Dies the Fire by S M Stirling

Recommend reading by Paul
Dies the Fire by S M Stirling

The year is 1998 and a strange electrical storm over the island of Nantucket suddenly causes all electronic devices to stop functioning! Cars and trucks stop in the middle of street, planes fall out of the sky and the world is changed forever. Small groups of people realized that this is not a temporary event and begin gathering seeds, farming equipment, livestock and move out to the country to survive. The cities go first with disease and starvation and the more ruthless individuals' are building armies for conquest.

So what would do if the world ended tomorrow? What skills do you have that would help you survive?

Fun with book Covers photo Essay

Photo Essay continue. We had a little bit of fun with this one!

Movember Day 19 - Cardigans and glasses

Movember Day 18 - A Man With Out a Mustache

Movember Day 10: On the Razors edge.

So this whole shaving thing every night is the pits! Last night while lathering up, I dropped my wedding ring down sink drain!! Luckily, I have big fingers which means a big ring, so I was able to unscrew the goose neck and retrieve my ring out of the plumbing. This of course took about an hour of looking around for tools and then painstakingly reaching into the small space behind the sink to unscrew the goose neck. All said and done I got my ring back; lathered up and finished my shave.

Now I am not used to shaving every night, as I usually wear a beard and neither is my skin, which has been getting a lot of razor burn lately! I mentioned this to my friend and teammate Mark Bradford who is also participating in Movember this month and he suggest that I try using some body butter after I shave as it has helped him cut down on the razor burn. Not a bad idea.

So last night after flushing my ring down the drain and then retrieving it and shaving, I decided to take Mark's advice and see if I could find some of the raspberry body butter that I had received as a present last Christmas. Unfortunately Jenn was already asleep so I couldn't ask her where it was or make too much noise as I didn't want to wake her up. So I turned on my bed side lamp to find said body butter. I couldn't find it. I was able to find the vanilla stick of body butter I had given Jenn for her Birthday though. Surely she wouldn't want me to suffer, or be waken up and asked where my body butter was. Plus she was the one who signed me up for this month of shaving and sharing a little bit of her body butter is just part of the package right? So I grabbed the stick of body butter, turned off my lamp and made my way to the bathroom where I applied the body butter to my sore razor burned bare chin.

Time check 11:30pm and with all the excitement I was still wide awake. Well I thought to myself "You're up, why not check and see who the Giller Prize winner is, and blog about it." A great idea right? Get the news out to the masses...or the few that read our blog and by the time I am done I should be sleepy and ready for bed. Wrong! So I start typing out the the news that Johanna Skibsrud is the 2010 Giller Prize Winner(congratulations!) , and a funny thing happens, my face starts becoming a little itchy. That's when I begin to sneeze and cough. "Oh No!" I think to myself "What was in that body butter I grabbed?!" I picked up the body butter which is sitting beside the computer screen waiting for me to bring it back upstairs. I read what I though said vanilla body butter and realize that the body butter I have applied to my face is not just vanilla but also has some essential oils included in it as I well. Which I am allergic to of course. The things I do to my face for Prostate Cancer Awareness. Only 21 more days to go.

Movember at Chat Noir Books - It's going to be a chilly month!

I'm doing Movember to support the 1 in 6 men diagnosed with prostate cancer. So should you. Join my team.

I think I have just convinced Mark to join my team!

The Mo, slang for moustache, and November come together each year for Movember.

Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month. The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for prostate cancer. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, the men of Movember commit to growing a moustache for 30 days.

So this Friday I will be shaving off the beard, but I think I will will leave a MO. Come Sunday it all goes...it is going to be so cold!!

The idea for Movember was sparked in 2003 over a few beers in Melbourne, Australia. The plan was simple – to bring the moustache back as a bit of a joke and do something for men’s health. No money was raised in 2003, but the guys behind the Mo realized the potential a moustache had in generating conversations about men’s health. Inspired by the women around them and all they had done for breast cancer, the Mo Bros set themselves on a course to create a global men’s health movement.

In 2004 the campaign evolved and focused on raising awareness and funds for the number one cancer affecting men – prostate cancer. 432 Mo Bros joined the movement that year, raising $55,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia - representing the single largest donation they had ever received.

The Movember moustache has continued to grow year after year, expanding to Canada, the US, UK, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, the Netherlands and Finland.

In 2009, global participation of Mo Bros and Mo Sistas climbed to 255,755, with over one million donors raising $47 Million for Movember’s global beneficiary partners. We are proud to announce that last year’s Canadian campaign was the second largest in the world behind Australia, with 35,156 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas coming together to raise $7.8 million for Prostate Cancer Canada.

Want to see more? Check out their Mo-Intro video by clicking on the image below:



The funds raised through Movember’s Canadian campaign go directly to Prostate Cancer Canada which enables them to fund vital research that will led to better screening tests and treatment options and to run support services for men surviving prostate cancer.