Its a bird! Its a plane! Its a woodpecker!

It all started one morning when I looked out into the yard and saw a chicken fly by and land in a tree. I had just woken up and all of my sensibilities had yet to kick in, so I really did think this was a chicken in my winter-naked maple tree. Then I got a better look. It was the world’s biggest woodpecker. It was the size of a chicken. I felt like I had just seen a UFO or Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster. I knew that if I told someone that I had a ten pound woodpecker in my yard, they would roll their eyes and change the subject quickly. It would later be confirmed (by my trusty Audobon bird guide) that sitting in my tree was a pileated woodpecker. And yes, it was the size of a chicken. Giant woodpecker, with a red crest and a moustache. Kinda looked like William H. Macey in the movie ‘Fargo’. Anyway, since I blabbed about my sighting on the radio, I would personally like to thank all of the listeners who have shared their pileated woodpecker stories with me. As it turns out, these giant birds are fairly common. Who knew?

I was sitting on the couch the other day, eating a bowl of Lay’s potato chips. Mostly because I had housework to do. My three dogs don’t usually beg for food, but my dog Hudson really likes chips. So he sat at my knees staring at me and my chips for a while, then disappeared. Moments later, he returned with his rawhide bone, which he promptly dropped into my bowl of chips. This was a new twist. He was offering me a trade. Of course, it worked. He got chips. I got a slobbery rawhide bone. Drat! Out-smarted by one of my dogs yet again.

This year, more than 7 million Americans will be buying a 52-inch (or larger) plasma tv. I don’t have the Canadian stats, but per capita, its probably similar. Men are doing everything they can to convince their wives that a tv which takes up two thirds of the living room is not only quite acceptable, its really cool. And the funny thing is, this has lead to record sales in jewellery. Believe it or not, your man wanting a giant screen HD plasma LCD whatever tv, often leads to you getting some surprise jewellery. Not a bad deal. Except you may have to climb over the tv to get to your new necklace.

Its Olympics time once again! If you’re like me, you can’t get enough of Olympics coverage. I think I must watch about 5 hours a day, of course while wearing my Canadian Olympic sweater. My vote for most fearless Olympians has to go to the members of the various skeleton teams. Nothing like going head-first down a track at a gazillion miles an hour. I salute all of our Canadian athletes. The difference between them and people like me, is that they actually stuck to a plan.
I wonder if there are any tickets available for the gold medal mens hockey game.

Hey! You 'do' have to shovel it!

If you’re a Tom Cochrane fan, its great news that he’ll be playing the ‘snowbowl’ to kick off Winterlude on the Rideau Canal (the stretch of canal that’s right in front of the NAC) on Friday, February 3rd. Last year, the Rheostatics had the same honour and put on a great show, although they may have wondered if the crowd did like them. Its just that you can’t hear applause when people’s hands are covered by mittens.

Speaking of the canal, maybe you’ve noticed that the NCC has made it official: there are now giant signs on the canal touting the fact that we are in the Guinness Book of World Records, yes we are, THE longest skating rink in the entire world!!! Just in case there was any doubt. Every few years the argument returns, and a frozen Dutch surface tries to claim the honour, but we are sticking to our story. Although this winter has been so mild, we may have another world record: the most people standing and staring and wishing they could skate on the world’s longest skating rink.

The debate continues: should the city of Ottawa snow plow drivers not only clear our streets, but also take out the ‘hump’ at the end of our driveways? Apparently, the ‘taking out of the hump’ will cost taxpayers another million dollars. In the meantime, most people handle the driveway hump one of two ways: with a snowblower, or, putting pedal to the medal and flooring the family mini van. A crowd often gathers when this Indy 500 manouevre results in the belly of the mini van straddling the hump, while all 4 wheels spin in the air. I’ll bet this has never happened to the Canadian Tire guy.

The 939 BOB FM ‘pet friendly’ coffee mugs are here! Let us know when you’re going to be gathering at a dog park with your 4 legged and 2 legged friends, and our ‘pet friendly’ van will swing by to deliver these super cool traveler coffee mugs! Send us the info by clicking onto the ‘pet friendly’ section of our website. The BOB FM pet friendly coffee mug is quickly becoming the ‘must have’ item for hip dog owners. OK. Maybe I should stop watching ‘Fashion TV’.

Just heard a startling statistic: pizza sales are down by 10 percent across Canada. The culprit? The calories and the carbs. A piece of pizza can have 500 calories and 30 g of carbs. No wonder its so delicious. Now, pizza makers are designing pizza pies with healthy whole wheat crusts and toppings like spinach and tofu and artichokes. Yuk. I’m sure the guys are gonna order a couple of those while they’re watching the Superbowl.

You Can't Always Get What you want, eh?

