you hometown dominated all newscasts over here. The cabin crew of that AirFrance-aircraft did a tremendous job in getting everybody out in time!!
The newspapers have quite an extensive coverage of the crash. Apparently the First Officer was landing the plane rather than the guy In Charge. There are a number of reports of passengers hiring lawyers to sue Air France. I'm betting that a lot of them had 'priceless family heirlooms' in their luggage and want to be compensated for it, especially because the whole plane (and all of the luggage/cargo) is a complete write-off.
Right around the time the plane was landing, however, a band of really severe thunderstorms was moving through the area so that may have had something to do with it also. I was occupied in my normal afternoon activity and was rudely woken up by The Dog (who is terrified of thunder) sitting about three inches from my face panting and drooling all over the place. I wasn't overly impressed by that, especially the doggie breath.
The Really Big News is that there will be a hockey season this year, and the local favourites (the Toronto Maple Leafs) are still touted to be a contender this year. The Club actually *reduced* ticket prices by 5% to try to recapture what they feel is a lost fan base over the cancelled season last year. This is actually quite funny because good ticket prices went from $185/seat to $176/seat... that is assuming that you can at least get the tickets at the box office. Most of the games in the past have been sell outs, and when they aren't, then there's like two full pages in the newspaper with columns and pictures trying to explain why there were empty seats. The fans here are (or were, before the lock-out) so Leaf-orientated that if the club put uniforms on six chimpanzees and gave them hockey sticks, most of the fans would believe that they had a real chance at making the playoffs. If they didn't, the prognosis would be changed to 'building for the future'. All of this with in-depth colour coverage on the tube and special sports editions in the Saturday paper.
Which sort of reminds me of a guy that I used to work with some time ago. His name was Bob Sloane and he was such a hockey fanatic that he must have had the Leafs logo tatooed on his, well, tatooed anyways, but nobody could really prove it. He was also a compulsive gambler (I think) and would bet on anything. He was a pretty good programmer so mostly his little escapades were sorta over looked by the management.
He also owned this butt-ugly pet that he called Teddy. I think it was one of those hairless cats or dogs that you hear about every so often. I never liked the thing and it made my skin crawl. It like sorta just laid there and eyeballed you. You know, it was eyeballing like you had "Next Meal" on your forehead. A couple of the programmers, however, weren't as spooked about Teddy as I was and there was the usual cutting comments about Teddy, most of which Bob ignored. The problem was that the more the comments were ignored, the more cutting the comments became if you know what I'm talking about.
Well, one day Bob must have reached his limit because I recall this 'loud conversation' in a cube a couple of rows over and a couple of rows back. It was so funny because I stood up to see what was going on and pretty well all you could see was heads (or jumping jack heads for the shorter members of the staff). Sort of like a bunch of prairie dogs popping out of their holes to see what's happening.
Turns out Bob challenged The Biggest Mouth of them all to some sort of a race between Teddy and The Mouth's dog (I'm hazy on the name now, but I'm morally certain it was 'Butch' or something like that, but 'Butch' is good for now) AND he offered a fairly substantial bet to 'make things interesting'. He also offered to cover any other bets that the staff may have. I was about the only one that didn't put down any money (because Teddy gave me the willies) so I got to be The Custodian of the cash.
The race was set for the Friday at the end of the week, after hours, and the venue was the basement parking garage. I was to appear with the cash (about two inches of cash in small bills) in a brown kraft envelope and present it to the winner.
Must have been sixty or seventy of us there. The Mouth had his dog. Bob had Teddy. A couple of lines were drawn at either end of the garage. The finish line had two bowls of food. One bowl was for 'Butch', and vaguely looked like ground meat. The other bowl was for Teddy, and certainly looked like sugar.
Basically, the winner was the first one that got to their respective bowls. Butch and Teddy were lined up and the starting whistle sounded. 'Butch' sort of took off towards the bowls, but Teddy just sort of stayed there eyeballing everything.
'Butch' kept moving toward his bowl at a fairly good pace. Teddy just sort of laid there.
I heard Bob say "Sugar, Teddy. Sugar". Teddy just sort of laid there and eyeballed him.
By this time, 'Butch' is almost to his bowl.
Bob leaned over real close to Teddy and said something that not a lot of us heard.
The next thing you know, Teddy is at the other end of the garage sitting on his bowl of sugar. 'Butch' came in a close second. Ya, I know... don't ask me how but if Bob could package whatever he said to Teddy, he'd be a millionaire. I'm still sort of hazy on how Teddy got down to the finish line before 'Butch' (and a lot of the other guys were also), but there Teddy was, and Teddy was declared The Winner.
I turned over the envelope to Bob, and mentioned to him that I thought that 'Butch' as a sure thing and I was convinced that all of the bets were basically sucker bets and he (Bob) was gonna loose his shirt.
"Nah", he says. "It was a sure thing."
"How so?" I says.
"Well, there's an old saying: Sloane's Teddy wins the race".
Jim.
), and on COB IV we already are eight.
Maybe you could add the Scottish Flag at the top?
And I will be around the corner from my son's elementary school. 
The office is large, only 2 years old and comes with everything we need. (Exam tables, lab equipment, phones, computer system, EKG machine, as so on.) I'm going to be like a kid in a candy store! 
