Shea and I are binging “Handmaid’s Tale” right now and both loving it (while also regularly cringing!) but if pressed, I’d still say “Breaking Bad” is my favourite TV show of all-time. (It’s up there for Shea too but I think she picks “The Wire” as her all-time favourite.)
Anyhow, can’t wait for this…
As someone who loves visiting all-inclusive resorts (and frequently meets overseas guests while there including many who probably traveled with Thomas Cook), I’ve been watching the collapse of the 178 year old travel agency with with great interest.
Some thoughts:
* Some are calling this the first “Brexit Bankruptcy“, a result of uncertainty caused by all the back and forth confusion around Brexit – if and when it will happen and what the terms will be.
* It’s crazy that not just tens but hundreds of thousands of people are affected including many who are currently *in* resorts that haven’t yet been paid so there’s the crazy situation where people who are at a resort are being asked to pay *again* for a trip they already bought since apparently travel companies don’t release funds until *after* the package vacation is over and obviously Thomas Cook isn’t in a position to do that.
* Fortunately, the UK has some sort of national insurance scheme for international holidays that I don’t think we have here (I’ve read different things about whether it applies to all international travel or just package holidays.)
* Thomas Cook hasn’t operated in Canada for thirteen years so it’s unlikely that very many Canadians were affected, at least directly.
* Will be interesting to see how this affects resorts in the coming months – both in terms of prices (will they go up because of less people booking or down to attract more customers from North America?) and inventory, especially at destinations popular with British/European travelers.
* And obviously this is a tragedy for all of Thomas Cook’s workforce who ended up without jobs extremely abruptly.
“You Can Have The Crown” – Sturgill Simpson
It’s referring to the high school he attended, not the private school he taught at.
But the title of the prologue in a recent biography published about Justin Trudeau with his participation is pretty ironic given the recent brownface scandal that broke when a picture of Trudeau wearing makeup to look like Aladdin during an event at that private high school blew up the current federal election.
I just happened to be finishing this book on the day the scandal broke and this title definitely took on more meaning than it did when I first cracked the book!
One of my favourite pictures at our family cottage is this Anne Geddes picture.
My dad has nine siblings and since this photo showed ten babies, all ten of the kids in his family were able to sign their name, in birth order, from left to right.
I’ve said it before but it always amazes me that nine of ten siblings are still alive, ranging in age of late 60’s to nearly 90.
I make the occasional run out to Indian Head and around the Qu’Appelle Valley and after my parents won a few free oil changes at the local car dealership and offered me one, I had an excuse for another road trip yesterday after I got the kids off to school.
The free oil change turned out to be quite expensive when the garage found out my tire treads were getting quite low (which I knew and intended to deal with soon) but also that one tire had damage to the sidewall (which I didn’t know) and they recommended repairing immediately as it was dangerous to be driving on the highway!
So I left my car behind to get new tires and they gave me a loaner vehicle for the day.
I decided to carry on with my plans anyhow – eating take out East Indian food (not sure what amazes me more – that my small prairie hometown has supported an East Indian restaurant for five years or I haven’t managed to eat there before now!) at our family cottage, checking out our family farm, going for a long hike.
That’s where the road runner part comes in.
I decided to extend my hike past where I normally (and easily) go – not just to the “Hog’s Back” hillside about a kilometre from our farm yard but to take a big walk around the whole quarter section of land that we have which overlooks the Qu’Appelle Valley.
In my head, I thought there’d continue to be nice grassy parts along the fence line so I wouldn’t have to walk through the stalks of the combined canola. Turns out I was only partially right – there were a couple parts that were good for walking but for most of my walk, I was either getting my bare legs (hadn’t really prepped for a hike and was wearing ankle socks and shorts!) scratched by the canola stalks or by the various pokey weeds in the grass.
A smarter man would’ve turned back right away but I kept thinking “Oh, it’ll get better” mixed with “I really want to do this” so I carried on (to be fair, the picture above is from the end of the hike, not what my legs looked like after my first few steps!)
Anyhow, I got about halfway through and all of a sudden, I hear a rustling near me and see an animal take off from the tall grass where it had been resting (it was also a fairly hot July-like day yesterday.)
I only saw a glimpse of it and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that my first thought was “Why is a dog way up here? Must be loose from a cottage below.” Then, even more embarrassingly, I ran through other dog-like wild animals it might be, ruling out “fox” but settling on “wolf” completely forgetting that there was an animal between those two extremes called a coyote.
Perhaps part of the reason my mind blanked on coyote was that we’d just seen one at the Calgary Zoo a month ago and I was morbidly fascinated watching the penned coyote gnawing on its lunch and I didn’t want to contemplate a close call with one not having a fence between me and it!
Anyhow, the rest of the walk proceeded without further incident (well, as I said, my legs were pretty mangled by the end – can coyotes smell blood like sharks do?) but I did pick up a couple rocks to carry and turned on some tunes to try to dissuade any further interactions even though coyotes rarely attack adult humans.
When I finished my walk, I spent some time thinking about what had happened and it made me realise that seeing that coyote was exactly *why* I wanted to go for the walk – it’s a good reminder that we mostly live in a fairly safe, developed, neutralized world and that can make us a bit complacent even though wilderness and untamed nature isn’t very far from us either.
But yeah, next time I go for a walk at the farm, I hope I see a deer instead! 😉
Easily my favourite song of the year (I can’t believe I haven’t posted it before!)
“Letter to Madeline” – Ian Noe
