Monday, January 30, 2006

Weekend

It was a very fun weekend, and fairly busy. I didn't manage to make it out for Jay's Birthday party on Friday. Darrell's Grandma passed away and he had to fly to Ontario out of Moncton that day. So he is gone until Wednesday and then we are off to Halifax Thursday for my regular trip to the Doctor.
Happy Birthday jay, sorry I missed it.
I did manage to make it out to the Blue Olive on Saturday for Helen's birthday though. that was alot of fun, lot a huge crowd but a good crowd of fun people. Chad and Nancey, Bertis, a few of Helen's friends from work, and of course Brian and Helen. I stuck to beer and gat home by 2:30, no hang over the next day (always a plus). The band was a little loud for the size of the room so it was hard to talk ( I must be getting really old), but I still had a good time.
Sunday I cleaned the house, did the laundry, and made a sleeper for my nephew.
Today is a pretty easy day, with nothing on my plate but a tape dub. I think I will probably take the oportunity to back up all my old projects and make some space on my drives.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Friday Feast Jan. 27, 2006

Appetizer
Choose one: Popcorn, Pizza, Pretzels, Peanuts, or Pasta.
Pasta

Soup
Describe your personality in terms of a particular vehicle.
Deep red, Mustang GT Convertible

Salad
If you won a shopping spree, from which store would you want it to be?
Home Depot or Home Hardware (they price match)

Main Course
Which television show re-runs do you enjoy watching?
Roseanne, Everybody Loves Raymond, That 70's Show

Dessert
If you could look into the future, how far down the road would you like to see? 10 years? 100 years? A million?
All of the above! But I'd really love to be able to see about 2000 years into the past to see what really happened.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Wednesday

So far the only advice I have found for my trees is "Not really anything you can do, but keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best." I think the danger part is probably past anyway. There is a layer of snow on the ground to insulate the roots if there is a sudden freeze or ice storm. We're supposed to get more snow to ad to it today, so I'll just have to see what happens in the spring.

I thought I couldn't possibly live with a Stephen Hitler Government, but now that the results are in I think I can live with it as a minority. It looks like a win win situation for voters. We have a change, there will be reforms, the Librals will be shopping for a new leader (probably Frank McKenna if any of them have two brain cells to rub together), The NDP will be able to effect policy, and Stevie has the Power he craves but not enough to inflict his ultraconservative right wing bible banging views on the rest of us. With our parliamentary system set up the way it is, a minority government situation is actually the closest thing we can get to a real democracy in Canada. Hopfully no one does anything stupid and sends us back to the polls for awhile, because I couldn't stomach another elect in the near future.

Darrell and I (mostly Darrell) spent the weekend searching out a break in some wires. When we had the installer from the alarm company out last year he drilled through the floor and nicked a couple, causing our fridge outlet and our dining room heater to go out. We didn't know about the heater until recently. We did manage to find the breaks though and yesterday Darrell bought a connector box and some new wire and fixed them up. We also got a $100 credit from the alarm company.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Voting

Today is the day we excercise our most sacred right as citizens of a free and democractic country, our right to vote. I don't consider voting to be a right, so much as I consider it a requirement. It is our responsibility and duty as members of a free and democratic nation to vote. It is our reposibility to enforce democracy by going out and excercising it. You may think that voting is a waste of time and that nothing ever changes, but in not voting you invite others to dictate your government to you. That is the first cause of the democratic deficit in this country. Maybe if more people realized their need to vote they would translate their frustration with the current process into positive democratic change. Throwing your hands in the air and saying why bother doesn't do any good, it only gives your power away to someone else. It is everyone's job as members of a free society to excercise the fundamental right that keeps that society free. Voting is not a right, it is a sacred trust and it is the duty of every citizen of Canada to perform. Today!

Friday, January 20, 2006

Unseasonable

I've really been enjoying the unseasonably warm winter, but I noticed this morning, what looked like little green buds, beginning on my Magnolia tree. This has made me start to worry about all the trees Darrell and I planted last spring. I'm afraid that if it continues to be so mild and then suddenly gets cold and turns to a typical winter they might die. Granted they all came from the Nursery and are guaranteed for two years, but I would hate to have to dig them back up and replace them all. I will definitely be spending today doing some research on how to protect them from false spring.

