Sacremeat There was smoke, and char, and the gleaming blade’s edge pulled with a tender tug against the juicy meat. As the slice rolled over on itself, I could see the perfect ribbon of smoke infusion had made its pinkish red intrusion one thumbnail’s depth into the meat. It was…

Sitting on a toilet seat four meters in the air, braced up against a tree, I marveled at my friend Marty’s ingenuity at building a two-story outhouse with a window-view across a lake. There is no human occupancy below, just a lot of storage capacity produced by a guy who…

This week a pair of black bears slipped into the open door of a Krispy Kreme Doughnut delivery truck and laid waste to about a jillion doughnut holes. If there is a pre-hibernation bear-Heaven this was it; like a stream of sedentary boneless salmon dipped in sugar! Those bears are…

Hard-headed, but soft-hearted is a tough combo. I insisted to my 20-something daughter that I needed more than two of those thimble-sized ketchup cups at A&W restaurant. She challenged me to think outside the box, or in this case, the ketchup cup. Then she carefully expanded the pleated sides of…

We have been doing AI for a long time even though many of us are losing control and are running around with our hair on fire about, well, about losing control! For a moment let’s deliberately make the mistake of thinking AI is Artificial Insemination instead of Artificial Intelligence. The…

Sometimes an easy life can seem a little shallow; too protected, no sharp edges and just a little too insulated from the real world. I have worked and saved a long time to add security and an illusion of padding against hardship, yet, too good an exterior can create a…

The tendrils of Prince Albert smoke gently curling up from my father’s pipe were an apt metaphor for his driving style. Contemplative and smooth with gently acceleration up on the downslope and feathering the throttle on the upslope to keep the old Pontiac Bonneville station wagon from downshifting. In contrast…

It wasn’t that non-Harleys weren’t allowed at the 7th Annual Hawg Flatts Motorcycle Rally in northern Alberta but of the 800 bikers there, mine was the only German bike to be seen. There was a lonely MotoGuzzi and about seven Japanese bikes looking piteously out of place. Everything else simply…

The self-deprecating humor of a 90-year-old’s post-depression tendencies. An elderly man, confined to bed with a terminal diagnosis, thought that he was hallucinating. Yet, the delicious smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies permeated his bedroom like a dream of Heaven. Figuring “What the hell do I have to lose?”…