The Fellowship of the Ring (the first book in the Lord of the Rings) is out! Though I haven't seen it yet, those that haven't read the book since elementary school can get a quick refresher by reading Aule's Summary of The Lord of the Rings

Wow, what a windstorm on Thursday night! Patrick went to work on Friday morning and came straight home because there was no work to do! The fiberglass molds that are stored in the yard were blown away, right through the fence into the farmer's field across the street! I think he said the Fraser river was flooded right up to their back door too.

I went to work, and there were branches everywhere, and a remnant of a fallen tree that had already been cleared from the road. There was no power at work because the substation had flooded and blew a transformer. Everyone was going home. Funny, because one of our business units is backup power. There is this huge marketing display in our reception area that has a picture of a dark neighbourhood with one house with lights. The caption reads "What Blackout?" Very ironic. I ran out of stuff to do at about 3 so I went home.

Safeway apparently was crazy on Sunday after they issued another storm warning -- everyone stocking up on everything. I was checking the power outages on Sunday night and there were still 2000 people without power in Abbotsford and lots of pockets of hundreds of people without power all over the lower mainland. I wonder how close this was to being declared a minor disaster.

On the night of Dec 5th, I had a dream that I was attending a memorial for the massacre at L'Ecole Polytechnique. There was a boy there who didn't understand what the big deal was, why there were so many people there for something that happened so long ago, so far away. In my dream I felt a very deep understanding of the significance of the event and carefully explained it to the boy. I explained that it was important because it was something that should never have happened, and we must remember it so that we can prevent it from ever happening again, and to be aware of problems in society that may have contributed to it. The boy understood and nodded and I was relieved.

I woke the next morning and wondered why I would dream such a thing and then I remembered that it was the anniversary of the attack, December 6. I hadn't seen or read anything about it in the news earlier. I think my subconscious brought it up to remind me. I found that very strange.

What will they think of next?

Some guy figured he didn't like getting his hands greasy from eating popcorn, so he invented the popcorn fork. What is wrong with using your hands?

Well, all the power to him...they sell for $1 each and if he sells a couple million of them, he'll be a millionaire. Hey, only 1 in 10 people need to buy one.