Back on the Blue Jays roster... Alex Gonzalez?

So it's no secret to those who know me well that I love baseball.

I've loved it since I was seven, laying in my grandparents' basement, listening to my dad shouting at the TV the night the Blue Jays won their second world series. I figured because of all the fuss, there must be something to this game, and the next season I started watching.

I had played softball since I was six, so I knew the game and the rules. And the team of choice seemed obvious - those Blue Jays my dad had been so passionate about.

The only thing left was finding a favourite player.

Being a shortstop myself, I gravitated to the Jays new, young shortstop, #8, Alex Gonzalez. It didn't take long before he was my hero.



Though he wasn't much of a hitter, Gonz shone defensively, and was robbed of numerous Gold Gloves by Omar Visquel (who I'm sure they just kept giving it to, year after year, because it was easiest). He was quick on his feet, had a great arm, and good instincts when the ball came off the bat. But all his critics were concerned with was his inconsistent plate appearances.

But I cheered for Gonz faithfully. On Sundays after church, knowing my mom liked to stay around and chat, I would race home on my bike right after the service to catch him, second up to bat, at the games that started at twelve.

My friends and family knew more about him than they ever wanted to. We even celebrated his birthday (April 8).

And so it was good. That is until that fateful day in December of 2001 when my dad called me downstairs and, as gently as he could, informed me Gonz had been traded to the Chicago Cubs.

After four-and-a-half months of mourning, I accepted the trade and converted from a Jays fan to a Cubs fan.



I had some good times cheering for the Cubs. There's a lot of history at Wrigley, and we enjoyed a thrilling playoff run in 2003 (until the Steve Bartman incident).

But in 2004, Gonz and the Cubs parted ways. Gonz bounced from Montreal to Tampa Bay to Philadelphia until his retirement in 2006, a sad day for baseball... well, a sad day for some of us.

After Gonz's retirement, I decided to forgive the Blue Jays and became a fan again. And last spring I finally made it to Toronto to see a game.



So my heart stopped for a moment when I saw that this off-season, the Blue Jays signed shortstop Alex Gonzalez...

But upon further reading, I realized that it was MLB's second version of shortstop Alex Gonzalez. #3 Alex Gonzalez, who previously played for Florida and Boston.



I don't know how I feel about this development. It will be a little weird every time I watch a Jays game and see the other Alex Gonzalez at shortstop.

I guess we'll see on Monday when the regular season starts.

Anticipating Glee

Being in CreComm doesn't leave a lot of time for TV shows.

Or hobbies.

Or friendships.

Or anything really.

But last semester, every Wednesday night, I pushed my CreComm responsibilities aside.

For Glee.

Yes, I do like music. And musicals. But I have to admit I wasn't too eager to give Glee a chance at first. I detested High School Musical, and worried Glee would be much the same.

But I couldn't have been more wrong.

While there is still the element of cheese, Glee is an extremely well-written, hilarious show. It's characters are misfits with their own unqiue quirks. Most notably Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), the ridiculously inappropriate cheerleading coach and sworn worst enemy of the glee club. She even has her own show on the late night news. My favourite Sue quote from season 1: "I don't trust a man with curly hair. I can't help but picture little birds laying sulfurous eggs in there, and it disgusts me."

But the true genius of Glee is that the show celebrates the glee club and its members, but mocks them at the same time. You root for the characters who have elements of ridiculousness to all of them, and you want their club to succeed while laughing at them for taking themselves too seriously.

Though CreComm is almost over, season two starts up on April 13. And though I will be buried in a pile of homework and won't have talked to my own mother for weeks, I will find a way to spend one hour in front of the TV.

We made a magazine!

Here's the thing about CreComm. When you have a big assignment, you don't sleep, you don't eat, and you shed tears. You live and breathe CreComm. You go to school for 8 a.m. and you don't come home until they kick you out at midnight. You hate life and resent schoolwork so much. But then, all of a sudden everything comes together, and it all suddenly feels worth it.

The past three months, I have been working on creating a magazine from start to finish with three of my classmates, Stacia Franz, James Hawboldt, and Christa Campbell. We chose the concept, wrote all the content, created all the advertisements, and designed and laid out the whole magazine - quite a process, especially for people with little design experience.

I have resented this project for three months. It got off to a frustrating start. We had to come up with a concept and how it would hang together - how it would be marketed, ideas for editorial content, color schemes, target markets, etc. - in the first week. And I had just met my group members.

Creating our feature articles was frustrating - it required a lot of research and rewrites - but that turned out to be the easy part.

InDesign was my worst enemy. I have trouble with design - I don't know what colors go together well, how to lay things out in an aesthetically-pleasing manner, and when I had a vision, I didn't know how to transfer it onto the page. And close-cutting a photo in Photoshop took hours sometimes.

Not to mention keeping all of our files (I think we have about 50) organized and with the document. Ugh.

But today, we got our first proof of Wait - a magazine for servers, by servers - from the printers. A physical manifestation of all of the tears, sweat, stress, and fatigue we've experienced the past few months. We were all giddy. (OK, maybe partly because we're way overtired and jittery from all the caffeine we've consumed this week.

We have a little bit of tweaking and proofreading to do, but I'm really proud of all four of us, and seeing the printed copy really has made it all worth it. We have a great portfolio piece we can be really proud of - something we never would have thought we could do when we started this program.

So thank you program. Even though most days I resent you, days like this, when I reflect on the skills I have learned and how far I have come in such a short time, I'm so thankful and proud to be in the program.

