not sure if anyone filmed the women’s game. this is only the first period of the men’s game, but it gives a good idea of what dangle derby is like.

I’ve pretty much finished 90% of unpacking into my new place. now it’s just a matter of putting little things on shelves and such.

by the by, I’m one of the refs on the inside pointing and/or waving at the guys going through the pack.

for some odd reason, I’m absurdly proud of how i put things away in my front storage closet area. you know when you clean things up and you store it all nice and neat and you get that sense of accomplishment out of it? yeah.

this is from the third (?) last time I moved. tomorrow everything I own will yet again be crammed into some vehicles, ferried over to a new place, unpacked and set up again. except this time there’s the added weight of some real furniture. so, you know, more lifting and stuff. the downside to that is having to carry it all down three floors out of here. the benefit is that my new place is on the ground floor and the patio doors are right there so there’s none of this lugging shit through hallways mess. nope, out of the van, over the lawn, through the patio doors and we’re done.

tomorrow will be an exercise in rapidity since I have to go do the move in inspection, then haul as much crap over as I can, then go to a ref meeting which is likely going to end in bloody murder for one person, and then come back here and clean up and then sleep and then wait for my dad to get here on wednesday morning to finish hauling stuff over.

and then beer.

on a totally shiny new topic…

jack layton and firearms regulation. yes, that’s what I said. whilst perusing the news sites at lunch today I read up on the latest in bickering about registration and moral issues surrounding the support of owning guns.

in the last week I’ve had three people say “I never figured you for a gun nut.”

aside from the shrug I can give as a “so?” answer, let’s examine the connotation of the term ‘gun nut’.

what immediately pops into your head when you hear that term? I’m willing to bet an image of some kind of angry Tory supporter who must be a wacko for owning something that has lethal potential. and don’t lie, I’ve discussed this with too many people to know that that’s the immediate reaction of *most* (not all) people. you know, the image of the kind of person who says the firearms registry is a joke! a waste of taxpayer dollars! a Liberal boondoggle!

people tend to get confused when they ask if I shoot and/or own firearms and then I tell them that I’ve voted NDP and support registration. yes, it really can happen. that actually ended up as a conversation in one of my MPP classes where my prof, after having heard me say that, said I was the kind of person that pollsters hate because I don’t follow immediately recognizable trends in firearms support data.

the reason i find jack layton’s decision interesting is twofold. one, he’s allowing his MPs a free vote on the issues. several NDP MPs have stated they will vote to kill the firearms registry because that’s what the majority of their constituents want. I’m a huge proponent of my Parliamentary representative making a vote in the House based on the majority will of their riding. to me, that represents true democratic will ad representation. I applaud Layton’s decision to allow this vote to be free to his MPs in that regard.

however, the second reason I find it interesting is that the NDP is one of the most vocal supporters of registering firearms. allowing a vote to take place that might actually succeed in doing away with the long gun registry runs counter to party policy and belief. Layton then put forward suggestions on how to improve it. first, if the registry is dead, how do you fix it? Second, if Bill C-391 (the private members bill put forth by Tory MP Candice Hoeppner to end the long gun registry) passes, how do you propose to build another one from scratch and avoid the immense amounts of political and public pressure for having just done away with one only to turn around and make a new one that for all intents and purposes might be just as cumbersome?

the solutions presented by Layton (warnings for not registering, upholding treaty rights, no charge for registration, allowing municipalities to ban handguns) are probably policies that, should bill C-391 fail, the Tories will absorb, try to tack onto the current registry and claim as their own. except for the banning handguns part. while I agree with most of them, the proposal to allow municipalities to ban handguns seems like a large political and legal obstacle that most politicians probably wouldn’t want to get too involved in. I think it’s safe to assume that most Canadians aren’t actually aware of just how large the gun lobby is in this country. you try and drum up support for a ban on something they own in a non uniform way and see what happens. guaranteed you will run into years of court challenges.

