Saskatoon and heading north

We're back in Saskatoon for a few days regrouping for a trip to Grande Prairie. I've got some work to do up there and Marilyn has a girl friend that she hasn't seen for years so we're headed north at the wrong time of the year. You'd never know winter was coming by the weather we've had for the last week but I don't expect it to hold as we head north. It should be pretty travelling up there this time of year though. We've got friends at Grand Cache as well so we'll try to work in a visit there but that may get tricky because Marilyn has a contract with a mining company that she just landed. We have to be back here by the 23rd so she can fly into the mine for the weekend. By the time she gets back from the mine it will definitely be time to get back to Nipawin.

Anne got settled back into Hillcrest and staged a remarkable recovery. It was hard for Marilyn to persuade her to leave the hospital. Once she was home she exclaimed about how much better she felt. I think the staff at the hospital were pretty amazed at her resilience.

While Marilyn was getting Anne settled in I spent the week driving back and forth to Saskatoon. I was the lunch speaker at a CAFA meeting on Tuesday and the trainer for a Nurse Tank Safety course on Thursday. I ended up driving to Saskatoon on Wednesday as well because I thought the NTSCC course was Wednesday rather than Thursday but that's a whole other matter. Today when we were driving in with the bus that made the 4th time this week I had made the trip.

On Wednesday I phoned the returning officer to see how we could go about voting. I don't really think that riding is in any danger but I said to Marilyn that we would feel pretty stupid if the idiot Val Mushinski got in by one vote. The returning officer said we could come vote right away. I'm not sure exactly what we voted in - it wasn't the advance poll but it was clearly a poll in advance of election day. They didn't even have printed ballots - we had to write Randy's name in but it's done now. So it was hard to get very excited about watching the debates. We caught the end of the English debate - just long enough so I could appreciate Grant Devine's comments this morning. "Like a pack of four coyotes worrying the old bull on the ranch." Yapping coyotes seems like a great metaphor for that pack of fools.

Marilyn is having fun playing with her new software tonight. She had Dragon Naturally Speaking on her desktop in Nipawin but for some reason couldn't install it on her new laptop. I think the desktop was likely W2K & the laptop is XP so that is likely the reason. Whatever the reason she ordered the software and had it shipped to her here in Saskatoon. We picked it up this afternoon and now she is teaching it to understand her voice. Once she gets it trained it will transcribe her words as well as let her run other software by voice commands.

We're camped at 16 West on the Yellowhead highway just north of the Saskatoon airport. As soon as we got here Georgie and I went for a really long walk all the way around the perimeter of the campground. He always hates leaving for a walk but he is getting to where he really enjoys the walk once it gets going.