USA Today reports that there are now three job seekers for every job opening but with this moderately competitive market and very realistic opportunity to find work within 26 weeks for the unemployed, apparently some still think 26 weeks is not enough.  Since the recession of 2008 particular states offered workers up to 99 weeks to find a job.  If the unemployed cannot find a job, can they not find someone’s windows to wash?  Can the unemployed not find someone’s house to clean?  Can the unemployed not sell the house and take work serving coffee?  Can the unemployed not pick cotton, shovel snow, sell Avon, or perform a temporary project?  Can the unemployed not deliver flyers, drive a school bus or paint the neighbors kitchen?  If unemployed, somewhere along the line somebody did not want you, need you, or you did not want them.  Can you not go out and prove to a community you are deserving of work by working?  The American dream is premised by individual liberty and the rights of the individual to contract for services so why is it that this right is left open ended in lost opportunity? Perhaps your idiotic school system forgot to teach capitalism. 

Could Mitt Romney have been right during the election campaign of 2012 when stating “there are 47 percent who are with him (Obama), who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”  At the time I didn’t subscribe to Romney’s cynicism but I’m having second thoughts.  This endless bantering about extending unemployment benefits is just one more reason why responsible people are left frustrated by the madness in Washington and the climate which continues to perpetuate dependence at a time when debts and deficits are gargantuan, the financial system is in peril, and creditor nations loom like hawks awaiting America’s default.     

My loving parents bought me skis when in 8th grade.  The brand name was Torino and couldn’t wait to try them out on the new snow at the side of our modest duplex on the Sahali hill in Kamloops.  Just to feel gravity work on this new equipment was thrill in itself never mind the absence of a lift or adequate stopping distance before traffic.  It was silly but fun on the most moderate of gradient amidst the ambience of a new winter, low cloud cover and dusk which had Christmas lights starting to glimmer in the background.

It was this memory that I’ve taken an “embrace winter” attitude coming into this ski season.  Throughout the fall, I’ve schemed about purchasing X Country skis, acquiring waxing tips on youtube while gradually acquiring the necessary tools via educational shopping trips to the local mountaineering shop to ensure that the glide and grip match snow conditions.  Tonight it really all came together on my third venture out to my back yard.  Yes….my back yard similar to my venture as a budding teen.  My current back yard has a school ground and very large uninhabited park where nobody goes – not even dogs.  When the snows not great, I can head over to the rink and skate which the city already at this early stage in winter has flooded.  The timing for the “embrace winter” attitude could not have come at a better time with snowfall really outperforming accumulations of past years.  Laying down the tracks simply requires some patience and voila the path is set.  Bring a friend and put on the head lamp for some night time cardio on your home made trails in the fresh air and limit those pesky germs in gyms.