while the ownership of firearms is not a constitutional right like it is in the US, having passed all the Federally mandated safety courses and training, RCMP background checks, purchasing memberships at firing ranges, etc., I feel that I’m well within my right to own and use whatever type of firearm I can legally purchase. here’s where the conflict of interest sort of sets in. As an individual who has proven to the authorities that I am well able to safely handle these weapons and feel it is my right to do so in an uninhibited manner, I also think that registration and monitoring of ownership is a good idea. that’s where the political class comes from in part. gun owners feel that the government treats them as criminals because the RCMP has their information, knows how many guns they have and so on. My thoughts are that if you’re willing to take the required safety courses and go through the registration process, you have no reason to argue about the information you openly provide to these agencies. the problem I have is when agencies, or individuals, suggest that an object I’ve trained to use, allowed personal information to be kept, and ensure that policing agencies know of its whereabouts at all times, tell me that I’m now not allowed to own it.

a common argument against handgun ownership is “they’re only designed to kill.” so are rifles. that argument really holds no substance when someone can just as easily kill an animal as they can another person with a hunting rifle.

if you really wanted to make headway with that argument, you’d change it to focus on penalizing unsafe and irresponsible owners of any type of firearm. you know, like those assholes in Saskatchewan who poached ducks and were stupid enough to post video of it online. the gun community in this country was screaming its head off at the judge to hand them the maximum sentence to make an example of them as poor firearms owners and users. of course that didn’t happen, leaving most of us shaking our heads wondering why, if the community using these firearms is asking for a precedent to be set, a judge wouldn’t do just that even when presented with overwhelming evidence and opportunity to.

I’m fairly certain that opponents of firearms ownership have no idea what the cost is, both financially and time wise, to be properly trained, licensed and registered to own a gun in Canada. having been through the process many, many times I can say that it’s not painless and it’s not as efficient as people make it out to be sometimes. yet I’ve still put up with it, as have other family members, because we believe in responsible and safe ownership. opponents to guns often conveniently forget that people like us exist sometimes.

but back to Jack. I applaud you for the free vote, I question you solutions to the current registry, and don’t forget that those constituents who are telling your MPs how to vote will not be shy about speaking up if you try to enforce any sort of ban anywhere in the country.

right. that’s all I’ve got for now. back to the packing.

been a rough week. next week isn’t looking like much of a break either.

yes. yes it is what you think it looks like. it is indeed a man in a wet suit, snorkel and flippers in the midst of of faceplant off a bike in 30 degree weather. yes. yes those kinds of things do apparently happen sometimes. and they happen at places like Shake the Lake.

were i given the choice between riding said bike in said wet suit off the sidewalk and onto more pavement, or off a boardwalk and into the lake just a few blocks down, i’d probably go for the lake option.

since all the smoke from the BC forest fires has come to town, it’s looked like the fucking apocalypse outside for the last day and a half. seriously, we couldn’t see a whole block out of the windows at the office today.

now it’s raining and hailing like nobody’s business.

yesterday we had some morning show DJs from the newest radio station in town show up to our practice to try it out, take some video and see what all the fuss is about. given that I rarely actually listen to a radio station from here (thank jebus for the Fox streaming online in the morning!) I had no idea who they were or where they were from. if you’ve bothered to follow that link you’ll see that it’s an easy listening station. totally the target demographic of roller derby… but whatever, they were fun people. the chick was dressed kind of like a flamingo that wished it were a giraffe and then dressed in dayglo, leopard print spandex. and for about an hour I was ‘training’ them to be derby players. they don’t have the video up yet, but when i find it i’ll post it. likewise, i don’t know if they talked about it at all this morning seeing as how my listening habits at work primarily consist of the Jeff O’Neil Show and podcasts in the Smodcast Network.

in any case, it was all good fun watching them try not to fall on their ass and break something. basically, my teaching them sounded like this

*watching them skate towards the wall at the other side*

“if you want to stop, the easiest way for you to do that is to take a knee like so.”

*demonstrate how to take a knee.*

BLAM!

