at night… they kept changing how the call letters were announced in their promos.. they ran “how do you like our music?” promos…   I hardly listened to them any more, although I still kept them as my secondary.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I noticed something.  They were playing Top 40 music again!  Delilah was gone.  They stole one of The Wave’s DJs for their morning show.  I heard a Top 6 or 7 or 8 or whatever countdown in the evening.  Their call letter announcement sounded much more modern than it had ever been.  It was obvious that they had decided to go head to head with The Wave for the .. ahem… young audience.  And I really think that they hit it.

Hell, I heard The Humpty Dance as I was driving home.  Who doesn’t like The Humpty Dance?

Do the dance!  Do the Humpty Dance!

Regular season NHL play started tonight with arch rivals Montreal Canadiens playing the Toronto Maple Leafs.

I sat down to watch my Leafs play their first game since April.  They should have been well rested, since they don’t like to play in the playoffs, and how much energy does it take to swing a golf club?

The first thing I noticed…  I didn’t recognize either of these two teams!  I don’t know if they decided to trade everyone away in the off season, or if they’re just handing out jerseys to the first 30 people who walk through the door, but there are soooo many new names on both teams.  I just didn’t recognize anyone!  Well, the goalies are still the same, but that’s about it.

The back and forth battle had the Leafs leading 3-2 late in the third period, but like they love to do… they gave up a goal with only a couple of minutes left.

And lost in overtime…

But hey..  this is our year.  I can feel it.  We’re just gonna take it nice and slow…

Shots on goal 46-27 in favour of Toronto.  We’re working too hard…

I don’t know how some people get (or keep) their driver’s licenses.  Having said that, yes, I’ve made mistakes, been careless, and am not always the picture perfect driver that I should be.  I try not to do anything TOO idiotic, so I can still hold my head high when I see morons like what I’m about to describe.

After I left work last night, I got on the highway and headed home.  A pickup truck (why is it always a pickup truck in my stories?) started to pass me, and when he was directly beside me, started to cross the line back into my lane.  At first I thought that he was simply weaving, but then I realized that he was definitely intentionally moving over.  I was probably in his blind spot at that point, but c’mon… he was PASSING me.  He obviously knew that I was in that lane!  I slammed my hand onto the horn, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.  Thankfully there was a good sized “pull over” lane that I was able to get into before he hit the side of me.

So then I was behind this idiot, and noticed that the back of his pickup truck was filled with boxes and stuff.  An SUV passed me, then passed the pickup truck, and the driver of the truck gave the SUV the finger.  They must’ve had some sort of run-in earlier.  To make matters worse, two large white styrofoam boxes caught wind and flew out the back of his truck, and once again I swerved into the pull over lane.  I was seriously preparing my own greeting for this guy when the highway divided, and he went the other way.

Idiot.

It’s late. It’s really late. 3am is the time when most people are tucked into bed, sleeping quite soundly. Not me. Not tonight. Tonight I’m up. I wouldn’t quite say “wide awake” up, but I’m up. There are some nights when sleep just doesn’t seem to be an option. Tonight is one of those nights. So I have the music cranked. I’m going through my iTunes library, fixing mistakes as I come across them. So many of the songs have the artist and song title combined in the same field. So I’m separating them. It’s tedious work. And if it sounds a little anal, yeah, it might be. I’ve been collecting this library for years, and it’s only become an “issue” for me now. Now that I’m tracking my listening habits (for no real particular reason other than curiosity) I’m noticing that it’s hard to group the songs together when some of them are formatted in one particular manner, and others are not. So I’m going through them. There are a couple of thousand songs in the library, so it’s no small task.

And it’s laundry time. I don’t have the luxury of being able to hang it outside at this hour, so I have to stick it in the dryer, but that’s fine. It has piled up a little over the days, and it’s time to get caught up. And don’t get me started on the leaning tower of dirty dishes that sprung up suddenly in the kitchen. I’m embarrassed to have anyone over. So it’s time to get that cleaned up too.

Then there’s time well spent on the deck. The sky is crystal clear. Earlier in the week I was able to view some of the meteor shower that we were treated to in these parts. It was nice. There’s nothing like that tonight, but it’s amazing how dark it is out here, and how brightly the stars shine without the city lights interfering with them. It’s peaceful at this hour.

Unfortunately it also means that my day time is pretty much a write-off, but that’s something that I’ll worry about tomorrow.

I like to look through the stats for the blog.  Most people come here directly, because they’re friends and family who either type the address in, or have it bookmarked.  But occasionally someone comes in from a search engine.  I chuckled when I saw this as a search result that landed someone here.

“do i sell my sirius stock”

So ofcourse, I had to try it, and sure thing.. there was the post on my experience with Sirius, listed on the 2nd page of the Google results.  I didn’t think that anyone actually went to the second page of search results, but I guess that someone did.  How disappointed they must have been if they thought that they were going to find an indepth financial analysis of the SIRI ticker!

