I must be on curling-crazy pills!

So it turns out Townie's not the only one who has to watch his temper with curling*. Though granted, my problem tends to be OFF the ice, not ON it :P

I may or may not have just "bitched out" our local rec. coordinator.

Because of curling drama.

Oops.

Actually, that's probably the way he'll tell the story. If I were to tell the story, I'd probably say that I stood up for myself, something I'm not really good at in my professional/social life. And something I've said in the past I really need to improve. So really, it's a personal accomplishment. Kinda, haha.

You see, we've been having endless problems with setting up the curling club. Granted it's not been operational for a couple years... so it's like any bit of machinery that's not been running for an extended period of time: rusty.

As you might remember, first it was the rocks. Somehow they grew legs and walked off. Not all of them, but enough that we can't have both sheets of ice going at the same time. Rocks are expensive. They run anywhere from 500-1500 dollars a pop. Not per set. PER ROCK. And that doesn't include shipping. So we think we'll have rocks next week. We think. But we've been pestering our rec coordinator for MONTHS to have the second sheet up and running. It's been half-done since before Christmas.

And frankly, I'm sooo sick of hearing club members question why it's not finished. I have been relaying the information, but nothing is being done on the other end.

And then last weekend, there was the Avaataq Cup. The Avaataq brings in young strapping hockey men from all over the territory for 5 gruesome days of hockey. We were told we couldn't curl Thursday night because they needed the curling club as a change room. We didn't say much, and thought oh well, it's just one week. No biggie.

That is until last night. When we arrived for our 8 o'clock game and saw the ice effed up beyond repair.

They didn't just use our club for a change room. They stored their smelly hockey bags in the rink...

AND SKATED ON THE CURLING ICE.

Yah. Seriously. Skated on the ice. I couldn't believe it. Sure Rankin's a hockey town. But this is insane.

It was SO DAMAGED our strongest player threw a rock as hard as he could, and it didn't even clear the house on the other end.

Now of course, the rec coordinator isn't listed in the phone book, and I called his sister's place to get it, and she wasn't home... so I had to wait until today to raise the issue.

And well... the brat hung up on me! Of course, that was after he said that curling was a thorn in his side and we had no right to complain because we don't even pay rink fees.

UGRAGH! Seriously? SERIOUSLY? We will PAY you rink fees, if that's what you want. But don't even BEGIN to say that WE are a hassle to YOU, YOU are the ones that didn't make our ice on time. YOU are the ones that somehow managed to lose curling rocks when the league wasn't running. YOU are the ones that said you would clean up the ice on Tuesdays and Thursdays before games (and rarely do). YOU are the ones that "borrowed" our club for a change room and YOU are the ones that SKATED ON OUR ICE.

WE are the ones that have done all the work to get this off the ground. WE are the ones who organized everything. WE are the ones that have tracked down rocks. WE are the ones that are going to PAY for those rocks. WE have offered to clean the ice. WE have said we will do anything to make YOUR job easier.

YOU are the one that didn't have any answers for what we could do.

Next time, I think I'll just take the rocks out to the hockey rink and play there. Maybe that would get our point across...

*Really, this isn't the link I was looking for, turns out TB is more of a gentleman than he lets on. Go figure.

UFC: Un-Freakingbeliveably Crude

Sometimes I wonder how much of myself comes across through my writing. How do YOU guys see me ... versus how I see myself. Though granted you only know the things I want you to know, I only tell you what I want you to hear, but still. Tone and manner of writing can at times say way more than words themselves, so I wonder. Anyways, if nothing else, this post will tell you a little bit more about ME. I guess.

Last night I went to a friend's place for drinks and such. Just a couple of us hanging out, watching TV etc. But the event du soir was some pay-per-view UFC championship thingie. Or else just a regularly-scheduled pay-per-view. I don't know how these things work. Whichever.

Now for those not familiar with UFC (a population I was part of until a couple months ago when another acquaintence turned it on one evening), Wikipedia explains it as...

