No Hockey Sticks Allowed

Dear John,

Being back in Halifax is refreshing. Coming home for three weeks seemed excessive at first and then after New Years became so. The hours of shinny made all the time worht while though. The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) has spent a million dollars on building an outdoor olympic oval on the commons here. It is free to skate on and free to rent skates and due to a large public demand they are considering keeping it, because they were just going to tear it all down and turn it back into a ball diamond for the summer. Infact I had to wait in a line for like 20 minutes to get on the frozen surface to skate with the thousand others. From a distance the spectacle looked kind of surreal: A swirling mass so thick you can't see through it, spotlighted overhead and glowing from the snow.

No hockey sticks allowed though.

A friend suggested we rent a rink because they are cheap. I imagine that everyone I know out here is probably terrible at hockey let alone skating but atleast I'll get to skate.

Mad Men has delivered on the entertainement. Cait and I have been watching it at a feverous pace, season 2 will last us about a week and if we get our hands on season 3 and 4 we'll probably be paining before February comes. Good characters, interesting plot, and a really polished aesthetic make it hard to not stay up and hour later. I briefly slipped into a nap yesterday, probably because I was up till 2am finsihing a third episode that evening. John Hamm deserves much of the credit for the shows watchability, even if he can't stay truthful to Betty.

Blair Allen.