Blue Collar Life

And an awesome way to celebrate a successful hunt.

In a six quart crock pot combine the following:

2lbs stew meat, preferably from deer, moose or elk.
Four good sized carrots.
A healthy serving of potatoes (the baby ones work great)
A generous dose of celery.
One medium sized onion.
Sliced jalapenos to taste.
A good sized dash of Worchestershire sauce
Mushrooms, canned or fresh (don't skimp here)
A healthy dose of hot sauce. Frank's Red Hot or Louisiana Hot Sauce works wonders here.
One can of beer, preferably something dark and with lots of flavour. Guinness or Holsten Festbock are generally my top choices.
3/4 cup of flour.
Fresh ground black pepper according to your tastes.
Beef consomee to top up the broth.

Cook for six hours on high and try not to drool too much while it's cooking. The aroma will saturate the house and get your salivary glands working overtime. :)

In a fitting tribute to a dearly missed old friend, a picture of my old malamute Sheena will grace the pages of the 2010 calendar from the local SPCA.

I had forgotten that I sent in a pic over half a year ago and it nearly brought tears to my eyes to open up the package that arrived in the mail and see what it was.

"Friends for Life" is the motto for the local SPCA and Sheena was indeed that. From the time I adopted her from there in October 2001 to her death in July of this year she rarely left my side. To see her picture on that calendar is a fine way to honour her memory.

I miss you, old friend.

Three inches of wet snow today and Juneau wasn't quite sure what to make of it. She ran out the door and stopped dead as soon as all four feet hit the snow. She stood there for a minute, lifted one front foot, stuffed her nose into the snow, looked a bit confused, and then started tearing around the yard like a fool.

Snow dogs.... :)
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Juneau at four months old and nearly fifty pounds. A big pup for sure. I'm kind of wondering what exactly I've gotten myself into with this one. At this rate she;s going to be well into the triple digits as an adult. Good thing she's a nice, mellow pup with a wonderful temperment.

Not much red left in her pelt anymore, but she's kept the white spot in the middle of her forehead and on the tip of her tail. I don't think her markings will change much from now on.
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I think I'm becoming bored with the internet.

It's hockey season again, my first game of the year was yesterday evening. I'm a bit sore today with a nagging fatigue that will likely stick with me for a couple of days.

It was awesome to get back together with the team and go out on the ice. I played a decent game, but my stamina was a bit lacking and by the time the third period arrived my legs might have well been made out of lead. Rang my first shot of the year off the crossbar but missed the net on the next three out of five total shots.

Hopefully I will at least match last years numbers; twenty three points in thirty six games, nine goals and fourteen assists. I'm definitely not the most talented player out there, that's for sure, but I sure love playing the game. I pretty much grew up playing hockey, starting out at four years old on a backyard rink my dad made on top of the garden during the winter. In other words, I had about as Canadian as a childhood as you can get.

When the winters last at least six months of the year, you find ways to have fun in the snow and ice. :)

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Why exactly I chose the hottest weekend of the summer to redo the roof on my house is something I don't know if I'll ever be able to answer. I can tell you though, that spending two solid twelve hour days peeling old shingles and nailing down new ones in 31C(about 90F) heat sure as hell isn't any fun.

Thank God for good friends. I had five good buddies help out with this project, and they hardly complained at all. Cost me over two hundred bucks in beer and grub to fuel the hungry and thirsty crew but that's pretty cheap labour these days.

Unfortunately, I seem to have missed a few spots on my back with the sunscreen, and even two days later I'm still suffering from a nagging fatigue.

But it's finally done. After five years of procrastinating and waiting until shingles were literally falling off with each windstorm, I finally got the job done. Now I have to wait until it rains so I can crawl into the attic and see how many leaks I have.

Next project, new windows...

Writing, as you can well imagine, has been out on the back burner of late and likely will remain there for the next couple of months. Not sure when I'll be able to get back to it...