Friday Feast Jan. 20, 2006

Appetizer
About how many times per day do you check your email?
I leave my e-mail browser at work open all day long and it checks every ten minutes.
At home, since we're on dial up we hardly ever check, maybe once every couple days.

Soup
If you had the money to collect something really valuable, what would it be?
Gold coins. Gold never loses it's value stacked against the dollar. Once upon a time an ounce of gold or ten dollars would get you a fully tailored 3 piece suit.. today an ounce of gold will get you a fully tailored three piece suit, but ten Bucks won't get you squat.

Salad
Write a sentence using the letters of your favorite beverage. (Example: The egret admires.)
Barry eats eggs regularly.

Main Course
If you could be on a game show, which one would you want it to be?
The Amazing Race. That would be soooooooo fun.

Dessert
Name 3 computer programs or web sites you would hate to be without.
Photoshop, 3d Studio, After Effects

Monday, January 16, 2006

Rick Mercer Blog

I'm not the biggest Rick Mercer fan by any means.. but sometimes I get a kick out of his rants. His blog is actually quite good.

Rick Mercer Blog

Poking fun at Canadian Politics really never gets old does it?

Friday, January 13, 2006

Friday Feast Jan. 13, 2006

Appetizer
Name one chore you don't really mind doing.
Laundry

Soup
How many times have you moved homes in your life?
17

Salad
How old were you when you had your very first kiss?
10

Main Course
What time of day do you usually feel your best?
Mid-morning to early afternoon... Depends on the day and what's going on

Dessert
Using three words or less, describe your current local weather.
warm, spring-ish, awsome

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Munich

We went to see Munich with Bertis and the Bonds last night. What an excellent movie. I can honestly say without a doubt it is the best movie I've seen in quite some time. In Fact it will likely stay on my list of top twenty movies for quite sometime. Right up there with Shindler's List... also a Spielberg drama.
The Movie stars Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Hanns Zischler as the group assigned to bring retribution to the orchistrators of Black Sunday and the killings of Jewish Atheletes at the Munich Olympics. It is nearly three hours long, but well worth every moment.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Friday Feast Jan. 6, 2006

Appetizer
Have you ever seen a ghost or an angel?
I think I've seen several.

Soup
What is your favorite board game?
At the moment Ramoli

Salad
What was the last movie you saw that made you cry?
Pay it Forward

Main Course
What would you do if you had 3 months off from your job?
Write another novel

Dessert
What kind of shoes are you wearing today?
White leather running shoes "pony"

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Political RANT!!!!

I am sick to bloody death of Canadian Politics. As if it's not bad enough we have to suffer through an election over the "holidays", but we don't even have anyone worth voting for. It the same old song and dance over and over... the Librals are plagued with scandal "Time for a change!".... But the alternative isled by an ultra- conservative extremist who will end up pushing human rights in this country back 20 years and spend us back into the huge deficit the Librals have only just managed to drag us out of after the last conservative government. So who the Hell do you vote for? You take one smelly old turd and replace it with a smelly new turd and you're still left with a smelly turd.

Paul Martin... I would like to give the guy the benifit of the doubt, but everytime I turn on the news something else pops up. I would like to think that the sponsorship thing was Cretien's scandal and Paul Martin (even though he was Finance minster) really was in the dark. I know how budgets and committees work, I can easily tell myself that he was in charge of making the budget, but all that entailed was allocating funds to departments to be administered by the heads of those departments... and that would work for me.. knowing that he and Cretian weren't exactly best of friends and that he was out of the loop should also help... but sadly a person can only delude themselves so far and I just can't bring myself to completely believe it.

Stephen Harper.... This guy should change his name to Stephen Hitler. He claims to stand up for the charter of rights when he is waving around his Health care proposals... saying the Canadian Supreme Court has judged that long wait times for care are against a person's charter rights. Yet at the same time he wants to revisit and resind gay marriage... even though the Highest Courts in every Province and Territory save two have said it is against the Charter of rights to deny same sex couples the right to marry.... even though every Province and territory save two had already allowed legal same sex marriages before the government voted to change the definition of marriage. He says he won't invoke the not withstanding clause and will put it to an open vote in the House of Commons.....even though the issue has already been put to an open vote in the House and passed (with a MINORITY government in power no less). Hell I don't even believe in marriage let alone gay marriage but I want my decision to not marry to be my choice, not a matter of not being allowed to by law. It's not the only issue his party has threatened to revisit. During the last election there was talk of revisiting the abortion issue and appointing a 3rd party to assess and decide who qualified for abortion.. taking the choice away from the women in question (don't think he's let that little idea drop just because we haven't heard anything of this time around). And he'd drop the Gst by two percent... well no actually he'd drop it by 2% over the next 11 years and we'd actually only see it go down by 1% in the beginning.... it was the conservative Government of Brian Mulrony that gave us the f'n GST to start with. $100 a month for day care for each child in your family... works out to $25 a week enough to hire a babysitter for about half a day (and then you are left to find the person you trust alone with your children on your own).

