Continuing cold, and no sign of snow! It was pretty quiet mid-week, but snowmobilers started arriving Thursday evening and Friday. Forecasters said it would warm up a bit for the weekend then get cool again first of the week, but it dropped down to -30° each night for the past while. Once a snowmobiler gets his machine started for the season, cold weather doesn't faze him.

Faithful reader Mike Hankewich came over to the coffee table and introduced himself on Friday. He is originally from Fosston, now lives in Kindersley but gets the Wadena News regularly. He is up here snowmobiling. Good to meet you, Mike!

The conversation on Friday was about survival in the urban malls, and how women are better equipped physically than men for extended shopping. Merv Miller says his back and hips start to play out very quickly, and he has to find a Canadian Tire store or a coffee shop to recuperate. Jim Steadman doesn't even try to compete; he goes and has coffee with the old men, who are likely also waiting for their wives. June and Lana Woulfe say their men have almost a zero tolerance for mall shopping, though they can handle Canadian Tire, Princess Auto or Home Depot longer. Must be something to do with the air conditioning.

Doreen is the most accomplished shopper I have ever run into; she can spend the whole day shopping, yet not spend a dime. She can outshop any of our daughters or daughters-in-law; Jenny says Doreen is the only person she knows who can go window-shopping in a grocery store!

When we went to a mall, we used to agree to meet at a certain place at a certain time, and that was fine except I always forgot where we were supposed to meet. Merv didn't have that problem; he always remembered where and when, and got there fifteen minutes early. The women were always forty-five minutes late, but eventually they got together.

Doreen and I bought a pair of cheap walkie-talkies, and each carries one when we go to a mall, trade show, or a fair. If one wants to find the other, a press of the call button does the trick. They have a pretty good range, though in the city there is sometimes interference, likely from someone using the same channel. We tried them at home, too, thinking that if one is out on the boat, the other could still get in touch. They worked fine from the north end of the Lake to the cottage, even with the headland in the way, but we haven't tried them from the far northeast corner. They are supposed to have a range in open country of two miles and they handle that easily. One of our smarter investments!

The ditches are full of moose tracks, and I saw some more right in the core area a few days ago. Yesterday, there was a moose standing by the highway with its forequarters in the bush, likely catching some rays from that beautiful sun. That was just the other side of the Big Hill. We stopped for a good look, and it just looked back at us. We could see some gray patches that we assume to be where the fur has been rubbed off, but it wasn't too bad.

George Hayunga was born and raised in Ontario, entered the army right after graduating from Normal School in 1916, was wounded in action in the summer of 1918, and spent the rest of the war recuperating. After the war, he came west and filed on a homestead in the High Tor district, east of here. He taught at Manchester School, east of Perigord, for two years, then at Batestown, northwest of Kelvington, for five or six years.