Wow — Canada has taken off in the last couple of days at the Turin Olympics. Yesterday we won four medals, today (so far) three more. Our total at the moment is 11, tied for second place with Germany and Russia, behind first-place Norway (13). We’re even ahead of the U.S. (for now…enjoy it while it lasts). Today, the American women’s hockey team was defeated by Sweden in a huge surprise upset. Now we will face Sweden in the gold-medal game on Monday. Also today, amazing footage of “Mr. Bean” (Jeff Bean of Ottawa), whose skis both flew off as he was doing a huge reverse flip in aerial skiing. The landing was awful to watch, but apparently he’s fine (which means it’s okay to laugh).
Meanwhile, things are really “taking off” around Montréal! The temperature was +8 on Tuesday, then -10 on Wednesday, then +7 again yesterday. We’ve also had snow, rain and freezing rain. Then today, a huge storm came in, and tremendous winds of 100km/h, and a “flash freeze” — the temperature went from about +6 to -11 in a very short time. The wind was blasting all day, airports are closed, we have some power outages and very serious road accidents. In the prairies, temperatures are below -30 and some places are experiencing windchills of -47… Winter is here at last!