Let it Snow!

We've had a huge storm over the past days. This picture shows the level of snow on the top of an outside railing - this is from Sunday. We had quite the dump and it continued snowing into and through the night. Schools (I can't think of any that were actually open - this is quite rare here!) were closed yesterday and they continue to be closed today. After the snow - we got an incredibly cold Arctic wind that kept the streets and sidewalks ice-covered. There are white-out conditions on the major routes around Abbotsford and the side roads are very icy. Now, Abbotsford is often the one place in the area that has rain. We just haven't had this much snow in a long time. It's great though, because I have report cards due next week and I'm hoping to get a lot done before the weekend. So, I write this entry. This is supposed to help me 'warm up' to writing comments. Dunno if it's gonna help. Plus I'm listening to Diana Krall's Christmas CD- which is incredible. Pick it up if you can! So I'll leave you with one more picture and I'll try to get to work ;-)

He Don't Need No Steeking Gadgets!

I just saw the latest Bond movie, Casino Royale and WOW!Daniel Craig presents us with a different Bond. He bleeds, rarely looks neat and tidy and even eats with his mouth full. He is definitely the closest Bond to the original Bond featured in Ian Fleming's novels. Craig is a Bond who is polite only when it gets the job done. He is sort of the 'MacGyver' of Bonds, using whatever is at hand to pummel his enemies. His only true gadgets are ones any of us could buy at the local electronics store - laptops, cell phones, etc. He has a gun every now and then, but it usually gets lost and he just pounds the other guy. He runs after a guy more often in this film that I ever remember a Bond doing. The best chase sequence I have ever seen is right at the beginning and - get this - there's no cars involved! Well, there is a bulldozer, but only for a few seconds...
He has few one liners. He is a very cold Bond. After he kills someone, he only looks coldly down to make sure that the other is truly dead. I thought for sure he would say 'Nailed him!' after killing a guy with a nail gun, but....nothing and that shows how well done this movie is. It avoids the camp and cartoonish-ness of the previous Bonds. Brosnan came close to this kind of coldness in The World is Not Enough, but not this close. He still was too neat and tidy. I appreciated how this movie took the time to tell the story, although I did find the double and triple crossing hard to follow, but maybe that's the point - Bond is new and he's learning what life as a double '0' really is like. It's not an easy to understand this life and the only one he can really trust in is himself. And the 'bad guy' isn't always so easy to identify. It's a lesson he learns over and over in this movie and we learn it while having our breath taken away.

The REAL 'Best of Abbotsford/Mission'

A local paper here, which shall not be named here in order to sound like I'm being responsible or something, gives out 'Readers' Choice' Awards regularly to local businesses and the 5 or so regular readers fill out ballots and send them in. (An aside - this paper was on strike a while back and when they finally came back in print after a whole summer of no paper, I said to my father-in-law, 'Well, they're back!"
He just looked puzzled and said, 'Where did they go?'
"They went on strike."
"Oh, I didn't notice.")
Now, these readers are kinda weird in their tastes. Some of the regular winners make sense and I agree with, but SOME are just ridiculous.

Then comes THE POST (No website yet - it's THAT new!) A new paper trying to make its way in town. I'm not sure about the 'twin cities' thing and if that'll catch on, but who knows? Probably the only paper that will actually tell it like it is, it looks like. I notice that the POST has none of those annoyingly wasteful Plan A ads. This is good, because the ad-campaign itself could end up defeating the plan due to the high amount of tax dollars being spent wastefully by city hall to keep people from actually thinking that there is more than one option to vote for. But I digress from the news of major importance! It actually has a restaurant critic, anonymous of course, that toodles around town to find out what's really good. Now she has only written twice, but both sound great. Want a good breakfast? Don't listen to readers' choice - go to Rivers Restaurant. This week she reviewed Wee Chippie in Mission which actually has deep fried Mars bars on the menu. Hmmm...sounds interesting....
(Another aside: The Deep fried mars bar scored alot of hits on Google! Sounds terrible, awful and I gotta try one at least one time in my life!) Now I want the critic to actually find out the best Chinese food in Abbotsford, because the one that wins it every year must be bribing the paper-that-must-not-be-named, because it is not the best by a long shot. It's cheaper though, so maybe that must be the 5 readers actual criteria