I walked over 15 K this morning from my temporary lodgings in Dalhousie along John Laurie, up into the mist that cloaked Nose Hill and back again.

Sharp hooved white tail deer glared back but I glared back in a threatening way and they retreated to an aspen grove.

The fog was completely encompassing, yet I carried on. I'm pretty sure I am the first human to the top of Nose Hill, at least without oxygen, so I claimed it for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, for the Spirit of Alberta and for conservatives who settled a hard land and prospered.

The Superbowl is on. I sign off in deference.

I'm sitting watching the Nature Conservancy's funding appeal on TV. A terrific organization. Very practical. If you're an outdoors type person, check it out at, aforcefornature.ca.

1 800 463 9014.

I love that they make the point that we should be hopeful about the future, but we need to act to set aside habitat if we want to preserve plants, animals and birds.

Look, I'm a conservative and a conservationist. I'm a hiker, a birder, a fisherman and I even enjoy duck and pheasant hunting. I give them money every month because they make such a direct contribution and have such enormous credibility with governments of all stripes.

All of that and they are great people to boot. They are activists without being bitter and holier-than-thou which is an acid test for me.

Anyway, I like them enough to bet my money on them.

Despite being shamelessley promoted by big newspapers, TV outlets and the opposition parties, a grand total of 3,000 showed up on Parliament Hill to protest the alleged end of democracy in Canada.

There are six or seven rallies every year on Parliament Hill that attracts more people, and with none of the media hype.

Seriously, you can't propagandize people into getting mad about something that just doesn't ring true to them. They may not like prorogation. It may annoy them, but Iggy, Jack and many columnists have just overplayed their hand on this. Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

Hmm it's overcast, windy and cold here. Not exactly what you want for the first day of a new decade. Whatever. These days it's a bad strategy to wait for blue skies to move forward.

In fact I'm pretty sure that I read in some great holy book somewhere that it's always best to stab challenges right in the stomach with the car keys as a way of turning them into an opportunity. In other words, it's up to us, so let's suck it up and get on with it.

If we do 2010 will be our best year ever.

Ever since I started writing for the Sun I have had a Sun email account. For the longest time I couldn't get into it. Well, much to my chagrin today I found that it was receiving emails all along so I have over 1100 emails to sort through.

Most of it was junk mail. A lot of people want to design a website for me. The email from readers was mostly positive, but there were some...ummm...less than positive emails too.

Anyway, my apologies to everyone who wrote me expecting a response. I'll look forward to hearing from you.