I’m actually not sure how I feel about this.  When I first heard about it, I thought it was a pretty craptacular move by city counsel – sitting pretty solidly in the fail category, but the more I think about it, I’m not so sure it’s a complete fail anymore – depending on how things shake out.

Yes, it sucks that you’ll be paying more for less, or perhaps I should say paying the same for less – but won’t that make you want to use even LESS water, thereby conserving even more?  That’s a good thing right?  Of course if Ottawa stays with the same strategy then that will mean another increase next year, and another one the year after that, etc – which means we’ll just keep paying more and more for less and less water, and that doesn’t sound like much of a reward for trying to do the right thing…

Last weekend JK, and Grant, and myself jumped into the car and drove 1000+ kms to meet up with Trev to participate in Curl for Cancer at the Fredericton Curling Club.  This is an event that I participated in last year with my brothers and sister, in memory of my mom.  My main goal last year, since I’m not a curler, was to win the title of highest individual fundraiser.  As it turned out, my biggest competitor in that race was my own brother, and teammate, Mike.  Since there was no easy online donation page for participants last year, I had no idea how close or far I was from his total – and he wasn’t telling me anything.  Of course, the reverse was true as well, and I didn’t tell him what my total was either so both of us were flying blind right up until the day of the event.  If you haven’t read my post from last year, I’ll give you the short version – I managed to beat my brother and win the title by bringing in $1230.  Since my brother was close to me in what he was able to bring in, we also secured the highest team fundraiser title as well.  This year, I hoped to retain my title and also keep the team title as well.

I wasn’t really on the ball this year for this event – not sure why, but I didn’t start thinking about it until a couple of weeks before.  After talking to my dad, it wasn’t clear what everyone’s plan was – he mentioned that my sister wasn’t planning to participate this year, and he said he hadn’t heard from my brother Sean on what his plans were so…  As a result, I contacted the boys here to see if they’d be interested.  They jumped at the opportunity and Grant quickly decided that if we were going to go – since we weren’t going to win at curling – that we should at least look the part.  And by look the part, he thought we’d better wear kilts.  Grant is also the one who came up with the team name – Stones of Stone – which he felt suited us well considering the kilts and the cool conditions at the curling club.  :)  Grant had some other great ideas which we didn’t end up using this year, but may put to good use in the future.

I’m happy to report that I did manage to retain my title as highest individual fundraiser, after bringing in $1533.33!  (Special thanks to Darcy for making sure it wasn’t a nice round number)  Another huge THANK YOU to everyone who sponsored me – you guys are the best, and I hope I can count on you again next year!  I’m also happy to report that once again, my closest competition was a member of my own team – Trevor brought in $1015!  In fact my entire team did a kick ass job and collectively we brought in over $4K in donations!  That was definitely good enough to get us the top team fundraiser award and also good enough to account for 20-25% of the total amount raised by the entire event!  We were one team out of 22 and we brought in nearly 25% of the total amount – if you ask me, that’s damn impressive and I couldn’t be more proud of my team!

As far as the actual curling part of the event, I think we ended up surprising a lot of people (ourselves included), by staying in the running for 1st place right up until the last draw of the day!  After all was said and done, we took third place, which we were more than happy with considering our lack of experience with curling.  The way placing was determined was strictly based on points scored so it didn’t necessarily mean the best would end up winning – it all depended on the strength of teams you ended up playing.  If two really good teams played each other it might end with two low scores, whereas two teams that had never played before might end up scoring a bunch of points.  I’m not saying that’s what happened with us, but I’m not saying that’s NOT what happened either.  We won two games and lost our third.  I was skip for all three games and take full responsibility for the loss of our third game – I think I cracked under the pressure.  I don’t think the two Picaroon’s Winter Warmers before the third game helped though.

There were awards for: (a) highest individual fundraiser, (b) highest team fundraiser, (c) most enthusiastic team, (d) 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in curling.  We nabbed the awards for highest individual and team fundraiser, picked up 3rd place for curling and even got an honourable mention for most enthusiastic team – thanks in large part to our kilts I’m sure – so I’m calling this a huge success for Stones of Stone’s first outing as a team.  Well done boys! (In case you’re wondering – the Special Olympics team got the award for most enthusiastic team)

The final thing I need to mention is the outcome of the first annual Haggerty grudge match.  As it turned out, both my sister and brother did indeed end up playing – so there was once again a Haggerty team playing in Curl for Cancer.  It was my two brothers, Mike and Sean, my sister, Katie, and my dad – who was naturally the skip of the team.  We set up a game against them at the end of the day – which ended up being immediately after losing our first game of the day.  They drew first blood and picked up a point in the first end, but we countered with a single in the 2nd end to tie it up.  They then picked up another couple points in the 3rd end.  We again managed to tie it up in the 4th and final end (short games).  That meant it was a draw to the button contest between skips.  It was my dad, a seasoned curling veteran, versus me.  I really don’t think I need to tell you how this ended, you can likely guess, but I’ll spell it out for posterity.  They beat us.  We’ll get them next year!

I haven’t heard the official total for the amount of money raised, but as I alluded to above, it was somewhere between 16 and 17K I think – a bit lower than last year unfortunately.

That’s about it.  For those interested, I’ve got some photos here, Trev’s got some photos here, and JK’s got some photos here.

I, on the other hand, am having a hell of a time even raising $1K.  Granted, I have no prizes to offer, and I don’t have as many people who read this little blog, but this task is seeming harder than it was last year when I didn’t have the advantage of an online donation page, but still managed to bring in $1230!

