I DID IT!

      As most of you know I quite often eat at the local casino. The food is good and the price is right. I don't gamble. As time goes by we've met others who play the same game. Today , one of my former students, who is a senior had lunch with us. Calvin and I filled out the card for the seniors Wednesday draw of $500.00. We have won the senior draw three times so it pays for some meals.

     Three weeks ago the Micro Manager won the senior draw. We had also been filling in free rickets for a shopping trip. The shopping spree was worth $500.00 but what I didn't know it that there were 40 smaller prizes with the draw. So after they phoned the micro Manager I got a phone call telling me that I won a set of ear buds. 

    So now , what do I do with the ear buds. You can't just stick them in your ears and listen to music. Charging has to be done. The case is charged and the case charges the ear buds. So I found that out by trial and error. I had to pair the ear buds with blue tooth. There are voice prompts which I couldn't really hear. 

    I got the ear buds paired but they kept going off and on. I repaired them. Through that operation I found out that I was putting my fingers over the LEDs and was accidentally turning things off and on. 

    So once I had all these things sorted out, I was ready to listen to music on you tube. 

    It takes many mistakes for me to get it right. 

IT FINALLY HAPPENED

       When I was raising my kids we did not have a pet in the house or out of the house.

      So you guessed it. When the kids went out on their own they got dogs that lived with them in the house. 

     My son's first dog was a beagle and that was a challenge. His second dog was a beautiful calm lab. 

     My daughter's first dog was a spunky mini schnauzer. It kept you entertained all day. Her latest dog is of a mysterious pedigree but it's small.

     Small dogs seem to like chasing squirrels. The Schnauzer never missed chasing a squirrel. Her present dog also never misses an opportunity to chase squirrels. 

    A few days ago my daughter was sitting in the porch to keep cool. The dog was with them. My daughter saw a squirrel so tried to alert the dog to the presence of the squirrel. The dog beat it around the house and back completely missing the presence of the squirrel. . Okay my daughter tried again to show the squirrel and this time the dog caught on and chased the squirrel. Wonder of wonders the dog caught the squirrel. My daughter was surprised and horrified that the little squirrel had been caught. The dog had a very surprised look and let the squirrel go much to my daughter's relief. 

    So dog and owner were surprised that it finally happened that the dog caught a squirrel. 

    I wonder if the dog will keep chasing squirrels? 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD

      Yesterday was Dad's birthday and he would have been 112.

      Dad was born in a clay house 7 years after the family came to Saskatchewan to homestead. They had dirt floors. He liked the little clay house that was warm in winter and cool in summer. These were the same clay houses which were built in Russia and the Ukraine. 

     Of course, what better name to give a little baby born in August but August. So Dad was Emil August. The e in German was pronounced as long a. His mother in law who was English tormented him that it should pronounced with a long e. 

     Birth registrations in Saskatchewan from 1910 to 1912 were some how lost. When Dad applied for a passport in the 1960's the reply was, Mr Kline, we have never heard of you. That meant that he had to go through a procedure to prove has age. Dad was a little miffed as he had been paying income tax for close to 30 years. 

    He had never received a call to join the forces in the Second world war. So this explained why the army didn't find him.

SNOW

       I must admit that I like the comments I get when I talk about snow. This will be my first snow post for this  fall.

       I was shocked the other day when I heard a forecast for snow in the mountains.

      I live about 100 km from the Rocky Mountains. Most of the elevation in this huge range is from 8000 feet to 10000 feet. A few peaks are higher like beautiful Mount Robson. 

     Their are many glaciers that have been there for thousands of years. All summer at the higher elevations you will get fresh snow.

     So the forecast of snow was not out of the ordinary. Where I live we had a high of 24.

     But the snow does remind me that fall is on the way and then winter. 

     This is a peak in Montana which I think was 11000 feet. I climbed this one on a hot afternoon. Getting on the peak was a little tricky. I hope John will recognize this peak and give me he name. 

