You gotta have an angle

(us at the Nanaimo Dragon Boat festival)

Ok, so I was standing in the kitchen this morning making coffee, reading the paper, and thinking about how I havn't updated this in ages and feeling like I should because Weasel was asking where my blog was last night. So I figured I should put something new up. Problem is that I have a rather boring existance (no idiotic customers in my life thank god) and I'm trying to complain less so that cuts out pretty much everything I'd think to write here.

Thankfully the local paper helped me out. It was lovely, one of those, omg I can't believe this; i just have to write this up (nuts to the not complaining rule, and how convenient that it just happened to come up while i was totally at a loss for an update) sort of incidences. Nothing earth shattering. Nothing about the terrible injustices that our fellow humans are subjected to, nope, something completely self-centered. But thats ok. It's MY blog after all. I'll be self-centered if I want.

I opened up the paper not expecting much; I've lived here for 16 years (with a few breaks in there) and there is usually nothing much in there, and if it is interesting the date or place or names of those involved are probably wrong (and they never did publish our "Day in the Life of the Comox Valley" photo assignment, we're really glad we went out at stupid hours of the morning to try and find and photograph people doing interesting things in in comox at 3am. yeah riiight.).

Anyhooo, they have this neat little feature where if you go somewhere interesting and bring the CV Record with you and take a photo they might publish it. Here's where the self-centered bit comes in...wait for it...

My D Boat team suffers for lack of publicity. The paper Loooooves Hope Afloat (and so do we) so they get lots of press, which is good because they do all sorts of fund raising and publicity is good for them. And they're good! And they're the nicest people. No complaints there. And lately the "Other" D Boat team in the valley has decided they're fund raising for another boat to implement a "therapeutic paddling program" Cool! that's great, but how convenient to have such a heartwarming angle to fund raise on. Especially since your childish and un-sportsman-like behaviour has basically alienated you from the rest of us! That's right, get your own boat. We don't want you anyways. (I hope y'all don't wonder why you weren't invited to Pt Alberni's festival this weekend.) That leaves us. Apparently we don't exist. In fact, we weren't even at our own festival in Aug. That's right, in the the paper's world Hope Afloat represented the Valley at the Comox D Boat races.

The problem is that we are self-centered. We paddle for the joy of it and race for the fun of it. We aren't cancer survivors and we dont' have a cause. We don't fundraise because in a backwards way we want to support Hope Afloat and not spread out the possible public contributions to their efforts by making people choose between us and them.

It kinda stings though that they don't even mention us racing at our own festival! Plus, we could use a little interest in us if it boosts our membership. That would be good; having a full boat at a festival would rock! So we figured that if we took a pic of the team at the Victoria Dragon Boat Festival in Aug with the record maybe they would print that, we're not asking for much...

Apparently though that is too much to ask for. I've been opening the paper since August and looking for the photo. This morning was the final straw. Cancel my subscription (shhhh, I know, I don't actually have one). I give up entirely. You annoying small town paper (that made me break my vow not to rant on my blog anymore) YOU SUCK!

That's it, that's all, no more. We will just have to make ourselves known without your "help" CV Record.

ps. Hope Afloat, that was a lovely photo of you and the record in Bellevue in the paper this morning. And congrats on your awesome results at the races there!


(us at Comox Nautical Days DragonBoat Races - yup, picture proof that we were there. With ribbons no less. *sticks tongue out at the paper that likes to get things wrong*)