Oh wonderful, perpetually tardy Spring…it still tends to sneak up on you…especially when shorts, tank top and bikini season is approaching. Spring represents new beginnings, transformations and fresh starts. A mini-New Year’s for resolutions. I believe it’s never too late to start over again. It’s the only way to reach your goals. I have a calendar of motivational quotes and when I flipped it to April it said…”The beginning can happen anywhere along the way…” Something about that made me feel better, made me want to get re-started, re-motivated and re-committed to my goals for 2016. What goals have you let slide since the New Year? There is still time…(trust me, mother nature is taking her sweet ass time) The Zen Zone runs a “6 weeks to May long yoga challenge” every year. It motivates our challengers to get to where they want to be mind, body and spirit by May long weekend.   I am continually inspired by the different challenges that my clients want to accomplish in these 6 weeks. The goals range from quitting drinking alcohol, committing to a daily yoga practice, cutting out soft drinks and refined sugar to starting a regular meditation habit. What a great way to start some healthy habits to take with us through the rest of 2016 and save ourselves a New Year’s resolution for 2017! Longer days, more sunshine and that smell in the air. Let all these signs of spring launch you back into your routines. Get outside, get back in the gym, hit the yoga studio, whatever moves you. Connect to what feels good for your body and let’s get healthy and feeling better for when summer hits! And bottom line…it won’t hurt for when you put on that bathing suit either…

Brandon product and former Wheat King left-winger Brett Kitt, and his Melfort Mustangs teammates won the SJHL championship tonight defeating the Flin Flon Bombers 2-1 in game 6 of the championship final.    The Mustangs take home their second consecutive Canalta Cup Championship with the victory. They now move onto the Western Canada Cup being held this year in Estevan. Other teams in the tournament include: SJHL: Melfort Mustangs Host: Estevan Bruins MJHL: Portage Terriers AJHL: Brooks Bandits BCHL: West-Kelowna Warriors Two teams from the Crescent Point Energy Western Canada Cup will advance to the RBC Cup in Lloydminster. Kitt for his part chipped in with 6 points in 11 games during the playoffs while registering 19 penalty minutes.  He spent parts of two seasons with the Wheat Kings playing in 41 games.   Dakota Boutin, a onetime draft selection of the Brandon Wheat King and Boissevan product Sam Houston are also part of the Mustangs roster.

Sometimes I go for a little drive out in the country, taking pictures.  And tonight's experience is best portrayed in a recap, on a few thoughts from tonight's excursion.  "I should go to the grocery store.....what was I gonna get again?" "I should go for a quick drive first." "Is this actually a road?" "What's that high pitched squealing noise coming from the front end of my car?" "Where'd that moose come from?" A moose.  1 moose.  Moose.  Me.  Beside a shed. In a field.  With a moose.  That came out of a shed. Of all the things I run across....beavers....ducks.....geese.  This has to be the best thrill yet.  When I explore abandoned farmyards and old houses, I watch out for old wells.....barbed wire. Badgers. Zombies.  Axe murderers.  It hadn't occurred to me that I'd turn around and be staring a moose in the face. That just came out of a small shed.  He was having a nap inside a shed. I saw something move as I was walking towards the building and it kind of startled me, I briefly thought it'd be a bird. Nope.  Moose.  Where do you go from there?  Can't top that for a night.  This is a moose, isn't it? Yours truly, Caley

It was all in good fun. And for a good cause. But some of the shots slung at Brandon Mayor Rick Chrest at a recent fundraising roast must have stung just a bit. Creatively themed Breakfast for Dinner, the evening featured walkabout magicians Holden Lumbard and Brett Chrest. The roasters were former mayor/MLA/MP Rick Borotsik, city manager Scott Hildebrand, Coun. Jeff Fawcett (Assiniboine) and former deputy fire chief Gary Bell. The city’s first lady, Karen Chrest, was emcee. The event drew 160 to the Victoria Inn was the brainchild of Coun. John LoRegio (Meadows-Waverly), presented by NetSet Communications, with proceeds going to the Canadian Diabetes Association. The menu consisted of a breakfast buffet, which ended with a huge tray filled with bacon and sausages. And at the head table, there was plenty of hamming it up from the roasters.  

It came four hours late, but I did have a phone interview with Cliff Cullen, once a comparatively low-key Progressive Conservative Opposition MLA, now minister of growth, enterprise and trade (and labour) in the new Brian Pallister government. The Spruce Woods rep, who lives in Glenboro, is also now the de facto voice at the cabinet table for Brandon, as our two Tory MLAs were passed over for a seat in the pared-down 12-member inner circle. The Spruce Woods constituency encircles the Wheat City, so we’re kinda like the hole in the doughnut. However, Cullen has been spotted frequently in Brandon, is completely up to speed on the issues facing us that fall under the province’s purview and says he will work closely with Brandon East MLA-elect Len Isleifson and Brandon West MLA-elect Reg Helwer. “We have two really good representatives in Brandon,” Cullen said Wednesday, the day after he was sworn in. “I know the premier will have additional roles for those two fellas once they are sworn in (May 11). They will be an important part of our team. “And that’s really the way that we look at it. We’re all part of the same team trying to accomplish some good things for Manitoba. However, neither Isleifson or Helwer were on the list of six legislative assistants appointed last week to assist ministers. Cullen’s LA is Kelly Bindle, MLA-elect for Thompson. The position of legislative assistant, says a government release, is filled by MLAs in caucus in order to support cabinet ministers and also provide the assigned MLAs with experience associated to cabinet. The list also included many of the demographic and geographic voids in the cabinet. As far as lists go, Cullen wasn’t any pundit’s pick that I saw as being a potential cabinet minister. Helwer was considered the natural choice. I asked Cullen how he felt when he got the call from the premier on Monday. “I was somewhat surprised, but I’ve been around here a long time and had a lot of different roles and built a lot of relationships over time,” he said. As for pressing issues in Spruce Woods, they are primarily crumbling roads and health care — or “the lack thereof” — for the latter. In Brandon, infrastructure issues also dominate. Including the Daly Overpass rebuild. Cullen gets an extra $50,930 on top of the regular MLA’s pay of $93,025. He also gets extra staff. And a really nice office in the Manitoba Legislature. Cullen also has a new deputy minister, Jamie Wilson, the former, Treaty Relations Commissioner of Manitoba. He was one of four deputy ministers that Pallister moved in quickly to replace existing NDP hires. *** Brandonites will also have direct access to government via the Westman Regional Cabinet Office. What’s that you ask? It’s located in the provincial building on Ninth Street and has traditionally been a low-key operation. But there’s no reason it couldn’t be made more prominent and accessible to constituents. The office, which traditionally employs two people, was first opened in 1989 by former premier Gary Filmon. The first director of that office was veteran newscaster Ron Arnst, who has served as a press secretary to cabinet since he left CKLQ 880 earlier that year. At the time, Arnst was charged with acting as a local liaison for groups and individuals dealing with government and was to be available to assist organizers of community projects in gaining access to appropriate government services. I’m not too sure how that office was used under the NDP regime. I know the staff did organize media appearances of ministers and the premier, but the new Tory government is free to structure it as it pleases. And that could go a long way to soothe the feeling of Tory voters who feel that Brandon has been left on the outside looking in again of the cabinet room. (The photos here include one I took of Pallister greeting Cullen at a pre-election rally at Len Isleifson’s campaign office.The other is a screen grab from CBC of Cullen being sworn in by Manitoba Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon.)