Phendrana Drifts

I read with awe my friend Alex Abboud and his friend Andy Grabia’s blogs as they embarked on creating their personal summer bucket lists, the ultimate to do list for the summer. I was especially struck with a couple of their suggestions that I too wanted to codify a list for my summer. Those without a neurotic geek in their lives (and I do really pity you and what you are missing) won’t understand this, but we geeks love categorizing and list-making. And I love summer. So it made sense for me to make a list – not for you, but really for me. I want to do these things and the list will provide a good focus.

Before I delve to deep, first I need to steal. From Andy’s list comes my first five. Andy’s list is filled with the simplest of joys, but simple doesn’t mean bad. Not at all. I’m jealous because if you had asked me before prompting me with suggestions, I may have produced similar pap to any other materialistic or shallow person in our society. But that isn’t what summer should be about.

1. Watch the sun rise
2. Watch an evening thunderstorm
3. Howl at the moon
4. Dip my bare feet in a river, stream or lake
5. Watch the northern lights

I love every last one of these, and importantly I have every intention of sharing each of these with my beautiful wife.

Likely what inspired me to do this more than anything else was Alex’s suggestion for “Drinks, popcorn and politics at Martini’s” – because I do that too! I do it with Alex and many others! And it is awesome! And if that can be on Alex’s list it should be a part of mine. But that is far from Alex’s only great suggestion, so I’m going to be adding to my thievery.

6. Drinks, popcorn and politics at Martini’s
7. Publish two blog posts per week
8. Live simply
9. Visit Transcend Coffee in its new Garneau location
10. Read two books per month

Having stolen my first 10 bucket list items, I need to make my own contribution, as modest as it might be.

11. Go to the dog park once a week
12. Go on 50 evening walks with Allie
13. See the buffalo on Elk Island
14. Have a fantastic crafted beer at the Jasper Brewing Co.
15. Have a fantastic crafted beer at the Grizzly Paw in Canmore
16. Celebrate Raven finishing grade nine
17. Celebrate Wesley finishing his first course for the Canadian Forces
18. Visit the patios of the Sugarbowl, the Black Dog and Ceili’s
19. Worship the sun at the Legislature grounds
20. Plan and cook a masterpiece BBQ meal for my family
21. Spend far more time outside
22. Wear shorts 80% of the time
23. See some live music
24. Finish Red Dead Redemption
25. Finish Metroid: The Other M
26. Paint all of my already owned Warhammer 40,000 models
27. Find and renew my library card and stop borrowing Allie’s
28. Travel
29. Listen to music and drink a couple of libations in my yard
30. Have a great Saturday on Whyte Avenue
31. Play catch or frisbee in a park
32. Swim in a lake
33. Play with my cat in the sun
34. Have ice cream
35. Be more spontaneous – the opposite of list writing
36. Grab a hot dog from the hot dog vendor
37. See some live sports
38. Have an epic board game
39. Have an epic Warhammer 40,000 game
40. Make certain my family knows I love them and how much they mean to me

So, what do you want to do this summer?

I had a fantastic day, and I had no idea any of it was going to happen when I woke up. I got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. I went to work and Allie and I agreed to stop for coffee at work. My coffee order didn’t go… well, but no bother, it was still good coffee and Allie drove me to work. I did a few things at the office, and then headed out to do some errands, having no idea I was bound to blessed.

I got downtown, couldn’t find the new Moleskine notebook I saw earlier, couldn’t find pens. Then I remembered the Olympic ceremony at Churchill was at lunch, and I was right there!

I got to Churchill Square to find it buzzing – hundreds had assembled to see our city’s Olympians. The athletes were bagpiped in and I had the pleasure to hear the following conversation between a father and his two year old son.

Dad: [Pointing to the parade of athletes coming in] Do you see mommy? There she is!

Son: There’s mommy! I love mommy!

Later, when our anthem was being sung by the whole crowd the son belted it out every word with amazing gusto. Following that we swarmed the Olympians as they came off stage, and I got to see Shannon Szabados’ gold medal up close. Very shiny.

While I was watching the ceremony, I was also looking at the #yeg hashtag search on Twitter, and saw a curious tweet:

@idarknight: RT @naidoo Largest aircraft in the world landing in #yeg and nobody knows what it’s carrying! http://bit.ly/bZoGkG

I clicked on the link to discover that the Antonov An-225 was en route to Edmonton, landing in 3 hours. I was entranced. Allie, whose work is relatively close to the International Airport, had bizarrely brought her camera to work for no particular reason. I let her know, she worked some stuff at work, I let my boss know I was heading off to see a plane and I started on an adventure to get to Allie’s work and then drive to see a plane whose wingspan is 290 feet and can carry almost a million pounds.

En route to her work my friend Blake tweeted me asking where I was going to watch it, I gave coordinates and we met up with each other along with Jill in the parking lot of the Leduc Chamber of Commerce. Jill wanted both video and photos, so she passed me her small camera to take the video while she took several still shots.

The plane was huge – impossibly huge. We first saw it on the horizon, and it looked small. And slow. Then we did the math – it was going a fair rate of speed but was so big that it looked slow. It wouldn’t for long. It circled around and then came at us – I still can’t get over how big that plane was in the sky. A WestJet passenger plane flew over right before and it was big, but nothing like this.

I felt so lucky to see it in person.

The plane is picking up helicopters and cargo bound for our women and men in Afghanistan.

We got home, nice enough for steaks on our BBQ, and sat down to watch a movie I was told to watch many years ago, but didn’t get around to – The Big Lebowski. I can’t imagine why I avoided it, or failed to see it – I thought it was fantastic. Quirky and loveable.

I’ve had such a great day.

I seriously have no idea what to bring, but I’m excited about YEG swap. A old-fashioned swap meet in the digital age, you can read about tonight’s event on Facebook.

You would think such an event would motivate me to do something like housework in order to find something but alas I am far too lazy the past 36 hours. We’ll see if I find something other than a spare men’s bike in our basement before 7:00, but there remains a strong chance I’ll be playing video games instead until it is time to go… maybe my ancient CD player… but that seems like a lot of work to bring up. Hmm… will visit the basement before heading out. Hope to see you there

UPDATE: Forces beyond my control have conspired against us – I will be MIA from YEG Swap…