Christmas Vacation

Well, me, Jenn and the boys are off on a Winnipeg-Regina-Winnipeg Christmas vacation. Along for the ride are Jennifer's sister Michelle, her kids Haylei and Maddie, and Jenn's dad. We are in Winnipeg now; Regina tomorrow. Check back here often to see how we are makin' out!

First Goal

My son Andrew age 8, scored his first goal as a hockey player last night. It was a proud moment for him, and you could see it in his face when he came off the ice. I was very happy for him as this is his first year playing hockey, and due to his age, he is playing with kids who have already been skating for 3 or 4 years, so he's a little behind skill wise. Still, he enjoys it and is having fun which is the main thing. I remember my first goal as a kid, I was 8 and playing my first year as well.
Next one is Cameron, he's going to be six on Dec. 14. But he doesn't play any games until his first jamboree which is in January, so we'll see what happens.

Updated Shopping Links

Hi everybody.
Just a quick update on my companies that I promote. Check these links out
for shopping ideas, or if you are planning a trip somewhere! Thanks!

7 Days, 7 Deals at Sears.ca

Gig Cancelled

Unfortunately, our gig last Saturday had to be cancelled. A bit of a downer, but for us, family always comes first. See you next post.

Gig: November 15/09

My band; the incomparable Edible Rex; is jammin' in Dryden this Saturday, Nov. 15/09 at the Queenstreet station. Stop by here next week to see how it went, or better yet, if you're in or around Dryden on the 15th, come!!

Hockey Hockey Hockey!

I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd write and say what's up.

Last Saturday me and some friends from Sioux took a coach's clinic in Dryden. It was a good course that also provided us with a lot of resources to refer to in the future. I've decided to be more active in my kid's hockey since I'm at the rink with them anyway! Plus on my own, I play two nights a week, sometimes three if I think my body can handle it!

Getting back to the course, part of it was two on ice sessions which were optional to participate in. We all went and watched the Dryden coaches run their practices but didn't go on the ice. I personally regretted the decision of not going on the ice with the kids and the coaches, they all looked like they had a lot of fun.

Today was a Sunday, so it was a day off of hockey for us, but tomorrow it's back to the rink!

My Metallica Concert Review

Last Monday, October 12, my friends and I took in the Metallica concert at the MTS centre in Winnipeg. What a blast! I think there was something like 16,000 people there; I heard it was an attendance record for a concert there. Here's my take on the show.......

Metallica hit the stage shortly after 8pm with the song "That Was Just Your Life" off their new "Death Magnetic" album. The band played the entire song while the arena was dark except for some laser lights that darted around and others that formed designs and shapes on the stage. Very cool, and very different for a Metallica show. Singer James Hetfield had a spotlight on him everytime he stepped up to a mike to sing. After the song, the house lights came on and there they were on stage for all to see.

"The End of the Line" also off Death Magnetic, was their second song before they finally launched into a classic Metallica tune; "For Whom the Bell Tolls" a song I am absolutely in love with due to the bass riff at the beginning, it was my first time hearing bassist Robert Trujillo play it and it rocked.

It became very clear to my friends and I that this concert was all about the new stuff, as they played no less than six songs off their new record.

Metallica's stage was in the middle of the arena, and was about as big as a hockey rink, maybe a little shorter. They had seven (I think) vocal mikes that James and the band alternated between while singing songs, James never sang one song from just one mike. They had four coffins floating above the stage with lights all over them, and as usual, lots of fire and explosions.

A highlight for me was "Master of Puppets" a song which the band played but let the crowd sing the choruses, pretty impressive to hear 16,000 souls singing along. When the band played "Bell Tolls" and "One" they were actually shorter versions of the originals, which we found interesting.

The rest of the set included the new songs, "The Day that Never Comes", "Cyanide", "All Nightmare Long", and a couple others, as well as the classics "Enter Sandman", "Sad But True", "The Unforgiven", and "Nothing Else Matters" all off their "Black" album.

Some surprises to us were "Damage Inc.", "Whiplash", and "Seek and Destroy", the latter two were played as encores.

I'd like to end my little review with this; folks, nobody engages a crowd live like Metallica. Even if you are not a fan, I would encourage you to see them if you can, a live Metallica concert is an amazing experience. Can't wait to see them again,
which should be "soon" according to drummer Lars Ulrich as he left the stage.

Hi, I Can Help You Save Money!

Hey there. Some of you may be visiting because I personally invited you here. Here's why;

I have a side gig promoting companies on the web. How it works is I direct customers to their sites and if the customer makes a purchase, I get a small percentage of the sale. What that means is.... yep you guessed it.... you're a potential customer!

Now before you get mad and say "he's just trying to sell me stuff!" wait up for a second....

Quite often (but not always) the prices are cheaper at these places if you access the sites from an "affiliate" (me) than if you accessed the site yourself via search engine or whatever. AND...... these sites email me when they have big sales going on, and I pass this information on to potential customers by putting the links on this site. So I guess you can call this a win-win. I get a few cents per sale and you get to save some "cesh"!

