September - November 2007

Holy Family Parish Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary
Actually, I am a little late on this story because the celebrations started much earlier this year however I was waiting on the new spire to be completely finished before posting the picture. If you remember last year I posted a story and a picture of the unfinished steeple (see bottom of this page). Below is the finished work. It's higher than the St-Agapit steeple by about 20 feet and you now can spot it from miles away. I have been lent a DVD made by Russell O'Neill that shows the great fire of 1961 where the St-Agapit church, which then 'hosted' the Holy Family Parish, burned to the ground. I cannot put the entire DVD on my site but will put some excerpts. Stay tuned for that.

Legion Branch 185 Remembrance Weekend Pictures Click on Legion logo above! 

Picture of the week
Coming home from buying bird seed for winter I heard a loud noise over my head in my driveway. Up in our last remaining rotting tree was a pileated Woodpecker. I quickly went inside and grabbed both my cameras, still and video. The result is this week's POM (Pictures of the week soon to become POW). Click on POM logo above to see both the picture and the video of this huge bird. About an hour later, there were 5 smaller hairy woodpeckers chopping at the tree. At this rate, that tree will be eaten away by Christmas. 

Two Mountains Councilor Denis Joannette Goes Federal
Councilor Joanette has thrown his hat into the federal politics ring and will be running for the Liberal Party in the next election representing our riding , Riviere des Mille-Iles. He has launched a new website to tell you all about it. Click here to visit denisjoanette.ca. 

Red Team Captures 2007 SOMD Grey Cup
MVP Ron Fitzmorris leads him team, captained by Rollie Fiset, to victory by a score of 20 to 12. Click Here for a Slide Show.
Click here if you just want to see the Video highlights of the game.

My Map is Filling Up
As you can see on the above right, my website is getting hits from all over the globe now. This is a result of my colleague Stephan Bolduc who has sent out a few e-mails to his network of contacts across the globe. These people have dropped in from Brazil, Malaysia, France, London and Australia. Thanks Stephan and to the new visitors. Remember, it can take a day or two to show up. Stephan is the Iron Butt Rider whose put many thousands of kilometres on his motorcycle this year . I host his website give2ride.com which describes his rallies. The site will be updated soon with many pictures. Stephan also sent me a link to the most dangerous roads in the world. It's quite impressive. Check it out here.

A Nippy Day for the 42nd Annual SOMD Grey Cup
With a high of 7, the fall classic will be played in cold weather but with no rain. By the 1pm kick-off, the winds should be around 20 km/hr which might affect some of our quarterbacks. The bus is heating up for our pickup at the Tartan at 11:30. Check out the SOMD link for the full schedule.

Remember My Stop Sign Warning a Couple of Weeks Ago.
If you read this article (it was in Tuesday's Gazette), you might see the similarities between Island Pond VT and 2mo QC. The other difference is that the cop in Vermont actually gives warnings sometimes. I don't think that this is the case in our town. Click here to read about a little town with a zealous little police officer just like the one we have.

Hi Hawaii, France and Monterrey Mexico
As you can see from my ClustrMap above, I have recently had visits from Hawaii, France and Mexico. 3 continents and only 4 to go. Next time you are in Antarctica, don't forget to visit my site. Added info: More visits have now come from England and somewhere in central Brazil. This is the work of on of my colleagues, who is spreading the word around the world about my site and people are actually visiting it. Thanks Stephan. 

It's not an Optical Illusion
If you noticed the full moon on the night of Thursday October 25 and even on subsequent nights, it appears to be bigger than usual. It is not an optical illusion. The moon is actually very near perigee, meaning that it is at its closest point to the earth in its elliptical orbit. Click here for a picture taken by Jamie Gibson. This means that this full moon is the largest looking moon of 2007 as opposed to April 3rd's which was the smallest. The difference can be see here in 2006 pictures. Speaking of the moon, you may have seen Jamie Gibson's guest POM which was a picture of the moon taken last month. The POM can be seen by clicking on the POM icon on top. The POM is just about to change to the POW (picture of the week) as I will use my new picture storing service to display them. It will be much easier to update and therefore easier to post new pictures. I will probably convert my wallpapers to that format also. Fingers crossed, this will result in more updates to the site although time is just flying by and there doesn't seem to be much time to do anything.
An example of time flying by happened to me just this week. On Monday (October 22nd), when I got to work, I realized that it was the 5th anniversary of my mother's death and also the 15th anniversary of my father's passing. I really could not believe that it had been that long for either of those events. Life is flying by and you should grasp every moment. That to say, I am taking tomorrow off to enjoy one (probably) last round of golf before the long winter sets in. If you read this any evening between October 25 and 28, put on a warm jacket, go outside, look up at the big moon. For a few minutes, make believe that time has somehow stopped. If your are lucky, time will stop for a little while and you will have time to think of someone that used to make you happy. When you come back in, the worst thing that will have happened is the time will be back to normal or maybe you will have slowed down the clock just a little bit. If it doesn't work at least you will be able to fall back an hour on November 4th.

