Well, it’s finally happened – looks like our first snow fall of winter has arrived!! We’ve had it pretty lucky the past few months; I believe we have only had about an inch of snow twice so far, and it was gone fast. I hope this batch clears up soon, it’s supposed to be snowing again this Wednesday and maybe a little bit next weekend – when we start our next vacation – a long awaited cruise (it’s been over three years now) on the Celebrity Silhouette!! 😊. We’ve had to postpone / reschedule 4 times over the last three years so it will be great to finally be going back!! It will be 10 days / 6 ports in the Caribbean; Puerto Plata, San Juan, St. Croix, Antigua, St. Kitt’s, and St. Maarten. It should be a blast!! … And Doug the Dog will get to spend time at the spa, uh, kennel while we’re away – he enjoyed it a lot the last time!! We were lucky that we didn’t go back on another week to Mazatlan – the Mexican government arrested Olvidio Guzman (El Chapo’s son) in Culiacan (the capital of Sinaloa) and everything got rather messy as his cartel members tried to prevent him from being flown to Mexico City to go to Alto Plano (Mexico’s maximum security prison). Twenty nine people ended up killed – nineteen cartel members and ten police / military – and several airports ended up being closed; including Mazatlan – two days before we were supposed to fly back!! No civilians were killed or injured and everything is back to normal in Mazatlan. The main reason this happened was that the Mexican president wanted to demonstrate that Mexico was cracking down on the drug cartels just days before a summit where Trudeau and Biden were to appear in Mexico City. ☹ So, this could have all been avoided … it didn’t really accomplish anything and twenty nine people lost their lives. ☹
The war in Ukraine is still dragging on – not a lot of ground has been taken by either side; the Russians are still doing their terror missile attacks; the Ukrainians are getting ready for a big Russian offensive that will probably start in March; many people are dying, Putin doesn’t care, etc. . The Western countries are putting billions of dollars into arming and training the Ukrainians but they still need more. What they especially need is Leopard 2 tanks – much better than the antiquated T-72’s they now have, plus some T-90’s they captured from the Russians – but Germany won’t give permission for other countries that use their tanks to send them to Ukraine ☹. If the main reason is that Germany is expecting some backlash from Russia – well, duh … do they think Russia is in love with them now?? Russia is continuing it’s campaign of disinformation / misinformation / damn lies about what is actually happening in the war … Do they really believe that westerners will believe that all the deaths caused by missile strikes was actually done by Ukraine itself?? I imagine even the Russian people are starting to question the news … So, again, Ukraine’s best bet is to keep on the offensive, get more air defenses and military equipment from the West, and kick the Russians completely out of Ukraine. Oh, and as I have said before; have someone kill Putin … that man is insane. Oh, and have someone assassinate Yevgeny Prigozhin – the founder and head of The Wagner Group (his own personal mercenary army) – if Putin falls, Prigozhin will be looking to take his place.
… We are slowly getting back to cooking; it’s hard after eating at a five star resort for two weeks 😊. We’ve had tourtieres; beef curries; chicken and shrimp curries; chicken carbonara; beef stews; shepherd pies; chili with cheese quesadillas; beef wellington!; and Kelly made a type of banh mi sandwich – left over beef rendang stuffed into a loaf of bread!! So … like I said … slowly getting back into it 😊. Oh, and a beef roast with veggies for tonight’s supper. Oh, and before I forget … we started going to the Aylmer’s Farmer’s Market on Saturdays … they just opened it last August but we never had the chance to visit it until lately. It’s a great venue – though more of a craft fair than an actual food market – with lots of booths and great food – and a shout out to ‘Mr. Amish’ and ‘Uncle Dad’s’; the best home-made pizzas, sausage, and cheeses around!! 😊
We watched a few shows on Paramount … lots of ‘Love Boat’; ‘1923’, the pre-cursor to ‘Yellowstone’ – it wasn’t very well done, but still better than ‘1883’; The first half of Season 5 of ‘Yellowstone’ – I actually almost enjoyed it, it was much better (although slower) than the first four seasons. We watched a couple of movies on Netflix based on real life – ‘Dog Gone’, a movie surprisingly being about a dog, gone; ‘Ruby Saved Me’, about a state trooper in Rhode Island who wants to join the K9 division and the rescue dog that he hopes will get him in – it was actually not bad 😊. I’ve been getting back into my telenovelas – Season 3 of ‘La Reina Del Sur’ with Kate del Castillo – 45 episodes – and probably my favorite season so far. Some of the plot takes place in Malaga, Spain and a fair bit in Mexico City; but most takes place in Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina. … And the resulting scenes shot on location are stunning and show a lot of South America that North Americans are not familiar with 😊. I’m really enjoying watching this season; and although still a little cheesy (hey, it’s a telenovela), it’s actually really well done 😊. I’m going to have to find some new shows soon …
On the NHL front -Toronto are in still in third place in the Eastern Conference, going into the usual post Christmas slump; Seattle Kraken are in fourth place in the Western Conference – they have actually been pretty good lately and only four points behind first place. Montreal and Ottawa are just … embarrassing.
On to golf … the PGA tours are back on again after the Christmas breaks. The Sony Open in Hawaii last week had a couple of Canadians finish in the top 12; Nick Taylor tied for seventh ($250K U.S.); Corey Connor tied for twelfth ($140K U.S.). This weekend it’s The American Express in La Quinta, California – only one Canadian made the cut (the cut was minus 10!!), Adam Hadwin. He’s currently tied for 10th at minus nineteen!! Still six strokes behind the leader (Jon Rahm) … but you never know, he’s pretty hot today!!
NFL news – well, that was surprising, Seattle actually made it (with a lot of help from Detroit) into the wild card weekend!! … And then, not so surprising, promptly lost to San Francisco ☹. Oh, well … they had an outstanding year, nobody thought (except me, of course) that they would get to the playoffs at the beginning of the year. I predicted 10 – 7, they ended up 9 – 8!!. Division playoffs started yesterday – Kansas and Philadelphia won; they have to find out later today who they will face next week in the conference finals – probably Buffalo and San Francisco. I’m predicting a Buffalo / San Fran Superbowl!!
Have a great and safe week … pray for Ukraine … we will see you in a bit!! (probably right after the cruise) 😊