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a U.S.-based mixed martial arts (MMA) organization, currently recognized as the largest MMA promotion in the world.[2] The UFC is owned and operated by Zuffa, LLC, headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The UFC began as a single-event tournament to find the world's best fighters irrespective of their style, and was based upon Brazilian vale tudo fighting. Although there were a limited number of rules, promoters marketed fighting in the UFC as no holds barred, and contests were often violent and brutal. Early UFC fights were less sport than spectacle, which led to accusations of brutality and "human cock fighting" by Senator John McCain and others.[3] Political pressures eventually led the UFC into the underground, as pay-per-view providers nixed UFC programming, nearly extinguishing the UFC's public visibility.

As political pressure mounted, the UFC reformed itself, slowly embracing stricter rules, becoming sanctioned by state athletic commissions, and marketing itself as a legitimate sporting event. Dropping the no holds barred label and carrying the banner of mixed martial arts, the UFC has emerged from its political isolation to become more socially acceptable, regaining its position in pay-per-view television.

With a cable television deal and expansion into Canada, Europe and new markets within the United States, the UFC as of 2009[update] has experienced a remarkable surge in popularity, along with greater mainstream media coverage. UFC programming can now be seen on Spike in the United States and Canada, as well as in 34 other countries worldwide.

Basically, two men have 15 minutes to beat the crap out of one another in what's essentiall a bare-knuckles-no-rules fight.

I hate it.

I really really really hate it. Not just in a "I hate it I love it I hate it" kinda way.... in a real, honestly genuine, hate it kinda way.

I spent half the night, especially the "title fight" with my hand over my eyes, shield my delicate mind from the sheer brutality of it all. I almost started crying.

The pre-game fights really, okay. That wasn't too bad. Lots of hugging, mounting from behind, funny commentary. But the main fight of the night was just horrible. The walter-weight champion was having a rematch against some other dude. The champion was from Montreal. Woohoo-Canada. Not.

But the Canadian dude was SO MUCH BIGGER than the challenger. He was a big ole hulk of a man with granite abs and biceps of steel.

And he beat the little guy to a pulp.

Not just in the first round.

But the second.

The third

And the fourth.

Shit he probably would have kept going if the match wasn't called off by medical personnel. But for twenty full minutes (the "main fights" get 25 minutes of "pure fighting action" as my friend put it) this guy was slaughtered. I swear, the weight behind his punches was terrifying. And I seriously, honestly seriously, thought that the challenger was going to die. Going to die in front of my eyes, on live television.

It really could have happened. And the very thought just is so frightening.

What the hell kind of society are we to champion this kind of brutality? Why do we watch this? Why do two 20-something girls on a Saturday night SEEK OUT this kind of "entertainment" and then honestly watch it with interest and lack of disgust?

Don't they REALIZE that it's real? That hundreds of blows to the head in a matter of minutes can most certainly kill a man? Why would anyone watch that? Am I that much of a wussy pacifist that I stand isolated from the grander flesh-hungry portion of the population? Am I really alone?

I don't know. I just can't ever handle that again. If I ever get invited over for UFC again, I'll "just say no." It's too hard on my brain and my heart otherwise.

**Sidenote, Georges St-Pierre, the Canadian fighter, was actually named the 2008 Canadian Athlete of the Year by Sportsnet. Twisted.

A rock and a hard place

I am so stressed out right now, it's not even funny.

And the worst part is I'm stressed out about something that should be a PLEASURE to think about. But it's not.

I think I'm going to just start hating vacation. It seems to make more sense.

So CBC North staff are given a stipend twice a year to help offset travel costs. That money appears on a paycheque in October and then again in April. In order to get that money, you have to sign a form. And you also get two "travel days" because, as we all know, it takes usually a full day to arrive "down south".

Pretty sweet deal.

But here's the catch. You have to use that stipend (aka you have to LEAVE the territory) before the next one is issued or it becomes taxable income. Otherwise its tax-free.

