It doesn’t really matter if we have lots of snow hanging around, the roads are slick, our favourite comfy boots are too small, and that Old Man Winter has obviously arrived with a bang — we really have nothing to complain about in our ever-changing but refreshing Alberta climate.
There is no doubt most of us watched the total fury and devastation of a Hurricane called Sandy, as well as the many other weather disasters that are always occurring around the globe.
As we turn up the furnace, cuddle up and try to stay warm, it is so hard to even imagine having our homes swept away or ravaged by floods, going without power for days, while helplessly watching our lives flash before our eyes in only a few horrific hours of nature’s wrath. After that terrible storm it is also amazing to watch all those proud and hardy souls pick themselves up out of the wreckage, and with the help of thousands of others, try to put the delicate pieces of their precious lives and families back together.
Emergency and repair crews from throughout the United States, Canada and elsewhere responded immediately, quickly invading the State of New York to help restore the vital services. As always with extreme care and compassion, supplies and donations have been pouring in from everywhere, led by a cool million from flashy entertainment diva Lady Gaga, as well as many other worldwide celebrities and organizations.
In the midst of it all they still held an election with a record turnout, and President Obama will no doubt have a huge task ahead of him to gather the forces back into economic stability, which will hopefully include a pipeline from Canada??
How about a little bit of this and that?
• For those us (like yours truly) who buy lottery tickets and hope for a windfall of wine and roses with the rich and famous, I read the other day that our odds of winning the top Lotto Max prize are 28,633,528 to one. Then again, you don’t have any chance of winning if you don’t buy a ticket or two, and don’t forget that many millions from all those lotteries go toward. grants and support that allow Canadian towns, cities, and counties to help complete and promote countless community projects that will benefit each and every citizen now and long into our future.
• No English dictionary has ever been able to adequately explain the difference between the two words finished and complete. Some people claim that there is absolutely no difference in these words, but at a recent linguistic competition held in London, England that attracted the best scholars in the world, a 25-year-old Guyanese man by the name of Samsunder Balgobin, proved them all wrong, and brought the house down. Here is his very astute answer to his final question of how to explain the difference between complete and finished in a way that is easy for everyone to understand:
“When you marry the right woman, you are complete, and when you marry the wrong women you are finished. But when the right one catches you with the wrong one, you are completely finished!”
He got a five-minute standing ovation, as well as the top prizes of a trip around the world, a case of 25-year-old Eldorado Rum, and an invitation to dine with the Queen.
Quickie facts
• Nine out of 1,000 computers are infected by spam. I hope mine is not one of them because I hate spam! When I was a kid and we came to Canada right after the war ended, Spam was at the top of our menu, as well as porridge that you could stand your spoon up in, and sardines on toast, which I loved,
• Currently there are some one billion computers and two billion television sets in use throughout the world on any given day. This means that many of us are shining our bottoms on comfortable chairs much more than we used to, and quite possibly why our bathroom scales are going helter skelter, and daily exercise, beyond our fingers and eyeballs could be really suffering.
As our snowbirds now head south with the geese, the rest of us will just dig in (or dig out) and get set to enjoy another invigorating winter under the bright Alberta sunshine. Along the way just keep on shovelling and Christmas shopping, and have a great week, all of you!