Testing out the iPod Touch

This is kind of cool. With the WordPress app for the iPhone, I can blog from anywhere.

Some favorite photos at the lake

Jordon posted some favorite photos from Arlington this summer.

The last weekend at the lake for the season

We came home early for the Nashi fundraiser but this weekend was the last weekend at the lake until 2009.  Jordon has wrote about the fun here and posted some photos here.

Human Trafficking

Today Jordon and I went to another Nashi fundraiser.  The last time there was over 15,000 perogies there.  This time it was a Sunday brunch with the RCMP officer who helps coordinate Canada’s fight against human trafficking.  Human trafficking claims 600,000 to 800,000 victims a year and is second only to drugs in terms of money raised for organized crime.

The U.S. Department of State released the most recent Trafficking in Persons Report in June 2006. The report states that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across transnational borders, or from one country to another, each year. When intra-country or “within country” estimates are included, the figure rises into the millions.

The 2006 Trafficking in Persons Report also indicates that “Canada is a source, transit, and destination country …” Some 800 people are trafficked into this country each year, while an additional 1,500 to 2,200 are trafficked through Canada to the United States.

Here are two of the excellent ads that the U.N. has done and were a part of the presentation.

This one is especially powerful

Nashi is trying to do something about this in Saskatoon but also abroad with a safe house and training centre in the Ukraine.  It’s a great project and one that Jordon and I were happy to support.

Technorati Tags: Nashi,Human Trafficking

11 years

It was eleven years ago that Jordon and I got married.   Today we spend the day hanging out with the boys and doing a little shopping.  After eleven years of marriage, a romantic gift may have been good but after watching this video…

…I realized that I should try another tactic and so I made Jordon take me to Jersey City and I got a cute Denver Broncos shirt and some Saskatchewan Roughrider ear rings.  I got Jordon a Parker Rollerball pen that he has been looking around for years and a Sima Video bracket for our video camera.  We are also going to see Jared Diamond in a week. 

We went out as a family for dinner and had a good time until the point where Jordon’s cell phone started to ring.  Saskatoon had run out of hotel rooms for emergency after hours and neither the Centre staff or the Ministry of Social Services had many options.  As Jordon told, he had an idea but it wasn’t his best idea but that was all they had (his back up plan involved beaching the QE II on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River.  He was quite apologetic to me for ruining the evening but here I was in a home we own with Jordon, my two sons, two dogs, and life was pretty good.  Our evening was being interrupted because there are families who have none of that.  The end result was that everyone who needed shelter had a safe and warm place to go last night.  The whole thing reminded me that while no marriage is perfect, I have never had to worry about food, shelter, or my safety while married to Jordon.

Thanksgiving

I just posted over at the cabin weblog on our trip up there yesterday.  It wasn’t that exciting but with the snow storm expected today we decided to head up there and close up the cabin for the season (although we may head up there next week while Jordon has a week off work, depending on the weather).

This explains a lot

Driving around today Jordon revealed that he had once been assaulted by an A&W Root Bear back in 1983 at a practice for the Canadian Olympic Hockey Team in Calgary.

Apparently the Root Bear was there and took offense to Jordon and his friends humming the A&W tuba theme and grabbed Jordon, tossed him up against the wall, and punched him.  He threatened Jordon and his friends as well.  What makes this even more hilarious is that a former coach of the Calgary Flames told the Root Bear to chill out and leave them alone.  On further questioning (as I wasn’t convinced that the A&W Root Bear would just snap like that), Jordon confessed that he may have pulled on his tail a couple of times.

No one was hurt but Jordon still sits with his back to the wall anytime we are in an A&W in case the Root Bear decides to even the score.

Technorati Tags: A&W,Root Bear,Jordon Cooper

After 11 years…

I finally sat down and looked at our wedding photos with Jordon for the first time.  Over the last week or so I have managed to scan in many of them and I decided to upload them to Flickr.

As I mentioned before the negatives were never given to me (I was sent out some prints) and somewhere along the way, they got lost so some 4×6 prints is all I have.  While I had some plans for a couple of prints, the fact that I hadn’t bothered to even look at the wedding photos probably gives you an idea of how the day went (it has been a great eleven years since then but it started out badly).  Despite the lack of any high quality prints available, some of you may get a kick from looking at the past…