Ahh, it would appear winter has arrived! I woke up this morning, went out to start the car (a loaner Sunfire, while both the RX-7 and Aveo are out of commission for the time being), and was greeted by snow -- a LOT of snow.

I guess we got upwards of 5cm last night. Although the snow flying is a scary thought, this downfall will undoubtedly melt, and we will be dry for a few days before we are greeted by the semi-permanent view of white stuff.

November 2 is late for a first snowfall of the winter by my recollection. As a matter of fact, no winter in memory has begun later. Mind you, my memory is probably incorrect, and I'm sure there was a freak winter somewhere (for some reason I want to say 1997 or 1998 was later, but I'm not sure). Either way, we went all of September, and all of October without seeing a snowflake. I think we got pretty lucky in Saskatoon.

Becky took pictures.

Racism? Saskatoon? Police!? Never!

Leave it to the Saskatoon Police Service to make the national news for racial profiling. It is getting to the point that I am surprised if any news of police corruption in Canada is not about the Saskatoon cops.

For a police force who is still reeling from the Neil Stonechild inquiry that was released not too long ago, and still involved in the David Milgaard inquiry, these guys sure can't take a moment to keep themselves out of trouble.

From CTV:

"A police car, out of nowhere, slides in and hits me," he told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. "I had to stop myself from sliding under the car and I was like, 'What the hell? What's going on?'"

For a department already tarnished with a reputation of one of the most corrupt police forces in Canada, they sure do like attracting attention. When will they learn that the Native individuals they are abusing actually will go to the media? Do they honestly still believe they are going to get away free-and-clear? Do they think they are in the Southern United States, and the year is 1954? This is Canada in 2005. Racism no longer flies.

Besides the fact that racism is a pointless crime. Most victims of racism (and all prejudice) are the least deserving victims of all. It's a damned shame. Why can't the Saskatoon Police Service just grow up already?

Today has been the worst driving day I've endured in my brief driving history - six years, seven if you include my learner's permit year. Well, maybe I just think that because today was the first taste of winter driving for the season.

Starting this morning when I drove Lana to school. According to Google Maps, the route I take is 8.6km, a good chunk of which is on the Circle Drive freeway. This 8.6km of travel took about 45 minutes this morning. I travelled at 15km/h or less for most of the trip, including the entire freeway trip (90km/h speed limit - don't even get me started on that), the entire time spent on Attridge Dr (60/70km/h speed limit), and the entire time spent on Warman Rd (60km/h speed limit).

About ten minutes ago, I wanted to go to Pharmasave. The roads in the Sutherland/Forest Grove area are the iciest I ever remember driving. Tomorrow is going to be horrible. I am really not looking forward to the morning commute. Ugh.

Why is it that as soon as a couple centimetres of snow flies, everyone in this city forgets how to drive? I mean, we do get snow for about six months of the year. You'd think most would remember a little bit.

As I said yesterday, driving in Saskatoon in the winter sucks. Especially right at the beginning of winter. It turns out that it is not just in Saskatoon that driving on snow proves too difficult for some.

Unfortunately elsewhere in Saskatchewan there were a couple of fatal accidents this weekend. One of them actually hits really close to home. :(

From CBC:

Two vans collided in a blinding snowstorm near Yorkton Monday afternoon, killing two men and a woman.

According to the RCMP, the crash occurred on Highway 16 near Springside. The names haven't been released.

A man driving the larger of the two vans was killed. A man and a female in the other vehicle also died.

This is the one that really hits close to home, and I am quite worried about. I grew up in Yorkton, and spent the better part of my young life there (until I was 15 or 16, with a few earlier years spent elsewhere). I haven't heard anything from anyone in Yorkton yet, so I'm sure I don't know who was killed in this accident. I hate hearing about accidents in Yorkton, and there seems to be a lot of fatal winter-time accidents every year.

A couple of years ago, a few kids were coming back from the Asessippi ski resort in Manitoba and were killed when they hit black ice. It's scary driving in that part of the province in winter. It's a damn shame the province won't do anything about it, too many people are killed or hurt every year. Something needs to be done.

As Becky was so kind to point out, it is going to be crazy cold tonight. According to weather.ca:

Current Temp: -19°C
Overnight: -22°C
Wednesday Morning: -17°C

Wow that is cold. I am NOT looking forward to starting the car in the morning. Get a load of these lies:

Thursday: 1°C
Friday: 2°C
Saturday: 1°C
Sunday: 8°C
Monday: 4°C
Tuesday 9°C

Yeeaaaaahhhhh......

So, earlier I had mentioned that it was snowing and cold in Saskatoon. For the past week and a half or so, we've been in the plus temperatures and haven't seen a snowflake. I was holding off on posting, because knowing my luck it would have snowed as soon as I posted.

Well, it hasn't yet, and they say there is a small chance of it today, but not likely. Cool. I can't remember the last November 24 when there was no snow. I would be extremely happy if we entered December with no snow on the ground.

As long as it snows on Christmas, every other day can be dry, thank you very much.

Being the final week of shopping, I'm sure it's absolutely craziness everywhere in the industrialized world right now. That does not mean I am not allowed to vent my frustration with Christmas shoppers.

I was at the mall yesterday, and the people were just driving me crazy. I mean, in general, when I am at the Midtown Plaza, the shoppers annoy me. Stopping randomly in the middle of the hallways, with people right behind them. Generally moving at a ridiculously slow pace, etc, etc. But, add Christmas to the mix and you have that problem times about 14,231. Yes, I did the math.

I figure I will complete my shopping at Wal-Mart at about 4:00am on Wednesday night. I have a few small items left to pick up, and since Wal-Mart has decided to stay open for 24 hours starting tomorrow and running through Christmas Eve, I may as well take advantage.

With Wal-Mart Preston Crossing being only about two minutes from my house, I decided that this was the best course of action. Now, if 4:00am Wal-Mart shoppers are as annoying as regular Wal-Mart shoppers (much worse than mall shoppers, btw), I am going to be incredibly pissed off.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine from home (Yorkton) had the gall to ask me -- seriously, mind you -- whether I had defected from the Riders and became a Stamps fan yet. The audacity of this question is beyond me. I grew up a die hard rider fan. Even though I was only 6, I vividly remember where I was when the Rider's brought home the Grey Cup for the second time. I was boarding an airplane in the Regina airport. I can't remember where, but I mean, come on, I was six.

On top of the die-hard green blood that flows through me, it's not even football season yet!

All of that aside, I think the Rider's are fielding a much better team this year. Roy Shivers and our man Danny Barrett have been putting in a lot of overtime this off-season trying to give us fans what we've wanted for so long -- at least a home playoff game. Both of their careers in Regina are on the line this year, and they know it. Both of them love Regina, the province of Saskatchewan and all of its people, and, can you believe it -- they want to stay there!

We've dropped McCallum and Nealon, both of whom were on the roster for at least a year too long. Unfortunately we lost Corey Holmes, but I think it was necessary to drop him. A necessary evil you might say.

Argueably the biggest signing of the off-season has been Kerry Joseph (who will now be sporting McCallum's hopefully not-cursed old number 4). One of the few good things to come of Ottawa folding is the Riders have once again got an incredibly solid quarterbacking core. Joseph will most likely be the number one man, with Marcus Crandall (who is an excellent QB as well) backing him up. Currently Rocky Butler is occupying the number three spot, but I've heard rumors that we picked someone up out of University of North Carolina, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Another stellar pickup was Jason Armstead, also a positive byproduct of the Ottawa CFL team folding. Armstead pads an already potent receiving core that features the likes of Matt Dominguez, Jason French and Corey Grant to name a few.

It's Kenton Keith's make or break year with the Riders. If he does well, he will become the franchise player he's been touted as for the past year. If he performs subpar at all, he will most likely go the way of Shivers and Barrett if they have an off year.

With such returning stars on the other side of the ball such as Reggie Hunt, Nate Davis, Fred Childress, Omarr Morgan, Jackie Mitchell and LaDouphyous McCalla to name a very select few, we should have one of the top defensive teams to go along with the outstanding offense.

While it is yet to be seen how the new team will play together, on paper we are about to field an absolutely great team, and it's got all of Riderville excited. I am completely pumped, and I can't wait for June 3 when I will be in Edmonton cheering on the proper green team in our first exhibition match of the year.

Big news in the Rider Nation today is that the Green & White were featured on Sunday's episode of The Sopranos (episode 75 - Moe and Joe).

During one of the final scenes there is a gathering at Tony's place and they are all watching football on TV. Although you can't see the Riders playing you can clearly hear Chris Cuthbert's voice saying something like "2nd down. Greene on the rollout. Gets it away. Has a man. Threads the needle to Jamel Richardson!"

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling makes a good point about why this may have happened:

I know that American's will often use CFL games in their TV sitcoms. The reason for this is that the NFL charges way too much for the footage, while the CFL pretty much gives it away.

As long as the Riders are involved I'm all for the CFL giving away the coverage.

I went golfing with Marc in Saskatoon (where I am right now) yesterday. We went to the Willows and played 27 holes of golf in 31 degree weather, starting at 9:30am and going to 4:00pm. Although I didn't shoot horribly -- a 91 on 18, I didn't really plan on being outside for that long so I forgot to bring sunscreen and managed to intensify the sunburn I had from earlier this week.

Now my arms are beat red, and my face is pretty much the color of lobster. Not cool.

You may or may not have noticed that my posting has been spectacularly light this weekend... the traffic statistics since I left lead me to believe you probably have not noticed ;) Anyway, we ended up sticking around until today, and I had a great time.

Did quite a bit of golfing, got to see a good movie, saw a bunch of friends I hadn't seen in a while, spent some time with family. My dad handed me down his golf clubs from last year. Sweet. It was a good outing, but it feels good to be home again.

Here's a picture of me in a ridiculous pose from the weekend:

Wow I'm stupid.

Saskboy and I have been discussing the possibility of us Sask Bloggers getting together this summer. We've come up with a basic itinerary that is pretty much open to discussion:

July 22, 2006 Saturday - Regina
We would start out at about 1pm with a barbecue in Wascana Park. Kids, and Everyone of course, will be welcome. After the barbecue we could head to the Rider game (if enough people express interest, Stephen might be able to line up some discounted tickets). After that we could all head out for supper, or do another BBQ and then head out to a pub for some drinks.

The option of a Saskatoon meet has also been discussed, but we would like to have one big meet as opposed to two large ones, but we’ll see what everyone has to say. Saskatoon dates that have been discussed include June 17 and August 19.

If most people would prefer a Saskatoon meet on July 22nd, we could possibly change it up.

Email Saskboy or myself, or post a comment here to provide input or say you’re coming.

I started my first business shortly after turning 19, and my business partner had just turned 18. We had grand visions of making it big and building a skyscraper to hold all of our employees. Our dreams quickly became grounded (in a good way) when we started planning, but dreaming is what it's all about.

While we never really did make all that much money, it did occupy us for a good time and provided us with an extremely valuable life lesson, and showed both my partner and I what we wanted to do with our lives.

At the time we started our first business, we were by far the first of our friends to do anything entrepreneurial. This has changed, and now a good number of my friends are running their own businesses:

• Josh: Ice Cream Igloo in Saskatoon
• Chris: Flat Out Performance in Saskatoon
• Noel: Cubed Productions in Regina
• Chad, Aaron, Brennan: Cab Clothing in Yorkton

I'm actually quite surprised to see all of them (I think) succeeding in Saskatchewan. The SK government needs to do a lot more to promote youth entrepreneurship. Come up with a better grant system, or make it easier for young people to get loans. Even if they lose some money it will promote to the group of people coming up that they want to keep them there, and are willing to help them. This will at least help keep them in the province when they want to start up a business as a more mature adult when it will have a better chance of succeeding.

