Windchill Warning

It’s minus 14, but with the wind chill it feels like minus 24.What if you don’t go out? How does it feel then? It feels like you should get a real job, that’s how it feels. It’s minus 28 outside, but it feels like you are blessed, because your old boiler is working its heart out, it thinks this weather is just dandy. Your apartment is so hot that you open a window and suck in the cold thin air through your nose. You are outside in the stillness of minus 43, but you feel like you are on the moon. You wonder what it’s like to be dead. It’s minus 27, but it feels like you haven’t done your creative work this winter, again, and soon you won’t have the cold to keep you in, pinned to your desk. It’s minus 9, and yes it does feel like minus 25, because you’re not smart enough to dress warmly enough unless it’s minus 25. Other days the conditions can be exactly the same, but you feel like a winter animal, something fat, a seal or a polar bear, happy as a clam and warm right down to your tootsies. It’s minus 20, but it feels like a normal, pre-climate change winter, and for that you are grateful. It’s minus 21, but the sun is coming up so much earlier now, you’re not sure you can face another spring, you just had summer, it seems. Time goes so much faster when you get older. It’s minus 22 and the conditions are perfect for the creation of crystals in the snow. There are diamonds everywhere you look and you wonder why this wasn’t on the weather report, like “Severe Risk of Wonder,” and jokesy admonitions like “Boy it’s looking pretty magical out there folks, better take care out there, don’t want you to get hurt in any flights of fancy.” It’s minus 27, but the rabbits love it, sitting in silent contemplation of the moonrise. You and the rabbits feel gypped: some stupid groundhog somewhere has said that winter is almost over. If it’s true, the rabbits will have to start changing into their spring pyjamas. You will just have to cope with the absence of cold, the promise of spring. It’s minus 33, and you wonder why they keep telling you how you feel, how they never even come close.

(photo depicts a Regina bunny in warmer times)

Stephen Harper Is Still Prime Minister

Ignatieff's Liberals help the Tories pass the budget. What was it Tommy Douglas said about white cats and black cats?

Nobody Ever Dies Of Boredom Covering The Saskatchewan Court System...

Color me gobsmacked.

Jim Hopson's press conference told us nothing, which was understandable, because (a) he's not privy to the police investigation, (b) anyone facing charges is innocent until proven guilty, (c) nobody is really going to know anything until the trial starts, (d) the alleged incident involved a minor, so it's more than likely that the judge will impose a media blackout, and (e) there's a one-in-a-10-million chance that the accuser is from the Rachel Marsden School of Attracting Attention To Yourself.

The first media stories said the RPS investigation began last August or September, but charges weren't laid until today (3 February) which means ... what? The sex crimes division is understaffed? The investigation dragged on? The investigating officers wanted to make sure their case against Tillman was air-tight?

There'll be a lot of ink spilled between now and the trial date, but little of it will comment on the two groups most affected by this -- the claimant (assuming, once again, that she's not making this up, and given whatever claim she lodged with the RPS has withstood the five-to-six month investigation) and the family of Eric Tillman (he's married, and, I think, the father of two children). Instead, Roughrider fans and the Leader-Post will be more worried about what this does to the team, as if the whole club was involved in these escapades.

On Pittsburgh, Home Of The Championship Steelers

This, my friends, is a sandwich.

Pittsburgh is basking in Superbowlular glory, so it seems like a relevent time to sing the city's praises (have I mentioned I've been there and really liked it?).

Pittsburgh is great. It's got a dynamic, compact downtown. It's got the Warhol Museum. It has one of the best dinosaur fossil collections on the continent at the Carnegie (promounced "car-naggy") Museum.

It's got the Penguins, even if they're having a stupid year. It's got the sublime Monterey Bay Fish Grotto, where I had an amazing wasabi bloody mary last February.

It's got the Superbowl Champion Steelers.
Best of all though it's got regional haute cuisine in the form of sandwiches stuffed with French Fries and coleslaw. They're the pride of place dish at Primanti Brothers Restaurant, a downtown sandwich shack a few blocks from the hotel that says they invented 'em.

Truly, the food of champions! (And yes, I did eat it.)