Morning Folks,
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Ahhh, isn''t it a glorious Monday morning? How did everyone''s weekend go? Mine was quite a bit of fun. Before I delve too deep into the Musing today, let me apologize for the lack of musing on Friday. I''ve been transitioning my server over to my new box and somewhere along the way a configuration file or config variable was lost. I think I have it ironed out now, but Friday''s musing didn''t get emailed out because of this. I plan on working on this problem until I can figure it out so if you get a couple musings today, I apologize now :)
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This weekend we celebrated my wife''s Birthday. We had some family and friends over on Saturday which was a lot of fun then we went to the Mother-in-Law''s place on Sunday for some BBQ steak and cake. There were a lot of laughs and a lot of good times to remember; it was a great weekend.
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Now here I sit on a Monday morning writing to you all. I woke this morning with all these great ideas in my head about what I should write about today and somewhere between the snooze button and the front door I lost everything. Not surprising since my most inspirational moments are first thing in the morning. Unfortunatly, they usually last until AFTER the musing, but today I''m exceptionally tired because I got very little sleep this weekend and even less last night. If you have kids, you''ll understand; if you don''t have kids, let me give you some advice. NEVER feed your kids anything sweet prior to bed. You see, we had cake twice this weekend. Once for the party on Saturday and again on Sunday. The weekend before this we celebrated my sister''s Birthday and we had cake then as well. THEN again the weekend before that for my Birthday. Guess what we''re doing this weekend? You guessed it, celebrating my son''s birthday with more cake. Typically that would give us a ! week or so break in between, but this week my nieces birthday party is on Tuesday so we will be eating that as well.
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I don''t mind personally, but when its 1-2am in the morning and one of your kids wakes up with an obvious tummy ache, you wish you hadn''t given them that last piece when they asked for it.
Such is life.
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Also this weekend I found some time to play some WoW. I ended up dinging levels 48 and 49 on my Hunter with about 2 bubs into 49 when I logged out last night. I don''t know where I found the time or energy to play, but I did none the less and had a blast each time. We started the weekend off by heading to Uldaman and finishing off some quests there and I ended the weekend by finishing off a sweet quest in the Badlands called Tremors of the Earth which yeilded a sweet sweet Mail chest piece for my toon. Not only that, but while farming the dragons I was rewarded with a Small Black Drakling pet which I promptly put up on the Auction House to sell. These items are very RARE and I''ve only ever seen 3 of them in the game to date. Having this little guy drop was such a sweet thing because I''ve been trying to save up some coin for a big in-game purchase. I''ve seen these things go for as high as 30g in Ironforge, so I thought I''d give that a try and see if it sells. There are! some people out there who are just crazy enough to spend that for a little dragon pet that doesn''t do a damn thing except fly around and follow you. Myself, I have a Crimson snake pet that I bought for 30 silver and I hate it :)
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All in all, the weekend couldn''t have been much better (except for the weather).
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As we were driving home from Katie''s Mom''s place last night, we started talking about Neighbourhoods and the "Labels" that are placed on them. By Labels I mean Good and Bad places to live. My Mother-in-law lives in a place called Bowness which has a bad reputation due to a gang of bikers that live in the area. Personally I have no issues with the biker gangs as I grew up around machine heads and most of my friends in High School and beyond were mechanics of some sort.
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You see, when I was in High School I found a way to coexsist between all the different social structures. I could hang out with the "Geeks" up on the balcony or I could wander through the foyer and sit with the "Jocks", "Grease Monkeys", "Cool Kids", "Band Kids", "People Under the Stairs" or whatever. I was socially accepted pretty much everywhere I went as a neutral outsider. Granted I didn''t fit in to any one social group, I was greeted by all social groups and had many friends.
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Anyway, we were driving home talking about these Community labels that somehow are placed on communities. Where is a good place to live? Where is a good place to raise children? Which are has the best schools? So many questions to ask when you talk about areas to live in. Calgary is made up of a ton of smaller communities. Some of these communities, at one time, may have been small towns that merged with the City as it grew. A lot of these community structures are self sustaining and thrive just as if they were still their own ''entity''.
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I''ve heard a lot of bad things about this community my mother-in-law lives in, but I''ve also heard a lot of good things about it as well. For example, 3 of my co-workers live in Bowness and they are all great people. The reputation (or how it was explained to me) was based on a Biker House (Hell''s Angels) that exsisted right on the main street of the community. Of course, as soon as you throw the word "Hell" into a gang name, people automatically see it as evil. You have your various religious movements moving in and trying to get rid of them and then community politics getting in the way. Personally, the gang''s name has very bearing with me. As it was explained to me, the Hell''s Angels actually watch over the community to ensure no outside influences are brought in. By that I mean, no asian gangs and drug deals go down in Bowness unless the Hell''s Angels know about it and allow it. :)
A good place to raise kids? Not my kids, at least not in the areas I saw. Would I ever move there? Who knows, I''m trying this new thing were I get the facts for myself instead of listening to what the Media has to say all the time.
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So these "labels" raise a very important question. Who the hell creates these labels and puts them on communities like this? I want to know HOW something like this could ever happen. My wife and I were sitting there trying to come up with a place where we felt would be good to raise our kids and send them to school when it all of a sudden hit me. We were basing our entire decision on where to move based on these labels on each community. Calgary isn''t a small city by any stretch. As of 2003 we had just under 1 million people living here; in 2002 Calgary covered 720 square kilometers (447 square miles). Of course those numbers are larger today but it gives you a good idea how large this City is and how many places there are to live. We work and live in the NE quadrant of Calgary. Some say the NE is a bad place with lots of violence and such, but I like it just fine (for now).
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Bottom line folks is the labels. Yes, I would like to be informed of something wrong with a place, but your version of unsafe and my version of unsafe may be two totally different meanings.
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Anyway, this musing is taking me awhile to put out today so I think I''m going to bid you all a good day and head off. Remember, you are something special!
Have a great day gang!
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Ahh
Cheers,
Al
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