By offering someone a chance to fail at a young age, it provides them with experience that will make it less likely for them to fail again when they have got more money at stake as an older person. It will create excitement for the high school and university group about owning their own business and when they remember how friendly the government was to them when they were 17 or 21 or whatever, they may be more likely to stick around later.

On another note, the business that myself and my partner are currently developing would be impossible to execute in Saskatchewan due to the government's monopolistic control of liquor sales. Once we get ourselves set up in Alberta, we are going to try to make an inroad into Saskatchewan but I really don't see it happening. I'll let you guys know more about this venture at a later date.

What: SaskBlogs Meet 2006 Regina
Where: Saturday July 22, 2006 in Lakeshore Park Regina

How: Register at SaskBlogs.ca for the free BBQ
Why: It’ll be a great time! A BBQ, and for those interested a Rider game and night out at the Cathedral Village Freehouse.

End of week four and our beloved Green and White are the bottom dwellers of the Western Conference with one measly win. What a pathetic start to the season. We've been stomped in high-scoring games twice, once by BC and last Saturday by Calgary all of places.

Calgary is about the worst team to lose to this season, especially at home with the most hated man in Saskatchewan, Smilin' Hank at the helm for the opponents. What a fucking disaster. It was 20-20 going into the half, and then we just stopped playing in the third quarter. I mean, we did give them a bit of a push in the fourth quarter offensively but without any defense how the hell can we overcome a 16 point lead? Grrr.

If we don't start winning soon the last two years will threepeat. What a waste.

I'm completely surprised that the Riders' Board of Directors finally grew a pair of grapes and got rid of Roy Shivers. This is a very welcome move as Shiv has been shittin' the bed lately to the tune of 4-5 on the year and an even more impressive 52-64-1 during his tenure. The firing came at an unexpected time, following our first win since week seven, but who cares? It was about damned time.

Although I agree Shiv needed to be handed his walking papers, I think Danny Barret should have been the first to go, and expect he'll be walking back to the Southern USA with his protector-in-shining-armor Shivs very soon, as apparently Shivers was let go as a result of refusing to fire Barret at the request of the Board.

Not sure what's going to happen for the rest of the season, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

The crime rate in Saskatoon is atrocious. All of you know that. Couple this with an incompetent, sometimes corrupt police force and bad things are bound to happen.

While stuck in the first instance of winter traffic of the year, John Gormley was telling the story of 81 year-old Jean Belcher. Before I get into it I want to preface my comments by saying this story made me sick to my stomach for even being in the same city that it took place in, let alone having lived here for many years.

Jean is an active senior citizen. She enjoys walking around her community, shopping with friends and all the other things the elderly enjoy doing. She likes Saskatoon. However, in the last thirty days she has been mugged three times.

Three times. One month!

I remember vaguely hearing about this while I was in Calgary and thought - giving the area of these crimes, near City Hospital - that it was some of the poor inner-city youth. I couldn't have been more wrong, which makes this story all that much worse.

A few weeks ago, Jean was mugged near the City Hospital and her purse was stolen by 45 year-old cocaine and crystal meth addict Betty Anne Gilles -- while her 21 year-old daughter stood by and watched. Nice example. She was chased and caught by a witness on a bicycle who then held her until the police could arrive. Gilles has since been sentenced to two years in prison for her crime.

Merely weeks later she was shopping with a friend and she had noticed a younger woman walking behind her as she was leaving the store. Being the fine citizen she is, she decided to hold the door open for her fellow customer. The young woman noticed that Jean's purse was accessible and decided to swipe it on her way out. So much for helping out thy fellow citizens.

And if all of the above was not enough she was again taken to the cleaners while shopping with a friend. This time she noticed she was being robbed and screamed at the top of her lungs. Three off-duty firemen happened to be in the store at the same time and noticed the would-be 32 year-old male mugger and took chase. According to Jean, these fine samaritans followed the man for numerous blocks before catching up and holding him for police.

