Greenwater Report for November 23, 20055, 2005

Last Sunday night, or early Monday morning, the temperature got down to –9°. It was dead calm, and the lake was frozen for about 100 yards out from our place. It was just like a sheet of glass. Monday night, it got down to –12°; there was a high wind all night, and by morning the ice was all crunched up and only about 100 feet wide. Tuesday night, it dropped down to –19° with no wind, and by Wednesday morning the lake was frozen over completely.

We went to Saskatoon on Friday to see the stage show “Cats”. We wound up staying over until today, finally getting home about 9 PM. What did I do for two whole days in Saskatoon? I ferried Doreen, Lucille, and Laurie around the city while they did Christmas shopping. By the time we finished this afternoon, the trunk was full, both Lucille and Laurie were holding parcels on their laps, and the rear mud flaps were scraping the pavement. As long as I do the driving, nobody expects me to shop.

The stores were madhouses, especially in the afternoons. Everyone in the city must have got the same idea. Of course, the fact that we were back to September temperatures helped a lot - there was very little snow near Saskatoon on Friday, and by the time we left tonight there was nothing. We did see some in Archerwill, and lots here in the Park. I have to hold off sending this report out until Monday morning, so I can see if the lake is still frozen over. (Yup - it’s frozen as far as I can see from here.)

One of the places we went shopping was Lee Valley Tools at their recently-opened store. Leonard Lee, the founder of the business, happened to be there autographing his newest book, “The Great Saskatchewan Fowl Supper and Literary Contest”. We got our book and introduced ourselves, and I asked Leonard how long he had lived in the Archerwill area. He said he took his public schooling at Algrove School, four miles north of Archerwill, and his high school in Archerwill. He is retired from Lee Valley, but runs a publishing company called Algrove Publishing, and has published over a hundred books. Many of them are old, out-of-print books that he got the rights to publish.

There is quite a section on limericks in the book, and Leonard pointed one out to me (and gave me permission to use it in this column):

A lot of the other limericks refer to Saskatchewan places, too. I recommend the book highly!
(That limerick sounds like something Dennis would do. I understand he once used a side grinder to scale some fish - said it made an awful mess of the kitchen!)

My personal reaction to high gasoline prices was to drop my cruising speed by ten kilometres per hour. I thought I would be holding up traffic, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. On this trip to Saskatoon, we only passed one or two cars, and very few passed us. That has to be the safest possible scenario. I wonder if the same idea occurred to almost everyone at the same time? I believe our mileage improved by at least ten percent. The vehicles that passed us? Pickups, usually on a solid line.

Oh, yes - Cats. A huge disappointment. Almost as soon as we sat down, that horrible sound system in the Centennial Auditorium tried to blast our heads off with raspy canned noise. I had forgotten my ear plugs, so jammed Kleenex in my ears and that helped a little, but I still couldn’t make out the words, and the words are important. The lighting was not bright enough to be able to make out what the cats not presently in the spotlight were doing, and that was a great deal of the appeal of the show. The cast couldn’t seem to mesh with the canned music and sounded ragged, particularly in the first half. We first saw Cats many years ago, and loved it. Doreen has seen it since and liked it, too. There was a live orchestra and properly moderated sound. Every time I go to a performance at the Centennial Auditorium (now known as the Teacup) I swear it will be my last.