Basic fact the Federal Government has no business setting up Daycare and no jurisdition to do it no matter what they promise... it's a provincial matter.

Jack Layton.... this guy reminds me of a sleezy used car salesman. Like Larry from Three's Company. Not to mention the NDP has no chance of making up the next government, so a vote for the NDP is really saying you'll let other people choose who runs the country... since this guy is never going to be Prime Minister. In fact if your riding elects an NDP candidate you'll find your "Voice in the House" sitting somewhere way in the back row and you'll have a better chance of seeing Him/Her in the supermarket out shopping than you ever will of seeing him/her in footage or debate in the House of Commons.

I'm not even going to mention Gilles Ducepppe.. since no one outside of Quebec can vote for his party. It makes no sence that he is even included in the Leadership debates... He couldn't be Prime Minister if he wanted to.

So those are the "Choices" and there is no "None of the Above" selection on the ballot (I'm sure that would really change the outcome if there were). It's the devil your know or the evil little nazi you don't want to, and more and more it looks like that evil little bugger is gaining ground. The Librals got caught with thier hands in the cookie jar and there's no dancing around it, but why do we have to punish ourselves in order to punish them.... that's what's so unfair about the election. We were actually better off with the minority government we already had. They actually had to shop their policies around the house and make amendments that suited the needs of the majority of the MP's in order to pass them. Isn't that how democracy is suposed to work in the first place?????????????

The more I think of it the the more I'm convinced that the parties aren't really the problem. We've seen that no matter which one is in power they end their time in scandal. We got our first female Prime Minister by default because she was Deputy Prime minister when Brian Mulroney "was forced to" resign in scandal. That scandal was so intense it split the Conservative Party in half and we saw the Birth of the Reform party that devolved into the Ultraconservative Extremists Part...er.. Alliance Party. We then saw Peter McKay run for the leader of the Conservative party and sell out the half of them that wanted a merger... saying if they gave him the job he wouldn't merge with the Alliance party, only to turn right around and place his giant nose right up Stephen Harper's backpassage and sell out the other half who didn't want one by merging (liar liar pants on fire)....... This is the guy who would be deputy Prime Minister if the conservatives get in. So when Stephen Harper is throw out...er... resigns (Probably in Scandal) Peter McKay gets to be Prime Minister for a month or two. And what's the deal with the hieresses? Why so desperate to marry a millionaire Petey? So the fact remains that they all end up in scandal in the end no matter which party you vote for. So it's not the Parties that are the Problem.... it's the Party system of government that's the problem.

Give it some thought... it makes perfect sense... you have one side that makes up the government and the other side that makes up the oposition. The oposition's job is exactly what it sounds like... oppose the government. No wonder they never accomplish anything. When you go to the polls and vote for the person to represent your riding.. it doesn't really matter whose running, because you aren't voting for a person.. you are voting for a party, and the person who is elected doesn't actually represent you and your area in the House... they represent their party. then one party holds the power and pushes through whatever policy they like based on pure numbers. That is not a democracy.

