June 8, 2010
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Are you from Canada…do you play hockey?

Here it is June, and the Stanley Cup playoffs will soon come to an end. I have to say I’ve been enjoying the games. I like playoff hockey and I like the international tournaments as well. It’s a much different game than you see during the NHL regular season. In fact, if teams played hockey that was anywhere near as interesting during the regular season, I might pay attention. Unfortunately, anytime I’ve tuned into a regular season game, it’s put me right to sleep.

As gentle readers of this blog know, I’m not a big sports fan. I’m not the guy who knows all the players and follows seasons and trades and stats and all that stuff. I’m the guy who jumps on the bandwagon at playoff time. This time around, I was cheering for Montreal because, um…uh…well because they’re just down the road I guess. My my non-expert point of view there are a couple obvious problems. One is that the season is way too long. I think that’s what makes regular season games so boring. It must be really gruelling for those guys to go out there night after night and try to play good hockey. Why is the season too long? I presume it’s to pay the salaries. Like other major sports, it’s big business. I realize that none of this will change. Here in Toronto, people keep filling the arena even though we haven’t had a winning team on the ice in an embarassingly long time.

And so, I tune in at playoff time. I wish playoff time was earlier in the year though, say around March. It just seems right that hockey season should end as winter ends. Meanwhile, I’ve jumped on a new bandwagon since Montreal got beat up by Philidelphia. Go Blackhawks. Doesn’t Stan Mikita play for that team?

June 7, 2010
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I was thinking about…

…the music of Regina folky Don Freed. I wondered if I could find a video of him performing Being a Pirate. I didn’t, but I found this nice cover of it….

You can’t be a pirate with all of your parts. Truth that.

Here’s Mr. Freed playing Talkin’ Mysterious Prostate. Har!

…and one more, just for kicks…here’s All Night Long

June 6, 2010
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Hash

Recently, I created a post about making hash. A couple gentle readers suggested that I ought to have presented a photo with that post, so tonight when I made it again, I pulled up my socks and took a photo. This one had leftover baked potato, leftover bbq chicken, ham, corn, mushrooms, eggplant, onions, tomatoes, scotch bonnet flakes, salt, pepper and a little commercial black bean sauce. It was very tasty indeed, and I have some for tomorrow’s lunch too.

June 6, 2010
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Deluge

I took the dogs out this morning to play with their buddies, and it poured and poured. The wind was up and it was chilly for June, that’s for sure. It’s late morning and the rain has finally let up, at least for now. The sky is gray, that kind of gray that means this system is socked in for a while. If weather forcast is to be believed, though, it’s going to get sunny and warm on Monday, followed by a few days featuring variable cloudiness.

Here’s Fleetingdays, one of my YouTube favourites, playing chemnitzer concertina:

June 6, 2010
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In the Garden

Our dry spring is quickly turning into a wet spring, as it rained again all last night. Meanwhile, our garden has been thriving. Tuffy P. took some photos the other day.

Peonies

Poppies

Peonies

White peonies, just starting to bloom

Poppies

June 5, 2010
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So Sad

I was out in the woods today and found plenty of trees with oyster mushrooms. Unfortunately, they were all too far gone to pick. I had hoped there would have been a new fruiting with all the rain we’ve had, but all the oysters I saw today have been around at least a week and in some cases longer.

I did find these curiosities though. I think these are Russulas because of how brittle they were. If they are the Russula that the Lobster mushroom parasite favours, then this is good news because it means the host has arrived.