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It’s one of those moments you wait a lifetime for.

I was on the way to drop my son off at his high school around noon today, heading WB up the hill on 16th ave, after coming off the Deerfoot. Home of the most prolific radar trap in the city of Calgary. Anybody that’s lived here for more than a couple of months has likely seen where Calgary Police Services sets up shop, right beside the Midfield mobile home park on the north side of 16th ave.

Every time I drive the kids to school, and exit off the Deerfoot onto 16th ave, I make a point of keeping it to no more than about 65 kph. Maybe they’re up there, maybe they’re not, but it’s not worth taking a chance. I’ll get a honk every now and then from the guy behind me, who’d prefer to keep up the same 100 kph he was using on the Deerfoot. Have at ‘er fella.  Secretly, I hope that the police are at work that day.

It never happens.

Until today.

The black truck on my tail blew past me and ripped up the hill at about 90 or 100 kph. I got to the crest of the hill just in time to see the officer jump out onto the street and signal the truck over to the side of the road.  Finally! After more than 15 years of trudging up the hill at 60 or 65, it finally paid off!

The satisfaction didn’t last long. As I drove by the truck, I noticed the lady at the wheel. She was now a couple hundred dollars poorer, and a few demerits to go with it. That’s a lot of money. Probably more than a day’s pay.

It really is a weak location for a speed trap. Once you get to the top of the hill, you run into a whole whack of traffic lights on 16th ave. You’ll be  lucky if you get past 50 kph  again until you hit 14th St, on the other side of town. Unless the people that live in the mobile home park are complaining, the only logicial explanation for a speed trap there so often is that it’s a fishin’ hole for the police.

So, while I’m glad that it wasn’t me, and it was fun to finally see somebody get nabbed, I’d prefer they set up somewhere that really made a difference.

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I hear there’s a football game on this weekend.

I love sports. Any kind of sport. Anytime.

I will admit, though, that I’m not a big NFL fan. I grew up watching the B.C Lions with my Dad out on the Coast, and still love going to Stamps games at McMahon. I’ll admit the players in the NFL are bigger, and probably more talented, but they’re definitely not more exciting.

That said, I’ll be one of the hundreds of millions of people around the world that sit down on Sunday to watch the NY Giants take on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. That’s Super Bowl 66, right? My old math teachers would shoot me, but it’s been a while since I last used Roman numerals.

Here’s what I love about Super Bowl. It’s an event. Our friends down in the States really know how to go over the top when they throw a party, and Sunday is their biggest party of the year.

Kelly Clarkson will sing the national anthem. Black Shelton and Amanda Lambert sing “God Bless America”, and Madonna is handling the halftime show. And not only can you enjoy their performances, you can bet on them.

I’m serious.

Bodog.ca is a gambling site that offers all kinds of interesting wagers on Sunday. Will Kelly Clarkson forget, or miss, any words to the “Star Spangled Banner?”. Will it take her longer, or shorter, than 94 seconds? What colour will Madonna’s hair be when she first hops onstage to perform? Will she be wearing fishnet stockings?

Oh ya, you can also bet on the football game too.

How big is this thing? When the haltime show rolls around, they’ll be 106 million people watching the broadcast. After that, the numbers will fall off when all the non-football fans go back to what they were doing.  But for about half an hour, it’s the year’s highest rated show. To give you an idea, “American Idol” is the highest rated show on TV right now, and it draws about 20 million people.

So, despite the fact I don’t normally watch the NFL, I’ll be there on Sunday watching the big game. If for no other reason than to see how long it takes Kelly Clarkson to sing the anthem.

And the snacks.

Have a great weekend.

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While I was playing “Marry Me” by Bruno Mars yesterday, one of the biggest wedding songs last summer, it got me thinking about our wedding song, and how it came to be. My wife and I celebrate our 25th anniversary in May, and used “You’re the Inspiration” by Chicago as our wedding song way back in the spring of ’87.

To be honest, that song has come to mean more over the past 25 years than it did on the day we got married. It wasn’t really “our” song. We met in June of ’86, got engaged in February of ’87, and married in May. I had moved to a radio station in the Okanagan, leaving my bride-to-be back home on the Coast to handle all the details.  One of those details was our wedding song. We never did get around to choosing one until the last minute. We kind of looked at each other with a blank stare, and started naming songs. In retrospect, there were a bunch of songs that we could’ve use that would have made great wedding songs, that meant a lot to us. The song we first danced to was the same song that was playing when we got engaged. Probably would’ve made a decent choice, huh? Alas, we were in a crunch for time, and went with Chicago. Still a great song, and it’ll always be our wedding song, but “our song” is probably a tune called “Amarillo By Morning” by George Straight.

