One might think that after nearly two years of this pandemic, we’d be a bit better at figuring out where we are at.

Last week, I promised to offer a list of some of the Prairie Gold I’ve mined over my life as a reader. I realize the impossibility of listing all the inspiring books I’ve read just since moving to Val Marie…

This week’s humour: “I told the procurement department a joke and they didn’t get it for 4-6 weeks”.

These days it seems there are three certainties in life: death, taxes and bigger government paycheques.

Prairie gold is not always wheat. It is also the wealth of writers sprung from this land. So much of the character of this place, its very soul, is in its stories, many of them not written but told over years, decades and generations…

Some things just don’t make sense. For instance, why do cartoon characters wear the same things every single episode? Why do we press harder on the remote when the batteries are dead?

Maybe we’d be better off in Saskatchewan if some people stopped looking at this province strictly through their own political filters.

The longer this pandemic goes on, the more frustration grows … and, sadly, the more deeply divided we seem to be getting.

Did you hear about the super hero - X-ray man? When a concerned citizen shouted, “Quick! The thief is getting away!”, X-ray man calmly responded, “Yes, I can see that.”

“The bankruptcy of a city is of no interest to the citizens of a city who are themselves bankrupt.” Fran Lebowitz said that.

Would you buy a washer that could only do one sock at a time? That’s solar power in the winter.

When I was creating our holiday cards, I came across a slogan on a template that I couldn’t get out of my head: “What a year.”

Over thirty years ago, my friend Helen shared her new year’s ritual with me. The ritual has become a tradition in our family, so a few of us practiced it last week.

A couple was in court fighting over the custody of their daughter. When the judge asked the man to present his argument, he said, “Your Honour, if you slide a coin into a vending machine and a snack comes out, is the snack yours, or the machine’s?”

Well, we clearly aren’t avoiding the fifth wave of this Omicron variant of the COVID-19 pandemic.