The Briar Patch

I lied, it is clear I wont have a chance to get back to a travel blog this year 2025. Hell it might be 2026 before this is even up! So ending on some more random thoughts. Mostly unedited and well for real last one like this I am doing for a month. At least. New goal for 2026 travel blog out every 2 weeks until last trip is done. Want it to be done before I go to Spain this year!! Oh I am posting this January 2nd. A big chunk right in the middle is Stranger Things with some massive spoilers if you haven't watched final season be warned.  Hockey ended shitty. We finished 3rd in our div. For once it felt like the right div, winning as much as losing. We got a wild card round Bye, then quarter final single game elimination we played a team with only 2 wins. One we handled easily BUT no one showed up. Not figuratively, really. We had a tiny bench and they beat us. The legit season we could have made a good playoff run we lost. I can't say much, I didn't play I was working. I mi...

I have ranted in a better thought-out blog before, but I need to vent on health care!  Throughout most of my life, I have had the fortune or misfortune of dealing with the healthcare system. Some of it is due to family and friends being involved in it. Once in a while, I have had to rely on it, and it is easy to notice over the last few decades that things are getting worse and worse. I've already vented on it, but I just have to get more off my chest about our current healthcare system. No matter what party is in power, they should be willing to repair the healthcare system; this should not be a political issue. I realize that different people will want to fix it in other ways. Still, no matter what party they should want to put the money in (like a lot of cash! and not wasteful spending but actual targeted spending), put the time in, put the effort in, and make Alberta healthy and happy once more. It can't be a Band-Aid fix anymore. We keep doing that with everything, doing m...

 Again, going way away from what I was working on but had a minor holiday somewhere new. Or somewhere I haven't been in years, so I figured a travel lite blog might be in order. We went down to Kelowna for a few days; it was a good time in a beautiful area. For me, it wasn't my first time in Kelowna. Years ago, like 30-plus years ago, I remember going with my mom and her boyfriend. If I am honest, I don't remember much of that. Of course, I vaguely recall Flintstone Park. People trying to race snowmobiles across water and camping. I don't think we stayed right in town that time. Then, it was a long time until I was back. I was in my mid-twenties, so 15 - 20 years later. This time, I was with a group of friends my age. We camped, I think, in West Kelowna. Honestly, most of that trip consisted of a couple of days of drinking on the beach. We did see the town, but not overly. I woke up one morning with Hells Angels at my picnic table because one buddy invited them to share...

 Ever kick a bee hive, I kicked a proverbial one on social media a couple days ago with a single post. Something about having an unelected Prime Minister in Canada. I wish at the point I did have the coffee mug that said Liberal Tears. People with names like Mr Woke or Mr Left started snapping. Honestly I am picturing the memes of some purple haired they/them yelling at a screen, anyways Let's dive in..... Start with a simple question, which riding is Mark Carney sitting in? I mean he was voted into government in a free and fair election right?  "You don't understand how the Westminster system works!" Yes clowns I do. I am going to say on social media there probably aren't many people that are going to teach me how the government is set up. Maybe about different departments or laws sure. In fact it was fairly recently I learned about Gladue Papers, that was actually interesting. How the government works though, no thats pretty basic and straight forward. I know th...

I am for the most part a pretty proud Canadian, even with the dipshit we have running the country, its still the only nation I want to call home. A mansion in Beverly Hills, ya that would be sweet with a Canadian flag flying out front. Now that I know tattoos really don't hurt I keep thinking of ones to get and sometimes dream about working the maple leaf into something. However 2 things are really getting to me these days. They make me wonder wtf is wrong with our nation, why we are so divided and losing sight ofthe things that did make us a great nation. So a quick bitchy blog, here they are. 1) Gaza. Am I horrible for saying this, I don't care. I have been blogging about media and honesty and such recently and this is a prime example of it. Person A claims Israel is bombing the shit out of people, killing innocents on purpose, starving people to death, sending assassins into hospitals, raping and on and on. Person B then refutes it. The assassins in the hospital killed high ...

Whatever you are doing right now, stop it. Grab a tall glass of water and chug it. 60% of human bodies are water. Most people don't get enough water in them in a day!! I'm seeing more people with big water bottles to remind them to drink. I have one, but I still need to get more into me. This is purely my opinion, but water, sleep, and HEALTHY food are the three best things for people. When someone is hungry, thirsty, or tired, they will not nearly perform as well as they usually would. That is a personal side note. I will get into it more, but we must take better care of ourselves. Those three things are a fundamental start. Get more sleep, healthy sleep. Don't drink to pass out; that sleep isn't restful. I mean the sleep you get after a long, hard day. Get more water, and I know it is hard, and you may end up peeing more BUT drink that damn water. Eat better! I am a person who eats out a lot, cooks at home a lot, and is used to eating fast food a lot. Greasy fast food...

So I think this is my last entry for the year of 2023 that won't be in the series I have started. All it will take is a quick read and some of this was started a month ago, or more. I am going to concentrate on those other blogs and maybe be done them by the end of the year, sorry if some of this is really not relevant anymore! 337 years... That's at least how long my family has been in North America. Or at least the the part of my family whose surname I still use. The other part of me, well we have been in Canada forever, Ojibway. Anyways what I got from doing family tree research was it would have been my great (X9) grandfather that came here way back in 1686, Jebus. I found out for a few generations we were in Philly and then moved to New Jersey... Thank god we moved outta there. Then into Ontario, again thank god we moved to Alberta some time between 1896 and 1910. A lot of Jacobs, Lewis' and Daniels in the tree. The hard thing to tell is are they Irish or British they ...