I did a little poll yesterday on our Facebook page, and got a ton of great responses. It was interesting to see wide the spectrum of “wedding songs” was. From the Goo Goo Dolls, to Elvis, to Bon Jovi, to Joe Cocker. There were country songs, rock songs, slow songs, fast songs. If you feel like having a look, just go to facebook.com/lite959 and scroll down the page a bit until you get to about 3pm on Tuesday afternoon. It’s kind of cool imagining the meaning behind all those songs.

If you missed a chance to join the Facebook discussion, feel free to leave an answer on here. Let the memories continue.

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Groundhog Day is coming up on Thursday, the most scientic method of predicting the weather since your great uncle Ed’s prediction of rain when his bones started to ache.

However, if you’re going to listen to a groundhog, make sure he’s Albertan, and make sure he’s from Balzac.  Last year, the three major prognosticators – Shubenacadie Sam, Wiarton Willie, and Punxsutawney Phil all failed to see their shadows, and called for an early start to spring.

Balzac Billy begged to differ. He popped out of his burrow, saw his shadow, and predicted 6 more weeks of winter.

Here’s how the next six week rolled out. The last two weeks of February, we got above zero only once, and the temperatures for the first six days of March were -24, -17, -12, -15, -17, -17, and -11. And those were the highs! ‘Ol Balzac Billy nailed it right on the head. Not only did we get 6 more weeks of winter, but they were some of the coldest weeks of the year.

I must point out that I’ve never really understood the groundhog method of making weather predictions. If he sees his shadow, that means it’s most likely sunny outside on February 2nd. In my eyes, that should mean that an early spring is on the way, right?

Not according to the groundhogs. It it’s sunny on Groundhog Day, that means 6 more weeks of winter. If it happened to be a blizzard that day, and he didn’t see his shadow, it means spring is on the way. Go figure.

Really though, it’s a win-win on Thursday. If Balzac Billy calls for an early spring, then we can celebrate. If he calls for 6 more weeks of the kind of winter we’re having right now, I’ll take that too. Matter fact, I’m kind of pulling for more winter. It was 10 degrees yesterday, 12 the day before!

Just don’t listen to the Eastern groundhogs. Not until they move their burrow a little closer to the land of chinooks and ice crystals!
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As you’ve probably heard, there was one winning ticket in the Lotto 649 last Saturday, worth $25 million bucks, purchased somewhere here in Calgary.  So far, nobody’s stepped forward to claim the cash. I don’t buy a lot of lottery tickets. I bought one this time. Maybe I won. I won’t know for a while yet. Why?

I won’t check my ticket…..yet.

Here’s the way I figure it. The longer it goes without somebody claiming the jackpot, the better chance I have of “potentially” winning it. If I check my ticket right now, and it isn’t the winner, the dream is over. If I don’t check it for a couple of weeks, and there’s still no winner, then I can start each day with possibility that I’m a multi-millionaire.

To take my superstitous idea even further, I figure there were probably about 40 million tickets sold for the draw. Most of those are back East, in Ontario and Quebec. So I figure that about 10% of the tickets were sold in Alberta, which equates to about 4 million tickets. Most people check their tickets that night, or the next day, so lets eliminate about 75% of those tickets. Now we’re down to about 1 million potential winners. If another 10% check  their ticket each passing day, knowing there was a winner sold in Calgary, then we’re down to about 400,000 tickets left.  Oh ya….those are “Alberta” numbers. Since it was in Calgary, let’s chop them in half again, to 200,000 remaining unchecked tickets.

I started out with a 1 in 14,000,000 chance of winning. Statisically, I’m still at 1 in 14,000,000 but in my bent sense of superstition, I’ve reduced that to 1 in 200,000.

The longer I don’t look at the ticket, the more potential winners fade away. I figure that if nobody’s claimed it after a month or so, then I’ve accomplished a couple of things:

1) I still have a shot at $25 million bucks

2) I’ve had a month of waking up knowing that I might have won the 649!

Then maybe, just maybe, I’ll have a peek.

Did I mention, that Lotto Max is worth $50 million bucks this week?

Ever wish you could go back in time, and change something you said or did? I’m thinking that’s a resounding “yes” I hear. I have events happen daily that I wish I could take back.

Now you can. Sort of.

Facebook is rolling out “Timeline” in a couple of weeks. In fairness, they’ve been warning users for weeks, if not months. What is “Timeline”? Essentially, it’s the last few years of your life spread across your computer screen,  and those of the people you call “friends”. Every thing you’ve ever said, every post you’ve ever made, every status update, every picture. All fair game. Unless you go and delete it before January 31st.

I don’t use my Facebook account for much more than a place to throw up pictures. I can honestly say that there’s probably not a status update or comment that I’d like to take back. For some, that’s probably not the case. Especially younger people, like our kids, who tend to us Facebook as a place to vent. If you’ve had a bad breakup, and posted a few things on your account that you now regret, it’s probably a good idea to delete them before the end of the month.

