Huntego's CleanShot - A New Way to Clean Your Gun

Bore cleaning is a pain in the tail.  You need to get out your chemicals, rags, and plunger and horse it through your gun, then get it all broken down and put away again.

With this, however...



I am so trying this and will post up and let you know.  

Monster Commercial

Monster does a great job in its new commercial and plays off the fact that most people will leave a job because primarily because they dislike/hate the person for whom they work:

I used to have one of those bosses we see at the lead, and I actually had the finger snapped at me multiple times as I sought to make myself more productive while he held meaningless conversations on the phone.  In fact, whenever we met in his office, he'd nearly always pick up an inbound call and would demand that I sit there and wait. 

What'd I do?  

I ultimately got the hell out of there.  Life is too short, and work too much of that short life to be treated like garbage. 

Dog Slowing Down

My yellow dog is now at 12.5 years old.  She's slowed quite a bit, and I've not hunted her for two years now.  

Her days are now a mixture of good and bad days.  Sometimes she's not ravenous for food; indeed she may not even finish a meal and will pick at it gingerly.  She'll be lethargic or sullen.  She'll also sometimes develop incredibly loud belly noises - noises that can be heard from well across the room - and foul flatulence.   

Then, by miracle, the next day she's back to her old self.  

So now the age-old question that every owner of an old pet needs to ask: when is the right time to seek medical treatment?  In invoking Dr. Google, the Yellow Dog's maladies could be quite serious and could require surgery.  But for a dog her age, is that fair?  Just like humans, old age will ultimately ensure that something conspires to take you out.  We don't last forever.  

But could the short-term quality of life be improved?  That's a question I'm wrestling with.

This morning I woke to the loudest belly noise she's ever had.  She did take some water, and slowly ate most, but not all, of her breakfast.  A quick morning walk elicited the necessary "deposit" which appeared normal.  

She was like this a couple of weeks ago and bounced back well.  Hence, we'll sit tight and keep a close eye on her.  We'll also keep you all posted.

Hunting With Kin Recap

This past week we held our nearly annual hunting with kin weekend up at the duck camp.  It was attended by not only two of my cousins, but also by my young nephew.  We've been at this for 14 years as of this January, and it has been a blessing on so many levels.  The ducks have been just an excuse; the true reason we get together is for the laughs and the memories.

Here are some of those for this trip:

Duck hunting is not an easy pursuit.  Hunting starts a half hour before sunrise, and with all of the work to do ahead of time (setting decoys, travel, coffee, biological needs, etc.), and we're up incredibly early.  There are some benefits of being the only ones in the world up at our ungodly hour, and one of them is that we're often treated to God's beauty.  Here was just one example. 

 Another great sunrise.

My nephew had never been pheasant hunting, and 15 minutes into his first hunt he bagged this bird on a hard crossing shot.  Truth be told, I shot first and missed.  The kid backed me up.  I have no idea how many hunts I had been on before I shot my first pheasant, but it felt like it would never happen.  It happened for the kid only a couple hundred yards into his first hunt.  Lucky dog... 

Here's a buddy with a rare end of October blue wing teal.   

Here was the sunrise for our last day.  Another fabulous way to begin our day, and end our trip.

While the bag wasn't heavy, we did scratch out our share, with the kid and I contributing to a last day's brace of drake wood ducks.

Other highlights included:

• My cousin's famous gumbo night, which was attended by a bunch of neighbors.  Not sure how many folks we had in total, but we fed over 20 (and still had leftovers)
• My cousin bagging his first pheasant in who knows how long
• Victories by the Gophers, Irish, Tigers AND Vikings (when does that ever happen?)
• Too many laughs to count

Hopefully, we'll be able to do it all again down in Louisiana in January.

Saturday Song Share: The Tragically Hip - Locked in the Trunk of a Car

Still tough to think he's gone...

6 Year Old Invites Teddy Bridgewater to His Birthday

This superfan created a video to invite his hero to his birthday:



So what happened?  This happened:



NFL players are taking a pretty bad rap nowadays.  Here's to one of the good guys.

RIP Gord Downie

Gord Downie, the lead singer and soul of one of the biggest bands in Canada finally succumbed to his brain cancer and passed away yesterday.

He was 53.  My age.

The Tragically Hip is Canada's version of U2, with Downie playing the role not only of Bono, but that of Dylan, Springsteen, and Jim Morrison all rolled into one.  He was musician, magician, showman, poet, and the voice of a whole damn country.  

How much did he mean?  Here's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meeting the press and talking about Gord:



I had the pleasure of seeing the Hip three times in my life, and was blown away by Downie's stage presence.  He was a live wire - jerking and jiving the whole night.  Likewise, he spewed out stream of consciousness jargon throughout the concert; stuff that made no sense but perfect sense at the same time.  He was a lyrical gymnast and often replaced words in his own songs - ones that still rhymed with the original, but nuanced the song all the more.  

I've loved this band since the 80's and across thirteen different albums.  I still remember when I first heard Up to Here - where I was, what the day was like - and thinking "who the hell ARE these guys?" Since then, they've been a soundtrack to my adult life.

I got the news while at lunch, sitting in my car and checking the web.  Like Trudeau, I cried.

I leave you with my favourite song (and given their library, that's saying a lot and I spelled "favourite" that way for a reason), and a performance that is classic Gord Downie.

Goodbye, Gord, and thank you.

Words Matter

As a marketer, this really resonates: