Today we held the first Waterloo Chili cookoff, with proceeds going to the United Way.  When asked if I wanted to participate, I jumped at the idea and I had a ton of fun doing it.

It was a beautiful week, so I took advantage of the weather and decided to fire up the smoker.  I put an outside round roast on at 8pm, and Jodie was kind enough to take it off for me the next morning at 10am.  I chopped up the beef and used that as the base for this recipe that I found on the web: http://www.recipezaar.com/Crock-Pot-Chili-Chili-and-Beans-46332.  I omitted the two cans of green chilis, as I think that would have been a bit much for the Canadian crowd, but for the most part stuck to this recipe.  I also made up three batches of one of my favourite sides for southern food, jalepeno cheese corn bread, based on this recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/Jalapeno-Cornbread-49113.

Everyone brought in some good entries, including pork chili, shredded beef chili, and some variations on traditional ground beef chili.

Having lost the Halloween costume contest not a week ago, I put some extra salesmanship into the competition this time around and it appears to have paid off.  My chili was awarded top prize, woohoo!

Some not-so-hot Blackberry photos below.

For those of you who missed it, I dressed up as Nick Oddson for Halloween this year.  This was a repeat performance for people who were with Open Text six years ago and were located in the Albert Street office.  For those of us who knew Nick six years ago versus “SVP Nick” you’ll understand that the performances were necessarily very different and more subdued.

After making the decision, I started an immediate facial-hair-growing regime.  As the days went by, my appearance became increasingly scruffy and my inability to grow any decent facial hair was becoming obvious.  I received a few odd looks, but for the most part people were kind enough not to comment.  On the Wednesday before Halloween, I had an executive customer visit from Celgene and was looking a bit like a hobo.  I explained to them that I was working on a Halloween costume and to please not remember me as “the guy with a really bad goatee”.  James McGourlay was kind enough to comment from the peanut gallery “and he’s been working on that since June”.  Nice.

By Thursday night, I was ready to begin the transformation.  My beard had grown in almost completely black, so I needed to dye it a lighter colour.  I pulled out the Just for Men Bearch and Sideburn kit and read the instructions.  “Only targets your grey hair” seemed like a deal-killer, but my wife came to the rescue and suggested facial hair bleaching cream.  I applied it and left it on for about 30 minutes, most likely getting high on the ammonia fumes.  The end result was a beard that was Nick-coloured but thin.

I also tested out the rest of the costume, including a haircut on the wig to get it to Nick-length, creating the exclamation point hat out of yellow electrical tape, and testing of a few different types of glasses.  The final task of the night would be to prepare my profile photos to be posted the next morning on Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, and IM so that I could assume the identity of Mr. Oddson.

A note on the facebook photo.  Those of you who don’t follow Nick on facebook will no doubt have been scratching your head when you saw my new facebook profile photo.  For the last month or so, Nick had a picture of himself posing with an oversized jar of honey, and then an oversize jar of mustard.  Mustard being the most readily available club-sized condiment at the grocery store, I chose to lampoon that photo.

I woke up early in the morning and set the plan into motion.  I began a twitter status stream documenting my metamorphosis, and increasingly odd Nick-like behaviours.  I updated the photos, and as people awoke and started reading their social network traffic, my plan was becoming obvious.  I drove into the office, and conveniently ended up pulling into the parking lot at the same time as Nick.  Oh joy of joys, he was wearing almost the exact same outfit!  We both entered the building together and joined Kirk in his office for our first meeting of the day (Kirk got a pretty good laugh out of it).

As the day progressed, I played the part by encroaching on people’s personal space while talking to them and constantly typing on my blackberry.  Sadly, I didn’t take away any “best costume” prizes at the lunch event in the cafeteria but I blame that on doing a poor job of selling it.  I returned home early in time to get the kids ready for trick or treating in the neighbourhood, and the first thing I did when I got home was shave off the beard.

I count myself lucky to be living through this no-doubt important day in history.

I am neither a citizen nor a resident of the United States.  I cannot vote in this election and I am unlikely to influence any ballots.  I am however personally invested in the outcome of this day and its importance will factor heavily in the direction of the world in the coming years.

By all accounts, it would appear that Barack Obama is likely to be elected as the President of the United States.  He possesses a unique character that will allow him to move a people, to affect change, and to restore the place of the United States as the most respected nation in the world. 

Over the last decade, I have watched as the US government has destroyed the credibility that its fathers and grandfathers worked for decades to build.  As a child I saw the United States as a benevolent superpower, one with a history of great deeds and global impact.  Internationally, their influence has won great wars and come to the rescue of millions of unfortunate souls.  Domestically, generations have worked to right the wrongs of slavery and to espouse a society that aspires to freedom, righteousness and justice.  The United States of my childhood was one that was not perfect, but was revered.

Juxtapose that against the United States as the world perceives it today: one that is internally divided along lines of race, politics, and place of birth; one that is a bully on the world stage; one whose leaders are at best incompetent and at worst corrupt.  Whether these are merely perceptions or reality, what the world needs now is a leader that can right the course of this most powerful nation on earth – to unite its people and restore its world image.  I honestly believe that Barack Obama has “it”.  I can’t put my finger directly on what “it” is but his optimistic vision, his ability to seeming speak directly to an individual while addressing millions, his willingness to openly discuss taboo issues and rally everyone to help solve them… this “it” can change history.

This is what has gotten me so excited about today’s election.  I love the United States and the many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who make up that nation.  The people of the United States have an opportunity today to choose a leader who will right their course.  They can elect a government that once again represents the truly great people that they are.  They can rally with one voice and choose to restore their place in the world.  That is the power that Barack Obama can bring to the United States and to the world.  This is what makes him historic.  I’m lucky to be alive to be a witness.

I had no idea that the Toronto Zoo had a monorail at one time, but a short writeup of the monorail and its current state hidden amidst the trees was a surprise to me.  We visited the zoo last year, and I didn’t notice this at all.  The monorail track is longer than that at DisneyLand!  I share the thoughts of the author that a hike around the monorail would be fascinating.

From Geekdad: Urban Exploration: The Toronto Zoo’s Lost Monorail

I’ve been going to the Toronto Zoo regularly for 7 or 8 years now -basically once or twice a year since my daughter was born.  I went a few times as a kid as well, but there’s a period of probably around 15 or 20 years where I never got around to visiting.  That period coincides with the time that the zoo installed its biggest ride*.  The Canadian Domain Ride was a monorail running on a 5.6 km long concrete guideway, connecting a number of the zoo’s domains (in comparison, the monorail track in Disneyland, California is 4km in length).  The Canadian Domain Ride was in operation from 1976 through 1994, but suffered several serious accidents (one in 1991 that injured 9 people and a second in 1994 that injured several dozen passengers resulting in broken bones for some); the second accident led to the ride being permanently shut down.

Even though the Toronto Zoo closed the monorail and dismantled the electrical components, the concrete guideway and passenger stations have remained largely intact.  I’m not sure why the zoo management chose not to tear down the abandoned rail system, although some of the stations were re-purposed as washrooms and refreshment stands.  Every year, as we wander the zoo grounds, I am fascinated by that crumbling infrastructure.  It’s a little surreal, seeing the remnants, but having no memory of the actual machinery in operation.  The concrete gets a little more pitted and stained and more overgrown with vegetation each year, but life continues on around it as though it’s just part of the natural scenery.  It’s a little spooky, frankly, and looking at the abandoned stations as the encroaching vines and trees slowly reclaim their territory reminds me a little of the eerie photos published of Chernobyl twenty years after the nuclear power plant disaster.  A much smaller and less tragic scale, obviously, but watching how quickly nature can overwhelm the concrete constructs of civilization is humbling.  The evidence of the system’s existence is harder to see every year and I suspect that half the people milling about the zoo on any given day don’t even know that there was once a monorail zipping through the grounds.  I’m half expecting and kind of rooting for the possibility that the whole thing eventually disappears behind the trees before anyone finally gets around to demolishing it, leaving a fine mystery for someone to rediscover, decades from now.

I’d love to climb up there and take a hike along the track, but I don’t think the zoo officials would be so keen on that idea- besides, I think it ran through one side of the African Savanna and I’d rate my chances with lions -even relatively "tame" and well fed zoo lions- to be not so good.

*Because someone is bound to ask, no word on whether Lyle Lanley was involved in the sale of this system or if zoo management visited North Haverbrook to view their monorail before opting to purchase.

An abandoned monorail station at the zoo

One of the few vantage points where the concrete guideway is still obvious

I’m just about to go into a meeting with the president of our division dressed in a halloween costume.  Dilbert captured it well today.

Check these pumpkins out, carved by Jodie with no template.

And when photoshop tried to fix the lighting, it failed, but created some pretty interesting designs.

Last weekend we went out to a local farm where we got lost in a corn maze, and hunted for the perfect pumpkin.  A few pictures below.

We also took advantage of the nice weather to go out in our old neighbourhood to say hello to the neighbours and allow Katlyn to sell them some Girl Guide cookies.  One such neighbour had his bike out and let the girls pretend to ride it.

I need a new camera, these Blackberry photos are terrible quality but at least they capture the moment.

I rescued some photos from my Blackberry today taken in Germany.  This is my meal of sour lung soup and livercheese (with an egg on top).  Mmmm…

The girls and I stepped up our geocaching experience last weekend by hiding our first geocaches.  I took Katlyn and Jaimee to the dollar store, where they picked out the box for their caches, some stickers to decorate them, some little toys to hide inside, and the notebook and pencil for the logbook.  After putting together their caches and selecting a name (Katlyn chose “The Sharing Cache” and Jaimee chose “The Worm Cache”) we set out to find a good hiding place.  First up was Jaimee, who said she wanted to hide hers near where she takes swimming lessons. We went for a hike in the park behind the Milton Leisure Center and hid it under a tree.  Katlyn wanted to find somewhere near her school so we went for a walk on the trails behind EW Foster and found a good dead tree to hide it in.

We submitted the caches to geocaching.com and awaited blessing from the site reviewers.  On 10:30am the next morning the caches were published and by noon several groups were already out hunting for them.  Turns out that I transposed a couple of numbers in the coordinates for Katlyn’s cache and four different people were out looking in the wrong spot for it in vain.  Oops!  I corrected it quickly and by 2:30pm someone had made the “first to find” log entry.

By the next day we had received several reports from people who were out hunting for the caches including comments like “nice decoration girls”.  After seeing all of the activity, I started to get jealous and wanted a cache of my own as well.  So I went back to the dollar store and picked up some magnetic key-hiding cases and set up my own cache.  I decided to hide it in the park behind our old house, and as I was hunting for a good spot I noticed a young family out on their back deck who were looking at me suspiciously.  I decided it would be in my best interest to let them in on the game rather than have them call the police on the creepy guy wandering around the playground.  After telling them about geocaching, they basically insisted that I hide the cache on their fenceline so that they could watch people tyring to find it.  I happily obliged.

You can see the caches I’ve hidden and associated comments, pictures, etc here:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?u=pnear

I’ve also been out geocaching on the Bruce Trail with Jaimee, in Cleveland with my coworker Bob, and just yesterday in Providence Rhode Island.

My dad sent along this shot of Katlyn that he took while we were out for a walk on Thanksgiving.  I hope to get the original shot from him so that I can touch it up some more, but I like the way that the moment has been frozen in time.