It’s that time of the year where we’re seeing daytime temperatures above freezing and the snow and ice are quickly disappearing.

The City of Regina is warning us to stay off the ice.

With the warm weather, conditions around lakes, creeks and drainage ditches are very dangerous.

The Queen’s gaffe-prone husband Prince Philip proved that at 88 he is as undiplomatic as ever, when he asked a young sea cadet if she worked in a strip club.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s comments are usually intended to put the other person at ease when meeting royalty but they have often landed him in hot water on foreign visits.

Here’s a short video on the Prince’s latest gaffe and his sorted history of putting his foot in his month.

Well this weather has been great and from a look at the forecast it’s going to remain warm. With the snow melting and wet and dusty streets, it seems my car is turning a little browner each time I drive it. While I know it’s still a bit pointless to go through a car wash, I think it’s time to give the car a “sympathy wash.”

Then again, I could get a bit creative and make the most of the situation and save a few bucks on a car wash with something like this:

Dirty car or work of art?

This weekend the rest of the country will change clocks as Daylight Saving Time begins. To us in Saskatchewan this means our favourite TV shows on cable and satellite will be on one hour earlier.

Having a curious mind, I did a little reasearch on the history of Daylight Saving Time and would like to share with you an interesting write up on time change history:

Although first instituted in 1915, the idea of daylight time had been batted around for a more than a century. Benjamin Franklin suggested the idea more than once in the 1770s while he was an emissary to France. But it wasn’t until more than a century later that the idea of daylight time was taken seriously.

William Willett, an English builder, revived the idea in 1907, and eight years later Germany was the first nation to adopt daylight time. The reason: energy conservation. Britain quickly followed suit and instituted British Summer Time in 1916.

Several areas, including parts of Europe, Canada and the United States, followed suit during the First World War. In most cases, daylight time ended with the armistice.

During the Second World War, a different form of daylight time was reinstated by Britain and clocks were set two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time during the summer. It was known as Double Summer Time. The time shift didn’t end with the summer, as clocks were rolled back to be one hour ahead of GMT through the winter.

The Uniform Time Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1966, established a system of uniform (within each time zone) daylight time throughout most of the U.S. and its possessions, exempting only those states in which the legislatures voted to keep the entire state on standard time.

In Canada, it’s up to each province to decide whether to use daylight time, and not all do. As of 2007, most jurisdictions in Canada and the U.S. have been moving their clocks ahead by one hour on the second Sunday in March and back by one hour on the first Sunday in November.

Most of Saskatchewan has not observed daylight time since 1966 and stays on Central Standard Time all year round. Some border towns follow the time schemes of their neighbours in Manitoba or Alberta.

As the late Paul Harvey would say “and now you know the rest of the story.”

(Article source: cbc.ca)

Here’s proof you can sell anything. A New Zealand woman has sold two vials that she says contains the ghosts of an old man and a young girl.

Avie Woodbury from Christchurch claims to have captured the spirits after an exorcism session of her house.

Woodbury then put the ghosts into holy water and stored them in separate vials before deciding to auction them.

The web page for the sale attracted more than 200,000 views before the auction ended. The final price for the “ghosts” was just over $1400!

So how did the woman know her house was haunted?

Woodbury said quote “I would get things like the jug boiling itself, touching on the back of my neck, voices from other rooms, and items going missing then turning up in weird places.”

“I just want to get rid of them as they scare me. But someone might like these to play with,” she said.

Woodbury said she felt a better vibe in her house after the exorcism.

I’ll bet she feels even better for having found someone dumb enough to shell out $1400 bucks for a couple “ghosts.”

Telemiracle 34 has wapped up in Regina.

This year Telemiracle raised a total of $4,010,314!

Last year, Telemiracle raised $3.8 million.

THANK YOU Saskatchewan!

It’s the Telemiracle weekend as the Kinsmen Telemiracle Foundation host Telemiracle 34.

Every year groups, organizations and individuals raise money for Telemiracle. I remember as a kid back in Gravelbourg the elementary school would have a hot dog sale to raise money for Telemiracle, as I recall the annual hot dog sale raised a fair bit of money each year.

This year, Telemiracle returns to Regina taking place at the Conexus Arts Centre. Doors open at 8pm with the 20-hour telethon beginning at 9pm continuing until 5pm Sunday.

Last year’s Telemiracle raised $3.8 million.

Well it looks like the federal government has come to its senses on a proposal to change a line in the national anthem to make ‘O Canada’ more “gender neutral.”

The government said Friday it’s decided not to review the lyrics of “O Canada.”

Much of Canada was abuzz after the government announced in Wednesday’s throne speech that it would look into making the lyrics to “O Canada” more gender-neutral. Of those who responded to the 620 CKRM online poll question on the subject, 98.4% said the government should not make ‘O Canada’ more general neutral.

The government now says it will longer be considering changing the lyric “all thy sons command” because of public disapproval.

The throne speech suggested a review of the anthem and possibly restoring the controversial line to the original words “thou dost in us command.”

On Friday afternoon, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement affirming the change was abandoned because of strong public reaction.

“We offered to hear from Canadians on this issue and they have already spoken loud and clear,” PMO spokesman Dimitri Soudas said in a release.

Now this is the kind of government flip-flop that actually makes sense!

Many in Regina are still talking about some city hall workers getting an eye-full from a man who streaked into city hall the other day.

Well here’s a story of something else, which should have been covered up or maybe just someone who’s a little too up tight?

In New Jersey, police have forced a woman to cover up a snow sculpture modeled on the famous nude Venus de Milo.

Elisa Gonzalez carved the ancient Greek-style torso from snow on her front lawn and says her work was initially a hit.

“It looked very beautiful,” she said. “We got a lot of attention from people in the neighborhood. Some of them got out and took pictures and spoke to us.”

One neighbor clearly felt the snow nude — headless, armless, and cut off above the knees — was too hot.

“We had a visit from the local police who told us that a neighbor had complained about the statue and we needed to cover it up or knock it down,” Gonzalez said. “We didn’t want to have any problem with the police so we covered it up.”

Here’s what the censored version of the snow sculpture looks like:

Is the world a safer place now?

One surprise from the government’s throne speech was a proposal to tweak the wording of “O Canada.”

A sentence in the 6,000-word speech, which was delivered Wednesday afternoon by Governor General Michaelle Jean, said the Conservatives would ask Parliament “to examine the original gender-neutral English wording of the national anthem.”

The lyric in question: “True patriot love in all thy sons command.”

Under the Conservatives’ proposal those words would revert to an earlier version of the anthem written by Stanley Weir in 1908.

The lyric would be replaced with the phrase “True patriot love thou dost in us command.”

I like most men; women and children (people to be politically correct) never realized some were offended by our national anthem. I think this is nothing but political correctness being shoved down our throats and a complete waste of time for the government to even consider a lyric change for the national anthem. I just hope the government wakes up before a lot of time; effort and money will be spent on a debate over ‘O Canada.’