www.kyid.net

Captain Ed has a post about Stronach’s defection. I think the comments on that post say more than enough.

Kate from Small Dead Animals has posts here and here on Ms. Belinda Stronach. The comments are really worth a read too. I haven’t seen so many posts about the West separating from Canada in a long time. Here is one quote that I think sums things up nicely about government in Canada:

Canada is NOT a democracy. We are run by a private oligarchy and our political system has been corrupted and taken over by this oligarchy. It couldn’t happen in the US – because, as kate points out,their checks and balances and whole infrastructure prevents such a takeover.

Hat tip to Being American in T.O.

Well, not that I ever was a massive Stronach fan, but her crossing the floor has really caught me by surprise. The Opposition still has enough votes to bring down the government, but it is very tight.

I wonder if this means her boyfriend and Conservative MP Peter McKay will be crossing too?

As my good friend G pointed out to me – this really, really hurts the Conservatives in Ontario if they cause the government to fall and an election is held. The people of Ontario love Stronach, and you can bet she and Martin will be joined at the hip as they campaign all over Ontario.

The upside of this story is that it finally gave me enough inertia to start posting again!

Right Thinking Girl has Weekend Survey 11 up and ready to be answered, so here are mine:

1. Name three people you consider heroes.

1. My mom
2. Winston Churchill
3. Sister Catherine – a nun who helped my mother when we couldn’t afford food when I was a tiny young kid.

2. What qualities attract you to others?

Openness, Humour, Personality, Intelligence, Honesty, Good Looks.

3. What qualities do you think other people are attracted to in you?

I have no idea. I haven’t had a date in 14 years…

4. Where do you want to go today?

My Bikram Yoga class!

5. What’s your favorite curse word?

I’d say “fuck”… But my mom thinks I say “Jesus” too much.

6. What lights you up and blisses you out?

erm… I don’t understand…

7. What qualities do you dislike in others?

Lying/Dishonesty, Closed-minded (you can disagree with my views, but at least hear them), arrogance, big egos, bitchiness, not know when a joke has gone too far (only if this happens a lot).

8. Do you speak any foriegn languages?

I speak pig-latin!

I have studied both Japanese and French, but retained almost none of either due to lack of use.

9. Recommend a book you think RTG readers should check out.

I am “just” becoming politically and “current events” aware myself, so I don’t have anything to offer…

10. Angels are to cargo nets as _____ is to swimsuit mishaps.

Tissue?

11. Name at least one person you’d have a fling with (besides your significant other – I’m looking for celebs here.)

Nicole Kidman

12. What happens when we die?

I don’t know, and it scares me.

13. Do you believe in anything supernatural?

I waffle between Christian, Athiest, and Agnostic in my views, so I can’t say yes in any definitive way.

14. How would you rate George Bush’s job performance?

Good, I suppose, though I am not American.

15. Why is the sky blue?

Because it’s daylight.

It’s time to get back into the blogging swing of things. The combination of being very sick last week, and then going to Minneapolis for the weekend, has left this blog a bit rudderless for the last week.

Well, I’m back baby! And the postings shall being in earnest once again!

I woke up around 05:00 and started to get ready for race day. I was really nervous since I hadn’t run in a race since highschool many, many years ago. At 06:00 I went to make sure my friend from Los Angeles was awake, and then started to prep for the race.

By 07:00 my mother, my friend from Los Angeles, and I were walking to the Mall of America to find where the starting line would be. My race was scheduled to start at 07:30. I had loaned my camera to my friend from Los Angeles so she could take some photos of me running to the finish line. When we got into the mall, my mom decided she would register for the race (but not run it) as a cancer survivor. So, she and my friend headed off to get my mom registered, and I left to find the starting area for the 5k run. I told them that if we hadn’t met within an hour, that they should head back to the hotel and wait for me there.

When I got to the starting area of the race I was completely blown away. There were thousands of people. I would have guessed over 10,000 for the 5k race. Indeed the start was very anti-climactic for me since I couldn’t even get onto the course until after the starting gun had gone – there were just too many people. I started walking with the crowd onto the course, and after a minute some gaps in the walkers started to show up. As soon as I could start to walk faster, I started my watch (about 1:30 after the official starting gun), and then I started running. Running among thousands of people is not easy. I burned a lot of energy early in the run moving side to side on the roadway as I tried to find gaps to run between people.

