You never known when the next pandemic will hit so we’ve gotten smart and started buying twice as much toilet paper as we would normally during our Costco runs…just in case!
(I think the cut-off for public disclosure is amounts $250 or over. So if you’re a manager and want to donate to the NDP or a union member who wants to donate to the Sask Party, keep it to $249 or less!)
I have to admit I’m disappointed – but not surprised – to see the Sask Party is raking in more from Hammonds than the NDP are!
I’ve been fortunate to have all sorts of happy, sad, and memorable moments working in the library over the years.
One of the most unique was helping a couple family members of Metis Leader, Harry Daniels, who fought to have his people included in the Canadian Constitution, come into the library to print a proof of a stamp that was going to be released the following (eg. this) year.
That stamp is now officially released but at the time, they told me that outside of Canada Post employees, I was likely one of the first half dozen people in all of Canada to see that stamp (and quite possibly the first who was not a direct family member or friend of Mr. Daniels!)
Quite an honour and speaks to all the ways that libraries help people in so many amazingly varied ways.
Two main strategies – use four words that are going to knock off 20 of the 26 most common letters in the alphabet then give you two guesses to pick the word or try to narrow it down to guess in the fewest tries as possible.
I love how melancholy and poetic and longing that song is.
There’s another song that’s in my Top 10 and which is probably a contender for number one – “Wake Up Boo!” by the Boo Radleys – which covers the same territory – yearning but also loss and death – but in a much more upbeat manner.
In fact, if you played “Find The River” at the start of my funeral (hopefully someday far in the future) and “Wake Up, Boo!” at the end, I’d probably be a happy ghost!
This is a fairly recent performance and it’s always weird to see bands you knew as a young person getting older, just like you are.
In fact, part of the reason I like this song so much is the line “Twenty-five/Don’t recall a time I felt this alive” which resonated because I first heard this song when I was in England in 1995 on a University exchange which also happened to be the height of the “Cool Britannia” movement and just an amazing time in my life – I jokingly say “Apologies to my wife and family but that four months in England was easily the happiest four months of my life.”
I was 22 when I went to England, not 25, but it was close enough to feel that same sense of the whole world being in front of me but also that it could disappear in an instant which is another reason this song resonated – I loved how it mixed a happy, upbeat sound with some dark lyrics about how summer happiness can be tempered by death.
And how the hell did I miss that the Boo Radleys! released a new EP in 2021 that was their first new music in 23 years?!?
Even though I grew up in a small town, surrounded by tons of family and friends who were really into cars, I was never obsessed with vehicles myself.
I always said “If it’s got four wheels, an engine, and gets me where I need to go, I’m happy.”
Well, the car I bought a few years ago has been the epitome of that.
It’s a 2006 Ford Fusion that had *maybe* 60,000 km when I bought it off an elderly couple who never winter drove it and drove it very little in the years before they sold it as well since they had some health issues.
It was top of the line and fully loaded when they bought it new though obviously, a lot of those “features” aren’t as nice as you’d get in a brand new car (what *does* a chilled steering wheel feel like?)
I also put a better stereo in it than the factory one (though still a fairly low-end Pioneer – I feel the same way about stereos as I do about cars. As long as I can hear the song, I don’t need some hi-fi, bass pumping monster.)
Best part? Even though I only paid a few thousand dollars for it, it’s still running well and still a long way to go until it hits 100,000km since I basically only use it for commuting to work.
I’m pretty sure every librarian (including me!) has thought “Why has no one made a TV show set in a library? Boy, people would sure be surprised that we don’t just circulate books but there are wacky staff! Buffoonish managers! Silly patrons! And lots and lots of overdoses. High-larious!”
With Pace getting his learner’s this week, I’ve got a bit of a “milestone” theme going. So here’s the newspaper announcement (remember those?) from when I graduated with my BA…
