Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

I’m guessing that Dairy Queen isn’t too happy about their neighbour’s name.

- Spruce Grove’s “Liquor King”

There are about 3 alcohol suppliers within a block of that DQ. No wonder Alberta runs out of booze — they have too many liquor stores fighting over stock.

- Grove Motor Inn. They were “renovating”, so the room nearly beneath mine was missing it’s large ground floor window, and the bed and room was wide open like you see on a hotel hit by a tornado.

-Here be mosquitos

-Ditto

-Rumoured to be the first time this child walked

Scott Tribe is picking on my poor Senators. Now there’s a joke, “poor senators”.

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The weather lately has been very dreary in Regina. Fortunately one of Ashley’s friends dropped off cheesecake :-D so the day was bright indeed.

Lloydminister, SK/AB

-Edmonton, AB which doesn’t like Pizza Hut it seems.

- I did eat at the real Pizza Hut in Spruce Grove though, which is where I took this photo from.

-Men decorating a wedding.

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And for some more Canadian insight, check out Miss Cellania.

Here’s the photo of a rainbow that touched the ground, which I mentioned the other day.

- From Yellowhead Highway #16 north west of Sasktoon

I’m blog of the day, woo hoo. I’ve been blog of the day on Fuel before, so it’s nothing too new, nor special. About any blogger can become the blog of the day after a little while of being on Fuel My Blog’s listing. They are upgrading their homepage soon, so it may be a title that doesn’t last much longer, who knows?

And blogger of the day certainly doesn’t go to David of the CTF. Trolling isn’t an uncommon thing, but when you’re the poster child of accountability to taxpayers, you’d think you could have honest conversations about it online.

Astronauts hate to be outside shielded areas while they are in space, because they can be irradiated by high energy particles from the sun. The damage to their cells can lead to all sorts of diseases. NASA reports that a new method of measuring electron increases in space, can predict the arrival of ion storms by at least 7 minutes, and even by an hour. This gives space explorers and even satellites time to prepare for the crippling radiation.

As a side note, radiation shielding in space contains hydrocarbon chains. Hydrogen acts as a good radiation filter. The material it is similar to, would be your plastic shopping bags (at least that’s what I’d heard several years ago).

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Regina is drizzling today, and the drive home from Edmonton and Saskatoon last night had rain along the way. There were some lightning bolts to the south. I got a rainbow photo northwest of The Battlefords that I want to post when my trip’s photos are downloaded.

I’m attending a wedding tomorrow, and have settled into my room at the Inn. I got here after dropping off Arlen from Saskatoon in the midle of Edmonton. He saw my rideshare posting on Craigslist, and saved himself (and me) some money in getting to Alberta’s capital. I head home on Sunday, and make a quick stop in Saskatoon to see some family, and finish up another 8 hour day on the road — hopefully with more photos than you can shake a stick at.

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The news I heard today included a massive sinkhole in an Edmonton freeway that I fortunately wasn’t driving on. It was pretty slow going on Whyte Ave. though.

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I don’t think I gave my review of “Shrek 3″ [7/10] yet. It was nothing too special, but worth seeing if you liked the first two movies. Just dont’ bother seeing it as soon as you can. Tonight I watched some of “Shattered City” [7/10] again, which is about the Halifax 1917 explosion that killed and injured thousands of people during WWI.

Check out the protest these parents are making. They are walking for days between their hometown, and their children’s school, due to one of dozens of the senseless school closures in Saskatchewan this Spring. Kids attempting to grow up on farms/ranches south of where I grew up in Wood Mountain, now have Rockglen school which is ~45 minutes (one way) drive over gravel or broken pavement, ~30 minutes Glentworth over rough pavement, or ~1 hour Assiniboia/Lafleche over rough pavement. Glentworth, Rockglen, Lafleche, are all in the sights for closure in quickly coming years, putting kids on the bus for over 2.5 hours every day! The one room (home) school is going to be brought back to Saskatchewan by parents who want to avoid turning their kids into road warrior zombies.

- I attended Limerick School after they closed Wood Mountain School in 1994. It was a ~55km bus ride one way, every school day.

Should kids as young as five be forced onto a school bus 2 hours every (other) day, because incompetent school officials can’t figure out how to educate children as efficiently as their great grandparents did under the same geographical challenges, and with now better distance education programs to offer? Clearly the answer is no they shouldn’t, and there’s something wrong with the inflated estimates of money “saved” by shipping kids to so called “central” schools. Education clearly isn’t the priority of these school boards. And anyone who says that the current government in the province is committed to rural economic development, needs to be committed.

PSSD is guilty of reversing rural economic development as well.

I have gas… in my car.

So I’m passing on this American petition in the hope that we’ll all get a little less gouged at the pumps when we make our car-pool trips.

Dear MoveOn member,

As of yesterday, gas prices are the highest in U.S. history—we just passed the 1981 record, even adjusted for inflation.1 Prices could reach $4.00 per gallon in parts of the country, just in time to crimp summer vacation plans. As consumers suffer, the oil industry continues to reap the windfall—breaking profit records on an almost quarterly basis. It’s outrageous!

Enough is enough. Hearings start today on H.R. 1252, a House bill that would make gas price gouging a federal crime, punishable by 10 years in prison. Speaker Pelosi has said she’ll move the bill to a vote this week—if there’s the two-thirds majority required to fast track the bill through the process.2

Oil company lobbyists are frantically trying to stop the bill. Your representative needs to hear from you today. Will you sign our petition asking Congress to pass the price-gouging bill—and then send it to your friends?

“Gasoline price gouging should be made a federal crime before the summer price increases hurt more American families.”

Sign the petition:

Rep Bart Stupak (D-MI), sponsor of the House bill said this of his motivation to introduce the legislation:
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