The Church Of A Swift Kick To The Knackers

  For your homework please listen to the closing guitar solo(s) of the title of this post and rate and compare to "Free Bird." You youngsters need to understand that one other thing you can hate us old fuckers for is the fact that we had the best music and yours totally sucks. We didn't do that. You did. I posted the picture of the "Okee Dokey Corral" (above) because when perusing photo's this morning the green grass surrounding caught my eye, and tugged at my heart. We haven't seen too much winter yet, and the next week looks balmy for Saskatchewan January, but man, oh man, do I ever need spring. Two hours driving the snowblower yesterday exploded that feeling. (Jeezus, my back is tender today.)   I wrote a piece for a Facebook group on Sunday. My piece tried to inject a slight amount of humor into a group that is dry as Saskatchewan dust. "How much is this?" "Have you seen that?" "Is it open Christmas Day?" My post receive...

 The remote car starter is not modern technology anymore. It was twelve years ago, when my wife had one in a Hyundai Santa Fe. One day, while she was at work, a gentleman came into the store that she managed, and exclaimed, "who owns the blue Santa Fe? It keeps starting over and over!" I lost all faith in 'modern' tech that day.  My wife's next auto was another Santa Fe, without the tech. In fact her remote starter was a certain man who would brave minus 40, risk piles from hell by sitting on a frozen, rock hard, seat, and crank and curse, breath the raw gas fumes, cross his fingers at the misfires, until that piece of crap started. That "certain" man was me. The human remote starter. The greatest technology of all. My wife now owns a Nissan with the push a button technical marvel. She loves it. I am not so sure. I have not lost my job as remote starter, though these days most of my chore is done from the warm side of the window. "Beep. Honk. Click....

Coffee warms the soul and kick-starts the heart. The Yorkie, arrogant little turd that she is, never asks to come up on the couch. She will always invite herself, and then give me the look like I am the intruder. This morning she asked, coming to a perfect sit in front of me. Piercing my heart with those eyes that turn me into a puddle of gooey emotions. "Come up", I tapped the seat beside me. She has been cuddled up, covered by the blanket that is kept for such occasions. We sat together, the light from the kitchen drifting lazily into the living room. The salt lamp surrounds us in a candle-like glow. No phone. No TV. No screens. Just half an hour of man and dog fighting the cold, enjoying the mutual company and warmth. "The furnace is working hard this morning, Bud." I believe I heard a snore in reply. It's another sub-zero day in Redneck Flats Saskatchewan. I hope you are able to stay warm and safe, no matter where you may be.

 It was -36 this morning. (And for clarification, once the temperature dips below -35 there is no reason to designate Fahrenheit or Celsius. The temperature is close enough to -40 equality that it does not matter what scale is being used. In other words, it's deadly freaking cold.) It is -38 now.  The phenomenon of the temperature dropping as the sun rises. At -36 this morning our uninsulated, unheated, shell of a garage was -15 inside. That is still too cold for my old and creaky bones, but it is a powerful example of how blocking the wind keeps things warmer.   My wife's car started OK.  She tells me it has an oil pan heater instead of the regular block heater located in the frost plug. My truck, with the regular block heater, fired right up but the 20 second zing of rings against bare metal made me cringe. " That can't be good. " When I lived in southern Ontario I owned a 1980 Buick Regal (rust bucket) that did not have a block heater, as they are not used or n...

  What can I say? I'm happy to finally have a sense of normalcy back in the season. But it is going to take a while to accept, and get used to the view. The Weather Network has increased the amount of predicted snow for Tuesday from 10 cm to 20. A snowcopalypse! A snowmaggedon! A snowholycrapimgoingtohaveasorebackfromshoveling! But, do we believe what the Weather Network Tells us? It was the summer of 2023 when I lost my faith in the weather man. Yes, I bitched when the forecast was wrong before, but I (we) never had a reason to bitch about utter prediction failure like we did in the "lost summer of smoke and drought". I would look at the Weather Network forecast. "It looks dry this week, but the fourteen day forecast says 40mm next Friday." That day arrived hot and dusty. "No rain today but the long term says in two weeks we will be flooded." I'm glad I didn't build an ark. All that wasted gopher-wood. There were nights I would go to bed with...