Overall this week went well for us but it was full of strange news.

First, the weekend wasn't a good one for Marsha. It should have been good. She had four big games she was looking forward to watching.

Starting on Saturday with the Minnesota Gophers playing Wisconsin. They got slaughtered. The final score, forty something to twenty something, didn't reflect how badly the game had gone for Minnesota. Marsha turned it off in the 3rd when Minnesota still had less than a dozen points. Later on Wisconsin replaced their real players with fine arts and math majors and then Minnesota could finally score. Marsha was not happy.
http://wcco.com/sports/minnesota.gophers.loss.2.1954907.html

Next up was the Minnesota Twins. I don't know what it is. In the years the Twins go to the playoffs, such as this one, and they meet New York, such as this one, they nearly always get eliminated by New York even if the Twins are the far better team. This time the Twins got eliminated by New York in a three game sweep. Marsha was not happy.
http://wcco.com/sports/twins/another.twins.loss.2.1957660.html

Next up was the BC Lions, the Canadian Football Team. They outplayed Winnipeg handily. However they committed dumb penalty after dumb penalty. On one Winnipeg score the Lions earned themselves 40 yards of penalties. Not over the whole drive, on just the last play. The announcer said that he'd never seen a team lining up to receive a kick-off right on their own goal line. Winnipeg tied it at the last second and then won in overtime when they intercepted a BC pass. Marsha was not happy.
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/football/story/2010/10/11/sp-bc-wpg.html

Finally there was the Minnesota Vikings. They lost to the New York Jets completing the sweep. Marsha had gone to bed at that point.
http://wcco.com/vikings/minnesota.vikings.new.2.1957870.html

Does anyone remember the film 'The Cooler'. It was about a guy who was bad luck. He worked for a casino to just go stand near winning players to get them to lose. He wouldn't do anything, just be there and his bad luck would rub off. We've decided to go into that business ourselves. Starting today, for a reasonable price Marsha will NOT root for your team. For a bit more Marsha WILL root for your teams opponent. E-mail us at this address for details and prices.

In Victoria they unveiled a statue of Emily Carr. Few people know this but Emily Carr is very famous writer and artist from BC. She especially liked portraying aboriginal life and natural settings from this area. There's a mural of her work in Chemainus. To celebrate her works they commissioned a life sized statue to put up near the waterfront. This week they unveiled the statue, several tons of bronze featuring her, her pet monkey and her dog to the public. However within minutes of the unveiling it came out that the plaque on the statue had grammar and spelling errors. Really nice for something honouring a writer.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/10/14/bc-emily-carr-statue-typo.html

Friday there was the senior, well respected, news anchorman on CBC that was introducing a story on cricket farmers in BC, (They raise them to sell to pet stores as food for other critters.) It was late on Friday afternoon and he got tongue tied. What came out was "Some may like them but others find nothing more annoying than the sound of a critic in the middle of the night". Then he started to giggle. He tried to correct but by then he couldn't get any word out so they just ran the tape. Embarrassing to say the least.

Then on Saturday I made dinner. I wanted to make a variation on Spaghetti carbonara crossed with the 'Noodly Stuff" we make fairly often. Normally we use egg noodles, butter and then coat everything with Parmesan cheese and black pepper. This time I used a wonderful lemon basil linguini and figured that with olive oil italian seasoning and a bit of onion it would be good. I boiled the pasta and then drained it. Everything seemed fine. The first indication that things were about to go sideways was when I added the olive oil. Rather than coating everything into a nice slippery jumble, it glued everything together. I soldiered on adding parmesan, spices, and onion but it just ended up a sandy looking lump. The final dish was inedible and worst of all, I have no idea why.

BTW The BC lions lost Saturday night effectively eliminating them from the playoffs for the first time since the late 1990s.

Silly quote of the week
"Yes we've been losing but they've all been close games. Usually one goal." Unfortunately this was said by the coach of the Vancouver Whitecaps Soccer team. You remember soccer, the sport where nearly EVERY game ends up within one goal.

And in other odd news there was the guy who left his telescope out and it set his deck on fire
http://wcco.com/local/mike.lynch.telescope.2.1963406.html

And the lady that was trying to catch her cat and fell out of the window. She spent a night in a St. Cloud hospital, strangely enough alcohol was likely involved. Who could have guessed.
http://wcco.com/watercooler/drunk.cat.chase.2.1962324.html

Hope you all have a good week or at least better than the Twins, Lions, Gophers and Vikings.

Marsh and Doug