Whenever I think of this day, I get “I Got You Babe” stuck in my head thanks to the movie, Groundhog Day.
In traditional weather lore, if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow because the weather is bright and clear, it will be frightened and run back into its hole, and the winter will continue for six more weeks. [wiki]
This year the prophetic little critter in Pennsylvania had this to say, which is a lot more than I can get out at that hour of the morning:
Phil’s official forecast as read 2/2/07 at 7:28 a.m. at Gobbler’s Knob:
El Nino has caused high winds, heavy snow, ice and freezing temperatures in the west.
Here in the East with much mild winter weather we have been blessed.
Global warming has caused a great debate.
This mild winter makes it seem just great.
On this Groundhog Day we think of one thing.
Will we have winter or will we have spring?
On Gobbler’s Knob I see no shadow today.
I predict that early spring is on the way [Groundhog.org]
Our Canadian version of Phil, is Wiarton Willie in Wiarton, Ontario. He also predicted an early spring. But just how many of these climatically inclined critters are out there? City News gives us a list including, but not limited to: Buckeye Chuck, French Creek Freddy and Balzac Billy. Way to go guys, today is YOUR day.
It seems like just yesterday we started this little podcast with a group of local hockey bloggers and here we are on #19.
We’re without Alanah on this episode, but the Internet gods were not on our side. Blame them. On the other hand, the rest of the crew were on hand after a long dry spell without Dave. Three games to talk about this time around; a loss to the Kings, an amazing win over the Sharks, and the Blue Jackets stole a shootout from us last night.
Record as of this episode: 28-19-4
Northwest Division: 2nd
Western Conference: 7th
Also, we address some trade rumors, talk about how Crow is doing in L.A., do a bit of an injury analysis on Kesler and Mitchell, get to some listener feedback/requests, and look at the road ahead towards the playoffs. And believe it or not, Fin is blogging.
It’s hard to imagine that we could be thinking about the playoffs with such hope compared to where we were at the beginning of the season, but we are. Episode 19, Run Time 51:00
If you want to get really picky… you could break it down by Canadian province. British Columbia being at 168 million behind Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. You could say, BC is the new Connecticut, or Alberta is the new Missouri… or just let Wiki do the rest of the comparisons for you.
According to Hockey, A People’s History (which John and I watched religiously but are too cheap to purchase the DVD box set) Tim Horton was trying to subsidized his meager hockey earnings by becoming an entrepreneur. He worked for Conn Smythe’s [wiki] cement company before starting up his own burger joints and eventually the donut shops which became a staple of Canadian culture [wiki] .
We were talking with Bradley (yes, name drop, don’t you feel special now?) on the weekend about how prevalent Tim Horton’s are back East. He said they even have different products including the rumoured “Gretzky”. We all know a Double Double is two sugars, two creams[CBC], but the fabled “Gretzky” is nine of each [wiki].
But the Tim Ho specialty I’m missing right now is the bread bowl. I got some gift certificates for my birthday so I’ve been pumped with coffee for about 3 days now. At lunch I ran down to get some chili, which is accompanied by garlic bread, which will have to suffice for now. I’ve told John about the commercials for a while, since sometimes I’ll just blurt it out in every day conversation but I really do want to say, with merit, “…and then I ate the bowl!” (followed by cheesy laughter).
Phil’s official forecast as read 2/2/07 at 7:28 a.m. at Gobbler’s Knob:
We were talking with Bradley (yes, name drop, don’t you feel special now?) on the weekend about how prevalent Tim Horton’s are back East. He said they even have different products including the rumoured “Gretzky”. We all know a Double Double is two sugars, two creams[