Jack's 15 minutes

One of our favorite movies is "The American President" starring Michael Douglas, Annette Bening and Richard Dreyfuss. The Dreyfuss character spends most of the movie thundering "My name is Bob Runsom and I'm running for president of the United States" much like Jack has been fond of doing lately.

Jack appears to be a well educated man, possibly a little stupid but well educated. Unfortunately "well educated" and "smart" all too often are mutually exclusive concepts but that's a whole other matter. So Jack must know that he isn't really running for Prime Minister of Canada. I have about as much chance of getting elected Prime Minister on Oct. 14 as Jack does. Neither of us is going to be moving into 24 Sussex in the near future (or ever for that matter). But there goes Jack like a little wind up soldier claiming that he's running for Prime Minister.

The line is so reminiscent of The American President that you would have to think Jack knows where it came from - copied it even. But if so then he must surely also know how that movie ends. For those of you who don't know, it ends with Michael Douglas finally engaging the Dreyfuss character. The Douglas character starts that speech by saying "My name is Andrew Shephard and I AM the president of the United States. Bob Runsom - your fifteen minutes of fame are over." So enjoy it while it lasts Jack.

We've been holed up in Prince Albert for a week now and it looks like we will be here a while longer. Anne is still in the hospital. She's apparently doing well but the doctors haven't discharged her and she probably enjoys all the attention.

I was in Brandon on Wednesday to do some NTSCC training for CAAR and then we both went to Saskatoon on Friday. Marilyn had some meetings and I took RJ out for his 20th birthday supper. Hard to believe that its 20 already. Originally we had planned to move back to Saskatoon this weekend but we'll likely stay here for another week now. It looks like we will then be off to Grande Prairie for a week or so. I'd rather be heading south but its nice to have lots of work lined up if we are going to be here anyway.

We took the boat back to Nipawin on Tuesday and picked up Marilyn's car so that we could both have a vehicle again. I got the boat winterized and stuck in the shop. I always hate doing that - it seems so much like the end of summer and it always seems like we don't get enough time to use it. This year we put close to 60 hours on it. Last year it was barely 40 hours but that says more about Candle Lake than it does about how much we used the boat this year. The best we ever did was one summer when the kids were younger when we put over 100 hours on it. Usually if we can get over 50 hours I count it as relatively successful. We should be able to start to consistently put more than that on it though once we put Saskatchewan in the rear view mirror. When we were in Osoyoos it looked as though we could be on the water to the end of September or perhaps even well into October. If we can start in June in the Shuswaps and finish in October in Osoyoos that would be a major improvement on the 8 or 9 weeks that we have been used to.