And now the complication: I had planned on staying in the North for Christmas. It was going to suck. I have acknowledged that. It might very well kill me. I had come to terms with that as well. But I have to have my "first Christmas away from the family" some time. And it looked like 2008 was going to be it.

The trade-off was I was going to try to go to PEI in the spring/late winter. A year is a long time to go without seeing your dad and your grandfather.

But my sister graduates this year. And I missed her high school graduation and prom because I was in France. I can't miss her university graduation. Her graduation is in May.

And the boy and I had talked about going on vacation in April and/or August.

And there had been tentative discussions of a condiment reunion (perhaps somewhere HOT) this year during Robyn's spring break. But those were very tentative plans.

And my mom just pointed out that while I had used up all my vacation (and even had to take days without pay) in August... the way the vacation is set up this year I would only have to take the 29-31st off to get over a week off (CBC gives employees the 25th, 26th and 1st and 2nd). Meaning I would have enough time to go home to PEI after all, with only taking a few days off.

Oh, and I've also got to try and juggle the cost of a plane ticket out of here with the temptation to use the extra cash to pay off debts and the like.

I just can't deal with all this. No matter what I do, no matter what I decide I am going to disappoint someone. And in the end it just seems like I'm going on vacations for OTHER people. And I don't have enough time or money to do all of them.

So I'm tempted to just become a hermit and build myself an igloo and live in it for the next year so I don't have to deal with any of this.

Broken spirit

One of the hardest things about living up here is there seems to be a lot of pessimistic people.

People who resist change not because they don't like the ideas or the people who think of them, and not even because they don't WANT change, but because these kind of things have not caught on in the past. And so you better not even bother.

This has happened twice in the past week. There is an idea that friends and I have cooked up, that appears to have support - because we've felt it out, asked people what they think. But then randomly someone says, usually in a really loud voice and a know-it-all tone, "Nope. Won't ever happen. Not here. It's Rankin."

It's just so discouraging. It's not like I'm sitting here, proposing we all drive on the left hand side of the road, instead of the right. Yes, that would be a fair response. No, not here. Never. It's Rankin. People do not drive on the left hand side of the road in Rankin. It's never been that way, and it never will be. Point finale.

But we're talking about something as simple (in one case) as curling. There is a curling rink in Rankin. Friends have put the wheels in motion to have a curling league. Probably, there won't be hundreds who join. Probably, we'll just have a couple, or a handful of teams who play. It's not a revolution. It's people looking for something to do in a small community, when the days get short and the evenings lonely. It's not even like it's a new sport that has never existed in Rankin.

But when it was brought up today, one person's response was out-and-out "It will never work, no one will ever do it. It's Rankin. I live here.I know."

I don't understand this out-and-out refusal to consider people doing something - not even that different - that would make them happy. That isn't hurting anyone.

Why would someone insist on being so negative about another person's pet project? And I guess I don't understand why I take it so personally either. It's not MY brainchild. I've never even thrown a rock in my life. But some friends were excited about setting up a league. And I got caught up in the excitement. But it's hard to be excited when so many people just want to cut you down.

Back to cursing Bell

My first cell phone was with Bell.

We were friends for a little while... and then once I started to get dinged every time I went back to PEI for the summer... I started to curse Bell Canada. I vowed I would switch to Rogers.

And I did.

Shortly thereafter I started to hate Rogers. I cursed their crappy cell phone packages. Every bill I got I dreaded ... the fees, the incidental charges... up up up...

Then I moved to the north. And escaped the corrupt world of cell phone plans.

Until 2 months ago. I found a plan that just couldn't be beat. 20 bucks a month... free phone... and all the fixins' the hitch? Re-sign with Bell.

I had forgotten how much I loooooathed Bell and it's pitiful cell phone service. Until today.

This is the dumbest. Thing. Ever. YOU CAN'T CONTROL WHO SENDS YOU TEXTS.

I'm so annoyed at this. Has anyone heard of some sort of petition/letter writing campaign I can join ?? Let me know.

This time, Bell...you've gone too far.

FEEL MY WRATH!