This song went mega-viral recently, becoming the first song to ever debut at #1 on the Billboard charts by an artist with no other previous charting songs.
“Rich Men North of Richmond” – Oliver Anthony Music
Some of the controversy about the lyrics, written in the voice of an angry blue collar worker, inspired a response song from that champion of the worker, Billy Bragg:
Easing back into my Secular Sunday posts with a funny Reddit post, inspired by a heat wave in Europe, ruminating on how the location of mens’ testicles is an argument against intelligent design!
Went out with a bunch of friends for supper and drinks Saturday night but my buddy Paul doesn’t look like’s enjoying a “Jason Sandwich” between myself and another buddy named Jason.
Topics of Conversation Through The Evening (Beyond the Usual Generic Topics of Work, Family, Travel)
Pace had four wisdom teeth removed early on Friday morning. When he got home, I was reminded of this clip – one of the original viral videos of the YouTube age:
Friday is my 15th work anniversary of starting at RPL which is hard to believe! (Uhm, time flies when you’re having fun?!?)
I was trying to write a long post talking about the various roles I’ve held at RPL, some of the highs and lows, and more. But it was just getting longer and longer and harder to finish so instead, I’ll save that for my memoirs and instead, just re-post a picture that a colleague took on my first day.
This picture also happens to be possibly the worst posed photo of myself ever (pretend you’re working!” Proceeds to levitate hands over a keyboard in front of a *giant* monitor!)
Cool trivia: I started in the HR Unit as the Organization Development Specialist and had the rare pleasure of having RPL’s Director (who is still Director today) in on my interview – something that doesn’t even happen with many manager jobs! 😮
My last post was August 21 when I said I was going to try to get back to (roughly) daily blog posts after a summer of holidays and other distractions.
Then I promptly didn’t post again for nearly two more weeks until today.
Lots I could write, lots of navel-gazing about why I (still) have a blog when everybody’s sharing their “content” on Facebook or Twitter or Substack or Instagram or TitKok (h/t to coworker who gave me that brilliance.)
(Maybe finding a reason to revisit a long ago post about the 25th anniversary of the Sask Book Awards today is as good of reason as any to keep doing this weirdly public journal?)
Anyhow, here’s a shot of a sunset at Nickle Lake and it makes me think of many things – the beauty of nature, the passing of time, the importance of transitions and how we managed to wreck Lorne Calvert’s wife’s sunset photo session earlier this summer by asking for a group photo with Mr. and Ms. Calvert then being all “Chatty Cathy” afterwards.
Not a lot of blogging this summer due to holidays and other things occupying my mind. But time to start over with trying to do (mostly) daily posts (he says posting a Music Monday post on Tuesday morning!) 😉
“(Just Like) Starting Over” – John Lennon
The Kayak Club at Nickle Lake where we camp recently had their first-ever “Glow Float” fundraiser where you could rent a kayak or stand-up paddle board (or bring your own), decorate it with glow sticks and then take it out for an hour late on a Sunday night.
We were going to do it but Sasha wasn’t feeling up to it. But when we went to the beach to see the action and saw ~50 vessels out on the water, she was very disappointed that she didn’t follow through (seize the moment, child!)
Next year…
Anyhow, here’s a shot of the armada from a drone that someone had over the water…
…and a blurry shot I took from shore through the darkness:
Puckdoku is a hockey version of Suduko.
Back from our most recent camping stretch but bittersweet as my inlaws decided to pull the pin after twenty years of seasonal camping.
(This has been coming for awhile but still tough that the moment finally arrived.)
So much of our week away was watching as they listed (and sold) their camper, packed up everything in it, started clearing out their site, etc.
I made a video of some of the many highlights over the past twenty years…
