Another creepy photo...

Pucker up Dion!!!

this month brought to you by...

Athabasca icefields!

Does this photo give you the creeps too??

Liberal Leadership Convention

Watching it right now on ctv...boy.. I think Dion's got it!

some good blogs covering the event:

www.warrenkinsella.com

Personally I think Warren is a bit of a blow-hard but sometimes he can be funny. He's a Liberal but if you want to read stuff by a conservative who somehow got into Palais de Congres, check out www.stephentaylor.ca

Been gone, gone, gone, been gone so long

Yes, I've neglected my blog for the past few months - I wish I could say it's because I was terribly busy but really I've just been really lazy.

News -

I have a new laptop. It's awesome. I don't even know half of the things I can do with it because I am a technical weenie.

Still living downtown and enjoying it immensely.

Writing more..in fact I think my first attempt at a novel will be finished by the new year.

Still working same place, but not for long. In January I am being flown to Calgary for an interview with a major oil company. The job sounds terrific and the pay in insane. the initial phone interview went so well that they asked me right then and there to go out there and of course I accepted. I am going to keep my fingers crossed, but I think this might be it.

Tim is here from Hong Kong. We've been having fun doing silly things like test drive Smart Cars (SCARY) and sitting on the mastadons at the Nature Museum at 3am in the morning. He leaves tomorrow to go back. I will miss him intensely *sob*

Mayan Riviera in 2 months time. Could be a solo trip...unsure. Either way, I'm going to have an excellent time on the beach with a stack of books and a drink with an umbrella in it.

So...that's pretty much it. I promise to keep this updated...it will be easier now that I have a decent computer.. and I'm going to go and buy a digital camera (I held off before because my old computer was crap and I didn't think I could even hook up a camera to it) and start posting pictures!

This month brought to you by...

Spirit Island!

Long Weekend is here!

I am about to take off to the cottage momentarily - long weekend - Bennett Lake Regatta this weekend.. woo! Hope everyone has a good time and for those of you stuck in the city - suckers! :P

....hello K-Roc!

This month brought to you by...

I was remiss on the 1st of the month... But go Lake Louise!

Back to the Cottage!

Back to the cottage this weekend for some R&R with the whole family. Maybe a little drum action too :) I won't have access to internet, news or newspapers till Monday... If Israel invades Lebanon and launches the Hezbollah into the outer stratosphere, someone send me a smoke signal, wouldj'a??

Take care and have a good weekend everyone!

...and the beat goes on...

A-Fucking-Men!

If having the same opinion as writer Lorne Gunter makes me an insensitive bitch, then so be it...

Whiners: Find your own way out of Beirut

After being rescued from war zone, a little gratitude would be nice

BY Lorne Gunter

Aw, the boat ride was too long, was it? And you say it was too hot?There was no doctor on board, either? And the departure was delayed. And theport was chaotic. And too little food and water had been laid in. And some ofyou had to sleep on the floor!?

Oh, the indignity of it.

To listen to the whining and carping of many of the 261 Canadians rescued from Beirut on the first day of the evacuation from Lebanon, you would think they had just been returned to port from an ocean cruise that went terribly wrong, instead of being saved from a war zone.

Tuesday, the Crown Princess, a Princess Cruises ship, suddenly listedto port in heavy seas off the coast of Florida. The promenade deck almost submerged. Stairwells "became waterfalls." The casino and gift shop below decks were flooded. The main dining room had to be turned into a triage ward as more than 200 of the 3,100 passengers on board were injured by the sudden tilt; 94 had to be taken off for hospitals on shore.

By contrast, no passengers on the first Canadian rescue ship were injured. The worst that happened was a few threw up.

And, yet, the grousing and moaning on the Crown Princess did not equal that of the evacuees from Lebanon when they reached Cyprus early Thursday morning. Some even cursed at the Canadian diplomats who greeted them.

One woman from Montreal described the trip as "hell;" not the war,but rather her tax-paid voyage to freedom. After all, it had taken 15 hours instead of seven. Twice their ship, the Blue Dawn, had been stopped bythe Israeli navy to ensure it was not hostile.

Imagine that. Stopping a ship in a war zone to see whether it is friend or foe. How rude!

And the griping doesn't end with those Ottawa has already plucked from the suddenly very hot zone in south Lebanon. Others still awaiting evacuation complain that our embassy in Beirut has not dealt with them fast enough. Their e-mails have gone unanswered, their phone calls meet with a busy signal. If they present themselves in person, there are long lines in the hot sun to meet a Foreign Affairs official face-to-face.

There aren't hotel rooms for them all. The waiting rooms are inadequate for the numbers wanting to leave. Embassy staff will not give precise departure times.

No kidding. We're not talking about the returns desk at Wal-Mart the day after Christmas.

A staff of two dozen, who normally deal with a few thousand inquiriesa year are suddenly swamped with 2,000 or 3,000 people demanding to be saved -Now! In a city that no longer has a functioning airport. Where fighter-bombers frequently scream overhead. Air raids do tend to disrupt the flow of things.

It's a wonder our government managed, at all, to find seven underused cruise ships it could lease on such short notice.

On the first day that any country was able to get its citizens out by boat, we managed to rescue 261. The British got out just 170 of their people. The French, who have a fleet of warships patrolling the Mediterranean, could manage just 180.

Thursday, we rescued another 1,375. And thereafter, we should be able to extract 700 to 1,000 swearing, muttering ingrates each day, either to Cyprus or Turkey.

But just wait until they get to safe ports and find out they have several-day waits ahead of them until they can be airlifted -again at taxpayers' expense- to Canada. When told she might have to sit put inCyprus for a few days until a jet ride could be arranged, and that while she waited she would have to find and pay for her own hotel and meals, one of the first evacuees complained that the government had not already taken care ofsuch things.

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? To simple gratefulness? I don't expect the rescued Canadians to bow down and kiss the feet of our diplomats when they arrive on safe soil. But why is it too much to expect they might be thankful simply for being extracted from a danger zone, regardless of how uncomfortably?

They remind me of the Canadian and British antiwar activists extracted by commandos earlier this year from months of captivity in Iraq, who rather than saying thank you criticized the rescuers for using force to free them. Wouldn't you be grateful to be rescued from Lebanon right now even ifyou and your family had to ride out in the fish hold of a trawler for a few days?

And yes it does matter that many of those complaining are Canadians of convenience. They hold Canadian passports, but have dual citizenship in Lebanon and have not been much interested in Canada for years until their real home country started getting dangerous. There is a simple solution to this carping. The boats have to go back to Beirut for more evacuees. Anyone who profanes a Canadian worker or whines about conditions on the free boat gets put back on board and returned toLebanon where they can find their own way out.

Cottage Weekend!

Going to the cottage this weekend with one of my favorite people, just to relax - read - float in the lake - eat - drink - and generally just be merry.

I am so looking forward to this...

Have a good one folks!