As Hot As Vegas - In Yellow Grass Saskatchewan

Hey!! We do have hot weather up here sometimes!! I can quit surfing and longing for southern U.S. summer weather updates (in the summer, lol) and look in my own back yard.

(So what if it only happened 70 years ago?? It could happen again!)

On July 5, 1937, Canada's highest temperature record was set, in Yellow Grass Saskatchewan. It got as high as 45C (114F), and hasn't been that hot since.

I know it still gets pretty hot in the interior (Osoyoos regularly gets close to 40C in the summer and the lake gets to around 24C), but 45C is pretty impressive ;-)
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Dr. Oz's Anti-Aging Wine In The Blue Zones

Ok, Dr. Oz, I heard ya say it was mostly the alcohol and not the grapes that has the anti-aging effect in wine!! (I knew I liked Dr. Oz ;-)

Oprah then said something like "so then you could have a shot of vodka every day instead?" (I paraphrase - I can't recall what her exact wording was).

I like wine - don't get me wrong. I prefer white or zin to red though, and was always under the impression that the health benefits were from the grape skins (hence the red colour in red wine). According to Dr. Oz, though, the alcohol is a significant part of the benefit (provided it's not drank in excess of course).

Hmmm. Does that mean I can keep putting Bailey's in my coffee? Heh heh

Here's an exerpt from the episode recap on www.oprah.com:

Dr. Oz says 90 percent of the benefit of wine is because of its alcohol. The other 10 percent is because it's got an antioxidant called resveratrol.

But the real benefits of drinking wine—red or white—aren't nutritional. "Wine happens at 5 at night when you get together with your friends. It happens with your family. And it's as much the ritual and doing it a little bit every day," Dan says. "They say people who drink two glasses of wine a day outlive those people who don't drink any. But you can't save up and drink 14 on Saturday."

Sounds good to me ;-)
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Calgary Stampeders Win The Grey Cup

Congrats to the Calgary Stampeders for their 22-14 victory over the Montreal Alouettes in the 96th Grey Cup!
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My Dog Is In The Bathtub

Not because he's dirty... noooo, you'd have to go outside to get dirty. MY dog is cowering inside the house, crouched down in the tub... 75 pounds of scardy-cat, trying to hide from the gusting, whistling wind.

I'm not sure what he thinks the tub will do for him. The upside, I suppose, is that he hasn't crawled into my lap (he crawled into my husband's lap a few years ago during a dog fight scene in "Snow Dogs"). Yes, it could be worse.

In his defense, we do have a couple of large trees by our house, and a couple of years ago the wind was bad enough here for trees to fall, slicing open rooves like they were butter. The worst of the damage for us was a tree that split in half in our bad yard - nothing touched our house (thank goodness). All the scary stuff was a in a neighbouring community and covered extensively on TV. Hmmm. I had no idea the dog had been watching ;-)
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The Demise Of Written Language

I just read this interesting article at www.wired.com about the supposed demise of text based blogs.

The author's main point, if I interpreted it correctly, was that there is no longer the same market for long drawn out prose as there was several years ago, and other Internet media that is more image based, such as Flickr, or light on text, such as Twitter or Plurk, is the way of the future.

These platforms, with their limited space for words, enable the not so proficient writer to be on the same level as the skilled wordsmith. This got me thinking about the typical e-mail by many people: there are many abbreviations used, and not much punctuation or capitalization.

Should we be concerned about the generally accepted lack of "proper" language use, or should we embrace this effective and efficient style of the future?