What we need to do in Canada is flush the Party System and start over. No more groups or teams going to Ottawa, but individuals who represent the people in the area that elected them first and formost. Just like a Student's council or Municipal Government. There would be no "Government" or "Oposition".. there would just be Members of Parliament committed to looking out for the best interests of the people in their riding and the best interests of Canadian's in general. Of course this system is not without it's flaws either but there are plenty of measures that could be put into place to insure it against corruption. There could be a system in place so that people in a riding could recall their candidate and elect someone else if the person they elected wasn't doing their job properly or hadn't taken the proper steps to fullfill their Promises. No one even bothers listening to the Government Election Promises any more because the majority of them are just happy fantasies that will never never never happen. Something as simple as making sure the seating in the House was shuffled at random for every sitting so no one consistently sat together and formed little coalitions could be put in place. How about putting people in charge of ministry porfolios who actually have a background in the area they are put in charge of? Wouldn't it be nice to see the ministry of health actually run by people with a health care background? For that matter there shouldn't be just one MP running the Ministries either there shoulds be a committee of MPs, 3 or 4 from different areas so no one person controls the purse strings. What I see would be a system where someone was elected from a New Brunswick Riding.. went to Ottawa with a list of concerns etc for their riding and presented it... then an MP from somewhere else in the country (say Alberta) was sent out to investigate them and report back. Then policies would be laid out for debate, and just like a debate team the pro side and the con side would be assigned to half a dozen people per side at random. Six MPs would go off and put together their arguements for and six would go and put together their arguements against.. then a proper debate would be had in the House of Commons and everyone would vote. No Party lines... No coalition voting... just a free vote majority rules. I think if something like that were to come about in Canadian Politics you'd see the separatist movement in Quebec disappear. Why separate when you can actually have your needs addressed properly?

Unfortunately we don't live in a true democracy and are forced to have to Choose between Paul Martin, whose Canadian steamships are regisitered in another country so they don't pay Canadian taxes, or Stephen Harper, who writes open letters to the New York times Apologising on behalf of all Canadians to the US for not supporting them in their illegal war in Iraq among other things.

Make no mistake one of these two guys is going to be Prime Minister of Canada. And as much as I hate to do it I really have no choice but to vote Libral.

We really need to start a new party that is made of middle class people who actually know what it means to live in Canada. A party whose sole purpose is to eliminate the party system of Government and restructure the House into a useful and Democratic machine. We need to limit the wages of MPs so that they are making just slightly higher (for travel costs) than the average Canadian Salary...Then we'd see them work on bringing the National average up pretty damn quick. We need a party that really will put Canada first.. ie. Stop shipping out our raw resources and buying them back finished because labour is cheaper elsewhere.... stop depending on our Neighbour's to the south for trade when we are a resource rich country that should be fairly self sufficient. It makes no sense that one cow gets sick and a whole industry is brought to it's knees because there aren't enough packing plants in Canada to handle the load. That is a meat and potatoes industry and the meat and potatoes of Canadian industries should be contained within Canada... trade with other nations should be the gravy. Stop allowing huge Corporations that make record profits to lay off staff because their shareholders want a bigger piece of the pie. Stop allowing foreign held business to come into this country and put locally owned businesses out of business.... Watch the Age of Walmart Documentary it may open your eyes a little to the actual business practices of Walmart... and may make you decide that the extra dollar at Zellars is worth it to support a Canadian Corporation that pays it workers union wages. We need a new Party that has the interests of average Canadian's at it's core.

Sadly until that party is formed we are stuck with the same smelly turds.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

2005 What a great year

I can hardly believe all the changes for us in 2005.
* Started the year buying a new car. So I would be able to do Evita.
* Evita.... what a great time, and what a great cast. I had a blast and met some really great new friends. I almost didn't do the show, so I'm really glad I changed my mind.
* Bought a new house. Wait... correct that... bought our FIRST house. Hard to believe that 7 years ago Darrell and I moved out here, with a station wagon full of stuff, a six month old puppy and no prospects... and now have a successful business, two cars, two dogs and a new house. And we haven't killed each other through all the stress of building it up.
* Did sound for Sunshine Boys... My first shot "Backstage" as it were. That was really great.. being on headset I got to get a real feel for all the things that go on that I didn't have a clue about. Writing and recording the soap opera with everyone was a scream.
* The summer was awsome... great sun, lots of friends around... taking the dogs to the lake (just down the street), planting trees in our yard, Gardening, and just sitting on our asses in the sun on the deck.......
* Got called to do Tosca... what an experience. To work with all professional crew and direction was a very unique experience. Not saying the other stuff I've done hasn't been Professional... but there's still a big difference.
* Christmas Carol, was one of the high points of the year. First time in a strickly "Acting" role (very nervous about it), as well as Sound and Visual effects designer. That was a lot of fun and really challenging.
*Darrell's parents came out for visit through the course of Tosca and Christmas Carol. They came separately and had really good visits.
*We did some house renos
*Mom came flew from Calgary for Christmas. I'm really happy she did. It was a really good time.

I have to say looking back it's going to a hard year to top, but I'm going to do everything in my power to do it in 2006