Who here is ready to party two years from now? Yeah! Party people get ready!

A month or so ago saw the founding of a non-profit corporation calling itself Manitoba Homecoming Inc., a Destination Winnipeg and Travel Manitoba joint project. (There was a show at the Forks to launch the program, but it was held on a Monday so you probably missed it.)

Supported by the province of Manitoba and the city of Winnipeg, the program has a budget of $2.5 million lined up for the express purpose of promoting celebratory events across the province and luring expatriated Manitobans back as tourists. The year 2010 will mark the province's 140th anniversary, which is a nice round number but a strange birthday to commemorate. Did we do anything special for the 130th? How about the 135th? Did we even buy a card that year?

The official theme of Manitoba Homecoming 2010 - of course it needs an official theme - is BTO's You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet. And they're right, we haven't - 2010 is still a ways away, and absolutely nothing has been concretely determined yet. If 2010 is the year to bring people back, what will they be coming back to?

The new airport terminal is supposed to be done by 2010, obviously, unless 'James 2010' is in reference to how many times I've had to look at its insipid billboard ads by now. Winnipeg was hoping to score the 2010 IIHF World Juniors, too, which would at least have given us a couple weeks' worth of hockey to watch. And we might have an indoor waterpark in the city by then, maybe. (If not, we could always try and find someone to reopen Lockport's Wet 'n' Wild instead. And the Odeon Drive-In, too, while we're at it.)

No way in hell is the new Blue Bombers' stadium going to be ready by 2010, though. Halfway through 2008 we've yet to figure out what it'll look like, where it'll go, what it'll include, or how it'll be paid for. And these things take time - especially considering that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights also intended to open in 2010, and after fundraising for five years, it still hasn't seen anything built.

The sudden addition of a suggested 2010 deadline casts a certain tinge of nervousness over these goings-on, sort of like the end of a school year: If everybody is expected to have their final assignment done by then, there are going to be a lot of projects finished hastily and messily the night before - but hey, if they do get their stuff in on time, there'll be some awesome parties afterwards.

The year 2010 is being marketed as a year-long celebration, so we as a province will probably be drinking steadily and skipping out of a year's worth of Mondays - and, as always, the biggest threat we pose to our neighbours is that we might party too loudly and wake them up. Any excuse to party, I say! I'd better go book the year off work before someone else does.

James Howard is briefly contemplating an attempt to spend the entirety of 2010 with a lampshade on his head.
Read more at: slurpeesandmurder.blogspot.com.