Newsday reported on Wednesday that the NHL is looking at the possibility of having the New York Rangers play the New York Islanders in a regular season game at Yankee Stadium.

I am simply too tired to comment at this point, although this is kinda cool. Is there an audience for this sorta thing in NY though? Who wants to see the Isles play the Rangers… I mean really? I’m sure if it goes through it’ll be hyped to pieces on NBC.

According to the newspaper, league officials met with both teams as well as city officials and NBC to discuss the feasibility of the event, which would tentatively take place on Jan. 1, 2007. (ESPN)

From the Globe and Mail: “A new study has found that most Canadians marry once and only once, and less than 1 per cent walk down the aisle more than twice.” (story)

This was a bit shocking to me although I suppose it makes sense, we are not the divorce-crazed society like our neighbours to the south. If ‘divorce-crazed’ sounds a bit harsh, check out some stats. You may have heard the ‘1 in every 3 fail’ stat or ‘50% fail’ stat but in United States as of May 2005, the divorce rate was 38% per capita. (source).

That indeed is a slightly less ‘staggering’ view and of course if you read the fine print you’ll see some states were not included, this only included one person on behalf of the couple, not counting the couple as 2 people, straight marriages etc.

The Globe article goes on to point out that marriages usually fail for 3 main reasons: age at time of marriage, the length of the marriage and the level of commitment of each partner.

I’ve been married 4 months and a few days now. If I would have taken any of these things to heart when marrying my husband I’d be having a fit-for-Dr. Phil-meltdown and not making my decision based on: who I love, what kind of life I want to lead (and who I want to lead it with) and all kinds of mushy stuff like that.

Still, divorce rates are higher below the 49th than up here. Why is that?

Statistics Canada researchers say that in 2002, about 84 per cent of Canadian families were headed by married couples. (cbc fact sheet). Compare that to the “…U.S. Census Bureau’s newest numbers show that married-couple households — the dominant cohort since the country’s founding — have slipped from nearly 80% in the 1950s to just 50.7% today.” (business week)

I’m not saying that all Americans have poor marriages. I whole-heartedly respect and admire many of my American friends’ families, with two parents or not. I also will never stop loving my family – no matter how crazy they get oh boy…but I digress…

I admire the fact that our Canadian society (as a whole) values this bond. Legally, religiously, socially, openly. (Although hopefully our ‘new’ conservative government won’t try to take away those rights from any of us).

Sometimes you can read stats and spook yourself out of doing things. Sometimes you just have to lead your own life.

The fourth floor room of the VCC in which the event took place was rather “marine” as Coupland put it. Overlooking the ports and the east side of downtown Vancouver everyone agreed. This was my second time seeing Douglas Coupland do a reading, a meet n greet and book signing and our second CBC Studio One Book Club show (site).

As of this morning I was all prepared to stand in line at Chapters tomorrow for his book signing session (site). I had submitted an entry for the Studio One Book Club on Friday – not thinking I had a chance of winning. All I have to do is write (in 250 words or less) why I deserve to attend. Lo and behold, at 11 this morning I get the email from a producer saying I have won tickets.

This is the second time (in two months) that I’ve ‘won’ such a thing from the CBC. The first was with David Suzuki (post). The reading was hilarious, inciteful, and I was one of a handful of people who’ve actually already made it through the book (that made me feel kinda special). It was great to meet him again and get 2 more books signed. I have almost every one and I didn’t want to be too greedy… He shook John’s hand twice, amazed (so it seemed) that someone from Iowa has read one of his books. (john’s post)

These CBC experiences are pretty great – watch for the ‘taped’ version of this one in July (I’m sure they’ll archive it on the site). I’m half tempted to re-read jPod right now just to try and pick up on things I may have missed. I must admit, I did not find the upper-case letter “O” amidst the 100,000 random numbers. I’ll have to play again.

EDIT: Check out the photo credit over @ the Georgia Straight

this is precious. myspace on the daily show (you tube).