Dog On A Root

- jim Young “Think outside the box to get the box there on time.” During this Christmas Holiday Season* shoppers everywhere are looking for great deals. And great deals they will find whether they are shopping online or in brick and mortar outlets. The philosophy seems to be, if more people are spending their money, prices go down. Banks follow that philosophy too. When people are borrowing more money, interest rates tend to go down. You know who doesn’t do this? Canada Post. Canada Post increases shipping surcharges during the Christmas Holiday Season claiming it’s required to “support additional staff, vehicles (and) extended hours”. Don’t businesses hire additional staff during the Christmas Holiday Season?  Don’t businesses extend their hours during the Christmas Holiday Season? How do they do it?  I think the concept is that profits increase when sales increase and while a share of those extra profits may be applied to those extra costs, overall there is a financial gain for the

  - jim Young When most people think of Santa Claus, they picture him flying around on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by eight (or nine if it’s foggy) tiny reindeer, delivering toys all over the world. But this year, you might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Santa also “Delivering Magic” from a red and white Coca-Cola Holiday Truck as he tours across Canada. Photo by Yvonne Metcalfe Images Beginning in St. John’s Newfoundland on November 13, Santa will visit over 100 communities as he travels coast to coast, ending up in Victoria, British Columbia by mid-December, giving Santa time to make his way back to the North Pole to prepare for his world wide tour on Christmas Eve. St. Nicholas of Myra Santa, as we know him today, has been associated with Coca-Cola for many years and Coca-Cola is, in part, responsible for how we see Santa Claus today. The very first Santa, St. Nicholas of Myra, was born in 280 A.D. and did not look anything at all like the Santa we know today. St. Nicho

The number of “Servings” in a recipe is always open for interpretation. It all depends on who you are serving. Children? Teenagers? Adults? Seniors? It might also depend on just how hungry the people you are serving are. For example, this recipe claims to serve two. That’s one pound of ground beef divided in half plus the balance of the ingredients. Despite what you might think when you look at my physique, a half pound of ground beef, plus pasta, plus vegetables is a lot for me to eat. My Shirley and I might typically eat a Quarter-Pounder at McDonald’s. Well, My Shirley wouldn’t. She would likely order a Big Mac which has less than a quarter pound of ground beef.  Of course there’s also the bun, pickles, lettuce, sauce and cheese. We’d likely split medium fries as well. Somehow eating a half pound of ground beef at one sitting however, just seems like a lot to us, no matter what you might serve it with. So the “2 servings” in this meal are usually split between My Shirley and I and w

- jim Young “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day.” - Ross Parker & Hughie Charles As a young lad I was always warned to not make a lot of noise when visiting my grandfather because he had PTSD. Of course it was called “shell shock” back then. My grandfather, William S. Young, from Craigvale that is now part of the town of Innisfil, tried to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps in 1916 to serve in the “Great War” which would later become known as “World War I”. But he was only 17 at the time and required his father’s permission which was denied, either because of his age or because he was needed on the farm. Over 2 decades later however, at the age of 40 and with a wife and 3 children, my grandfather joined the Royal Canadian Engineers, 8th Field Company to serve in World War II. After transferring to the 1st Field Squadron, he was eventually sent to Croydon in England, an area that was heavily bombed during World War II d

- jim Young Following is an article I wrote about 5 years ago, prior to writing for the Great North Arrow. For some reason I never posted it on my website, Dog On A Root. So I have revamped it for its first printing here. A lot of the rules can quickly change in both baseball and hockey, so if some of the points I have made here seem a little dated, that’s why. The rules and stats in this article are based on the rules of MLB and NHL games in 2016. Baseball: You've got a diamond, You've got 9 men,  You've got a hat, and a bat, and that's not all. You got the bleachers, got 'em from spring 'til fall. You got a dog, and a drink, and an umpire's call. What do you want? Let's play ball. - Matthew Smith Hockey: Hello out there, were on the air it's hockey night tonight! The tension grows, the whistle blows, and the puck goes down the ice. The goalie jumps, and the players bump, and the fans all go insane. Someone roars: "Bobby Scores!" At the go