This year I’ve got a page set up with the Canadian Cancer Society for online donations, but like I said, I’m having a bit of a hard time reaching my goal.  So consider this my plea for donations – if I haven’t hit you up personally yet, I probably will, so why not save us both some time and just go donate right now.  When it comes to raising money for charity, and specifically for cancer research, I really don’t mind pestering you!  ;)

For easy reference, my donation page can be found at: http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/haggaret

And of course, HUGE THANKS to those who HAVE sponsored me already – you guys rock!

For those of you who take  the police for granted, and sadly I think that is most people, have a read through the poem below by Adam E. Hutton and remember it next time you curse the ‘damn police’ for coming down on your for something stupid YOU did.

I can’t imagine what the family of Constable Eric Czapnik is going through right now, and I hope to God that I never have to find out. MY prayers are certainly with them.

“Pray for the Men in Blue”

It takes a very special person to wear the blue.
Most people do not understand what we do
We made a commitment to protect and serve.
We work hard to provide the safety you deserve.

No normal shifts, not nine to five.
We work 24/7 to keep you alive.
Holidays and weekends don’t mean a thing.
We work night and day, just give us a ring.

Our loved ones and children pray every night.
That we will return at the break of daylight.
We carry guns and wear vests to help us get through.
You couldn’t imagine some of the things we must do.

We see accidents and blood and small children crying.
We also see death and it’s not just old people dying.
Abusive spouses and parents that don’t seem to care.
These are just a few of the things, to make you aware.

Drug dealers and drunks are a regular sight.
We go to the bars for fight after fight.
Responding to calls day after day.
Not allowing our personal lives to get in the way.

You complain all the time when you see us on a break.
We just drive around in cars and oh, the money we make.
Stop for a second and try to assess
Who’s always there to clean up the mess.

We do all we can to help and provide.
To make you feel safe and secure inside.
Please remember all of the things that we must do.
And next time you pray, include the men in blue.

By

Adam E. Hutton

According to his next post, Elden describes how he thought about it and came up with a great strategy.  He decided that, assuming he made it to the stretch goal of $50K, he’d give the bike away as a prize to one of the lucky donors.  In addition to that, he managed to also get his hands on a 2010 Gary Fisher Superfly mountain bike, which he would also give away – again, provided he made it to $50K.  I like the way he associated the Gary Fisher bike with the LIVESTRONG charity and the Trek Madone with the World Bicycle Relief – I guess his thinking was that most Lance fans would be more apt to donate to LIVESTRONG, but they’d also be more apt to want the Madone as opposed to the Gary Fisher.  Very clever.

Well, in no time, he hit the first goal of $20K ($10K to each charity) which means he’s off to training camp with Team RadioShack, and it didn’t take long to hit the stretch goal of $50K either which means the bikes WILL now be given away to someone who has donated.

Once Johan saw that his stretch goal of $50K was hit so quickly, he upped the stakes again – go read his current blog post and you’ll see that he’s now sweetened the pot even further with a trip to France to see the final stage of the TdF if Fatty can reach $100K ($50K to each charity) by this Friday.  Elden has updated his contest to include this trip, and he WILL make it to 100K, I can guarantee that.  As I’m writing this post, he’s sitting at $39,695.00 for LIVESTRONG and $42,038.00 for World Bicycle Relief and it’s only Tuesday.  Funny that the World Bicycle Relief amount isn’t a multiple of $5…

Anyway, as I said, I think this is a pretty cool story.  If you want to donate, and get a chance at these awesome prizes, or maybe you just want to feel good that you helped out some great charities, then I’ve included links below for both.  At the very least, check out how close Elden is to reaching that crazy stretch goal of $100K.

LIVESTRONG page

World Bicycle Relief page

Good luck at training camp Elden!

UPDATE: The winners have been announced! Sadly I wasn’t one of them.  :)

I’ve been using Twitterrific Premium for a while now and I’m still liking it, but there is one bug in it that is driving me crazy!  I’ve informed the Twitterrific folks of it, somewhat indirectly I guess, through twitter, but I’m not convinced they are listening.  Here is what the problem is, and you may think this is a very small problem – depending on how you use the feature.  Whenever I favourite, or star, a tweet in the iPhone client, it shows up as a favourite on the web as expected.  If I un-favourite it on the client, it disappears from my list of favourites on the web.  All good so far.  If I favourite something on the web, it shows up on the iPhone client.  Still good.  However, if I favourite something in the iPhone client, and then un-favourite it on the web – it still shows up as a favourite on the iPhone client.  I have to specifically un-favourite it again in the iPhone client to get it to disappear from the list.  I find it really annoying!

Like I said, may be a small issue for some people, but I use the favourite feature to mark tweets that I want to read later – sort of a bookmark.  They may be things that I think would be better viewed on my computer rather than my iPhone, which makes it doubly annoying when I can’t un-favourite them from the web after viewing them on my computer.

I’ve checked out a couple other twitter iPhone clients, EchoFon and Tweetie, to see how they behave around this feature and neither of them had any issues clearing favourites from the client list when it was un-favourited on the web.  I really wish Twitterrific would fix this.

Do you have a favourite twitter client that you use on your iPhone?  How does it handle this feature?  Thinking of switching at this point…

So as the title of this post suggests, Grace is walking now. She started walking probably a few weeks ago, and is really on the move now. She definitely has the same spirit as Liam, in that not only is she walking, she is also climbing on anything she can manage to get her knee / leg up on. She has gotten very good at getting herself up on to the wooden rocking horse that is about as tall as her. I guess she got bored with the little rocking giraffe that we borrowed from the Keans. We’ll have to give that back soon – thanks for the loaner.

I’ll add a picture or two and maybe even a video to this post once they are available on Flickr.