New Website Now Hosting My Pictures and Videos
About 3 weeks ago, I decided to try a new a service for sharing photos and videos. I signed up for the 30 day free trial and now I am hooked. The service is called Phanfare and it's amazing how fast it delivers top quality pictures to your screen. Even if you don't have the fastest internet access the results are great. It's also pretty easy to use. First you load up their application to your desktop, then you can drag and drop pictures from Explorer right into it. You can add music and videos. The software takes care of building the slide show and downloading the full resolution pictures on the Phanfare website. The service costs $54.95 a year (they also have a lifetime membership at $299). As you drop pictures in the application, these eventually get load in full resolution to the Phanfare server. This means that if you ever lost your computer, there would be a full backup available from them. Your space is unlimited. I was talking to someone there (they have excellent phone support) and she mentioned that someone had just uploaded 15,000 pictures to the server on the weekend. If you ever decide to join this service, if you enter twomopaul in the reference field, you will save $7 off your first year subscription. On top of that, I will put a link on my website pointing to your albums so that you can get a lot of visits. The reason I had to use twomopaul is that they don't support id's that start with a number. If you want more information on this site click here.
If you want to see a couple of slide shows I have put together, go here http://twomopaul.phanfare.com. You will see few albums that I have worked on. You will notice that some have locks on them. These are password protected, so only people that know these passwords can view them. For the full viewing experience when viewing these albums, choose the Start Slideshow link and click on the full screen icon. You will be amazed! Click

Oh, one more thing, you may have noticed that the map on the right (above) now shows a visit from Australia. This visit is from Shannon, Sparkle (Stevenson's) daughter. Thanks for visiting Shannon. Speaking of Sparkle, it's now been almost 2 years since she passed away. Her guestbook at remembering.ca is being kept in perpetuity, so you can view or add to it any time. Click here to access it.

Just Got Back from The Rock
You hadn't seen much action on my site for a few days. We spent the long weekend in St-John's Newfoundland (Logy Bay actually), so I didn't get to update my pages at all. Managed to get one game of golf in, in probably the windiest conditions I have ever played in. The score is not posted yet and may never be. Got a little sightseeing in but most of the time was spent with family and had a grand time. Got a few pictures which I will shortly. Here are 3 slideshows of the trip. 

You May Have Noticed ...
...the map on the top right side of this page. It shows where my visitors are from. It is an interesting view of the world. I have only installed this on September 21st but it shows hits from all over Canada and the USA. By clicking on the map you see a better view. The dot sizes tell you the concentration of hits. In the first few days I got a hit from what looks like Churchill Manitoba. Who ever you are up there send me an e-mail and tell me what you are doing in the North country. The other dots are a fairly good view of who I would expect to be visiting. Boston, Calgary, LA, Florida (Doug and Jo-Ann). Not sure about the mid west or are they my friends from Wichita? The other small dots are Winnipeg and St-John's (which should be bigger). I can't wait to see a dot appear somewhere else in the world. Maybe it will be someone checking in on what's going on in Two Mo while they are on vacation....Keep visiting and tell your friends....

Click here for the Happy Gang Golf Tournament Pictures and Video of the Shoot Out

Legion's Final Ball Game of 2007 a Blast

Here are more pictures from Alison Knee of Gratten Lake. Thanks to Alison and Ted (her dad) for rounding up more pictures.

The final game of the 2007 season was a road trip to Rawdon vs. Wendy Fordham's Rawdon Gang. The weather was fantastic and the hospitality of the Rawdon and Gratten Lake people was superb. After the game we headed to Gratten Lake Lodge which celebrates its 75 years this year. We were treated to a great meal and even had a band entertain us before we got back on the bus to come home. Special thanks goes out to Wendy for organizing the whole thing in Rawdon, to the Gratten Lake Lodge for hosting us for our post game activities, to Peter, our bus driver, who patiently waited for us to get out of the lodge, to Mike Neville for making 2007 a special comeback year for Legion Softball, and to all the fans especially the many Rawdon fans who cheered their home town favourites.

Although the score was a lopsided 28 to 1 for the Branch 185, the fans rallied behind their team who were playing their very first game together. The score didn't seem to matter as everyone enjoyed the day to the fullest. Thank you, Rawdon players and fans for being such great sports and we look forward for a repeat next season. I forgot my camera in the car before getting on the bus so I have very few pictures of the day. Thanks to Alex McPhie for providing these two. If anyone has more, please send them to me.

4Korners Presents Oktoberfest on Saturday October 20th.
A message from 4Korners Family Resource Center:
Hi folks
Oktoberfest tickets are now available at the Center by calling 450- 974-3940 or from a member of our Board of Directors . It is a fundraiser so the tickets may be a little more that usual ---however, the band is reputed to be great for this type of event and can play dance music for any generation. The meal will be hardy and tasty and includes a complimentary glass of wine and we will provide transportation home if the beer flows too freely. This is our first attempt at an Oktoberfest and we are open to any suggestions. We are also looking for interesting door prizes if you know where we can obtain them and we need volunteers to help us decorate.
The atmosphere will be a casual one and we are hoping that this is a real community party that can be built on in the future. So we are looking forward to seeing many of you for a fun-filled evening. For all the info click here.

