It's getting awfully close to playoff time, I heard someone today say they believe it will start on the 21st. I can't wait for this city to erupt in playoff fever. Hopefully we can recreate the atmosphere from the last NHL playoff season. How great that would be.

Tonight, Sportsnet aired the final home game to be televised this season. This is a good and bad thing. The bad: No more hockey on free TV. The good: You can always catch the game at any bar on 17th Ave. Hell yeah!

The flames opened up the scoring in the second period with a sweet one time goal by Chris Simon. The third period staretd out with a massive bang, with two goals in the first 37 seconds. Daymond Langkow banged in a perfact pass from Iginla at 0:05 of the third. Kristian Huselius wasted no time showing Anaheim's goalie, Ilja Bryzgalov that he was the Flames' bitch for the evening, pocketing another pass from Iginla at 0:37.

Kiprusoff was (as usual) outstanding, posting his ninth shutout of the season. Awesome playing the week before the playoffs are set to start. I can not wait!

One of the great things about my moving from Saskatoon to Calgary is the addition of Taco Bell to the list of available fast food restaruants. It is by far my favorite at the moment, and I hit it a couple of times a week, even though there are none within 15 minutes of me.

Taco Bell rules!

Last night marked the beginning of crazytown in Calgary. I watched the game at my buddy Steve's place with my sister, Steve, his brother Rob and one of Rob's buddies. The game was a typically close affair (for the Flames), with Kipper being dominant and the Grinder netting the winner in OT.

Then we headed down to 17th Ave (The Red Mile) and partied with the ten or so thousand people that were out in full Flames regalia. It was a pretty good time, and the cops pretty much had let to people start partying and shut down the streets, instead of being the Gestapo that they were planning on.

I have pictures, but I can't get my computer to pull the pictures off my sister's digicam, which is gay.

The amount of Calgary Flames car flags I'm seeing around the city is becoming obscene. Almost every second vehicle (seriously -- this is not an exaggeration) has one or two, and in some cases three or four of these flags on their car. At first I thought this was acceptable behavior, and actually thought about buying one or two for my car. However, now I feel as though it is almost expected, and, as stated earlier, it is obscene.

I'm torn. I love the Flames. I sport a jersey when I watch the games, whether it's in public or at my buddy's place. I want to support them by rocking a flag, but I don't want to be a lemming. The worst part about the whole ordeal is the amount of profit these capitalism goldmines are producing. A single car flag costs $24.99 + tax. STUPID! I was thinking they should be like $7.00.

Go Flames Go! But don't rape my wallet while you're at it.

I kind of had a feeling it might happen, although I really hoped it wouldn't. But, as most of Canada already knows, the Flames are out of the playoffs, losing to the Ducks in a pathetic game 7.

The Flames had trouble getting anything going the entire game and were completely outplayed by the Ducks throughout. We could only muster two or three pathetic shots in the second period and we paid dearly for it.

So now they need to fire everyone on the ice except Iginla, Kiprusoff, Phaneuf, McCarty and Huselius, and start all over again. Oh well, guess it's time to jump on the Oilers bandwagon.

I've been living in Calgary for two months now, and there are certain things that I really miss about Saskatoon, and certain things about Calgary I never want to live without again. Here is a list:

• I miss how light Saskatoon traffic is. Sitting in gridlock on Crowchild or the Deerfoot is not fun. I mean, when I lived in Saskatoon I thought it was bad, but.... no.
• I like that there is always something to do in Calgary. Every night of the week you can find something to entertain yourself with. The biggest problem about being a young person in Saskatoon is the exact opposite - there is never anything to do.
• I don't head out to the club very often here, and never really did in Saskatoon either. However, in Saskatoon you ran into the same damn people every single night, no matter where you went. Not true here. Good stuff.
• I miss being within a few hours max of most of my family. I have one uncle in Calgary and an uncle and aunt in Brooks. I mean, it's not like I was always out visiting family, but it would be nice if they were closer.
• I'm hating being eight or nine hours away from Rider's home games.
• Every time I leave my house here I'm gone for about an hour. Even if I'm just heading out to get some food. It makes the day go by fast, but it still sucks. Urban sprawl is not all it's cut out to be. I miss being able to go out and be home in 15 minutes in Saskatoon. Not possible here.

Well, there's a few things.

So it hit 26 degrees here today and it is 25 right now. Absolutely beautiful! I've got a pretty mean sunburn on the entire upper half of my body, and we are to expect more of the same tomorrow.

