Thanks Donnie!

I thought he was going to fail at everything he touched, but no. Two months ago, it seemed Canada was about to emulate the U.K., France, India, Italy, Japan, and Poland in believing that slogans could solve any problems. Promise your electorate their deepest desires, prey on peoples' secret fears, shit on the little guy. We looked south and saw what that looked like four months into his second term, and took a beat. The political divide is real. Reverse the colours, stand it on end, put a U.S. election map up and the results are similar. Big urban centers are progressive, wide open spaces are conservative. The divide is getting wider due in part to the magnification of simplistic sound bites on both sides to get clicks. If I could wish for two things in the next four years, the first would be to rein in the online press. I think it's Maine in the U.S. just lost funding for the school lunch program feeding 247,000 students over two, count em two, trans athletes in that school system. I am pretty firmly against letting transitioning boys into girls' locker rooms. I am totally against a quarter of a million under-privileged children going hungry because of it! The second things is I would ask Carney to look at that map every morning over his cornflakes. (Well, not General Mills corn flakes but you get the idea.) His "Job One" would be to fix that map. You might start with pipelines. Everyone knows we need them. Fossil fuels are here for at least one more generation. Get Alberta that extra 20% by opening up access to Asia. One of their big talking points out west goes away. Trump won't like it either. Win-Win.

I.B.A.T.

There's a line I like in that stranded on a tropical island movie with Anne Heche where she is excoriating Harrison Ford on his bushcraft skills. "I thought you guys could get stranded with a flashlight and some fishing line and, like, build me a shopping mall?" That is the way I felt watching Talor put in my new front door. A hammer, a crowbar, a measuring tape ... crap! I spent a day and a basement full of power tools building and installing a home made door on my greenhouse in the backyard. Upon completion, you could throw a cat past it in three places with it tightly latched. This thing closes with a quiet, confident CLICK. Your ear pop like when the flight attendant closes the door on an Airbus A380. SWMBO is happy.

This Weeks List

The flyer was pretty good. Some stuff we don't normally see and a couple of returning five star items. Whole chickens are on. I am going to try something different and leave them whole for the BBQ after carving off the breast and freezing it separately for day to day cooking. Stewing beef is on again at $5.99 a pound. They call it blade roast, but you can fix that in about five minutes with a chef's knife when you get home. They have those flakes of chicken ($3.00) and Friskies cat food ($0.90) right beside each other in the flyer. The older I get, I just wonder? A little diced onion, a little mayo. "Who's gonna know?" "They'll know." The offers this week have some average deals, but I need to mention the one on Ziploc bags. $1.88? Is there a Canadian alternative? I don't think so? I love this product and that is a great price. I leave it up to you. If I needed them, I would get some. 30K in points for every $100 spent on BBQs or lawn furniture? Continuity offers were light. I included the fruit and veggie version, as that one is easy:

 1970s Home Economics

They don't teach this stuff anymore. When we were more agrarian, we were only a half or sometimes one generation removed from the farm. Holidays, you would go back to the country (Kinks, Crash Test Dummies?). Your aunts & uncles, your grandparents, etc. would still do common sense things that seem to come naturally to anyone who lives a little closer to the land. We lose that mindset the further removed we are from the land? Families recently arrived from Asia, India, Croatia still have those ties. You can see it in their habits. We city dwellers are losing them. People bleat about the price of fresh watermelon in February. It never occurs to them where that thing came from? I find it helpful to pretend I am living in the old west. On a homestead a few miles outside of town. Let's play:

1) Anthing close to home (in my fields, in my cold cellar, in my freezer, in my cupboards) gets eaten first. To feed my family, I cook the best meal I can with what I have. Waste is the enemy here and we do it a lot. You have moved that mystery package that has frosted over in your freezer for the last 20 months. It's time. You defrost it, just to see what it might have been. Then you pitch it. Oh well.

2) How do we avoid rotten vegetables in the fridge and leftovers that have turned into a science experiment? Planning and labelling. Losing that money is bad enough. You are also losing the time you invested in procuring it. The carbon footprint. You bought it; brought it home; you put it away. Paid to refrigerate or freeze it and moved it five times to get at the Pogos. Just eat it!

3) Now, you have hooked up the buckboard and headed into town. Do you wander main street poking your head into every nook and cranny? See where you can spend some of your hard earned cash?. You might. Shopping is fun, but wandering the aisles of your local grocery store is what they want you to do. Stuff (mostly pre-packaged) just falls into your cart as if by magic. Make a list. Check it twice. Buy whole chickens and loose bulk spice.

We Are Watching ...

Unforgotten, River, Annika

SWMBO and I have become huge fans of Nicola Walker. We subscribe to a Plex service and just by accident found a cold case British police series called Unforgotten. Five seasons went by in about two weeks. We circled back on Britbox and found River with both her and Stellan Skarsgård who my fellow geeks will recognize from Andor (Season Two is out). I see she was on multiple seasons of MI-5 so now we will have to watch that. Her current series is Annika. Two seasons are done. It is really great. Season three is in production. There is a whimsy and humour to her acting in serious roles. We are thoroughly hooked on her work.

... and finally

Could the Leafs just please win one series? We know they are going to get stomped by bigger, faster, better Panthers, if they move on. There will be three fights in the first game. (Gotta set the tone boys!) The Panthers will wound Tavares or Mathews in the second game. By the third game, Nylander will be cowering in a corner somewhere, but please? Ottawa would suffer the same fate, might as well put them out of their misery now. The misery for Toronto fans, I fear will continue.

Mitch and Maddie