an eventful few days.............

well i took a trip over to Saskatchewan this week to visit a few clients, i flew into a very cold, snowy Saskatoon on Thursday morning & rented a 4x4 to get me safely! around this snowbound province

Saskatoon seemed like quite a picturesque town, with bridges crossing the frozen river at various points & a hip(ish) little strech of shops, bars & cafes on Broadway - it was friggin' freezing mind you so opportunities to explore were limited & anyway I had a 4 hour drive east to Yorkton to consider after i had done my work

see route here

about halfway into that cross-province journey i pulled off the main highway with the intention of stopping to eat a bit of lunch & have a short a rest from the fairly monotonous drive, which offered few scenic highlights other than a flat landscape muffled by deep, white snow

as the snow covered road i pulled onto seemed quite narrow i thought i better pull over slightly in case anything like a tractor came past - BIG MISTAKE - the car suddenly lurched off the road & into a deep, snow filled ditch & there got itself well & truly stuck, four wheel drive/off road type thing or not - all i could do was spin the wheels & throw up big chunks of mud, grass & snow

swallowing my pride i called 411 (directory services) and asked for a nearby garage, and sure enough i was put in touch with the local towing company - 20 minutes later a tow truck driven by the obligatory baseball becapped old guy turned up, him no doubt thinking to himself what the bejesus is this idiot doing?! Then amazingly with his battered up old tow truck he was able to winch me & modern, shiny new 4x4 out of our sorry predicament - he then charged me a few bucks for the privilige & no doubt drove off laughing to himself - oh well , lesson learned!!

the rest of the trip was happily uneventful, but i would have to say that Saskatchewan is not going to set any pulses racing for sight see-ers - the words, flat, white & dull summed up the route i drove pretty succinctly

yesterday we had the pleasure of strapping my 16 month old daughter into her first pair of skis - she took to it immediately & had a whale of a time slippin' and slidin' round the piste - in fact she did wail when it was time to take them off & leave

pictures here - password is my surname (lower case)

last night was a bit of a blur, booze, booze & more booze in Bannf - where i met the proprietor of the local sex shop, she told me in great detail about her range - which was nice. To make matters worse though I had a 7.30am start this morning to get over to Sunshine for a days snowboarding with the gang, it was good fun though - very cold, but the snow was perfect , really quick & plenty of terrain to explore - i am now absolutely knackered though & the week hasn't begun

other stuff - Charlton defended doggedly & dourly to earn a point at Anfield, certainly not pretty or good to watch but a good result & 4 points off the European Champions this season - nice - great to see the odd plastic scouser moaning over on Netaddicks

i have only just, 6 years too late discovered what a good comedy series Black Books was - watched the whole of the 1st season on DVD recently - i should have known it was good with Graham Linehan involved, he of Father Ted - have aso been downloading & watching The IT Crowd recently - similar kind of humour & better than a lot of the stuff that passes for comedy these days

music wise - well The Broken Family Band album has been played pretty much non-stop this last week but to keep the mp3 blog going here are a couple of other songs i'm currently enjoying

the ramones - let's dance (live in LA 1976) - classic punk rock from Da Bruddas

fotheringay - the way i feel (1970) - Byrds inspired British folk rock from a short lived cult group featuring the immense talents of Sandy Denny