Now this is a BLOG, so I have to write some content. I can't just pitch stuff or they'll close me down. So occasionally, when something cool happens to me, I'll write it in here for your reading pleasure!

Here's some companies I'm promoting. I'm hoping to update this list monthly, if there's a website you'd like to see listed here, let me know and I'll try and add it for you.

Who doesn't like to shop at Amazon?


Here's my one shopping link, I'm trying to get more........



Travel..............












Get a ticket to anything you want, any where you want....

10 Year Anniversary

Hello, as most of you may already know last Friday, August 14/09 was our 10 year wedding anniversary. Jennifer and I decided to celebrate by spending a weekend in Winnipeg (without the kids, thanks grampa and auntie's Natalie and Michelle.)

Thursday, August 13/09

The weekend got off to a rockin' start when Jennifer slammed the car door onto my left hand whilst I was loading up our car topper, I'm pretty sure it was an accident!

We met Grampa Dick in Kenora Friday afternoon where he picked up Cameron to spend the week with him in Selkirk. Needless to say Cameron was pretty pumped.......
"Whatcha gonna do at Grampa's house Cameron?" "I'm gonna go to McDonald's, eat jellybeans......"

We checked into the Inn at the Forks Thursday night and I gotta say, what a nice hotel! The lobby and dining room was decorated with a definite "water" type theme, complete with a stream running through the lobby. We had an awesome room with a view of the Forks and the city skyline. The room itself was very nice with a king size bed and a glass sink and counter top in the bathroom.

After dinner at Earl's we checked out "Funny People" with Adam Sandler, very funny movie, both of us laughed out loud a couple of times, I think I embarrassed Jenn a little. After the movie it was back to the hotel, I'm not telling you what happened next.

Friday, August 14/09

After an awesome breakfast at the Current, the hotel's restaurant, we shopped a little until we had to go and see Dr. Ahmed, Jennifer's radiologist at Cancer Care.
At the appointment, Dr. Ahmed told us exactly what we wanted to hear, in his thick East Indian accent he said, "I saw your latest CT scan and there is no more cancer activity, we don't have to do anything else." Definitely a nice anniversary present!

After the visit to the hospital we power shopped! Or power "looked around" is more like it, we hunted the city looking for some specific items we wanted but couldn't find anything. Jenn did buy some clothes and I bought an organizer for my desk at work, rock on!

At 5pm following a stressful car ride through rush hour traffic, we arrived at the Rinestone spa at our hotel for a couple's massage. Rinestone is a very cool place, like any other massage business, you fill out a card with your medical history on it, then you put your slippers and robe on and make your way to the waiting room. The waiting room at Rinestone is, as you would expect, very relaxing. It was dimly lit and had a waterfall trickling down one of the walls. They had snacks, tea, and water there if you wanted anything. We had a "relaxing couple's massage" where both of us got massages in the same room at the same time. (Get your heads out of the gutter some of you, that's exactly what happened!) And it was very relaxing!

After that we "cleaned up nice" and headed out for our anniversary supper, which we wanted to have at the Ichi Ban Japanese Restaurant, easily our favorite place to go in Winnipeg. We drove downtown and had a hard time finding parking space due to construction, but we got there.

The the suckiest part of our trip happened! The Ichi Ban was closed! We were in shock. The lady said they were closed due to not enough business, what a disappointment. We hummed and haahd about other places before deciding on the restaurant at our hotel. We get back there and guess what? Yep, CLOSED!

So yeah, our anniversary supper was at the Old Spaghetti Factory, not by choice, but by convenience. It was actually pretty good.

After supper it was back up to the hotel for some more of I'm not telling you. Saturday morning we packed up and went to visit Jennifer's dad and step mom before heading home. All in all a great trip.

Fireman's Social 2009

Hi everybody,

I'm not posting on this blog as much as I thought I would, but I guess when it comes down to it my life is pretty boring most times and it's hard to find interesting things to write about.....

But such was not the case last weekend as my band Edible Rex played for the sixth consecutive year at the annual Fireman's Social, an event put on every year by our volunteer firefighters during Sioux Lookout's Blueberry Festival.

This year's event was NUTS! I'm not sure how many people attended but my guess is between 300 and 400 souls, most of whom got into the spirit of things and danced the night away as our band played.

Our first set began at roughly 10:15pm, a little later than usual but that was on purpose because in the past, we went on earlier and played to a pretty much empty room. This year was different and the late start helped, I think. People got up and started dancing right away, much to our surprise and delight. Our last song of the set was "Long Cool Woman" by the Hollies, which features a righteous solo by our guitarist Neil at the end of the song. When we were done our first set I remember thinking "Man, I can't believe we have two sets left!"

