Betrayal

Another week has passed on the shore of Lake Superior in my home town. The weather continues quite mild, but we got another dump of snow on Thursday, so we were digging out yesterday. Wendy is making good progress on her accounting contract—she's now working on the September records. She also has her Sweet Adelines treasurer work and singing. We both had choir on Thursday morning, and then served at Urban Abbey for their lunch offering for homeless folks. My main hockey team, the Oilers were on a losing streak—reaching five games—but finally won tonight! Penguins are also not winning much, but at least the Leafs are performing well. Curling remains my main sporting preoccupation again this week. The Scotties ended on Sunday, with the prohibitive favourite, Homan, beating my gal, Einarson, in the final. Homan will now represent us at the World Championships in South Korea. The Brier got underway yesterday in Kelowna and my usual favourite is there, #9-Koe. As you can tell from the ranking he's not having a great season. The favourites are #1-Dunstone, #2-Jacobs, #3-McEwen, #4-Gushue. I expect them to all make the playoffs, and I'm just hoping Koe can join them. The unranked Jayhawks are playing out the string on the regular season and hoping to get it together for the playoffs and a decent performance in March Madness. It has been a heart-wrenching month watching Trump destroy most of what USA has stood for over the years. He keeps breaking laws, treaties and the norms of morality. There is a very long list of items; just a few examples: we see food rotting in warehouses that should be feeding African children. That same food was provided under contract by farmers who are seeing those contracts broken and their livelihood threatened. The Canada/Mexico/USA trade treaty is in tatters as Trump threatens illegal tariffs against the very trade agreement he negotiated and described as the greatest trade treaty ever! In 1994, the USA, UK and Russia signed a treaty to respect the borders of Ukraine. Russia broke that ten years ago, and the USA led a world-wide response to punish them for it, but now Trump is trying to back out of that treaty. This week was the low-point of USA performance in foreign affairs as he brought Zelenskyy into the Oval Office, invited the Russian media in to document his brutalizing of his treaty partner on behalf of Putin. I won't bother to describe his economic malfeasance; it is enough to say that in the USA inflation is higher, employment is lower, and GDP is now projected to fall into recession. 

Erica writes, "On Sunday, Tina and I took a series of trains and buses to her friend’s place just outside of Essen. We enjoyed meeting new old friends over traditional German food and a mix of poor German, better English and hand signs. We stayed overnight and they were kind enough to drive us to Dusseldorf where we had a very early flight on Tuesday. I took advantage of the accessibility support for post surgery, so I didn’t have to stand in long lines. We landed in Saskatoon on Tuesday night where Guido and Eric brought us back to our homes! The evenings since then, I have been sleeping as I continue to heal. But Friday was filled with fun as our band had a gig at the local Army and Navy. Eric has no news, but he was super helpful in getting me home, making me rest and taking care of me at the gig."

Kristian continues to look forward to returning to school in the Fall. He has had no progress on finding work. He also continues with his electrical training as he has another pot light failing downstairs. We may attack that problem this weekend. Erin is making good progress at work, although she brought the laptop home this weekend, so that's not ideal!! Anyway, they have completed the search and offered the accounting clerk job, so that should provide a lot of relief for her. We'll see how that turns out. 

Travis and Joanna continue to be very busy both with the business and with Joanna's work. They keep having photoshoots while continuing to expect it to end soon as hockey seasons come to an end. As a result, we haven't been having our games nights so often, but they do have us over for supper and we love that! 

And that's enough for this week.