Happy New Year from Canadia!

Ok, to start if all off, this is a tag team post composed by myself & Ray (I'm typing & editing, he's dictating). He wants me to start if off by saying: Bowl games, bowl games and more bowl games - that idea was vetoed right outta the hop. For the first time in memory, we (Uncle Ray) is excited about not a football game on New Years Day but a hockey game. You really can't live in Canada and not talk hockey, I mean come on, that's totally un-American - err - un-Canadian?!?! The NHL is staging their winter classic today which is an outdoor game, where 75,000 fans will gather in Orchard Park, New York to watch Sid the Kid and the Pittsburgh Penguins (our team along with the Senators) take on the Buffalo Sabres. Go Pens!!! Nothing like seeing hockey played the way everyone grew up playing, outside, in the cold with snow falling and the wind a blowin'. (That reminds me, some people around these parts actually have homemade rinks in their yards! Seriously, I've seen people skating around on ice skates in their yards up here - quite a sight. They don't do that in Arizona.) It will be great to watch on CBC in beautiful high definition.

In case you're wondering, we had our own winter classic AGAIN! Another foot of snow fell yesterday and we'll be getting another foot starting tonight. Will it ever end? That means there'll be about 4 feet of snow down by the end of the week. Crazy I tell you! Ray and I have become as efficient as a NASCAR pit crew when it comes to scurrying out of the house, clearing the snow from the cars, and backing the cars out of the driveway at first sound of the "plow guy"...anything to avoid shoveling the entire drive....torture!

Go ILLINI - beat the University of Spoiled Children (USC) today in the Rose Bowl!!!!!!!