Which I see today dipped below the $0.50 mark.. still above where I sold it!  Damn!

It seemed like an innocent-enough trip.  We were on our way to Jake’s Steakhouse to enjoy a nice meal out.  It doesn’t happen enough anymore.  We had decided to let my friend drive.  I didn’t want to have to clean off my front seat, and he didn’t mind.  We were discussing a certain music video by the Black Eyed Peas, and he was telling me that our favourite Jakes waitress was gone now. But that’s ok.. they had hired a few more…

!BANG!

I think that there was just enough time to swear loudly before the second !BANG! as we collided with the car infront of us.  It all happened so fast (doesn’t it always?) and we didn’t really know what had happened for a few seconds.  I turned around to look behind us, honestly expecting to see a dumptruck or tractor trailer against our bumper.  I know now that this was a minor collision, but it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time.  The car ahead of us had stopped because someone was turning.  We had stopped.  The pickup truck behind us hadn’t.  It hit us hard, and slammed us into the car in front.

Thankfully no one appeared hurt, but the two cars involved weren’t so lucky.  Ironically, the pickup truck that caused the chain reaction looked as though it had recently rolled off the assembly line.  (Note to self: Buy something BIGGER next time)   I did what any self-respecting man with a cellphone would start doing in a time like this… I started texting my friends and family!  (Sadly, it was also a reminder that there was someone who I very much wanted to include in the updates, but that would have caused more problems for everyone.) I wish I had an iPod.  I’m sure that there’s an app for that (There’s an App for that!) “Look Mom! I was just in an accident.  This is where I am, and here’s a picture of the car. Nice, eh?”

The police came to the scene, and got us to move the vehicles off the road.  Turns out that a Ford Focus has a kill-switch if it’s rear-ended, so we had to push it.  It didn’t take long for the tow truck to show up and cart our poor Focus away.  Ironically, we were standing near a spot where 3 vehicles were for sale by owner.  That $1500 Spectra was looking pretty tempting as the rain started to come down harder! Thankfully I had a couple of offers of rescue from my initial text, and one of my friends came to pick us up (with towels and dry shirts! Who would have thought of that?)  After the police report it was off to the emergency room for what was hoped to be a quick look-over.  Ha!

If you’re in the local area and haven’t been to the Regional hospital in awhile, the first thing you need to realize is that the main entrance is no longer the main entrance.  Oh no.  Try going around to the side, where you’ve probably never been in your life, and THAT’S the new main entrance.  But the fun doesn’t stop there.  You need to go through those doors and look for some indication that you need to be UP one floor.  Had my friend who drove us not mentioned that we needed to go up, I’m sure that they would still be looking for us somewhere in the basement level.  Once you get onto Level 1, you’re fine.  Everything else looks the same as it always did, including the grumpy security guard.  I’ll skip the boring triage and wait, wait, wait, wait part.  Needless to say, neither of us were bleeding, coughing up lungs, or on the verge of passing out, so I’m pretty sure that we were at the very bottom of the list, if we were even on it to begin with.  If my buddy wasn’t there, I’m sure that I would have just left.  Same for him.  But the two of us were able to keep each other going, although I did say to him that everytime the nurses saw one of us laugh, they probably pushed us even further off the list than before we got there.

When I finally got through all that waiting, the doctor came to see me.  He looked more like Doogie Howser than Gregory House.  There’s something about getting older that I don’t like (well, more than a few things).  I don’t like being older than the doctors treating me.  I want an old fart like House, even if he takes a strip off me for being a moron.  Age = Wisdom and I don’t get that warm fuzzy feeling from one of these young doctors who look like they’re just wearing the white coat for fun.  But I let him play his little game.  He checked my eyes and ears, tested my reflexes, poked me in the belly, and made me touch my nose and his finger repeatedly. (OK, NOW he’s toying with me!)  Then he sent me for chest x-rays, just in case.  Lo and behold, I’m fit as a fiddle.  Well, maybe not.  But the “crash” (as I heard a nurse refer to it… “Patient 13 was involved in a crash”) didn’t appear to cause any longterm problems.  But he was also kind enough to warn me that “Tomorrow, you’ll feel worse.  And worse again the next day”  Hmm… maybe this was House after all?  Perhaps he’ll write me a prescription for vicodin.

“You can take Advil 600mg 4 times/day.”

Advil?  Isn’t that the candy-coated pill?  This guy really WAS Doogie Howser.

At 12:30am, nearly 4 hours since it all began, we were calling a cab back to my friend’s place.  We never did get those steaks… but we had a story to tell and laugh about until the next time.

On an interesting side-note, I pointed out to my friend as we were in the back of the cab “Here we are, coming from the hospital, after having been pancaked between a truck and a car only a few hours ago, and neither of us are wearing seatbelts.  What is it about sitting in a cab that makes people believe that they’re instantly invulnerable?”

Time to go pop some more Advil.