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This is one of the reasons why I love this breed. This is Kato giving me some attitude when I wouldn't give her some of what I was cooking for dinner. She does this all the time. My roommate and I find it to be very entertaining. :)

Mother nature opened a serious can of whoopass on my town yesterday. It's coming up on fifteen hours now without power.

Trees and power lines down everywhere. Tons of flooded basements (not mine thankfully) Two inch hailstones from skies that were nearly as green as my lawn. Three inches of rain in a matter of minutes and wind like I've never seen before. Plastic flower pots, tree branches, chunks of siding, shingle fragments and all kinds of other shit were sailing across the road at eyebrow height.

The hail broke a basement window on the west side of my house and everything leafy and green has been absolutely shredded. For a while it looked like it had snowed around my place. The hail was piled up nearly a foot deep in some places.

Seriously crazy stuff. I haven't seen a storm that wild since the Edmonton tornado in '87.

I need to find me a generator to borrow before everything in my freezer thaws out...

Sheena succumbed to cancer this morning at the age of twelve years. I was at her side as the vet eased her passing and she went peacefully, finally free of the pain that had been her constant companion in her last days.

Goodbye you old furball. Whatever the next life has in store for you now, I wish you well. We had eight good years together and now that we must take separate paths I can only hope that I was as good of a friend to you as you were to me.

Farewell Sheena, I miss you and I'll never forget you. You were one of the best friends I've ever had.

My much loved malamute, Sheena, is not doing very well. She is an old dog at twelve years, but I didn't realize just how old until the last couple of weeks.

I hardly noticed her downwards progression at first. When the weather grew warm this spring her appetite decreased to the point that she hardly ate anything. Not a real big deal, I thought, it happens every spring. Sheena is the worlds furriest dog and has always been a little out of whack with the seasons when it comes to losing her winter pelt. The heat always makes her lazy and as a result, she never eats much during the first few warms weeks of the spring and summer. When I had both dogs into the vet's in mid April for their yearly vaccinations and regular checkup, I mentioned the loss of appetite to the vet. He looked her over and wasn't concerned, old age combined with warm weather he figured. Sheena was seventy-five pounds on the scale, the same as she had been at her last checkup. I took her home, not particularly concerned. The vet had found nothing else wrong with her.

A month and a half passed. Sheena was still lethargic, maybe even more than usual. It was hard to tell. Her appetite had dwindled to the point where she'd often go a whole day without eating anything. Some days, she wouldn't even get up to greet me when I got home from work and she hardly seemed to have the energy to wag her tail. Not good, I thought, but I didn't clue in to how badly she was doing until I took her out on a short hiking trip. Poor old dog could hardly manage a kilometre. She kept lagging behind me, tongue lolling and panting furiously, barely able to muster anything more than a slow walk. That's when I started to worry that something was really wrong. Last summer she could do 15km without too much of a problem, but one year is a long time in a dog's life...

I took Sheena back to the vet shortly after I returned from my trip. She was sixty pounds on the scale, down twenty percent of her body mass, and little more than skin and bones for a dog her size, and I had hardly noticed! She's such a fluffy dog that it's hard to find the actual animal under all that fur. If I had known that she'd grown that thin, I would have had her at the vets much sooner.

The vet's inital findings were not good. Anemic, a moderate fever, and congested lungs. He was worried about the anemia more than anything else and sceduled a visit for x-rays in a few days. I was sent home with some antibiotics and told to feed Sheena whatever she would eat.

The x-rays came back inconclusive but worrisome. The heart was the wrong shape and quite enlarged and there was fluid in the lungs. Troublesome shadows in the area of the spleen as well. Congestive heart failure was part of his diagnosis but he thought there was a tumor somewhere, probably in the spleen, that was destroying red blood cells and causing the anemia. I was given some meds to help clear up Sheena's lungs, some other stuff to ease the pressure on her enlarged heart and was told to enjoy the time I had left with her.

