“Hello?” The phone is buzzing and chirping; I can hardly hear the voice at the other end. “Hello?”
I’ve been thinking about beer lately.
It’s not something I usually spend a lot of time thinking about, although I must admit I do enjoy a barley sandwich as much as the next guy.
It’s a few days after a cold snap but it’s still clearly a winter weekend when I peak outside.
It’s amazing how surprised you are when real winter hits you like a snowball, smack in the face.
It’s early in a brand new decade and we can all look forward to another year of unpredictable confusion, mounting bills, stress and unforeseen traumatic changes and, oh yeah, some fun times in there somewhere, too.
Just like most things in this convoluted complex life, Christmas can be everything from a magical enchanted journey of Disneyland proportions, to a stressed-out nightmare where you seem to be caught in the world of a really bad Tim Burton movie.
It’s the day of our annual Christmas house party, when we get to enjoy the best of the tide of yule with our friends. It is always a special night that says ‘Christmas’ loud and clear, and always reminds me how important friends are, especially the ones who bring presents.
Every year about this time, right about when many of us Red Deerians are vigorously expressing our surprise, shock and dismay that winter actually arrived — like it does more or less every year about this time — about 5,000 tireless and magical elves are working feverishly in the background with the sole purpose of making all of our grumpy humbug lives a lot better.
Many people are all gaga these days, as Prince William has announced his impending betrothal to commoner babe Kate Middleton.
By now most of the visual trappings of the yearly monster mash we call Halloween have vanished like the ghosts and goblins that haunted the streets a few short days ago.
Everyone has had one. The worst Halloween costume ever. Remember yours?
Now I suppose pretty much everyone is sick and tired of hearing about the civic elections (except those who were actually elected). Yes, this week featured a “riveting” night of interestingly epic, and some not-so-epic, election battles and I heartily congratulate all those who ran, win or lose.
Just when I thought I had this social networking thing all figured out, just when I was getting used to smugly working the net, haughtily communicating in an electronic fashion with emails and websites, suddenly my younger, hipper friends (that is, everyone younger than me, i.e. almost everybody) tell me I’m so, like, “old school.”
There’s something about the Thanksgiving weekend that just causes a person to be, well, thankful.
Question: What’s worse than a poor old canine that doesn’t see all that well anymore?
Answer: two of them.
So I’m in the public library wandering among the book stacks, a place I like to go quite often and which I’ve always said is the best deal in town — unless you are like me and you are always late returning your books and your library late-fee fines add up to more than you paid for your first car.
Pretty soon, ‘back to school’ won’t mean standing in long line-ups at Wal-Mart or Zellers or Staples with grumpy children and haggard parents clinging desperately to wobbly shopping carts.
These days, it seems like everybody has wires sticking out of their ears. And by “everybody” I mean most people under 30, and many people over the hill.
Today’s topic is about the one situation where all men are called upon to stand and deliver.
Talk about a peak experience! A couple of weeks ago, I had one of those profound personal moments that ranks right up there in Life’s Grand Scheme of Things. It involved a very good friend of mine, a buddy of many, many years. A guy I have never met.