Jean's story presents a number of problems. The most important of which is: this poor woman who once lovingly smiled at strangers during her walks, now watches over her shoulder in fear. She no longer carries a purse with her. These events have dramatically changed her life. All of this at a time when she should (well, really, everyone should) feel safe while in public. I was raised to respect my elders. I have a tremendous amount of respect for senior citizens and feel that we should do whatever we can to make them comfortable.

Unfortunately the good points of the story -- the fact that in two of the three situations witnesses entered good samaritan mode and saved the day -- will forever be overshadowed by the bad. The actions of these three criminals has added to Saskatoon's already tarnished image. And in the worst possible way. Victimizing the elderly.

It started snowing in Saskatoon earlier this week and the snow is still on the ground. I have distinct memories of first snowfalls melting after a day or two. What is going on here?

Not only that, but it's really not supposed to get all that much warmer over the weekend. Crap. Because Noel and Ken are coming up from Regina and Yorkton, respectively. Warm weather would have been much sweeter.

Damn Saskatchewan early winters.

I opened up this morning's Calgary Herald and made my way through a bunch of garbage about the Liberal Leadership Elections, eventually finding myself on page A6 and reading the headline "Thatcher set free on full parole."

Since May of this year, Thatcher had been granted day parole. I guess we all knew it was leading up to full parole eventually. However, Mr. Thatcher has never admitted any wrongdoing and has denied completely any participation in his wife's 1983 murder.

One of the conditions of Thatcher's parole is that he report all romantic relationships to the parole board. It appears, at least at face value, that he is going to avoid this altogether:

"I have seen people come back [to prison] because of a conflict with a partner," he said. "I would be hesitant to give someone that kind of power over me." (CBC)

It's interesting that Thatcher had actually served 22 years of his life sentence. The only other Saskatchewan-convicted-murderer I can think of that served the same or more time was David Milgaard, although chances are examples are simply escaping me. Of course, Milgaard was wrongfully convicted and served 23 years. John Murney seems to believe that Thatcher was also a victim of wrongful conviction. I, do not.

I wonder how the people of Moose Jaw and surrounding area will be taking his decision to relocate there.

I was looking through my RSS Reader and came across a video of a trip between Saskatoon and Prince Albert made by Thomas Friesen, found by way of Randall Friesen. I wish all one-plus hour trips could take this long. It's actually quite interesting to watch, so I suggest you head over.

While I'm not a Liberal party supporter, I do however support political parties embracing new technologies and reaching out to a younger audience. The Saskatchewan Liberal Party have launched a new website, that is far and away the best of any of the Saskatchewan parties.

In other provincial politic "news," if you live in the Regina Douglas Park riding, you should vote for Liberal candidate, Nick Schenher. Just because.

(via Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy)

Although the Riders have had a pretty tough go for the last five weeks (1 win, 4 losses for those of us keeping track), I’m still holding onto my optimism for the remainder of the season. If we can win again this afternoon, it should restore some more of the confidence that was lost during our four game losing streak.

I just can’t understand what caused a team to win five in a row, then lose four in a row directly after. Gah. It’s frustrating. Actually, it's beyond frustrating. After nine weeks we had the best Rider start since 1970 (when we started 10 - 2, and ended up 11 - 4), but something horrible happened at the Banjo Bowl, and we just haven't recovered--despite our win last week.

But, whatever, I’m sure that, like the rest of you, a home playoff game would be next-to-perfect. So let’s hope for a couple more wins coming up here, then for the home playoff game, then root for the Grey Cup.

This is not exactly what I was expecting to end off the week. The majority of the week was warm, T-shirt and shorts weather. Waking up to images like above this Saturday morning were not exactly what I would consider welcome. Hopefully this is the last we will see of old man winter this spring, but who knows around here?

(photo by dougblackport)