I’ve had a very interesting night.

After work, on my drive to pick up the kids from the sitter’s house, I heard there was a tornado watch for most of Southern Ontario, including my area. I wondered if the kids knew.

They sure did.

The car ride home was an unending stream of questions that covered the following: What’s a tornado? What happens if we get a tornado? Where should we go if there’s a tornado? Are we going to get a tornado?

I told them what a tornado is, does, and where to go in the very unlikely event that we get one, hoping that would put an end to the inquiry. I was very, very wrong.

The sitter had told them that if there was a tornado that they would need to go down to her “cold cellar.” My answer was that we would go into the “basement.” Perhaps if I called my basement a cellar and if this space was cold, there would be no problem, but suddenly our lack of a cold cellar made it seem to the children that we were woefully unprepared for tornados (and storing jars of beets) and this only encouraged more questions.

We were going to singing lessons after we checked in at home. Was there a cold cellar at singing lessons? Did they have a basement? How is it possible that our dad seems to know nothing about the architecture of the music school?

Why was it best to go to the basement to be safe from tornados? Where would the house go if a tornado hit it? What would happen if we were on the main floor? How about upstairs?

As flattering as it is that your kids think you know everything about everything, I couldn’t help thinking they have me confused with a structural engineer. And as much as I thought I owed it to them to be patient with their questions, would answering only lead to other rhetorical questions such as what would happen if we were on the roof, in a tree or having ice cream on the trampoline when a tornado hit?

On the drive home from singing, my son said, “Daddy, I’ve never had a tornado (dramatic pause) in my life.”

“Son, (equally dramatic pause) you are six.”

Before we were home I was asked if a tornado was worse than a hurricane. I had gone from structural engineer to part meteorologist, part scientist and I wondered when it would all end.

Are tornados loud? How loud? Are they louder than the airplanes at the air show?

They’re loud, really loud, not sure how they compare to jet airplanes (where exactly do you think I keep the equipment necessary to measure and compare the two?).

What percentage is it that we’ll get a tornado?

Hmm, seems like another way to ask how certain I am in my earlier assertion that there will be no tornados tonight. Do they have any idea how long I spent in school to become a structural engineer/tornado expert/aeronautical sound technician? And besides, I was told there would be no math.

I think their questions finally drained me of all my strength because when my son asked me if we would have to pay for a new house if ours blew away, I caught myself just as I started to explain how it works to file a claim under your home insurance policy...to a six-year-old.

We did get a fairly significant storm, and I am in the basement, but only to give myself a break from the kids.

No tornado, unless you count the one I’m feeling in my head.

My wife and I have always thought it was important to have our kids involved in a variety of activities. From the time they could sit in mommy’s lap and attend some sort of “singing/hand clapping for babies,” (probably not the actual name, but I’ve lost the brochure) we’ve had them doing something.

But now it seems “something” has become “maybe too many somethings?” and we’re trying to figure out how it will all work.

My daughter does cheer sport (competitive version of cheerleading) and she sings. My son has recently started playing hockey and is signed up to play on his first team this year. In addition, we have just signed him up for drum lessons. I like that the kids both have one sport and one music lesson. The thought of having a six-year-old banging on a drum set in my house is horrifying, but these are the sacrifices that parents make.

On top of that we need to sign the kids up for swimming lessons! Everyone seems against me when it comes to the swimming lessons (my wife worries we won’t have time to breathe, kids are kids and who ever enjoyed swimming lessons?), but I just don’t think it’s an option for the kids to be anything but great swimmers - how else is this going to happen?

And in case you didn’t know, cheering has two practices a week (each about two hours) plus at least one “tumbling” session. Hockey is twice a week, swimming, singing and pounding, er, I mean drum lessons are once a week.

Is it feasible? Sure. Is it going to be easy? Um...yeah.

There are going to be a lot of nights where one of us rushes home from work, picks up the kids from the sitter’s, grabbing whatever we can find to eat, barely catching our breath as we sit rinkside/poolside/gymside/musicschoolside while one child plays or performs and the other tortures us by repeating, “This is boring!” until it’s time to go home.

What about homework? Kids in Grade 1 and Grade 4 have a lot more homework than I did when I was their age and it’s not going to be easy to find time around all these activities to get it all done.

We’re going to be busy- wish me luck!

How about you? Do you do too much with your kids or too little? What are your thoughts on getting them involved in things? Interested to hear your stories!

Today, Jack Layton, the leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP), lost his battle with cancer. He was 61.

