White Powder

Snow fine as select Bolivian powder fell this morning. People in most of the rest of Canada do not pay much attention to snow as they drink their Saturday morning coffee and look forward to the day's hockey games. But to us Dope City folk it is a treat nearly as rare as a Stanley Cup parade.

As Sonja slurped her tea she said, "I wish the snow would never stop. Then maybe we would have ten feet of it like they have up in 69 Mile House."

After the snow stopped I leashed up the Hammer for a walk on Steepleton's icy sidewalks. There were a few other people than the two of us risking a trip to the decaying hospital by braving the ice. We chose our steps carefully, sometimes spreading arms like herons as we fought to remain upright.

When we made it to our first and most important stop I went inside and picked up all the beer I could fit in my backpack - four six packs of organic beer from Cougar City. As I was headed to the check out with my purchase I spotted somebody giving away free shots of scotch. (If you live long enough some of your dreams inevitably come true.) There were two new kinds of scotch from Grant's distillery for me to sample. The first was aged in sherry casks. It tasted like Johnny Walker. I'll stick to the Balvenie's when I want a sherry cask aged scotch thanks very much. The second was aged in ale casks, something new to me. It was a fine tasting simple scotch I would recommend, especially given its reasonable price.

As I was waiting to pay for my beer some fucker walked out of the store with some product under his jacket. The clerks shouted, "That man is stealing from the store! He has something under his jacket!" He brushed by me and I looked him in the eye just before he walked unhurriedly out the door. I do not support stealing anything from anybody, it ain't fucking right, but I was in a government liquor outlet so I sure was not going to hit the guy over the head with a six-pack of beer bottles for doing that.

As we walked home the sun was shining like Britney Spear's shaved beaver bathed in camera flash. Everybody was smiling as they putted around in their cars. I stopped for lunch. Chicken, salad and a couple pints of Stella. I sat by the window, chatted with the staff and watched Chelsea blow the doors of Wigan in an English football match far, far away.

On days like this we are reminded that as hard as government and industry try to make our region suck the big one, like the rest of the sick world tamed by cameras, uniformity and war, we still got it, that little intangible called happiness, here in Dope City.