“To everything there is a season,” wrote King Solomon in his bestselling book, Ecclesiastes. Sadly, the best two seasons of 2026 are now behind us, and they’ve taken a lot of the good stuff with them.
Soon there will be no more outdoor fun and I will be looking at six months of trying to keep myself entertained without running the risk of having any of my extremities turning black and falling off.
It will be time to take my favourite recreational activity, which is sitting on the deck enjoying a cocktail, and replace it with an alternate recreational activity, which is probably sitting on the couch enjoying a toddy. The couch is quite comfy and the toddy is nice, but I’d much rather be outside listening to the neighbours’ apparently never ending argument about whose turn it is to clean up after the dog (they both make excellent points, I’m glad I don’t have to decide) than be stuck in the boring old house watching the boring old paint dry.
So what now? What’s a boy to do to keep himself entertained through six long months of autumn/winter?
I play a bit of disc golf (quite badly, thanks for asking). The guys I play with have managed to continue through the winter, at least sporadically, for the last few years and there’s no reason to believe we won’t be able to do the same for the coming season. Mind you, when the daytime high dips below about minus 10 and the wind picks up it gets harder to convince yourself that plodding through the snow in pursuit of a round piece of plastic is a worthwhile activity.
Then there’s regular golf. I tried Drayton Valley’s indoor golf place a few times last winter and quite enjoyed it. It has all the frustrations of outdoor golf, but with comfortable seats and table service, so I’ll certainly give that another go.
I’m a member of an online quiz league (it’s not trivia, it’s general knowledge!) which takes up a surprising amount of time. It’s not so much the questions themselves; there’s a discussion board where you can read along as total strangers completely lose the run of themselves arguing over things like whether or not Antoinette is Marie Antoinette’s last name. It isn’t by the way, just in case anyone’s interested in that sort of thing.
I don’t like winter, but I do like Christmas. New Year is no slouch either. So the last couple of weeks of December usually take care of themselves from an entertainment standpoint.
Then there are a couple of events at the Max and the Eleanor Pickup Arts Centre that might be interesting. And I have a gym membership which I do actually use, and the restaurants and bars will all be open.
So there are things to do over the coming seasons. And some of those things might actually be considered as fun.
But in spite of all that I can’t help but feel that the next six months are going to be more of a drag than that TV show with Ru Paul. Still, complaining about it before it’s actually happened has made me feel a little better, so thanks for listening.
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And now for some good news. In last week’s paper we ran a story about $1 million in funding for this community from Weyerhaeuser’s Thrive Program. It turns out the actual figure is $1 million US, which is worth quite a bit more than the loonie. I thought that information was worth sharing.
