Sentimental Xmas Memory #2

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christmas, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, ice wolves, junior hockey, kids hockey, la ronge, pond hockey, training, working out

No five for Friday today. Instead another holiday flashback.

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With temperatures in southern Ontario hitting double digits for most of the last week, it doesn’t feel like Christmas is barely two weeks away. It makes it more palatable to drive a car in flimsy Under Armour shorts at 6am, without benefit of heated seats, and it sadly makes it impossible to skate on a pond on natural ice.

Which brings me to Sentimental Christmas Memory #2. Pond hockey.

Climate change deniers can deny all they want. The winters are shorter and warmer now. If you want to argue about something, argue about why that has happened. But the fact that it’s going on around us is irrefutable.

I remember as a kid practically exploding at the prospect of Christmas vacation. Christmas was, for sure, a very big deal in our home and my parents deserve a lot of respect and credit for making it that way for us. We didn’t have a lot of money but I never went without anything I needed. A lot of things I didn’t have, well, I didn’t need. Some of the traditions around my Christmas at home survive to this day with our family and I suspect some of them will move along with my sons when the time comes.

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Sonny’s Dream

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AUS Hockey, canadian politics, competing, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, music, ron hynes, sonny's dream, training, working out

Sonny don’t go away, I am here all alone
And your daddy’s a sailor, and he never comes home
And the nights get so long, and the silence goes on
And I’m feeling so tired, I’m not all that strong

— Sonny’s Dream, by Ron Hynes

 I’m foregoing the usual Five-for-Friday with a musical interlude.

A guy you’ve never heard of from a place you’ve probably never been who is famous for a song I’m guessing you don’t know the words to died yesterday. I owe him much.

I never met Ron Hynes, the Newfoundland folk singer who among hundreds and hundreds of songs wrote a barroom howler called Sonny’s Dream.

If you read the lyrics sober, it is a profoundly sad and moving song about a young man trapped in the service of his mother, long abandoned by his father for life on the seas. She implores him to never leave; he stares down the road to the cities he’s never seen and dreams of something better.

If you sing the song in a pub in a less-than-sober state, you will make friends, have a grand time, completely miss the sadness of the song, and possibly marry someone you sang with.

When I was a boy we didn’t party with Dinos

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canadian politics, competing, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, journalism, training, working out

Live from Toronto, It’s Friday Night!

When I was a kid in university we amused ourselves on weekends with the usual, time-tested distractions, which given the family friendly nature of this space I will won’t bother detailing.

You all grew up and did most of the same things with varying degrees of effort/enjoyment/criminal prosecution.

Kids now do all that stuff plus – they go to parties at museums.

On the weekend, Chris opted to stay in town Friday night because he was going out with some friends to the Royal Ontario Museum to . . . party? Yes, party.

Five for Friday, Vol II (Monday edition)

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AUS Hockey, cape Breton, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, Mother Webbs

The view from the shotgun seat.

Five for Friday seemed like such a clever idea 10 days ago. Then the combination of work, travel, and my diminishing memory conspired to override that thought.

So just to keep it going, let’s pretend today’s update is just a late version of Friday.  On with the show.

1. I’m actually writing this portion of the entry on Saturday morning. Dal lost 4-2 last night to Moncton. It was a decent game and except for about an eight minute stretch it could have gone either way. Our guy played well I thought and was certainly the most physical presence in the game, delivering one highlight reel open ice hit that was a show stopper. But he’d rather have two points for a win. Back at it tonight again St. Thomas and Dal really needs to win this one. Obviously I’ll update things later.