I’m not an overly political person and have no interest in debating whether or not Layton was a great politician. I am similarly uninterested in (and perhaps incapable of) arguing that the NDP under Layton did or were about to accomplish great things for our country. Others can and will tell the story of Layton’s political history and argue his leadership track record far better than I ever could.

But, whether you loved or hated the man’s politics, it was impossible to ignore his virtues as a man and the legacy he leaves behind. For these he will be missed by all Canadians.

Jack Layton cared. He cared about making the City of Toronto a better place and he cared about creating a better Canada. He cared about providing a different choice for the province of Quebec that he believed would provide them a better future. He gave of himself for a very long time to serve these communities as well as he could.

He worked very hard to do what he thought was right. He didn’t take “no” for an answer and overcame incredible odds to have the success that he enjoyed in the political arena.

He was a fighter in politics and in life. I’m certain that he fought his cancer with tremendous strength and dignity.

I’m well aware that my image of Layton was carefully crafted by his handlers, but I believe he leaves behind a loving relationship with his wife of many years. That he built and nurtured this special relationship with someone he loved is to be admired.

In a touching final letter to Canadians, written when he knew his end was near, he wrote:

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

Jack Layton left a legacy of love, hope and optimism. He made Canada a better place. I plan to use his words and his memory to inspire me to do the same.

I hope you will too.

RIP Jack Layton

Yesterday, I was given a stretch assignment. My wife was at work and she said it would be really helpful if I would take the kids to Wal-Mart to buy all of their back-to-school supplies. The school had sent home a list of what was needed for both kids, so it seemed like an easy job. The potential to win points with my wife was an added bonus so I headed to the store, list-in-hand, kids-in-tow, with the feeling that I would soon be the back-to-school king.

Arriving at the store I was pleased to realize that the first item on the list for both kids was “1 ruler (30 cm).” My daughter’s ruler was to be metric, but I assumed the metric system is not introduced only in Grade 4 and that this had been an oversight on my son’s list. Rulers (metric or otherwise) were exceptionally hard to find and it was apparent that the school had not ordered their list to correspond with where things could be found at Wal-Mart.

Passing many items I knew to be on the list, I took my cart through each crowded aisle in search of 30 cm rulers, quantity two, and could not find them. Plan B would be put into place immediately. A sequential sweep of each aisle would commence and I would knock things off the list as I saw them.

At first, the plan bore fruit. “20 quality 2 pencils, sharpened” and “pencils” (no mention of quality, quantity or preparedness) were found. Pens (red and blue), crayons and scissors were selected and thrown in the cart. Still no sign of 30 cm rulers, but they had to be somewhere!

The kids had started their own sweep of the aisles and peppered me with requests to have different pens than what was in the cart, special markers they had found, backpacks and notebooks and pencil cases. I reminded them of Plan B and wished I had had them initial the plan saying they had read and understood the methodology.

Other kids were playing the same game with their parents and I was finding it hard to move about the aisles with carts and negotiations blocking my escape routes. Families that brought four generations with them to shop in these aisles (seemingly closing in on me now) were beginning to annoy me.

Merchandise was knocked to the floor and left there. And where were the rulers?

Why do the pencil crayon boxes look exactly like the markers? They didn’t when I was a kid. Why can’t I find pink erasers, only white or multi-coloured? Has the world gone mad?

I found the glue sticks, but only sold individually. Would three of them meet the criteria of “3 large glue sticks (labelled)”? Why do the glue sticks need to be labelled? I don’t see “label maker” on the list anywhere?

Two dry erase markers for my son? Why? In Grade 1 do they learn how to lead a white-board planning session in the board room? And why are dry erase markers only sold in packs of eight? Don’t they know anything about Grade 1 at Wal-Mart?

“Daddy, can I have ‘grips’ for my pens,” asked my daughter. Grips? Don’t you know we’re in a global recession? What has happened that we can no longer grip our pens (red and blue) with nothing but our bare hands? Do you know that I wrote with a feather dipped in ink when I was a boy? (Disclosure: this was once in an Art class, but it’s not a complete fabrication).

Why do they need highlighters in Grade 1 and what pray-tell do they highlight? Why does anyone ever need a protractor?

Completely frazzled, but having found everything on the list, I proceeded to the checkout. The woman asked me if I had found everything and I said “yes” (automatic response when I have no interest in reliving the ordeal). She seemed surprised and asked, “Really?” and I knew exactly what she was thinking.

How on earth did this guy, under obvious duress, ever find the rulers?

Two years ago my wife approached me with the idea of having our family take up camping. Like so many other ideas before, this sounded terrible to me, but as often happens she convinced me to give the idea a try. I’m so glad she did because we’ve had some of the best summer moments together on these trips.

