Emerging Reports indicate that a large tear has developed in the roof of the cloth domed BC Place Stadium in Vancouver (home of the BC Lions Football Team and several annual expos and events). No injuries have been reported.

Here is a photo of the stadium on a normal day and in better health. I wonder if they will have it fixed before the boatshow! (Feb 7-11 2007). Hundreds of vendors will be waiting to hear if this will postpone or cancel the show and this is the second time in three years theshow has been threatned. A labour strile two years ago almost scuttled the 2005 show.

The CBC Website Reports:

The domed roof of B.C. Place Stadium collapsed with a loud bang on Friday afternoon and is completely flat.

Two City of Vancouver workers told CBC News that there appeared to have been a hole in the roof.

They said they heard some flapping, followed by what sounded like an explosion.

They said they believe the whole internal roof support structure may be gone.

Former CBC journalist Kathryn Gretsinger said the deflated dome was the “strangest sight ever” as she travelled into downtown Vancouver over the Cambie Bridge.

She said there was only a circular rim of concrete visible when looking up from outside.

Here is a more dramatic shot of the flacid facility:

I will start my series on blogs that I read with a shout out to a long time favorite website: Gillianic Tendencies. This is a classic personal web-log authored by the laugh-tastic Gillian Gunson of British Columbia. Through the years (since Aug 2004) This site has shown the sarcastic humour and is truly, as the it claims to be “The cyber-representation of Gillian Gunson”.

With posts on office sillyness, fantastic photography, relationship drama and supporting local charity efforts, there is always something hilarious to read. While the running theme of “Friday Cat Blogging” often dont have me in feline fits of hysterics, I have overpopulated my world with schnauzer related posts so I can just be pleased in the posts on keeping Gillian from going from Friday Cat Blogging to the Cat Lady Blogger. As the included global readership chart suggests, I am not alone in reading Gunson’s posts regularly.

Or how I learned to suck it up and write something for my web-log after being lazy and overwhelmed with other things.

Firstly dear reader, we are proud and excited to announce the future arrival of a new member of our family. That’s right! A new baby is my first news of the new year! Briana and I are due to welcome our new squirmie on May 15th and we are deep into the traditional pursuits of determining baby names, finding neat modern parenthood gadgets (we simply must have if we want to hang out with the cool moms ad dads) and worrying about the myriad or controversial mommy-baby health topics (where some one is almost always compared to Hitler predictably). Boy , girl, we don’t know and the white coats won’t tell us (no matter how much we try to stick it to the MAN) but whatever baby chooses for its birthday suit, this is the perfect time for us to add to our family and Briana and I could not be happier.

This Christmas and for the first time, Briana and I hosted the season’s festivities. With lots of help from family and friends we had a great time over five days of revolving door visitors, dinner parties and house guests. I just loved it and I learned (thanks mom) how to make a killer turkey and awesome gravy. As for seasonal swag, I scored an awesome black coat as a gift from Briana. Its funny! We both got each other pajamas, a coat, and kitchen gadgets.

While I have not been blogging myself to any meaningful extent, I have been fluttering around the bloggosphere like a geeky butterfly getting to know other blogs and enjoying old favorites. This activity is a lot of fun for me and responsible for countless hours of inactivity and over use of the scroll wheel on my mouse. On this subject, I announce a new series on Willbop: Wherin I review some blogs I am reading and what I like and don’t and other bloggie stuff.

Those Crazy Blogs

No one rerally takes me seriously but I really do want some ordinance one day for Christmas. Like these two small field pieces in the Amsterdam City Museum, setting up for a bit of artillery can be a wholesome family activity on a bracing winter morning. What more do you need to give you a spring in yus step than the deep chest feeling of a dissapating shockwave? What gift could more say “titings of comfort and joy” than a canon no longer used in bellicose employ? Naught, says I.

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An interesting vid . This is based on a series of advertisements from apple based on “I switch” (from PC to MAC). This presenter switched to Canada.

Pardon me while I roll on the floor laughing.

Within moments after the online tech-news portals began publishing the news that Google had inaugurated an online patent search tool, Briana emailed me with the news and I started searching. The first thing I noticed was that my boss now thinks I am a genius! I come up with wierdly detaied solutions to technical and mechanical problems, find hard to source parts and anwser arcane science and physics questions with my use of google, wikipedia, and the internet generally. Now I can add drawings and measurements from the last two centuries of innovative advancement to my catagories of known genius. Sweet!

It is very entertaining to peruse the ages of patents presently parked on the google service and I would bet it will be very useful for many as well.

Not to much longer than four years ago, my dad embarked on a process designed to fulfil a long held desire. He would apply his talent at drawing and art to training and practice with the result that he would become an artist. Even his earliest paintings were stunning and the obvious talent displayed in his work carried through into his paintings even before he had developed his more technical skills.

I have one of his more recent works here. As usual, I have no idea what the title is so I am calling it “Shelter Bay from Behind the Snowy Evergreen” by Richard Tomkinson Dec 2006.

Untitled Forest Floor / Richard Tomkinson

Preseted for you here are paintings from the Skagit Valley Washington painter Richard Tomkinson. Le lives in La Connor WA and I have featured his work on this website before (look under topic section “Cultural Interlude” in the sidebar.

This Painting was recently gifted to us for display in our home and pictures a forest floor scene.

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A Forest Scene / Richard Tomkinson

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