Chocolicious!

I appear to have been remiss in posting lately. I've been off freezing my brain, literally. -31C plus windchill on Tuesday morning was a rude surprise, especially as I had to work in it. Yikes.

Here's my self-portrait under a highway bridge.


Mrs. Spit would like you to know that it is I, not she, who is the big fan of chocolate in our relationship. While she appreciates and consumes chocolate... it would appear that I am a far bigger fan of the confection.

To this end, I was rather pleased to read that, not only is chocolate a slice of bliss across the tastebuds, it is... wait for it... a superfood! Acai berries? Who needs them - pass the Hershey's Kisses!

Think I'm joking? Here's the link...

Star Wars?

Yes, it's Star Wars. And thanks to this handy site with links to the videos, you can enjoy a fan made documentary about Star Wars that fans will enjoy.

Here's the link to the story, and all 14 youtube vids.

And here's the synopsis from the above story, to get you interested:

Star Wars Begins is an unofficial commentary to Star Wars, offering an insight into the development and creation of film. The documentary combines video from the movie itself with seen and unseen behind the scenes footage, rare audio from the cast and crew, alternate angles, bloopers, reconstructed scenes, text facts and more to give an in-depth look at the process which brought the film to the big screen.

Now Mrs. Spit will have something to keep her busy the next time she's stuck in a hotel with work again!

What's in a name?

A friend sent me to this map. If you're interested in the origins of country names, it's pretty cool!

Map link

Thanks to the Canadian Government's commercials of years past, I already knew that we're named for an Aboriginal name for "village".

For me, I'd like to go back to the land of wood and water, it's awesome! (i.e. Jamaica)

Groundhog day?

Driving down the highway this morning, I heard several times about how this or that or this other rodent is predicting an early spring - with the exception of the mouse (or whatever) from Balzac who saw clear skies and calls for another 6 weeks of winter.

Seriously? Let me check my calendar... right, we're in the year 2011. I know this is all in good fun, but seriously, are we really attributing the weather to the randomness of clouds around when a rodent is pulled into the open? Talk about the futility of science education.

The truly annoying part is that for the majority of my life, I've not lived anywhere that has had a winter of less than 5 solid months of cold and snow. And mid-march as the end of winter? That's an early winter almost EVERY winter for me.

Monday?

It's the last day of January, and coincidentally it's also Monday.

My day started off slowly, back to work, into the office, etc... get my cup of tea and start my morning work. Mostly going through what I did last week so I could submit the inspections.

Then I heard the first surprising news - my office laid off a couple of my co-workers. That was really enough to take the shine off my shoes, as one of them was a guy I've worked with lately. Personable guy. I talked to my supervisor, who was apologetic about not letting me know last week. Um... the layoffs were Tuesday, and I'm finding out Monday after? That's letting just a little time lapse, don't you think? I had my cell on me all week while out of the office... but anyways.

The good news is that, even though I am not swamped with work, the people I work for are looking for work to keep me busy in spite of the lag. Apparently that wasn't the case for my co-workers who were rather light on work (as winter is so light on construction - their area of operations - who knew?) and who were cut loose.

Then I had the other shoe drop. A friend of mine informed me that a co-worker of hers was involved in an industrial accident at the workplace. He was alive, not sure if he'd have all his limbs once they got him out of the machine he was trapped in.

All of a sudden, my life is looking so much better. Really, counting my blessings is suddenly easier to do. Not only do I have the ability to refuse unsafe work, but my company actually makes me be safe in my job. You know, if I had to do maintenance on a major machine, I'd have a lock-out padlock so someone couldn't turn it on, by accident, when I was inside of it. Although not actually part of my job description, at least I know that it would be part of the equation if it were. Not so for my friend's co-worker.

So while I might have had some disturbing news from a couple different directions this chilly Monday in January - holy cow, it could have been a lot worse. My thoughts are, somewhat understandably, on Victor in the hospital with an unknown prognosis for tomorrow, and Garry at home with his wife and toddler with no income for tomorrow.

A Facebook game - worth playing?

Ok, so as a young boy, I played a lot of computer games. Small surprise that, really - except that I was doing it in the early 80s. This game was apparently first started in 1971... and believe it or not, Oregon Trail is coming to Facebook on Groundhog Day.

Yes, more time wasted on Facebook - coming your way...

Except, this one might actually be a game that involves more than clicking away - and it might even involved, scary thought, learning.

It's been 25 years... where has the time gone?

It seems to me that this day is the Kennedy Assassination of my generation.

Where were you, when you heard that the Challenger blew up? For me, I had just gotten into my first class of the day at high school, English. My teacher told a completely incredulous classroom that the Challenger had blown up. We thought he was making a bad joke. Until he reiterated it, that he had seen the news before coming to school that day, 25 years ago, today.

I remember going home and gluing myself to the TV, switching through the different coverage, looking for news. It was my first real exposure to a shock such as that, at an age when I was able to start to comprehend the horrific nature of 7 people being blown into a fireball.

Today, the shuttle is on its last legs. Only a few more flights into orbit and NASA hangs up the whole programme, with no replacement in the wings. Sad, really.

Here's a photo piece on the Challenger, with a focus on the teacher in space, who didn't quite make it there, Christa McAuliffe. It truly puts a human face on the events of that day.