My mistakes are famous

I don't know how it ended up on a merchandise site, but here's a T-shirt with a picture of Matt's truck, after I smashed it in a spectacular way. (Years ago, I swear.)
Matt is the guy posing with it, and does open mikes with the name Smokin' Joe Kickass.
Alternatively, this could be a big joke, and I'm just being gullible. Either way, I am amused.

An excitable Scot

The Town of Antigonish erected this statue in Columbus Field about ten years ago.

Since that time, the MacDougalls and the MacDonalds have fought fiercely for the right to claim its prominent profile as their own.

Big car crash on Main Street, Antigonish

Matt, Karen, and Jonny

As Matt and I tooled around town, doin' stuff, some crazy yahoos rear-ended us, then honked their horn when we hesitated at the green light. We pulled over next to the statue of the large Scottish guy with a boner (more on that later), only to discover the terrible driver was Tony, with Jonny in town. They were just being friendly.
We quickly formed a tough-looking gang (pictured above). I'm the boss, and am wearing my brand new winter scarf, made for me by Matt's girlfriend Natalie, who - yay her - just got her permanent residency status in Canada.
(Note: Matt and Natalie own at least nine boardgames, including Scotland Yard, Risk, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and one called Fire Call, which was invented by their friend Blaise Mattie.)

Anti-go-nowhere

Boxing Day in the Maritimes is a big day for drunken community socials. I came with every intention of celebrating mine in Cape Breton, but things did not go as planned.
First stop for me in Antigonish is always Jonny's grandmother's, the woman who taught me to play cribbage at 16, and who has provided me with a couch upon which to crash every year since. Marie kidnapped me in her kitchen with a bottle of wine and a string of Gaelic phrases, so the big white truck drove on to Mabou without me. (Matt wearing a bright orange hunting cap and new spectacles.)
Instead, I had a good ol' Antigonish time two-stepping with Marie, Tony, and Andrea to the tunes of Pogey, Jonny's wicked funny east coast band. Jonny has nine siblings, and at one point I counted five of them rippin' up the dance floor. (Plus at least two cousins, maybe more.)
Holy-homecoming, every second person I ran into was now living in Calgary, Fort McMurray, Winnipeg, or Yellowknife. The hundreds of Maritime ditties mourning the daughters gone off to Toronto are not far off base. This town will dry up and blow away for a few years, until we kids all return. (If ever.)
After the dance-off at the local pub, we travelled miles of icy back roads to Pinevale, where Tony is staying in a wacky old farmhouse with a woodstove - water circulation system that needs constant stoking. Made said fire and played silly tunes on an out-of-tune grand piano until the wee hours.
The click of icy falling snow was the only sound in the morning chill.
Yay home!

A cracker tradition

The 2006 Christmas crackers contained (from top left): checkers, plastic puzzle, round dice, star-shaped erasers, screwdrivers, tiny kaleidoscope.

Lucas gets the third degree

My family's awesome. We've got a good balance of salty and sweet, warm and cold, and outspoken women versus a patriarchal presence. Grampy is the patriarch, and woe betide the men his granddaughters bring home, if they dost not please. (Just joking.)
Tonight, the newly engaged youngsters (Meg and Lucas) got the word. Or rather, Lucas got the word. I left the room, so I'm not sure what the outcome was, except Lucas didn't get a drumstick, but he got a handshake at the end.

Thank you Zanta

This (almost) makes me homesick for Toronto.

From blogto.com.

The ladies got rings

Lord preserve me. My baby sister and my mother both got shiny new rings from their beaux this morning, their stones and smiles glinting in the faux fir's LED twinklies. I am the official photographer for the morning's sentimental festival, drunk on two champagne-and-oranges (and two coffee-and-Kahluas, but who's counting?).

Salting waters

Kitchen tables, creaking chairs, and spiked coffee with rum.
Did a turn of the Halifax waterfront this morning (its rusted containers and broken down subs), then up Citadel Hill, next past the neat grids of old north end rowhouses. (A byproduct of the 1918 explosion, they are flat-faced and rigid-roofed, like a little kid would draw.)
The local papers tell me Halifax legend Dutch Mason died yesterday in his bed, with a throat full of bleeding sores from a lifetime of booze and cigarettes. He was the godfather of the blues scene here, the reason I hitchhiked to the big city in the pouring rain with the lyrics to "Pride and Joy" stuffed in my back pocket. I'll grab a pint at Bearley's in his honour before I head back to Upper Canada.