A Tuesday assortment

So, an assortment this evening.

1. Clare has fired up the start of annual Nunie Awards. You may notice on the sidebar that I am the winner of the 2009 award for Best Blog, which I do find kind of cool. You have until January 17 at 5 pm EST to nominate blogs in the Best Blog, Best Blog Post and Best New Blog categories.

I have, in the past, been shallow enough to lobby for the Best Blog category. This time I think I exhibit a bit more grace and merely point out the nominations are open and that there are many excellent Nunavut blogs out there you should consider nominating. This is a fun thing and a chance to go poke around and see and read more about this particular part of the north. Check out my sidebar or go to Clare's Nunavut Blogs page.

2. Because I know all of you are dying for more weather updates, it's been almost resembling normal here the last few days. Temperatures are back closer to seasonal norms and you can actually see the bay freezing in front of you during the day. Great steam clouds are hovering over the edge of the bay, which is kind of cool (you know what I mean). I don't know if the bay is going to freeze anything resembling normal, but I guess we'll see.

Among other weather related things, the cold snap has brought mixed blessings to people in town. The pro is the bay is freezing so people might finally get to use their snowmobiles out there in a few weeks. The con is that everything kind of flash froze after the mild spell last week. Iqaluit is skating rink. And now it's too cold for any kind of serious snow fall. Pro is that the sun is finally shining. During that mild spell sunshine was a rare beast. I have to admit, I'll take a bit of cold right now just to get some sunshine. I feel more alert.

One final thing about the recent weather. One of the benefits of this winter so far is that our heating bill is a fraction of what it was. It'll start taking a hit now, but we've spent virtually no money on heating oil and our electric bill is still reasonable. So it's the end of the world, but at least we won't be broke.

3. This is not north related and all, but I saw this story about The Great Gatsby movie maybe being shot in 3-D and had the very strong reaction of wanting to beat the crap out of Bas Luhrmann. And I'm not even that big a fan of the original novel. I remember reading it at MUN and thinking, as I often do of much classic literature, that I'm obviously missing a point here.

But it just seems like such a dumb idea. It would be like making "Pride and Prejudice" in 3-D (although "Pride, Prejudice and Zombies" does kind of cry out for 3-D). Then again, It's Luhrmann. For every interesting idea (bits and pieces of "Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge") you get something like "Australia". Luhrmann should be made to walk to every home in Australia and apologize for making that piece of shit.

Anyway, even with Leonard DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, this feels like a disaster. But I guess we shall see. Still, 3-D.....what a dumb idea.

Last Five
1. Miscellany (live) - The Chieftains*
2. Giant (live) - Stan Rogers
3. Fat lip - Sum 41
4. Fallen angel - Robbie Robertson*
5. Through the dark - KT Tunstall