Pictures are probably the most dangerous. Stuff you’ve forgotten about. Long weekends from 3 or 4 years ago that got a little out of hand. It’s on your account right now, but it’s probably hidden somewhere in your albums. If someone wanted to find it, they’d have to go searching. Not with “Timeline”. It’ll be there, front and center, depending on which photos of yours they decide to highlight. That’s the thing. If you edit your account now, it’s your choice. If you don’t, it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s.

I’m not going to get all up in arms about the changes. Personally, I don’t like the look of “Timeline”. It’s a little scattered for my tastes. It’ll get rid of the “ticker” that nobody seems to like. The fact of the matter is that I like to have a place to post pics for my friends and family to see. I’ll just keep doing what I do. I will admit that everytime Facebook makes a major change, I lose a little more interest.

It’s probably worth a look. Flip through your albums, videos and maybe backtrack a bit through your status updates a bit. Maybe there’s something in there that you’d prefer was left to memory, instead of front and center for everyone to see….again.

Click. Just like that….it never happened.

It was a rather spirited but humorous discussion in our living room last night. My youngest son’s 15th birthday is coming up on Saturday.

Since the dawn of time, or at least since he was toddler, we’ve booked a room at the Sheraton over at Barlow and 32nd Ave, and spent a night at the waterslides, followed by games and gifts in the room, lots of greasy poolside food, and more swimming in the morning. A few years in, Captain Kirk and his wife joined us, along with their young son. Tons of fun!

On many occasions over the years, I’ve arrived late to the hotel on a Friday night because I had to work a Hitmen game, then spent the night at home so I could take care of the dog, and then went back to the pool in the morning. Our oldest son is now 21, and he’ll pop by for a few hours, but won’t stay overnight. Increasingly, our 18 year old daughter is dancing over the weekend, and her time at the hotel would also be limited.

We were about to book the hotel again last night, when all of these points came to light. We brought our son upstairs to see if he really wanted to book the Sheraton again this year. He said he really didn’t mind staying home, but he didn’t want to hurt anybody else’s feelings. Great kid!

Bam! $200 saved.

That’s where the fun came in. Over the years, the parties and presents have dropped both in size and in expense. From full blown “hire a clown” parties, to just giving our oldest son a gift of cash in December. That’s what he wanted. Ditto for our daughter a couple of days later. Not a lot of cash, but enough.

Now our youngest wanted to negotiate. Since we were saving $200 on the hotel, and that was going to be his present, then…….you know where this is going.

No, he did not successfully negotiate $200 worth of birthday money. But boy did he try. When he tried to bring up last year as an example, he shot himself in the foot. Last year, he got a gift, the hotel AND a party with his buddies. We’d forgotten about that.

We suggested that in fact he owed us money from last year’s birthday.

He’s decided that he’ll be happy with whatever he gets.  Smart kid.

 With a future in business.

I know this is hard to believe, but Mookie and Billie Jo had one of the toughest jobs on the planet this week.

I can hear your catcalls from here! I know, I know.

They flew out of Calgary last Friday, about a day before we sank into the deep freeze, and arrived in Jamaica late on Friday night. By Monday, it was +30 in Ocho Rios, and -30 in Calgary. They’ll arrive back home late on Friday night, or early Saturday morning, just about the time we warm up to +3 for the first time since they hopped on the plane. Their timing is impeccable.

So here’s the deal.

Mookie and Billie Jo have to wake up Calgary, where it’s -30, from the beaches of Ocho Rios, doing their best not to rub it in. On one hand, they’ve been trying to do their best to relate to the cold weather in Calgary, while still promoting how terrific a resort Sandals is, and how beautiful Jamaica is. That’s not easy to do. Especially when their biggest commodity is sunshine. You know people back home don’t want to hear how much you’re enjoing the heat, but you can’t pretend your cold when you’re in flip flops and shorts.

I’ve been there. Literally. I did the same kind of promotion in Whitehouse, Jamaica about a year and a half ago. The weather in the two countries really wasn’t much different at that time, ’cause it was mid to late September. Jamaica was 30, and Calgary was still tickling the 20′s.  Still, I felt guilty every time I spoke of the Carribean, or the beach, or the endless sunshine.

Put it this way. You know when you’ve had a really great day, and someone comes up and says “Wow, what a brutal day I had”.  You want to tell them about your fantastic day, but don’t want to add additional pain to theirs. It’s a tough thing to do.

I know. You’re not completely sold on the concept. I hear ya.

But it is a tricky thing to do, and I applaud them for their efforts.  Just don’t hate them ’cause they’re warm.

Let’s me say first that I’m not a coffee franchise kind of guy. I can probably count the amount of cups of coffee I’ll buy at Timmy’s or Starbucks each year on one hand. I’m a home brew kind of guy. A Tassimo guy.

