Happy Mother's Day!

Another week has passed on the shore of Lake Superior in my home town. The weather has been nice, but we're still waiting for some heat before reseeding the front lawn. In the meantime, we've taken delivery of a load of topsoil into the backyard to work with there. I have redone the lawn edging. I will undertake the moving of the soil under my usual "45-minutes equals a day's work" protocol, so it'll take a while! Otherwise, it's been a quiet week for us. Wendy keeps up with therapy, healing, and has started an exercise program using resistance bands at her chiropractor's recommendation. I bought a set of them, and plan to join her in the workouts; there are lots of such programs on YouTube. We have also determined it was time to upgrade our phones. We were both sporting iPhone 6's, and iPhone is now at 12. We've bought used phones and moved up to level 10. Wendy also scored a new clock—part of her birthday present.

Wendy's Clock!

The markets ran nicely this week, a good start to the new month. Friday was indicative as both USA and Canada had big misses on the jobs report, but the markets roared ahead. Apparently, we're at the stage where "bad news is good news" as it supports Biden's contention that more economic support is needed. The vaccination effort continues, but we need it expanded. We're still hoping to get our second dose and do some travelling this summer. Alberta continues to be our worst manager in the pandemic, and is now worse than any of the USA states that we used to look down on! Manitoba has moved up there as well, and now only one state is worse than Manitoba, sigh! The big sporting activity of the week was World Women's Curling championship. It was not easy to follow as covid struck the broadcast crews and no TV was allowed from Sunday through Friday! Our team, Kerri Einarson, fought back from her poor start and made the playoffs, but she lost out to Sweden today. So, it'll be Russia vs Switzerland in the gold medal game, while USA will play Sweden for the bronze. The hockey season is grinding to a close; all three of my teams have qualified for the playoffs. Pens finished up today in first place in their division, while Leafs and Oilers have a couple of games left and sit one-two in their division.

Erica writes, "This week was a no-good-very-bad week technology-wise for me. With the transition, I currently have three different ways to do work: 1-old Deloitte files on my old Deloitte laptop, 2-partially transitioned files on a special environment which allows us to use the legacy Deloitte software, and 3-files that have been transitioned into the MNP software. First, my Deloitte laptop locked me out. Then, the special environment locked me out. Finally, when we went into a file in the MNP software, all our work was gone! Maybe it’s a message that it’s time to get out of the audit gig. By Friday afternoon, I was back up and functioning. I guess we accountants don’t have very exciting jobs, so we have to find our fun somehow! Eric had a quiet week of work and card hockey. Liam got his first shot. Haaken and Greg continue on as normal."

Kristian managed Mother's Day planning for his mother and grandmother—what a guy! I'm sure they will both enjoy the fruit of his promotions. Kristian is in his final Quint of this unusual school year, taking Mathematics and Social Studies. Hopefully, the new restrictions in Saskatchewan will not mess with the plans for him to attend school each day. Erin was able to get her vaccine jab this week—yay!

Joanna has returned from an emotional time at home as they said good-bye to her dad. She has isolated, and now tested negative for covid. Then, she arranged for her covid vaccinations. Yay! Further medical interventions have revealed an anomaly in her eye, so she has been referred to a specialist about that. This weekend, they're busy with Mother's Day floral deliveries. We hope to get together for Mother's Day Pizza later this weekend.

And that's about it for this week.