I'm Now "Colouring Outside the Lines"

THE PICTURES BELOW WILL NEVER DO THE ART OR THE ARTIST JUSTICE, BUT I AM PROUD TO DISPLAY THEM FOR ALL TO SEE.

And they're MINE, ALL MINE, buuhuuuhawhawhawhawheeheehee!!!

They're original works by none other than Vancouver blogger/artist/fine human being Andrea Pratt, from Colouring Outside the Lines.

And I am now in the privileged company of fellow bloggers Cherrypie (UK), Brian the Mennonite (Canada) and Kyknoord (South Africa) as proud owners of Andrea's work.

There may be other bloggers I know who have scooped up some of her works, but these I know for sure have Andrea Art in their homes.

Here's my beauts, and I apologize again for the off-centre pix:

Andrea is one of the most eloquent bloggers on the Web and clearly one of the most talented. I bought these from the Etsy site for a mere pittance.

I won't go into the costs of framing (!!! :) but it's worth it.

I also want to mention that while she isn't making a big deal of it herself, she's nominated in the artistic category for a 2006 Canadian Blogger Award so I'd urge you all to vote for her.

But check out her blog (find her on my favourites list on the right) and have a look at some of her artistry which explodes in colour and sensations that are unbelievable...

Then make up your own mind.

I wonder what it must be like for Andrea or any other artist to know their creativity graces the walls of people around the planet for an entire lifetime -- and just how that must feel.

Thanks, Andrea.

Mother Nature's PMS

OK, don't get your pantyhose all tied up in knots.

The pictures you are about to see are the equivalent of Mother Nature suffering through (or should that be US suffering through) a bit of PMS, northern North America style.

That's right, just the calm before the real storm, the predictable sign that winter is just around the corner on the northern Prairie, the cranky but inevitable approach of bad, cold weather on the horizon.

No offence intended, ladies, but I can't help but make the analogy. It's the onset of the Winterpeg Wonderland, that long, frigid time of the year when we must go without the necessities of life and just try to survive.

But this is just a sign that it's coming. This is nothing compared with what's yet to come.

This happened Monday over a span of about 12 hours. I took the first two pix Monday night after work and the last three Tuesday morning.

But my plans to do this post late Monday night were bamboozled by Blogger's decision to make uploading photos impossible. Until tonight, Tuesday. So here they are.

This will be no big deal to other Canadians tuning in.

This much snow in late October is a bit early, coming on the day before Halloween, and it will stay here and it will get much colder through December to March until it starts to warm again.

But I wanted visitors from Australia, South Africa, India, Malaysia, South America, the southern U.S. and bloggers in Europe to have a gander, just to get a taste of the first vestiges of a Canadian winter.

So here it is...

Between 15-20 cms. of snow fell. Depending where you live, is this a shocking revelation to you? Or is this what you'd expect from a place in the middle of Canada, the land of hockey and ice?

What's your weather like and have you ever tasted snow on the tip of your tongue or got your tongue stuck frozen on a metal object while you were a kid out playing in -30 C temperatures?

Turning Back the #@*&!! of Time

IT WAS THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN AROUND MOST OF THE WORLD...

Time to turn back the clocks to get that extra hour of daylight, at least for us up here in the northern hemisphere. I spent part of Sunday doing just that, but this time around, I had an extra smirk on.

This watch, which I bought a couple of years ago in an effort to be super cool, cheap and technologically advanced all at the same time, has been the bane of my existence ever since.

As you can see, it has four buttons on it and includes a stopwatch, date, day of the week, an alarm if I needed it, 24-hour time if I wanted that and the capacity to pretty much time my whole life and everything in it.

But do you think it comes with simple instructions on how to change the time on it as we do twice a year? Nope.

Well, that's not true.

Unfortunately, it was made in Taiwan or China and the instructions are virtually impossible to follow, requiring a complex code pressing all four buttons in some indecipherable Pythagorean sequence or hieroglyphic formula.

I think I did it once, by accident.

So for the past couple of years, I have walked around with the wrong time on my watch for half the year and with the right time for half the year.

So in honour of this year's switch to Central Standard Time, I went back in time and bought the old standard, the manual watch below that goes tick tock and which I can actually change myself by pulling out a little button.

Below are many of the clocks in my apartment that I had to turn back an hour on Sunday. The first one is in my daughter's room, so I won't apologize for that mess.

