Merry Christmas!

Another week has passed on the shore of Lake Superior in my hometown. The weather has continued to be mild; we saw +3° and rain on Christmas Eve, but our snow has held, and we're enjoying a white Christmas!

Christmas Dinner 2021

For our gathering, we assembled seven fully vaccinated family members around our turkey supper. We are well blessed! While Omicron surges across the country and the world, even this small gathering seems a bit risky as we calculate the many we've been in contact with over the past week. The recent surge in cases has certainly strained the ability of all jurisdictions to keep track of it all, but of the reported infections USA is up 48% and Canada is up 130% in the last week! Several reports are suggesting that symptoms from this variant are milder, but the vast number of infected also provides fertile ground for more variants to arise. It's a daunting consideration. Christmas preparations consumed a lot of our time this week.

four styles of Quatro

I have almost completed the Quatro Games I'm gifting to my children; there's still much time left before delivery to two of them, so it'll work out! As of today, I've invited them to choose which style they want! The markets were thinly traded this week. With USA markets closed on Friday, and TSX closed at noon on Friday, many traders seemed to take advantage and make a much longer break! Anyhow, the indices increased in value, and I had a good week as well. I plan to take advantage of the time off next week to review my investment ideas. This is something I do at the end of each year, and occasionally multiple times within a trading day! I've now been at this for almost 13 years, and I feel that I've been taught a few lessons over those years. If I get something written up, I'll post it here, and look forward to your response and advice! Sports has pretty much ground to a halt with covid precautions taking centre stage. NHL is  on hiatus until next week. World Junior Hockey is playing to restricted audiences. Jayhawks are on covid protocol. Football has some bowl games underway, but the big ones remain to be played in a week or so. We'll see how that goes. Manitoba had their Scotties playdowns last week, and Zacharias emerged the surprise winner. I'm still on for the Scotties here, but we're currently on restricted audience, so we may have some fewer volunteers needed as well. I've been invited to pick up my uniform mid-January, so I expect the picture will be much clearer by then. 

Eric, Erica and Liam enjoyed an icy cold Christmas in Prince Albert. Erin and Kristian celebrated with Shawn, Astrid and Liam in almost-as-cold Regina. As shown above Trav, Joanna, Gemma, Rhys and Andrew observed Christmas with us. 

We hope you enjoyed a warm celebration of the holiday with your loved ones as well.