After about a 10 minute break we tore into set two, with people dancing again like crazy. Unfortunately for me, I had some "technical difficulties" when the batteries for my wireless transmitter somehow became disconnected, forcing me to connect straight to my amp via patch cord. All in all I think it was about a one minute delay, I have to give a special thank you to our singer Suzanne, who noticed I didn't have enough slack in my patch cord to reach my vocal mike, so she moved the mike stand closer for me! The highlight of the set for me was our version of Bille Jean, which we played as a tribute to Michael Jackson. People dug it, and some started shouting "wooo!" when the bass and drums grove kicked in.

After a five, yes five minute break we were back at it with set three, usually our most danciest set of tunes. I was able to fix my wireless, therefore I spent some time during the set walking through the crowd while playing. I thought I would get more of a reaction than I did, but most folks were pretty juiced by then and were having too good a time to notice one of the musicians jamming away right there on the dance floor. We do a version of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" in this set, I say "a version" because we funk this song up with Ryan's awesome drumming and Neil's
jazzy guitar picking during the intro to the song. At a little before 1am we finished off with "Move it on Over" by Hank Williams, but made more famous by George Thorogood. We finished off to a sparser crowd as most folks trundled off to get in line at the bar, but that's ok. By the time I toweled off and hauled my gear out of there I was home at 1:30am.

I'd just like to conclude with some thank you's. Thanks to Heather and Aaron for helping us haul gear, and thanks to Scotty for being our DJ in between sets. And I just want to especially thank Rob, Kevin, and all the firefighters for having us come and play and building our stage to boot! Thanks guys, see you at hockey!

"Edible Rex" is composed of me, Neil on guitar, Ryan on drums and Suzanne on lead vocals. We've been together for six years or so. We only play one or two times per year and are always on the lookout for more gigs. If you want us to come and play your bar or event, you can email me at rickmckenzie_69@hotmail.com and we'll talk. We don't play for free, but we play for cheap!

June 22/09

I haven't written for awhile, so I thought I'd better put something on here to give my legions of followers something to read! (ha, "legions") Since it's warmed up outside my place has become overflowing with friends and family coming to our beach for a swim. I'm not complaining, anyone reading this, you're more than welcome to stop by. Jennifer and I love company!

Our lone family trip this summer is to Winnipeg and Dauphin during the second weekend of July. We are going to Dauphin to help Jenn's grandparents celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary! Other than that we are staying home this summer, which I have no problem with.

I shot my first game of golf yesterday, and shot a 47 over 9 holes. Not great but not too stinky either. I'd like to thank Andy and Steve for coming out with me on such a hot day. And to the other guy who wanted to golf and I arranged all this for, only to have him back out; you can go piss up a rope buddy! Did I mention I teach golf? If you can't get to me for a lesson, I'd say buy yourself a Medicus golf trainer from the link below. It's the best golf teaching system on the market today, in my opinion.

Hello and Welcome

Well, I've decided to start my own blog. Sort of "my own little space on the web" kind of thing. On future posts you will see photos and video, and links to websites and things that I think are interesting, important, or will make me some extra money! Ha! For now, I've decided to start with a few things about me.

1. I'm 38 years old and I live and work in Sioux Lookout, Ontario. I am a social worker or more specifically a case manager for an agency called Integrated Services Northwest; I've been with this agency for almost six years, the longest I've kept one job! 2. I'm married (sorry girls, and some of you guys) My wife Jennifer and I have two boys, Andrew is 7 and Cameron is 5. They are both healthy and happy kids. (and for the most part, not too badly behaved!) 3. I am a certified golf teacher. Call me for a lesson! 4. I play the bass (well) My band's name is Edible Rex, came up with that one myself. We play classic rock, country and contemporary top 40, basically "something for everybody" during our sets. Contact me for a gig. We don't work for free but we work for cheap! 5. I'm not very handy. Actually you can take "very" out of the previous sentence. 6. I'm colour blind. And no I don't see in blacks, whites, and grays, I see colours fine, just have a hard time telling what they are 'tis all. 7. I love hockey!!! I love watching it, playing it, reading about it, and taking my kids to their games and practices. My favorite NHL team is the Ottawa Senators, I used to like the Toronto Maple Leafs but I jumped off the Leafs bandwagon about 3 years ago when I picked a bunch of Senators players in a playoff pool I was in, came in 7th. 8. I like to travel. Since we've been married, Jennifer and I have been to Europe twice, Mexico, and Las Vegas. 9. Best advice I ever got was from three "older" gentlemen when I asked them "what's the secret to a long and happy marriage?" #1 said "take time for yourself and don't try to change the other person." #2 said "avoid arguing, but when you have to argue, be authoritative!" and #3 said "don't f**k anything you're not going to marry!" There you have it, poetry!
10. *DISCLAIMER* You may not want to read the following as it falls into the "too much information" department. My favorite sexual turn on is women in black high heel boots. Drives me nuts and I can't explain why. Hey you were warned!

See you next post.