This Is The Week

   The battle for Bar-B-Cue sauce supremacy for 2018 will be decided this Friday in Yorkton. The annual Ducks Unlimited fundraiser is on, and it's been moved up 6 weeks or so from the normal date in May, due, apparently, to some scheduling conflicts.
   And for the second year in a row, one of my sauces will represent our station, GX94 as we go head to head with our sister station Fox FM, CTV Yorkton, the weekly newspaper and The Rock, another local station.
   And we're out for blood this year. We narrowly lost to our sister station last year, with another one of my sauces picking up the silver. Which is not good enough! I went back to the drawing board, sifted through my recipes and came up with what I feel will be the winner this year. If it is, I'll post it on this forum.
   Once again, not that it's a hardship, we have to use one of the craft beers brewed by Back 40 Brewery in town. The most difficult task was choosing one to use. But, after sampling several of them (okay, just 4), I picked one that went into the sauce.
   It will be served with the other entries, with guests at the banquet sampling all of them of ribs or chicken. I've tried my sauce on both. I feel it goes well with either. But, we'll have to wait until Friday evening when the public decides.

Spring Ahead

   This past weekend saw the (to me) semi-annual idiocy of adjusting clocks ahead an hour in most of North America. Saskatchewan and Arizona are the most notable hold-outs, and I'm lucky to be in Saskatchewan.
   The ides behind DST was to save energy. But studies have shown it actually doesn't. When I lived in Alberta (where it was brought in in 1971), B.C and Ontario, I loathed the change. It played havoc with my internal clock, and took literally weeks fir me to adjust.
   So, in Saskatchewan we don't adjust our clocks. At least not deliberately. The bedside clock I have has settings for different time-zones, and has an over-ride to cancel the switch to daylight saving time. Or so I thought.
   I needed a bathroom break early Sunday morning (01:59 to be exact), and when I got back to bed, my clock registered 03:02. Despite my setting it on non-DST. No, it wasn't an extra long break, and I didn't "fall asleep in the drivers seat" so to speak.
   I did change it back to "normal" time when I got up.

TTFN

A Nasty Storm

   You can't see it all that well, but that's about half the snow we've had since Sunday. In all, 40 cm (about 16 inches) in the space of 2 days. Which has left streets impassable, and my car still parked at our house. I thought about trying to drive in Monday morning, but thought better of it, and took a taxi. A look out the window this morning showed things were even worse, so I cabbed it in again today. Fortunately, our property manage says our parking area will be cleared today, so I should have "wheels" again tomorrow.
   It was a Colorado Low that walloped the region, making highways a mess. So much so that several members of our staff who live out of town couldn't get in. Luckily, they can broadcast from their homes, but need someone to play audio clips for them.
   And now, the clean-up. I shovelled our sidewalk twice yesterday, and will need to do it again today. And while city crews are doing their best to get streets open to some degree, it's going to be days at best before we return to some form or normalcy.
   There is a silver lining, if you will. All the snow will help replenish much needed moisture ahead of spring seeding, although rain will be needed during the growing season.
   March came in like a Lion, and ironically, it was just a year ago we were being hit by a good old fashioned prairie blizzard.
   But on the plus side, we haven't seen a mosquito in months!

TTFN

At Least It's Friday

   And what a Friday it's been! Got in at my usual time, and fired up my computer. Or at least tried to. "Black Screen Of Death." Powered off and back up. Logged on, but everything was slow. Tried the one in the booth. Also slow. Logged out of both, couldn't log in.
   I ended up doing the thing I do not like to do. I called our tech guru Kyle at 04:45. He walked me through a re-boot, but still had problems logging on to our newsroom, email and 'net. He walked me through those to the point I could operate normally (at 05:35). Played "catch-up" the rest of the morning. He also says there was a problem with one of our main servers behind it
   Finally, the systems came back up normally a little after 10:00. With a few tweaks, that is. I'm just happy it wasn't Monday!

TTFN

March Arrives

   And it looks like it'll come in like a lion. The next 2 days won't be bad at all, sun turning to cloud with temperatures near zero. But the weekend, that lion starts to roar. Depending on which weather service you look at, we could see just a 60% chance of snow Saturday into Monday, to up to 30 cm (about a foot).
   Granted, it's only Thursday, and a lot can and will change between now and the weekend. But given the fact that a major part of Alberta is already under snow or winter storm warnings, I think we likely will get hammered. Worst case scenario: A full blown spring Prairie blizzard. Best case scenario: Just the 60% chance of snow some weather offices are calling for.
   My guess? Personally, I think we could well be in for the first blizzard of winter 2017-18. And, actually, we could use some snow. It's been dry this winter, following a dry year last year, so the moisture is needed. Maybe not all at once, and not quite the amount they're calling for, but some. If we do get clobbered, I hope at least it'll be a slow melt.
   We'll see.

TTFN

It's Working Again!

   Since the start of this week, I've been unable to access this blog. We had a system upgrade or something, which put everything out of whack, and when I tried to log on, I couldn't. Compounding the problem is the fact I am a total numpkin when it comes to most everything viral. After spending days trying to recover things (and seeing a new log-on, which I made a boo-boo with), I finally did the thing most reasonably technically adept people would do in the first place: I checked the "help" platform.
   Needless to say, a click here, re-entering the information needed there, and Presto! I'm back in business.
   They say you're never too old to learn, and I guess that's true. I managed to sort things out without a panic trip down the hall to get help from our technical guru.

   TTFN

The Poor Little Thing

   Our little girl had a fairly traumatic day yesterday. I got home from work at my usual time, and started putting some of my gear away in our walk-in bedroom closet. When I opened the door, she bolted out, and started blinking for several seconds. She'd been trapped in the utter dark for at least 6 hours.
   Apparently, she snuck into the closet when my wife opened the door to get something out before she went to work. She's a quiet kitty to begin with, not that it mattered with us gone, and never meowed once or scratched at the door to get out.
   I'm guessing she found a nice pile of clothes or a stack of sheets, curled up and just went to sleep until freedom came. At least she didn't leave anything nasty for me to clean up.
   And I bet it'll be a while before she tries to sneak in there again! But with cats, you never know.

TTFN