Stay tuned for some clips from Wait magazine, once the final copy is done.

Looking for a summer weekend getaway? Golf Killarney!

For another journalism assignment, four of my CreComm friends and I drove two-and-half hours to my hometown to write a travel article. I chose to write about our beautiful golf course, where I worked for four summers.

If you're an avid golfer, give it a read! It might just convince you to take a trip! Enjoy!



Located two-and-a-half hours southwest of Winnipeg and twenty minutes north of the U.S. border rests Killarney, Manitoba, a town named for the lake that Irishman John Sydney O’Brien christened after his homeland.

Home to 3,299 residents, Killarney’s population nearly doubles during the summer when cottagers, campers, and other tourists arrive to enjoy the town’s summer leisure activities. One of the main attractions is the Killarney Lakeside Golf Course, located on the shores of Killarney Lake.

Randy Brekke is entering his second year as the club’s CPGA certified golf professional. He worked previously at the Elmhurst Golf & Country Club, located just outside of Winnipeg, for 23 years. He says he was surprised by the quality of the Killarney’s course the first time he played it.

“Certain holes have a lot of character, and it’s an enjoyable course to play,” says Brekke. “It’s not super long, you don’t have to punish yourself, it’s well-kept, and it’s pretty. And it requires a little talent to play – it’s not a pushover small-town course.”



Les Defoort has member of the course for 35 years. An avid golfer, he has served on the club’s executive for three terms and holds one of the course’s two hundred shares. He says the course’s most unique feature is the contrast between the front and back nines.

“The back nine (opened in 1921) is a traditional old-style golf course with lots of trees, very short holes, and two very difficult par threes,” says Defoort. “The newer front nine, opened in the early ’90s, plays along the lake with one large mound and large bunkers. It was originally designed as a links-type nine, but that is slowly changing as the course matures.”



While every hole has its own character and challenges, Brekke says the ninth hole, which doglegs right around Killarney Lake, is the most challenging.

“It tempts you to hit a long drive over the water, but if you screw up, you’ve got the lake and a few bunkers that will really hurt you,” says Brekke. “It’s the hole that separates the men from the boys.”

An 18-hole green fee is $32 and a power cart rental is $30. Brekke says, unlike city courses, the course is almost never backed up, and golfers are often able to get a tee time by booking only one day in advance.



The course also has a driving range, putting and practice greens, club rentals, and a fully licensed restaurant, open from six a.m. to dusk, where you can purchase the Birdie Breakfast (two eggs, bacon or sausage, hash browns, toast, and coffee) for $6.85.

For tourists looking for somewhere to stay, the course offers stay-and-play packages (in conjunction with the Pleasant Valley Golf Club) with the Kerry Park and Agricultural Society campgrounds, the Country Comfort B&B, and the Erin Inn Motor Hotel and Emerald Isle Motel & Resort.

To book a tee time online, visit www.killarneylakeside.com/. For more information about the town, visit www.killarney.ca/.

Incredible Story of Three Manitoba Moose Fans

For an assignment for journalism class, we were sent to a Manitoba Moose game to find a human interest "story in the stands". After talking to several people, I came across three Moose fans decked out in Moose garb and approached them to ask a few questions.

Though they didn't reveal much at first, upon further prodding, I found out that these three, a husband, wife and daughter, had incredible life stories, and hockey was an integral part.

Here is their story.



For the Egdell family, hockey has become a break from life’s complications. A distraction that daughter Allison Egdell needed at last night’s Manitoba Moose game after suffering a seizure yesterday afternoon.

Egdell, 35, has had epilepsy since she was 6 or 7 years old. Because of her condition, she cannot work and requires constant supervision from her family. Last year alone, she had over 160 seizures.

“Today’s wasn’t too bad, so I could still come to the game.” Egdell says. “Sometimes when it’s over, I have to sleep for hours. It makes it worse when it interferes with my plans because I don’t get to do a lot.”

Egdell says she has been lucky enough not to suffer a seizure during a game, but was taken away by ambulance on the way to the arena in November.

“We were walking into the upper concourse (of the MTS Centre) when I had a seizure and fell and cracked my head open,” says Egdell. “We had to miss the game, but when the Moose found out, they gave us tickets for another night.”

Egdell and her father, John “Hoss” Egdell, a former master warrant officer for the Canadian Forces and life-long Maple Leafs fan, have been coming to games since the Moose moved to the MTS Centre in 2004. In 2006, the duo became a trio when Hoss, 67, met his second wife, Linda, also a die-hard hockey fan.

“We met over the Internet,” explains Linda, 59, who says she learned to love hockey while watching the Maple Leafs with her dad on their black-and-white TV set. “We had an immediate connection because we had both lost our spouses to cancer. And there was also our love for hockey. Hoss took me to a Moose game for our first date.”

Seven months later, the two were married. The hockey-themed wedding featured a cake shaped like a hockey rink complete with nets, players, and a large Maple Leafs logo in the centre. In honour of their former spouses and Hoss’s own battle with cancer, in lieu of gifts, donations were made to the Canadian Cancer Society, whose logo all three Egdell’s dawn on the upper-left corner of their Moose jerseys.

Of the 6,027 fans who saw the American Hockey League match-up in which the inconsistent Moose beat the Worcester Sharks 3-1 in the Sharks’ first-ever visit to Winnipeg, Hoss said his family will have appreciated last night’s game in a way others can’t understand.

“It’s something the three of us just get,” says Hoss. “We need hockey in our lives. When you can’t count on life, you can count on hockey.”