Meal Fit For A....

I really need to cut down on my eating.  I've put on some weight of late.  But since yesterday was the last Monday of the month I decided to have a cheap lunch.  Of late Burger King in Canada has been advertising their $4.99 King Meal Deal.  You get a small fries, small drink, and your choice of two cheeseburgers, 2 Chicken Jr. chicken burgers, or one of each.  I took one of each.

The Chicken Jr. is the equivalent of A&W's Chicken Buddy Burger, with lettuce instead of pickles.  I think it's a better tasting chicken patty than A&W's offering, although both are skinny.  BK didn't skimp on the lettuce on mine, and I ended up pulling some of the bigger chunks out.  The cheeseburger is the typical BK cheeseburger, and I think the size of the patty they use in this and some other sandwiches has shrunk over the years.  If you've had one before you know the taste.  I actually didn't mind the small fries here, but would prefer a larger drink.

All in all it was about what I expected.  It won't set the world on fire, but it's sure to appeal to BK regulars.

On the other hand I think I prefer the competition, in Saskatoon at least, for a five buck combo.  Various Dairy Queen restaurants here(I'm not sure all do) offer a five dollar double cheeseburger lunch special between 11 AM and 2 PM , with fries and a regular size drink.  I like their burgers better these days than BK's, and you get more fries and a larger drink.

Gas In Saskatoon, October 26, 2018.

I missed the last price change, so I wanted to make sure I didn't miss this one.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 119.9 cents a litre at most locations.  At least a couple of east side stations were at 117.9, so others may soon follow suit.

They Went There.

I hadn't been planning to watch it, but CTV happened to play the opening episode of The Rookie last night, so I decided to take a look.  The series stars Nathan Fillion as John Nolan, a 40 year old LAPD rookie.  He decides to join the force after intervening in a bank robbery in his small town, putting his life at risk in the process.  It seems to me that would be a red flag for any recruiter.  In any case he's assigned to the Wilshire patrol area, much to the discontent of his watch commander, Sergeant Wade Grey(Richard T. Jones).  Grey accuses Nolan of suffering from a midlife crisis.  And it's not hard to think he's right, especially given that Nolan is romantically involved with fellow rookie Lucy Chen(Canadian Idol season 3 winner/Dark Matter regular Melissa O'Neill), who is not surprisingly considerably younger than he is.  Yep, they went for the cliché.  We also go to cliché land with the third rookie, Jackson West(Titus Makin), the son of a veteran LA cop, whose first experience under fire may be an indication he's not up to the job.

We do have a surprisingly heavy regular female cast here.  Afton Williamson plays Talia Bishop, Nolan's training officer.  She has a friendly rivalry with West's training officer Angela Lopez(Alyssa Diaz), both women hoping to make detective.  Mercedes Mason plays Captain Zoe Andersen,  commanding officer of the various main characters.  Rounding out the regular cast is Chen's training officer Tim Bradford(Eric Winter), who comes across as a bad cop.  We learn he has a troubled wife he's estranged from, leading to the obvious question of whether he's nasty because of her problems, or  her problems are because he's nasty.

This being 2018 they've decided to use some footage from the perspectives of police car video cameras and officer body cameras.  Whether they'll keep this up as the series continues is an obvious question.  It no doubt complicates filming, and some viewers may not like the jiggling perspective of the body camera footage, which seems to be done using actual body cameras.

Will the show succeed?  Given that it's still a "cop on the beat" show, despite the hook of a 40 year old rookie, it will have to convince viewers that it's not just more of the same.

Part of what led me to watch is that it was immediately preceded by Magnum PI.  After watching the pilot I missed the following episodes, so it was time to give it another shot.  I'm still not convinced about Jay Hernandez.  I also found it odd that we have another episode with a kid in it.  The best part of the episode was a cameo appearance by Cyndi Lauper as a low rent defense lawyer.

He Was Actually Useful.

Donald Trump actually taught me a new word today.  Emergy.

W Day.

As  of today the wacky weedus, as the great British guitarist Fred Frith once referred to it, is now legal in Canada.  But don't expect to find any in my house.  I think recreational use of the stuff is a waste of time and money.  But I also think keeping it illegal causes more problems that it supposedly solves.  Just remember that you must be at least 18 to use it legally in Canada, with the exact legal age depending on your province.  Where you can smoke it depends on the province, so don't go walking down the street with a blunt the size of a ballerina's leg.  And it's still illegal to cross the US-Canada border with it, so don't buy some for cousin Fred in Tacoma.

Gas In Saskatoon, October 12, 2018.

Back down we go.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 123.9 cents a litre at most stations.  But I wouldn't be surprised if we see a price increase soon.  This week's fire at the Irving Oil refinery at St. John, New Brunswick may be used as an excuse, despite the fact that we don't get any oil from that refinery way out here.

Notebook.

I'm starting to think I need to carry a tiny one.  There were two things today it would have been helpful to write down the exact details of.

Check Your Cheques.

When was the last time you wrote a cheque?  I haven't got a clue when it was for me, but it was a very long time ago.  I had to set up an automated deposit to my chequing account, and it made me wonder if my cheques were still good, as they were obviously quite old.  A quick visit to my Affinity Credit Union branch indicated they're no good at this point.  I didn't order any new ones, as I can't see myself using a cheque in the foreseeable future.  But it's best to know in advance whether they'll be usable or not.