Drunk in B.C.

.......... is not very bloody likely. My gawd the booze is expensive out here. I can see we'll be running it back from Alberta at every opportunity. Today we had to make a cherry run. Cherries are an endangered species around our place andr we pretty well have to go for cherries every other day. While SWMBO was picking up cherries I went into a supposedly discount liquor store for a couple dozen Rickards Red. 55 bux later I walked out! That's over 2 bux a bottle. I can remember when you could buy bottles in the bar for less than that. And that price included some kind of a chair and a gap toothed bar wench to serve you.

Jim & Judy passed through here today on their way to Lloydminster to see Jim's parents. Judy is also making a run to P.A. to see the antique aunt. At 102 and almost a month Anne continues to defy logic. They thought she was a goner last January but she fooled everybody & my money is on her seeing 105. After her 100th birthday party she asked Marilyn when the next big bash was and she told her 105 so that's what I'm betting on.

The smoke from the fires north of Kelowna has been rolling in here every morning. Today when we drove into Chilliwack the whole valley was under a grey haze. Even the closest mountain ranges were obscured in the smoke and the farther away ones were almost invisible. Its desperately dry here too so this area could go up at any time but at least here there is irrigation in the valley so there are some areas to escape to and the valley is pretty wide so it provides some natural fire protection. Alberta and B.C. have to be at serious risk of one big conflagration. Too many years of pine beetles have left wide swaths of dead pine trees just waiting to go up in flames. I talked to Bryan about the fires up at Kelowna and he said when the fire hits one of those beetle-kill trees the whole tree goes up like a torch.