March 16, 2008:

It’s been a little cooler the past few days, though still above normal for this time of year. Even when the thermometer doesn’t hit the zero mark, when the sun comes out the snow melts rapidly. There are big patches of grass visible; the sidewalks are bare and walking is good, although one still has to watch for icy patches where melt water has crossed the sidewalk.

We did get a few flakes of snow this afternoon, barely enough to say it snowed. We are braced for a late March blizzard; there isn’t one in the forecast but we’re braced just the same. When I say we are braced, I mean we are quite prepared to turn up the heat, kick off our shoes, and sit back while someone else worries about the snow.

Doreen and I celebrated our fifty-fifth anniversary on Friday by taking in an Off Broadway dinner and stage show. It was a great meal, and a very amusing show about a young Italian man trying to break away from his four smothering grandparents. His parents had made the break some time ago by moving to Florida ; now he has a chance for a promotion clear across the country. The grandparents are doing everything they can to keep him close, including trying to set him up with a pretty young woman. Tons of fun!

We met Rudy Lambert, former Kelvington school teacher, at the show; he welcomed us to Saskatoon and visited awhile. I wasn’t even aware he had moved to Saskatoon – he has a cottage at Greenwater and that is where I know him from.

We also met Dorothy Murias, who came over to introduce herself. She taught school in Archerwill for twenty-seven years, and is a faithful reader of The Greenwater Report in the Wadena News. Very happy to meet you, Dorothy.

Jenny came to town to visit with us today so we took her to the Home Styles show at Prairieland Park . It was in a single large room, crammed with booths promoting building supplies and services, towns to live in, decorating specialists, soaps and cleaners, and even orthotic shoes. Doreen can last forever at these events; my feet played out after about an hour, and Jenny made it about half way in between. They found me in the cafeteria section, nursing a coffee and chatting up a lady from Swift Current who was kind enough to let me share her table. Doreen, of course, had a bag full of literature which she will actually take home and read. She will glean little bits of information and store it away in her head, to be trotted out at opportune moments to confound her listeners.

I bummed some chocolate Easter eggs from a lady promoting a hotel in Jasper; she insisted I put my name in for a draw for a couple of free nights. I got a little information on built-in vacuums, and signed up for high-definition TV from SaskTel Max. When we moved in here, we were told that high-definition was not available in our area, but the lady in the booth insists it is. We’ll see. Now that we have access to it, we hear high-definition is obsolete technology, replaced by some amazing new development that will also become obsolete once enough people are converted over to it. Hard to keep up, isn’t it?