OLE

      We paid our respects and final good byes to Ole this week. 

      I taught with Ole for at least 25 years. Every day he came to work and worked hard. He taught math and wanted every student to succeed to the best of their ability. 

     Ole was a very large gentle man who could occasionally get riled up when there was justification. He was patient for most of his life. 

     Stories about Ole would fill a book and Ole could tell stories that would fill a book.

    Ole remained single and had one brother who was married with children. Ole worshipped all of them. He took the whole family to tour Europe for 2 weeks. He took all of them to Hawaii and Disneyland.

    When we went on school retreats Ole would request me for a room mate before any planning was done. He said, "Red doesn't drink!" What he actually meant was Red doesn't party. 

     Ole was very active in the community and sports. It's cool that he was the PA announcer for the base ball club. When he was younger he played base ball and was a very competitive bowler. 

      Cool that the funeral celebrant had been a student of Ole's. 

       One time it was rumored that there would be a fight between some kids in our school and the next door school. The principal asked Ole and I to keep an eye on the yard and if anything happened we were to look after it. Kids did show up so out we went. Ole with his hands behind his back and a very gentle confident smile. We stood there and after a few minutes everybody went their own way and the excitement was over. I didn't do a thing but Ole did. 

     I will remember him and I can still hear his voice. 

A SURPRISE SMELL!

        I woke up 3 or 4 times last night and a couple of times I noticed a different smell. It was  pleasant smell but I couldn't identify it.

      When I got up this morning and my head cleared up, I thought about the smell. Then it hit me! I was smelling fresh air with no smoke. So all summer we've had smoke from the fires. It's a long time since we didn't have smoke. 

     We still have many fires but no big ones. Fall is a fire season so it won't be long until there's more smoke.

    You don't realize what the smoke is doing to you. I'm outside most of the time. I don't think you beat the smoke by staying in the house with doors and windows closed.

    The people in Jasper were allowed back in the town 2 or 3 days ago. The ones who lost everything had a look at the damage and then there's nothing more they can do until insurance is settled. The other people have lots of cleaning to do. Deep freezes and fridges have t be thrown away as the power was off. The caretakers were working in the school for the summer. They had windows open and had to leave quickly so the windows were left open so the school is a mess. The kids may be bussed to Hinton for a while.

    So that's enough on fire for a while. 

OLD JACK

       I grew up in the 40's and 50's on the Saskatchewan prairie. At that time quite a bit of the land was not developed.

      Most farmers had a dog...a farm dog. This dog was supposed to do work for the farmer by herding cattle. Very few dogs herded cattle because they had not been trained. The farmers didn't know how to train the dogs. Most of them were border collies. 

     The other thing the dog did was to act as a guard dog. They were hit and miss at this job too. They barked like crazy when the neighbors came on the yard. They sniffed all four tires and then left their own stink to be taken home by the car to the neighbor dog.

         These dogs stayed outdoors all the time. Some farmers had a dog house for the dog but most of the time the dog looked after itself. Most of the time they slept on the step. These dogs did not come in the house. As kids we thought it was ridiculous that a dog would be in the house. 

       We had a great old border collie by the name of Jack. An uncle gave us this dog and he had trained it reasonably well. But Jack had some issues. Jack would chase every rabbit on the farm. He would go bounding through the brush yelping as if he had been only half shot. He would come when called from this activity.

     You just had to say the word car and Jack was at the car door. Jack thought that any vehicle that moved on the yard meant a ride for him. He liked riding on the tractor all day. Why? When a rabbit bounded up in front of the tractor Jack leaped off the tractor in a dangerous way to chase the rabbit. One day Jack didn't quite make the leap off the tractor. The tractor ran over Jacks hind end. He was yelping for a different reason. He was very sore and in pain for a few days but he survived. Fortunately the soil was soft and he was not injured badly .

    Of all the farm dogs we had Jack was the best.