The Newsroom

While on vacation this summer, I stopped by a Best Buy in the United States (Fargo, ND to be precise) in the hopes of finding a good deal on the Lord of the Rings extended edition Blu-Ray. It's normally about $55 in Canada , and it was my hope that I'd be able to snag it for $40 or so in the US. Sure, I already own the extended edition DVD, but, gosh, it'd be nice to watch it in HD, eh? Uh, maybe not. For the same Blu-Ray set at Best Buy in Fargo was ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. $99.99, to be precise. Plus tax. And that was verified on Best Buy's website. Suddenly, $55 in Canada seems like a steal of a deal. Or maybe I'll just stick with my DVDs.

I woke up this morning to the news that my favorite band in the whole wide world, Downhere, is basically done . They're wrapping up their touring at the end of the year, and they won't be recording any further music as a band. And that made me a little sad. I absolutely loved their music. I always thought Downhere was the best Christian band that no one knew about and I could never figure out why they weren't absolutely gigantic in the Christian music business. I've seen them in concert at least four times (that I remember - I'm old, I forget stuff) in the past few years and was impressed every time out. Now I'm very glad I did get the chance to see them when I did. Of course, the purely selfish music lover in me (and that's a big part of me) wishes they could record forever, show up in Edmonton every 12 months for a show and continue to amaze and delight me with their tunes. But these kinds of changes are inevitable in life, so I wish them all the bes...

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When Continuum premiered a couple months back on Showcase, I was intrigued enough by the premise to sit through the first show. In a nutshell, it's 2077, governments have fallen and corporations control the world (or, at least, the North American Union), and ridiculously cute married-with-young-child cop Keira Cameron gets sucked back into the past with a group of terrorists called Liber8 who escape their execution through a time travelling portal they activate in the execution chamber. And they all land in Vancouver in 2012, which is very convenient for purposes of shooting schedules. I almost turned off the first episode after the first segment. It was preachy. It was full of ridiculous stereotypes that spanned the political spectrum. The dialogue was hackneyed and cliched. I stuck with it through the rest of the show and then in the final scene - BAM! They hit us with a brilliant plot twist that not only had me hooked but had me rewatching the premiere to pick up more ...

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As I had hoped, June turned out to be a great month in terms of exercising, as I put on 367 km in the month, almost all of it cycling. I continued my 3-year-old summer tradition of riding to work as often as I could, which helped put on a lot of miles (or kilometres, I suppose). So far in 2012, I've cycled 1,396 km, so I'm 70% of the way towards my goal of biking 2,000 km for the year.