So, I can stand back in a neutral position and watch the coffee wars begin. Starting on Monday, Tim Horton’s is changing the size of their cups. They’re introducing a new extra large coffee, that checks in at 710 ml. That’s about 100 ml more than Starbucks’s largest “Venti” coffee.

Whatever “Venti” actually means. Sorry, Starbuckers……not a clue. It’s actually amusing to watch people order coffee at Starbucks. It’s like listening to them speak Italian, or Greek, or Portugese. I have no idea what they’re ordering.

Starbucks does have a new “Trenti” they’ve rolled out in the States. Seems to me it checks in pretty close to 900 ml.  That’s a lot of coffee. Apparently there’s a race on to make the largest cup of coffee. McDonalds isn’t quite in the hunt yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long.

I guess my question is this. How big of a cup do you really need? We’re talking almost a litre of coffee at a time. To put it in perspective, those small milk jugs? They’re a litre, or 1000 ml. Do you really want to drink that much coffee in one shot? I don’t ever recall hearing anybody say “man, I wish I could find a bigger cup of coffee”.

I’m not sure exactly what Timmy’s goal is. Apparently, they’re not increasing prices. The old extra large becomes the new large, the large becomes the medium, and the old medium becomes the new small. So, you get extra coffee, and it doesn’t cost you any more. What’s the catch? I can only think that it’s the desire to have the biggest cup of coffee on the market.

No biggie. It’s a slow blog day. I just looked at the story in the paper, and thought “why?”.

I will say this. I hope it’s not a trend just to make our servings of  fast food larger. It’s coffee this time, but it could be pop or fries, or donuts next time. The size of the servings in Canada has changed a ton over the years, but we’re still nowhere near the size of the portions of the servings down in the States. When the boys and I go to Seattle, I’m blown away every time somebody at the counter asks me if I’d like to to supersize my drink. When they say supersize, they mean supersize! We’re talking about 2 litres of pop for an extra $.35 or something.

There’s a lot of really big people down in the States. Apparently someone’s saying “ok” to the supersizing. I really hope we never get to that stage up here in Canada.

Alright, I’m going to go home and have a cup of coffee. Maybe a mug. Certainly not a jug.

Okay, first things first. I’m not complaining. We’ve had an amazing run through November, December and the first half of January. We hit a record high last week. We’ve only a handful of days in the past month where we didn’t get up to the freezing mark.

But friends……it’s cold outside!

As I write this on Sunday night, it’s now -22, with a windchill around -30…..and it ain’t about to get much warmer. Just for your enjoyment, I’ll cut and past the forecast for the next few days.

Monday: Light snow beginning late in the afternoon. High minus 22. Wind chill minus 34.

Monday night: Light snow. Low minus 27. Wind chill minus 39.

Tuesday: Cloudy with flurries. High minus 27.

Wednesday: Cloudy with flurries. Low minus 31. High minus 27.

Thursday: Cloudy with 60 percent chance of flurries. Low minus 27. High minus 22.

You get the picture. THAT is one serious cold snap. And it’s a little unusual for Calgary. Usually, our stretches of bitter cold only run 3 or 4 days tops, before a chinook rolls in and warms things up a bit. It’s one of the first things I noticed when we made the move from Edmonton a little over 15 years ago. Our cold snaps are brief. Edmonton can get locked into this stuff for weeks at a time.

My goal this week? Try to get through it without any of the vehicles falling apart. It’s not uncommon, during the first real cold blast of the winter, to have belts snap, tires go flat, and frankly…..just have peices of my Jeep fall off. There’s a good deal of plastic in the Jeep, and it just gets so cold that with any kind of pressure, hunks just break off. I’ve gone through about a half dozen plastic clips for the system of bars that locks and unlocks my doors. The original peice was metal. The factory replacement is plastic. I gave up fixing the broken doors about 5 years ago. At $40 a pop, and a few hours of frustration, I eventually just gave up. You can no longer open the doors of the Jeep from the inside. You have to unwind the window, and open it from outside. The kids are used to it. It’s no big deal. Just start winding down the window about 30 seconds ahead of your drop off point, and we’re good to go.

I fired up our truck tonight, just to get some fuel running through the system, and take it for a quick drive. It was NOT happy about it. It grunted and groaned as the battery barely turned over, and when it did finally catch, it made a noise that would rattle your fillings. A few trips around the block, though, and it was purring like a kitten. Needless to say, all three vehicles in our family are now neatly tucked into bed with chords attached to their respective block heaters.

Alas, it’s winter on the prairies. This is what it’s supposed to be like every now and then. This is what makes us “tough” prairie folk. This is what separates us from our softer relatives on the West Coast.

So embrace it. Just don’t stick your tongue against any flagpoles. No matter how many times you try it, the result never changes.

Not that I’d know…..