Turkey and Rumours

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends. It seems later than usual this year to me, although I don't keep careful track of the U.S. dates of the holiday.

I got home a little earlier for once yesterday, and my wife called me at the end of her workday, concerned about the situation at our son's school. One of her coworkers had told her his school was apparently in "lockdown" mode after a shooting.

I'd heard the story on the way home while listening to my car radio, fortunately. It wasn't our son's school, but rather one a few miles from my workplace that was in lockdown. Eventually it was revealed that someone had seen a toy gun someone had brought into school and this triggered the response that led to the police doing a thorough search and investigation.

Weird how that translated into a "shooting" at a school eight miles away. Probably because some people believe it's a more likely site for such things.

I'm frustrated with this blog right now; I've tinkered a lot with the settings, pasting in code and such, but still can't make the posts show whether there are comments posted. For instance, there are a couple on the entry below about the things I envy about the U.S., but you only see them if you click "post a comment" yourself. Otherwise you don't know they're there.

To respond to those comments--I was surprised to learn that PA is as strict about liquor sales as Jen explained. Is it because of the Quaker heritage? Odd how different it can be from one state to the next.

Must go prep my day now; at some point I'll post something more interesting, I hope.

Us and Them

It's the name of a short play one of my classes has been working on for a while, but thought it might be a good title for this post.

I've read a few blogs and facebook comments from friends south of the border about what they prefer about Canada (or when the outcome of the election was in doubt, why they might move here afterward) so I thought I'd write a bit today about some things I might envy a little bit about their side of the line.

I suppose weather might be something I'd envy those in Southern Cal. I wouldn't want the blizzards of the midwest or the hurricanes of the gulf coast, nor do I covet the yearly tornado watch in states like Kansas, but it would be nice to have a little less rain in the winter. (Of course Seattle's in the same situation.)

Gas prices--we are a net petroleum exporter yet somehow our gas is more expensive at the pump. It's mostly taxes that are to blame, and my city has additional taxes on gas you won't find an hour north of here which support the transit system.

Just for fun (how sad) I did a little conversion work of figuring out our gas price in early September adjusted to the US dollar and the US gallon, and then compared it to now. It's valid, since our government let the big oil companies close most of our refineries a few years ago and now the vagaries of U.S. hurricanes and the fluctuations of the exchange rate do impact what we pay at the pump. Like most places, it's been dropping--price per U.S. gallon was $5.36 in September, and yesterday it converted out to $2.70 per gallon when I filled my tank.

Prices for a case of beer or bottle of wine are also more here. "Sin taxes" are high--both for alcohol and for cigarettes, but at least we can buy it on Sundays now, which changed back in '86 when Expo in Vancouver made the politicians examine some rather archaic rules. Before that, all bars, pubs and liquor stores had to close on Sundays. We still can't buy a bottle of wine in a grocery store, though.

I'm just fine with the high price of smokes here.

Now I'd also have to add your country's leader seems a lot more charismatic than ours--we'll see in the next few months how he handles the responsibilities of the job.

There are other things as well--I could do without our provincial monopoly for basic auto insurance, the fluctuations of our dollar (although I guess that happens on both sides) and I like some of the retail choices/chains that we don't have on this side of the border. (H&M, Century 21, Target, Best Buy...)

I'm sure there's more, but I'm off to go see a play up island with my wife this afternoon. Have a good weekend--if anyone actually reads this.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the... oh, wait

Yes, it's about time another foot washed ashore.

There's got to be a movie or CSI episode coming about all this.

Finally

It's about time. I had this dull apprehension that somehow the GOP would be able to manipulate things (like in 2000) to steal this election too. Then it would be a matter of time before the pressure of the job finished off the septuagenarian who already has health problems and put the easiest puppet into the oval office that the dark forces of Cheneyism could ever hope to manipulate.

Thankfully, it didn't happen.

I was watching the Vancouver-Nashville hockey game (and flipping to election coverage from time to time) and when they announced that Obama had been declared the winner, it got a standing ovation in the arena in Vancouver.

We're mostly very happy about this here, although we know that democrats will be more protectionist due to their deep union support than republicans, and that equals potentially hostile trade legislation and practices--but it's worth that risk to see a quicker end to Iraq and less likelihood of other military escapades to help fatten the wallets of arms manufacturers.

How much health care could that war have bought had it never happened?

Off to Nanaimo to see Macbeth at the college tomorrow. The forces of evil are defeated in that story, too.

(You may have noticed I've switched back to a more traditional blog look, but the comments still don't show under the posts as a link--anybody know how to fix this?)