November 9th, 2008: It’s been a cold, windy day; it was about -6ºC when I walked down to the coffee shop. I wore a baseball cap, and for a good part of the walk I had both hands over my ears. Now, after my afternoon nap, I looked out the window at a blizzard! I know there was a possibility of snow flurries in the forecast but it’s still a shock when it hits. The roofs across the street are white. Not that it matters to me – snow is someone else’s problem.
How nice it is to be feeling back to normal again! Doreen is still doing a little coughing, but is otherwise feeling fine. We have our new house pretty well organized with all boxes unpacked. (I know – there’s no such thing as being finished organizing.) There is some stuff in the garage that I don’t even want to know what it is, but some of it was tagged for the next yard sale Louise puts on. Louise says she is never going to have another yard sale, so one of these days it will make a short trip to recycle.
Last Monday, we went to the South-East Health Centre for our flu shots. While there, we had a visit with Mr. & Mrs. Earl Babey, formerly of Wynyard. I had met Earl on our jaunt to Watrous in September but am ashamed to say I didn’t recognize him right off.
A youngish lady came into the clinic with a working dog, an elderly black lab. Since she obviously wasn’t either deaf or blind, I asked her what the dog was for, and was surprised at her reply. She suffers from agoraphobia, a fear of going out in public – having the dog calms her and makes it possible for her to function more or less normally. She said the dog is also useful at finding their car in a mall parking lot. The dog was about ten years old and had cataracts. She told us that before she told us about her emotional problem, so I made a remark about the blind leading the blind. Luckily she took it in good humour.
From there we went to Wal-Mart where we ran into Derek and June Toovey, formerly of Wynyard. Old home week!
In another store yesterday, I smiled at a young lady who looked familiar (I always smile at pretty girls) but I couldn’t peg her name. Later, I found her in conversation with Doreen, who introduced her as Sandy Gudjonson, from Wynyard.
And at still another store, I ran into Trudy and Richard Bloski, of Greenwater. Richard was suffering from a horrible cold, and Trudy was just over one, so we didn’t chat long. That’s what I mean when I say Saskatoon is just another small town, only bigger. We are constantly running into people we know and enjoy visiting with.
It’s hard to believe, but we have had almost a full week without a campaign ad. They were getting to be pretty hard to take. I don’t envy Obama – he takes over a country in a terrible economic mess, and there’s an awful lot expected of him. If there were any easy answers, they would already have been found and put to work. It reminds me of Trudeau’s first election – he was a spellbinding orator and had the whole country hanging on his every word, but in the end he turned out to be just another prime minister and some of his solutions caused more problems than they solved, such as tax reform, and conversion to the metric system. (Why, oh why was it necessary to convert land measures? We hardly ever export any land or highways!)
The Northeast Chronicle has gone digital! They have a web page – www.northeastchronicle.com – which will have the weekly paper in its entirety, as soon as it goes to press. We, for instance, will get it a week sooner than by mail. It only covers two editions so far, but I presume old copies will stay online for past reference. Kathryn said it will be updated as news comes in, such as sports scores and special events. It’s free for a few weeks, then there will be a subscription fee to access it. Progress!
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