And for a few days, she brightened up. She was breathing easier and some of her appetite returned. But just as soon as she improved she went downhill again. She could hardly get up when I got home today, and when she finally did her left front leg and foot wouldn't work properly and she kept tripping and fell over a few times. I've only managed to get her to eat two small pieces of meat in the last two days...

Soon I will have to say goodbye to a very dear friend. I've known this day would come, I guess all pet owners do, but now that I've realized it is almost here I'm having a real tough time dealing with that knowledge. I get very attached to my dogs, but Sheena is a special case and I'm more attached to her than any other dog I've had. She is my first malamute, a dog that was seized by the SPCA from an abusive owner over eight long years ago. She was a complete wreck when I got her, thin, scruffy, terrified of everyone and everything. I was the first person in her life to treat her with kindness and after some hard work and lots of TLC she has become simply the best dog I have ever shared my life with.

It will be incredibly hard for me to say goodbye to her. Life will just not be the same without her at my side...

Mountains near at hand and the heady scent of pines in the air. Warm sunshine and cool shadows. Croaking ravens, chattering squirrels and impossibly clear water rolling over polished stones. A fishing rod in one hand, a backpack over my shoulders and the dogs tagging along at my heels as the sound of running water echoes playfully through the trees. Tracks of moose, deer, elk, bear, and wolf on the trails that human feet rarely trod. Cold water stings feet and legs and a lively trout dance on the end of the line. Lunch warmed over a small fire on the bank of the creek, and later on, a few beer enjoyed by a larger fire as the sun sets over the mountains.

It doesn't get any better than that. :)

Few things are better than getting out of work early on a warm and sunny spring afternoon.

Time to go do some fishing :D

It's snowing again. The forecast calls for something close to four inches by the time it's done. The thermometer reads -4C and I sincerely doubt that it's going to get anywhere close to the 'normal' daytime high of 18C for this time of year. I actually have the wood stove going right now.

I am getting unbelievably sick of this weather. This has been one of the coldest, nastiest, ugliest spring seasons that I can remember. Too much frost and far too much snow for this time of year. The trees here aren't even in full leaf yet, and the recent frosts have killed off most of the flowers. This weekend is supposed to be the 'traditional' opening weekend of the warm season for this part of the world, a time to put in the gardens, move the flowers outside, and enjoy some warm weather. It definitely is not suppose to time for a blizzard.

I think it's a good day to stay inside.

Quite a while, I imagine, possibly a lifetime barring accidents or unfortunate wildlife encounters. I'm no stranger to hunting and fishing for my own food and being on my own for long periods of time doesn't bother me. I'm in good physical shape, I've made and used primitive weapons with some success, and I know which plants are good sources of vitamin C. I've started fires without the aid of matches, tanned leather and built many a crude shelter in the woods.

The real trick for wilderness survival in this part of the world would be having a good permanent shelter in place before winter seizes the land in a frosty grip. Trying to stay sane during the cold and dark winter months might be another problem as well.

Didn't I write a story about this kind of situation? ;)

Cracks have appeared in the dam and at long last words have begun to trickle forth. Nothing much yet but slowly, surely, I am adding a paragraph here and there to Chapter 20 of Wild Rose Country. 

After the stress that has ruled my life over the last few months it feels good to actually be making some progress, no matter how slight it is.

Still nothing on The Gift of a Stranger though, and I think I've written myself into a deep hole on Wolf River that may take some time for me to crawl out of.

The muse demands more WRC and more of it she (and you!) shall have.

And it's snowing. Spring weather in Alberta never fails to entertain. If April showers bring May flowers, what exactly are April blizzards going to bring? I'm not sure if I want to know...

Spring is finally here. The snow is pretty much all gone and the first flowers of the year are bringing some much needed color to a world that is still varying shades of brown.



Going to be a spectacular day by the looks of things. Time to put the computer away and go enjoy the great outdoors.

Upon meeting a buddy at a local camping/fishing/outdoor/sportsman show.

"Jeez, you're a tough guy to track down in a place like this. You look like every other redneck here!"

:D