The other ones below are, however, adorning the rest of my place. I haven't even included the microwave clock and the coffee machine clock.

How many clocks do you have in your humble abode and is it fair to say we're obsessed with the passage of time?

ONE NIGHT WITH HOMO ESCAPEONS

THIS IS WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE TO YOU...

THIS IS WHO HE IS TO ME, FOR THE PAST 27 YEARS...

Who, really, IS this Blasphemous Blogger, this Escapeons Enigma, this Outrageous Orator? He is much more than you know or than he lets on in his blog, which anyone reading this is likely to frequent (or can be accessed from my sidebar).

What will already be evident to HE fans are his sense of humor, his knowledge of just about everything, his smart-ass but light-hearted yet insightful view of the world, his range of opinion, his capacity for the most innane trivia.

But what's beyond the bluster of the blogger? I'm about to expand your HE horizons.

We have known each other since 1979 when we both took the same two-year course in creative writing (journalism, advertising, P.R.). I almost detested his loudmouth schnook sort of personality and his good looks.

He was a chick magnet and a know-it-all to boot.

He was loud, obnoxious and unbelievably funny, even if you were his target, and I have been that often. Strangely, we became the closest of friends, because I am anything but loud and obnoxious.

We seemed to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, but something clicked.

He was the best man at my wedding. But before that, we spent those two years often pie-eyed at his place, listening to music he'd always try to get me to like, at unbelievably high decibels, while I wiped him out at Blackjack or whatever other card game we'd play.

(Yes, alcohol was involved)

His place was party central. I called his dad, Dad, the most beautiful man you'd ever want to meet. His mom was like my mom. Still is. We were so close that his girlfriends were almost my girlfriends (or sometimes I might have wished they were).

Upon graduation, we each got married. I moved away and we lost touch with each other. In that time, we both had families and, as it turned out, we both saw our marriages break up, although I had moved back to my home town.

We eventually reunited. Now the both of us have lovely kids, in HE's case he has a second family as a result of a consummate union with one of the most beautiful women I have ever met, she who cannot be named (Hi Alice!), whom HE refers to only as his GoodLadyWife.

Seeing as I'm single, he says he lives vicariously through me and my on-again, off-again different relationships. We generally see each other once a week at my place, where we try to solve the world's problems, tease each other and almost certainly laugh a lot.

For example, on Thursday night, we debated the following issues and solved or joked about all of them:

1. Canada's aboriginal problem

2. Canada's crime and justice problem

3. George W. Bush and Iraq. We have solved this over and over, but Bush still hasn't got it right.

4. What we're going to do on the final night of all human existence, as prophesized by the latest pamphlet to be dumped in my mailbox entitled "Revelation of Hope, a Bible Prophecy Seminar," taking place in my city next month in these "final few days."

5. How he was going to borrow his mom's rug shampoo machine, seeing as HE twice last night spilled his rye and Pepsi. The first time, he spilled it all behind my fridge, which is grungy enough. The second time, it was on my carpet.

I sopped it up gleefully, not wanting him to feel like a complete idiot as he apologized profusely. And he wasn't even drunk.

6. We talked about blogging and bloggers, of course.

7. We talked about and checked out Brian The Mennonite's blog, which had pix from their meeting last weekend at HE's place, a social occasion I unfortunately wasn't able to get to.

8. We talked about how he said he had blogged for months initially, beginning last winter, without a comment before the lovely Cherrypie found him and, with her wit and guile, made him see there were other intelligent, engaging people out there that could be an audience.

There were other topics, obviously. But those are the main ones of interest to the Blogosphere, I figure. And now here he is, nominated for Canadian Blogger Awards in several categories in his first year, and loving it.

But from a personal standpoint, and I know him intimately, he is only just beginning. He has unique thoughts and talents, he's a man of the world, and he has always had an impact on my life and what I think, even if he won't let me take a pic of his bare butt at Carmenzta's request.

He is far more artistic than you will ever know, having adorned some of his posts with his own artwork that he doesn't take credit for. He has done a caricature of me that I have posted before, but he has also done these of my kids...

No, this is the Homo Escapeons I know...wise beyond his own knowledge despite his frivolity and partying personality, his caring for the bigger issues on a global scale, his silent and unwavering commitment as a parent and as a friend.