Warning - Read This For Your Own Good
The Two Mountains slash Ste-Marthe slash St-Joseph police have gone hi-tech in some of their patrol cars, especially the unmarked ones. They have installed video cameras in their cruisers and they need to pay for them. So the new fad is for the police (one in particular seems to be a avid videographer) is to face street corners and to videotape people rolling through stop signs. As soon as someone rolls through a stop sign, the said enforcer of the law, chases you down to give you a ticket and proudly tries to show you his video of your wheels not actually coming to a full stop at the intersection. With 2 mo's thousand of stop signs, it is easy to see why it is so easy for these guys to catch people. The stop sign situation is crazy in some parts of Two Mo. In particular, Henri-Dunant and Guy between 20th and 27th have an atrocious number of stop signs. So if your wheels don't actually stop, get ready for a $150 ticket and 3 points off your license. I know of at least 5 people who have been awarded this prize in the last few months, so be careful and make sure the wheels stop completely. If not, smile, you're on camera. Maybe one day, the cops will be there when to ticket someone who really deserves it but for now this seems to be the latest MO in 2 Mo.

Legion Softball Suffer First Loss To Verdun Br #4
The Branch 185 softball finally lost a game this weekend when the Verdun Branch 4 took advantage of some errors in the bottom of the 6th to come back from a 3 run deficit. They took the lead 8 to 7 and Br185 failed to come back in the 7th. We all headed back to the branch for food and beverages. Thanks to Verdun Branch 4 for their hospitality. Also thanks to Peter for driving us around in his bus and making sure that we didn't drive. Peter is driving us to Rawdon next Saturday for our final game of the year. There might be a couple of seats available for some fans to join us on our road trip. Contact me if you are interested. Pictures are now available on this site. I am trying out a new service for pictures. Click here to see them For best results, do Start Slideshow and then expand to full screen. Let me know if this too slow for your internet connections.

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So Many Things - So Little Time
Once again, I find myself apologizing for my lack of updates to this website. This is the month when everything happens at once. Here is a typical week in September for me. Monday - Hockey, Wednesday - Darts, Friday - Hockey, Saturday - Touch Football and Softball, Sunday - Golf. Throw in two video projects I have been doing and Voila, no time for updating this website (except if you look at the time I managed to do this update (5:32am Friday). The good news is that there are a few things to report. Firstly, Scott Martin has been resting in the last few weeks and has provided a long update after a six week well deserved break.
On my side there is not much happening except that I am trying out a new feature on my site. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will see a little world map. Eventually there will be little red dots on it. This will show where all my visitors come from. When you click on that map it will expand to a bigger map show the world and the concentration of my visitors. It's a neat service and let's see how it works over the next few days as it needs a few days to update.
Yesterday was a very ironic day in the Montreal. It was the 5th annual no automobile day in Montreal. From 9:30 to 3:00 the downtown core was closed to vehicular traffic. There were promoting public transport, health and environment. I have been taking the train since September 1st because of the horrendous traffic situation of the fall and winter, so last evening I was attempting to catch the the 5:50 home. When I got to the platform for the train, I thought I was in Japan. People were actually pushing through the train doors to get on. Long story short, there was power failure somewhere on the line and this train was actually the 5:25 train that was pulling out at 6:05. The 5:50 finally pulled out at 6:30 to arrive in 2mo at 7:15. This could be good because anyone that respected no car day and took the train will probably not adopt the already overcrowded train as an option.
Here are a couple of links to websites that could come in handy. They will be posted in my Favourites soon. This a great (free) spell checker for you people who don't have a built in spell check in your software. It supports many languages. I use it a lot to put accents in French because I can't find them on the keyboard: http://www.thesolutioncafe.com/public-spell-checker.html .
Here is one for people that have to drive in to Montreal everyday. This shows all the traffic cameras set up in Montréal. http://www.inforoutiere.qc.ca/en/cameras/montreal/index.asp?
Finally a funny little video about phone support is here. Thanks Mike Fitz for the link. Coming soon, a guest POM.

Sargent Starr Captures SOMD Week 1
Dave Sargent and Bonnie attended at our 42nd SOMD season opener last Saturday. Dave owns and runs a sound studio here in 2 mountains and his wife, Bonnie came out to try out her new camera on some 'action' shots. After loads of shots and video, the result is pretty good and Dave built a SOMD fan site with a video and some pictures. Check it out, it's really cool. Here's the link. Thanks Dave and Bonnie for a great job.

Another Star-Image Show Coming to the Veterans' Hall
Many of you remember the great show Rock and Roll Memories produced by Star Image back in May. If you need a memory jog click here for the slide show. Well another Star-Image production is making its way to 2 mo on Saturday, November 24. This one is called a Rock and Roll Elvis Dance. It stars Stephen Kabakos who has performed all around the world. Click here for more information.