Mike Browne’s Blog

Moselle K, a former co-worker now living in England, sent me a link to her site, Modek.com. She’s taking photos and posting them like mad.
Nice work Moselle. Stay in touch!

The official site for Spider-Man 2 is up!

This weekend Carol and I drove the 450+ kilometres to see the property that Leslie and Ron have recently purchased. The property is one acre perched precariously on a hillside overlooking the Shuswap lake. They’ve done some building and bought a trailer. We thought it might be a nice getaway.

Carol and I drove for 5 hours after work on Friday through Merritt Mountain Music Festival traffic to get to the place. In Kamloops we realized we had not brought Moosh’s collar so we had to buy a her a new one. We arrived at La Vista Nueva at around 10:30pm very tired. Pretty much as soon as we got there we realized that we had forgotten our suitcase full of clothing in our bedroom at home. Leslie told us that there’s no power as the electrician is lazy and unreliable and didn’t do the job he said he would, so that means, no electric chemical toilet. You got it: here’s a shovel, dig a hole and shit in it. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the water from the well is not drinkable. Anyway, the sadly uninhabitable, leaky, mold-ridden trailer is just there for looks I guess. All four of us had to sleep in the shed.

“No phone! No lights! No motorcar! Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe it’s as primitive as can be!”

On Saturday morning we drove around Salmon Arm like idiots looking for some clothes to buy. Carol and I both got some new duds and then headed back into the woods. I contemplated a motel room a couple of times. Upon our arrival back at the ranch we saw Ron digging up a drainage pipe where the trailer, now moved, is to live. The girls were sent away to the building supply store for, of course, building supplies. What about me? Rather than sit and take it easy reading a book as I had dreamed I assisted Ron with ditch digging and pipe extraction (which was not as easy as we thought it would be) in the sweltering heat… in my new clothes. The blisters pain as I write as there was only one pair of gloves and I didn’t have them. Upon completion of that task (I almost passed out twice from the heat and I swear Ron had a heart attack) Ron put the piece on the pipe and we backfilled it. All that was left was backing the trailer into place then we could go swimming.

Not so easy, the trailer did not want to go into place (this took at least 2 hours), then when it did finally go in straight the wiring gave out to the hydraulic lift and we couldn’t get the trailer off the truck. After a few hours of futzing with our heavy duty jack (they didn’t have one), and me trapped inside the trailer due to the inability to open the door as the deck was too high with the trailer on the hitch, we got the thing off the truck. We then had a nice dinner of extremely burned pork chops, sat and grumbled for an hour (it was too late to go swimming) and then went to bed.

On Sunday we had a nice drive home in the heat and traffic passing the murder investigation you see below.

All around, a great weekend. La Vista Nueva? No. Not right now. More like shanty on the Shuswap. I’m sure it’ll be an awesome spot in years to come. I think we went too early. I’d love to go back when there’s a place for me to plug in my laptop, a comfy bed to sleep in and a toilet to pee into. 😉

CBC News: Pickton probe expanded to wetlands

As Carol and I were coming back from the Shuswap (more on the Shuswap debacle later) we decided to return to Maple Ridge through Abbotsford and Mission. As soon as we left downtown Mission we hit almost standstill traffic. I thought it was an accident on the highway, but it turned out to be the RCMP and forensic anthropologists sifting through a bog just outside of town. There were TV crews, onlookers and cops everywhere.

I still find it insanely creepy that these murders had been happening right under our noses for so long.

CNN.com – France bans ‘e-mail’ from vocabulary – Jul. 18, 2003

The French are very protective of their culture and this is not a surprise at all. E-mail is an English word. ‘Nuff said.

Thanks to Lance for the heads up.

Check out the Dictionary of Last Names.

BROWNE :

English, form of Brown, derived from common nickname applied to one brown, or dark red, of hair or complexion, principally the latter. A few Browns refer to the ancestor named BRUN ‘brown,’ but this was not a common forename in England after the Conquest in 1066. The explanation for several different spellings or even several different nicknames with the same or similar meaning ascribed to one country is that they arose independently in different parts of the nation due to differences in regional dialect.

In EBONICS: A slang dialect used by certain groups of the African-American community.

Yo, Big Daddy upstairs,

You be chillin

So be yo hood

You be sayin’ it, I be doin’ it

In this here hood and yo’s

Gimme some eats

And cut me some slack, Blood

Sos I be doin’ it to dem dat diss me

Don’t be pushing me into no jive

Ang keep dem crips away

Cause you always be da man, G

Straight up.

Aa-men.

You can find this and many more translations of the most famous prayer in the world right here. Don’t worry, I haven’t gone militantly Christian on you (or Christian at all for that matter). I do, however, find it an interesting prayer. I did choose the ebonics translation first after all.

My friend Scott works at the store bearing this domain: www.dickslumber.com. It’s a lumber store, not a penis taking a nap.

Bell equips trains with Wi-Fi access

I guess logging in on the West Coast Express with my wireless card and laptop is right around the corner.