This past weekend, we camped at the Elora Gorge Conservation Area. This was our third and final camping weekend of 2011 and easily the most memorable.

After checking in, we decided we wanted to go for a swim. There’s no swimming at the campsite itself, but campers are allowed to use the Quarry which is a short car ride away. If you’re not familiar with swimming quarries, they are basically giant holes (former open pit mines) that are filled with water. There are rocks everywhere that scream, “Climb up on me until you are dangerously high and jump into the super deep water!” The rocks are like teenagers who pressure their peers to take up smoking and are not to be listened to. The water at this quarry was cold and slimy. After a short swim, my son and I played with his sand toys on the “beach” until I felt the gravel-like “sand” ripping into my knees.

Back at the campsite we watched as a man and two boys of about 13 checked in to the site beside us. As is often the case, our neighbour happened to be the world’s greatest camper and delighted in sharing his infinite wisdom with his son and his nephew. Over the next few hours we would hear him tell the boys the proper way to start a fire, set up a tent, how to sit in a chair, the nine steps to have a pee in the dark, and claims that he is the original patent holder for the S’mores recipe.

Despite the noise coming from “Uncle Don” and the browbeaten newbies, we enjoyed a nice fire, had our dinner, roasted marshmallows and went to bed to prepare for a big day on Sunday.

The highlight of the weekend was to be tubing down the gorge on Sunday. We were told upon check-in that to have the best chance of getting equipment for the day, we should line up for tubes at 8 am or 8:30 am. The park has about 350 sets of tubes, goofy looking yellow helmets and life jackets, so we and the seven other people who arrived at 8 am were quite confident that we would not miss out when the counter opened for business...an hour later!

We signed the necessary waivers, paid our $25 per person, and took possession of the (somehow still wet) equipment for the day. Barely able to squeeze the four giant tubes into our minivan, we went back to the site for some breakfast, another fire and some second hand advice from Uncle Don about the proper way to button a shirt.

Nearing lunch time we decided we were ready for the adventure of a lifetime and returned to the place we would hop a yellow school bus to be taken to the raging water.

The gorge is beautiful and our excitement grew as we walked down a long path to the water’s edge. Getting in the tubes and pushing off, my wife held onto my daughter’s tube as the water whisked them away, and immediately ejected them from their tubes, submerging them both. My son and I went next and were able to stay together and stay afloat, but when we reached my wife and daughter I saw that my daughter was terribly upset, thinking she had almost drowned. It was going to take her some time to recover.

Unsure of what we’d signed up for, we carried on. Little did we know that tubing was about to become a lot less exciting. The rest of the “ride” (as the kids called it) took about an hour. Fifty-seven minutes of that time was spent barely moving in what I hesitate to call a current. We got stuck on rocks, sometimes had to paddle with our hands to have any chance of moving at all and it wasn’t long before we were quite bored. My son said he didn’t enjoy the trip because “it was too peaceful.” Indeed it was, son, indeed it was.

When we were done, my wife reminded me that we had the tubes until 7 pm and could come back another time or two that day. I informed her that I had very likely had my one and only trip down the gorge on a tube and longed to get back to the campsite to see if Uncle Don was teaching the boys the proper way to breathe.

We were barely finished our lunch when it started to rain and we had to take cover inside the tent trailer. The kids busied themselves playing games and watching videos on my laptop, but the rain showed no signs of stopping. It rained for about four straight hours, coming down so hard it pounded on the roof of the tent trailer, making it hard to hear anything else. I wondered if Uncle Don was at that moment telling the boys that he had invented rain, or that perhaps he was waterproof, but had no way of knowing if this was the case. At one point I actually laughed at the intensity of the rain and what it had done to our day. Looking back, I realize this may have been the onset of madness, but if so, I have made a full recovery.

The rain stopped in the early evening and we were able to poke our heads outside the tent trailer. Our neighbours were gone, likely to a hotel to wait out the storm, and we wouldn’t see them again until the following day.

After packing up and checking out on our final day, we walked the main drag of Elora and did some window shopping. We stopped for an ice cream and talked about what we each liked best about the trip. I can’t remember what everyone else answered to this question, but the best part of camping for me is always the same - spending time with my family and creating memories. Even the rain hadn’t spoiled that.

This morning at 7 am, at the Cambridge Centre arena, I became a hockey dad.

I will admit that this day means more to me than perhaps it should, but I've always hoped that at least one of my kids would learn to play hockey and enjoy playing as much as I did when I was younger. It is absurd to think that after today, hockey will be a big part of my son's life. There's a real chance that I will be a hockey dad only for the length of this "learn to play hockey" program, reverting back to "Nintendo DS dad" and its limited appeal. But without a start there was no hope and today if nothing else was that start.

