So this week a bunch of us were in the office. Significantly we weren’t talking about hockey. Not that I follow hockey, or for that matter pay it any attention at all. Here in Canada though it seems to be a topic of conversation much of the time. Surprisingly, one of the engineers mentioned that he was kinda glad that the NHL was on strike. It seems that one of his pet peeves was when someone would stop by his office to talk sports. He didn’t mind it at a pub but he just found it annoying at the office. This brought to my mind a tactic I’ve used for a number of years. I follow weird sports. For example back in Minnesota people always wanted to talk about the Minnesota Gophers football or basketball, the Vikings, the Twins, the Timberwolves, or whatever NHL teem happened to be in town at the time. My defence was to follow World Rally Championship racing. Nobody knew anything about the WRC and because they knew that was the only sport I followed I both got out of inane chats about “did you see that catch Smith made last night?” yet I was still perceived to be a real guy because I did follow sports of some kind. Unfortunately WRC isn’t televised up here and even the Dakar Rally is nowhere to be found. For a while I was avidly watching the Red Bull Air Racing Series but that went on a hiatus a couple years ago and who knows if it’ll ever come back. I guess I’m down to either open ocean sailing or jai alai.

Speaking of sports I want to avoid though, the news up here has been full of chatter about the US presidential campaign. The day after the debate it was so bad I ended up listening to music all day. I mean come on, we are in Canada, listening to Radio Canada. Is it too much to ask to have Canadian topics? Worst of all, we have already voted. We vote by mail and it has to be sent in well in advance to get there in time. This means that all of the advertising and chatter that leaks over the border is wasted on us. I did have one idea though. A way to increase voter turnout. First let everyone vote by mail. Then tie voter records into the cable companies. The idea would be that once someone has voted, their TV would replace all the political ads and programs with other ads and programs. Once you vote, your TV gets better. I think with this system we’d approach 100% turnout. Heck I think people would be trying to vote years ahead of time. It can’t fail.

And finally this weekend is Thanksgiving. This is the time of year we give thanks for the bountiful harvest, for the great year we’ve had, for how the house project is coming together, and all the rest. We’re getting together with everyone at Barbara’s Monday night to celebrate. In that spirit let me leave you with this final thought:

3X^2+7X-12
(It’s one of the parabolas of Jesus.)

Happy Thanksgiving!
Doug & Marsha

PIX: Sunset over the water, Sunrise on a forgotten web.