“…or run into the wall. that works too.”

these are my new skates. i won’t say how much they cost. they are shiny and awesome.

i broke them in reffing at the CRDA championship today.

now i am tired.

no i will sleep.

one last thing, you have to pick a song that your story has to be read along with.

so yesterday we doled out the cupcakes and whatnot for the birthday of one of our superintendents who works out of our office here. my boss told me to go find him the manliest card i could find. not being able to find one in a store, i proceeded to come home and make one up. the end result looked something like this:

the rest of the images are up on my flickr for all to see. then i went around the floor to have people sign it and everyone was like “this… is fucking amazing!” true story.

we pull little pranks and stuff at work sometimes, like switching the keys around on keyboards, switching out the usb receivers for mice, unplugging cables, little random shit that. my boss pulled one on me yesterday that had me sitting there speechless for a good half hour. by the by, i have the coolest boss in the world. you might think your boss is cool, but your boss really isn’t cool. my boss could bitch slap The Most Interesting Man in the World and still get him to her buy a beer without asking. can your boss do that? the answer is no, no they cannot.

anyway, yesterday afternoon we’re all doing whatever it is we do in the office, my (work) phone rings, i look over to see ‘DVD THMP HLTH REG” which in real english is the David Thompson Regional Health District. earlier in the day they were bugging me about not liking needles or having blood drawn and about never ever going to have blood drawn because fuck that blood is in you to live. so, of course, my immediate reaction was “jesus christ they set me up for a blood donor appointment WHAT THE FUCK.” so i pick up the phone and give my “Commercial Vehicle Enforcement, Patrick speaking” voice…

“Hello, is this patrick?”

“Yes.”

“Hi Patrick, I’m responding to your ad in the paper.”

“…my what?”

“I’m responding to your personal ad you have in the paper.”

“… …. ……. .. . no?”

“No?”

“…no…?”

“oh, ok.” *click*

“DID YOU GUYS PUT MY PHONE NUMBER IN A GODDAMN NEWSPAPER????”

snickering and laughter all around.

so I’m fairly certain there isn’t really an ad, but I’m not sure because they keep asking me if my phone’s rung anymore. so yeah.

so then about a half hour later, after sitting there in basically dead silence, i messaged my boss on our office msn type thing and said “this is the part in the movie where the guy goes ‘Well played Goldfinger, well played’ But then James Bond comes in and proceeds to kick some ass.”

then she asks “did she at least sound cute?”

to which i say “only strange people answer those ads. really strange people. stranger than people who answer those things on the internet.”

so that was m friday, cupcakes, cards and personal ads. how about yours?

not a fan of the new flickr page. just putting it out there. simplicity overlooked in the name of flashy buttons in my opinion.

this week has been an odd mix of clusterfuck and absolute brilliance.

just gonna chill out tonight and try to get back into a book.

this is what i do when i drive places. not so much the talking to the camera about random shit part, but the playing music and singing along part.

on another note, went skinny dipping for the very first time last night. not saying that beer was a factor…

we have a new arena to practice in after our rent agreement in Sylvan Lake is up after august. people were saying we had to go in and clean up some. i figure, ok, it’s an arena so we sweep the floors, wash some stuff and get to it. yeah no. more like, tear down the walls, wash the floor, rent giant fans to dry it, scrub, vacuum, mop, point at places most likely to have mould growing, barricade some doors to stop people breaking in, board up the broken windows… you know at the end of Clerks 2 when they’re fixing up the Quick Stop after it burned down in that montage sort of thing? yeah, this is one of those kinds of places. except in real life there’s no montage and it probably won’t look near as good when it’s cleaned up.

think i’ll eat something then head down to the skatepark to see if theres anything worth taking pictures of.

i went to look at another place today after work. it’s the best place i’ve probably ever looked at and i’m super stoked on the price. it’s pretty much the same layout as Chad and Danielle’s place, only smaller. BUT. i didn’t have to put the laminate or tile or paint or appliances in here. ok, that was pretty fun when we all played at being Mike Holmes fixing up their place…

i walked in and was like “i need to move here. now.” except not right now. more like start of september now. which they didn’t have an issue with. plus, since i don’t have a pet they said they’d knock the price down by $25 a month.

it has a DISHWASHER. i haven’t lived in a place with a dishwasher since i moved out to go to Ottawa. that’s eight years without a dishwasher. and a double sink. seriously. AND a giant built in microwave. AND all new appliances.

k, you get the idea.

the lady said they have one other application in, but that mine will probably get preference. don’t know why, but let’s go with i was super charming and awesome. shut up, it could happen.