The practice began with the kids skating around the ice in search of pucks that could be fired weakly in whichever direction suited them/was possible under the circumstances. If there was a weaker skater on the ice than my son, I could not find him (and not for a lack of trying on my part). I felt I had failed him to have him on the ice with kids who looked more like they belonged in the "I've already learned to play" program and worried that the fun of hockey would last less than five minutes.

Did I cut his stick too short? Is the knob big enough that he can pick it up when it falls/he falls (which is often)? When will he decide he shoots right instead of left and practice a perpetual backhand with his far-too-short stick?

While these questions haunted me, on the ice puck chasing was replaced by warmup and stretches. The results were predictable when my son was asked to go down to one knee while skating and jump over the blue and red lines.

"Let's skate backwards kids" made me want to scream "My son can barely skate forwards! Ignore them son, no backwards skating for you!" but I held my tongue. Soon after, the kids were divided into smaller groups and were asked to do backwards circles. My God, when will they be asked to do 50 chinups?

But despite my concerns, my son did everything they asked of him and seemed to have a smile on his face. He fell a lot and won't be used in the instructional video for backwards circles, but he got up and kept going each and every time.

I can't say the same for all of the other kids. One boy started crying because his helmet didn't feel right. He looked at his mother so she could see just how many tears he could produce over the issue, this lasting about half an hour. When she seemed not to be responsive to such a serious problem, he began slapping himself in the facemask and later lay in the corner, boycotting all skating drills. Good luck with that mom!

Another boy appeared from the corner of the rink and judging by his skating ability, he may have been there, unable to escape, for the entire practice. Or perhaps he was concussed from slapping himself in the face? I really have no idea, but I was even more proud of my son for having fun without any of this behaviour.

In fact, I'm not sure I can put into words just how proud I was of you today, son. You weren't afraid of falling or failing and maybe most of all, of trying. I told you "just have fun today," but you also worked really hard all practice long. We have some things to work on (you really need to start calling it a "cup" and not your "penis thing") and there will be millions of falls and setbacks to come, but if you enjoy the game, I have no doubt you can be as good as you want to be.

Never forget that hockey is a game and it's meant to be fun. And always know that any chance I have to watch you on the ice or doing whatever makes you happy, makes me happier than you may ever know.

I've just returned from having an oil change on my car. There is something about the experience that makes my skin crawl each and every time and I think I look forward to dentist appointments more than I do oil changes.

I realized today, that by observing the operation of my local oil change place, that there are several "golden rules" in running a successful business:

1. Greet all customers with the following: "Oil change or E-Test?" Follow that up with "that's a __ minute wait," depending on which service is requested (minimum 20 minutes). "Hello", "hi", "greetings" or similar are not to be used and don't worry, all customers like to wait.

2. Refer to customers by the make of their car. "Volkswagon", "Grand Prix", "Corolla", "Sienna Van" is the best way to tell customers you really care about them.

3. Offer all customers a seat and their choice of water or coffee. When all seats are filled (which is always) it is implied that the window sill is a seat. Water dispensers with no jug on top are ok as it is clear that there was water at some point. Coffee is to be made once a day and powdered creamer is to be purchased every 10 years.

4. Check the history of the customer's vehicle. If they weren't in yesterday, you are to say "hmm, it's been a little while since you've been in..." which creates doubt for the customer that their vehicle will get them home and opens the door for upselling.

5. No matter when they were last in, customers are to be told that their oil is black and that nothing short of an engine flush is required to return it to its original state (spring water from an artesian well).

6. Customers are to be told that cabin filters need to be changed at least once a year, brake pads every six trips to the grocery store and wiper blades after each rain.

7. Prices for these additional services are to be made up on the spot and if customers refuse your first price you are to immediately drop it $20 and offer the oil change for free if they go for your second offer. Before customers have a chance to figure out whether the oil change or the additional service is the true rip off, tell them that you can further reduce the price of the additional service, but not give the oil change for free, so it makes more sense to go for the first or second offer. At this point, it will be impossible for any customer to know what you're offering and they may accept some or all of the additional services out of pure confusion. Although it will be rare for customers to ask follow up questions on these offers at this point, it will normally be enough to just walk back into the garage area for them to give up their questioning. If customers persist in knowing what is going on, you are to have another member of the staff pull the fire alarm and yell at everyone to immediately evacuate all seats and window sills.

8. Lastly and this is important - make sure all oil change places within 100 miles your location operate in exactly the same way so that no one will ever be able to escape this kind of experience.