It's fair to say that winter is now behind us, and we have got summer weather to look forward to. This mean lots of weekends spent at the lake. May long is upon us (next weekend) and it kind of crept up on me. I didn't realize it was the long weekend until today, so we weren't able to make any campsite reservations. We've got a few buddies with cabins up at Sylvan Lake so hopefully we'll be able to latch on to them.

I hope all of you had a chance to enjoy some sunshine and mid-20 degree weather today too.

I can't believe I'm posting about the weather two days in a row, but I can't help it. I don't work today so me and a few friends decided to take advantage of the 27 degree weather.

At 11:00 Chris, Jaret, Jon and I went to Riley Park and threw the football around for two hours or so. In about fifteen minutes, the four of us as well as Jordan and Ryan are going to head back to Riley Park and toss around the football. I'm working on enhancing the viciousness of my sunburn and lovin' it.

I'm with Brea, this warm weather brings out good thoughts about life and brings me out of the slump that winter brings. I can't wait to head out to the lake this summer (hopefully this weekend!), golfing as much as humanly possible and camping at every lake in Alberta -- alright, that might not be possible, but it's a nice thought.

I noticed a for sale sign go up across the street, so I decided to check out MLS.ca to see what it's worth. Turns out it is one of two houses worth over $1,000,000 for sale on my street. Craziness!

House 1... you can see my house, and my truck in one of the pictures
House 2

Back on May 9 I posted a small comparison of Calgary and Saskatoon. It's been nearly seven months since then, bringing the total amount of time I've spent here to just a tad under nine months.

Traffic

I'm pretty sure this is one area that will always go to Saskatoon. Traffic in Calgary is simply awful. Deerfoot is pretty much a parking lot from 7:00 am - 9:00 am and 4:00 pm - 6:30 pm. 16th Ave (the #1 Highway) is right by my house and has been under construction since I moved here. It's bumper-to-bumper all day long and late into the evening - at best.

Not only are the roads more heavily congested, but the drivers are just plain stupid. I know growing up in Saskatchewan that we are conditioned to think that Sask. people are the worst drivers. Wrong. The slowest maybe, but the worst no. I still can't believe how many accidents happen here on a daily basis. Leaving my house a couple of weeks ago, we were in my friends car and got barely two blocks away before someone decided to pull a U-turn in the street without looking. We t-boned him at 50.

Entertainment

This category leans strongly in favor of Calgary. There is simply more to do. There is the obvious addition of professional sporting teams that you can take in. There are many more movie theatres that offer a more diverse amount of films for your viewing pleasure. Calgary is home to a good number of casinos. Most of them offer decent poker rooms or daily tournaments. I could go on for a few paragraphs, but what's the point? Calgary trumps in this category.

Shopping

Last time I made an entry like this a few people brought up IKEA as something Calgary has over Saskatoon. While it is great to actually have an IKEA to go to, it's so far out of the way that I never go. I don't really know anyone who shops there regularly. Don't get me wrong, when I want new furniture, I'm heading to IKEA. But I just don't go often enough that it really makes a difference.

The Chinook Centre has everything I could ever want in a mall, but it's just so far from my house, and it is always jam-packed with people. The Market Mall on Shaganappi is decently close and actually provides for a decent shopping experiences. Plus the design of the Moxie's restaurant in the mall is outstanding.

Stephen Avenue and the Calgary Eaton Centre are just plain sweet.

The independent shops are good. Being so close to Kensington affords me pretty decent access to a number of eclectic to some very interesting stores and allows me to spend some time away from the mall when I'm out to get something.

Family and Friends

I now have a cousin in Sylvan Lake to add to the uncle and two cousins I already have in Calgary. I also have an uncle and aunt in Brooks. Aside from them though, everyone is in Saskatchewan. That includes both of my parents, my siblings, all of my grandparents and other important family members. Also, most of my very good friends are still in Saskatchewan, although some have also moved on to bigger and better things in various parts of the world.

Sports

The worst part about being in Calgary has got o be being eight or nine hours away from Taylor Field. Rider's home games are quite simply the best sporting event evar! That, and the Stamps just suck.

That being said, Calgary does offer the Flames and although I don't get to go to many live games, being in a city that cares so much about it's team is pretty exciting.

That's about all I really want to get in to for now. Maybe I'll revisit this some time in the future. Who knows?

For two days in a row the temperature in Calgary has been -41 (with the wind chill factored in). Yesterday, the air temperature was a record at -29.5. The coldest temperature ever recorded on November 28 in Calgary.

I see a number of problems with this. First, one of the reasons I left Saskatoon was to escape the notoriously cold winters. Second, it's just way too damned cold. Today is supposed to be -12, which is more than livable compared to the crap from the last two days.