The Rolling Stones ‘Bigger Bang’ tour is back after the holiday break and I was lucky enough to catch the Montreal show, which was ‘the same but different’ from their performance here at Lansdowne Park in September. They played some old gems like ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘Midnight Rambler’ , along with new tunes. But there was one moment at the Stones show that I will never forget. Was it …their rendition of ‘Tumbling Dice’? Nope. Was it….Keith’s solo performance on ‘Happy’? Nope. It was….Ron Wood eating a banana. Yep. Right in the middle of ‘Midnight Rambler’, Ronnie just reached over and grabbed a banana from the top of a speaker, enjoying a good mouthful or two of Chiquita’s finest. For the first time in my life, I got the real answer to the question, ‘Does Ron Wood like bananas’? The answer is yes.

I don’t know about you, but I like keeping concert ticket stubs for souvenirs. Its fun to go through them every once in a while and reminisce about a certain concert. I don’t have my ticket stubs framed and hanging on the wall, or anything quite that organized. Some are in my wallet, some are stuck to the fridge, some are pinned to the wall in the workshop. But it would appear that the art of collecting concert ticket stubs may soon be obsolete. For the Stones show in Montreal, we got an ‘e-ticket’. Instead of giving the Bell Centre ticket takers a ticket, we handed them an 8 ½” by 11 inch piece of paper with seat numbers and a bar code on it. They scanned it and handed it back, so we could find our seats. There were thousands of people walking around with these pieces of paper. It looked like we all brought our homework to the Rolling Stones show.

My good friends at BARK (Bytowne Association of Rescued Kanines) are gearing up for their major fundraiser, the ‘Woofs and Wags’ Walkathon. OK , so its not til May…May 7th, to be exact, but who doesn’t like to think about the month of May during the dark cold month of January. Anyhow, to raise even more funds and get some friendly competition going, all RETREIVERS are challenging OTHER retrievers to raise the most money for the Bark walkathon on May 7th. If you have a retriever, join the ‘Retriever Fever’ team! Let’s see if we can extend this challenge to other dog breeds too…..how about a ‘Poodle Patrol’ or the “Jogging Jack Russells’…maybe the ‘Marching Malamutes’….or, what about the ‘Hiking Heinz’s’’..? For info on the walk, check www.bark-ottawa.com

Fantastic news about the Ottawa Senators games now being broadcast on both the Team 1200 AND in crystal clear 100,000 watt stereo on our very own 939 BOB FM! Just outside of Ottawa in cottage country, the ice fishermen can now have the Sens games blaring from their radios as they sit in their chairs overlooking the hole that they’ve cut into a frozen lake! Now ‘that’s’ Canadian!!

I had to chuckle while watching tv the other night, of course the federal election has hit a feverish pitch and it seems that every second tv commercial is either promoting or lambasting one political party or the other. But one particular tv commercial caught my attention, simply because at the end of the spot, a very serious female announcer asks the viewer a question. The question itself, ends with the word ‘eh’.
I think the question was something like, ‘as Canadians, we don’t want that, eh? Sheesh. Maybe they added the ‘eh’ to really speak our language. They should also offer us beer and bacon in exchange for votes. And maybe a toque, eh?

How to Get a Parking Ticket

Bob FM’s ‘paying off your bills’ right now. Since Bob decided to give our listeners some sweet relief after the expense of the holidays, behind the scenes we’ve been quite entertained at the nature of some of the bills people are sending us. (incidentally, you can send us your bills too, all the info is on this website) Of course we’re getting the usual bills, Visa, hydro, cable, but my favourite so far….today BOB FM picked up the tab for 2 parking tickets. Which actually lead to quite a lesson for me. On the morning show, I advised listeners to do what I do….if you’re parking illegally for a few moments, just leave your hazard lights on and you won’t get a parking ticket. A parking ticket officer called us right away to set me straight on this. ‘Green hornets’ have their own name for hazard lights. They call them ‘come and get me lights’. If your vehicle’s lights are flashing you will actually be the first on the block to get that parking ticket. Sheesh. Foiled again.

I finally saw the movie ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’. I thought it was pretty funny but I think my favourite running gag in the movie, was the fact that at the electronics store where everyone worked, a music DVD from singer Michael MacDonald played over and over and over again on every single plasma tv in the store. In my experience, every time I go to any ‘high definition’ tv department, they are playing the Eagles dvd, ‘When Hell Freezes Over’. I have seen this Eagles DVD play about a hundred times. If I ever get the urge to watch it, I just go to a tv store.

I came across an interesting website the other day, its www.myheritage.com. This website actually matches your face with the celebrity face that most resembles your face. You simply submit a photo of your face, and they send back the celebrity match! Use this site with caution, though. No one wants to be told that they look like Danny de Vito.

I love reading Sue Sherring’s column in the Ottawa Sun. Sue covers the goings-on at city council, and today she was offering up the latest: city council is thinking of banning ‘personal scents’, such as perfumes, colognes, scented soaps and deodorants, from municipal buildings, recreational centers and even OC transpo buses. Sue envisioned the scene on the bus when each driver has to not only collect fees and check bus passes, they have to actually take a big whiff of every passenger. If they smell at all like a flower, they are not allowed on the bus. But if you stink like garlic, grab yourself a seat! Don’t you just love living in Ottawa?