By the time I hit the 1 mile marker for the race, I was feeling pretty good about having pulled away from a lot of the slower people, and I didn’t have to do as much cutting back and forth as I ran. Around the halfway point of the race I noticed I was feeling slightly fatigued, and I knew it was because of all the early energy I burned trying to weave through the crowd in the early parts of the race. I kept pushing on.

At the 2 mile marker, I was getting tired and was starting to think I might have to walk for a few minutes, but I started thinking about my mom the previous day and her tears, and I knew I couldn’t drop to a walk. If she had done so well against her cancer, the least I could do was run until my legs fell off!

The 3 mile marker really was a welcome site, and I was slowing down a lot by that point. My legs felt like rubber, and people were starting to pass me, but I kept on running. I saw the finish line approaching, and as I crossed it I stopped the timer on my watch. I had run the 5k in 28:01 by my watch! My goal had been to finish in under 35 minutes, and I succeeded!

I spent the next 30 minutes walking around the finish line area cooling down and trying to find my mom and my friend from Los Angeles. After about an hour of total time (race + cooldown), I walked back to the hotel. When I got back to the hotel, I realized they were not back yet, so I decided to walk back to the race area (I had given my mom my room key, and thus couldn’t change yet). I met up with them as they were walking back to the hotel. It turned out that they didn’t even get to the finish area. They had just finished registering my mom by the time I had finished my run, and they decided to join some people who were walking around the inside of the Mall of America. We got a few photos of me, and a couple of me and my mom hugging before we headed back to the hotel.

I took a shower and got changed and we headed out for some food to eat. We grabbed some breakfast, and headed back to the hotel to check out. We finished loading the car with all our luggage (included my friend from Los Angeles’ luggage – we were giving her a ride to the airport) and left the car at the hotel and went out to do more shopping.

Inevitibly we had to drive my friend to the airport so she could catch her flight back to Los Angeles. The airport had a massive parkade system that dwarfed anything I had ever seen before. We parked, and walked her to the security check-in area, and said our goodbyes.

After we left the airport, it was time for a long drive home to Winnipeg. We did the drive in about 8 hours, including a patch of driving through a severe thunderstorm where we hydroplaned several times. We stopped at Outback Steakhouse on the way home, and had an awesome waitress serve us (she got a big tip!).

We had no problem at the border re-entering Canada, and the rest of the trip was uneventful. I told my mother I would have her home by 21:45 (9:45pm), and I parked my car in front of her house at 21:45 on the nose.

I think I will have to go to this race again next year!

We both got up around 06:30 and drove to the hotel. We got there after 07:00 and the staff informed us that we would be able to check-in at 10:00. Normally the check-in is after 15:00 (3pm), but our reserved rooms were already vacated.

At this point mom and I decide to head over to IHOP and have some breakfast. I really noticed something in IHOP. Perhaps it is a misplaced perception – I am not sure. It seemed like no one took their time in the restaurant. While my mother and I enjoyed breakfast and talked about stuff, there were at least 4 tables that were seated after us, ate their food, paid and left. Now I know my mother and I were not especially taking our time. It seemed like a normal pace we have when we go out to eat, but everyone else was about getting in, getting food, and getting out. Strange.

Shortly after leaving IHOP I thought my mother had a seizure. It turned out she was just whining about going to Target to shop So, to keep her quiet, we headed back onto the Interstate and drove until we found an exit with a Target store. My mom thought she was in heaven, and shopped like hell for the next hour.

Then as we were driving back to the hotel we stopped at another strip mall that had a Land’s End retail store. Land’s End has to be one of my favourite catalogue stores. I rarely buy from them, but the quality is always top-notch. My mom found out that because it was Mother’s Day weekend, there was an additional 25% off women’s clothing. So she bought a pair of pants from Land’s End.

It was after 10:00 at this point, so we headed back to the hotel and checked in. We got all our stuff to our rooms, and headed out to the Mall of America so I could get my race kit. I didn’t want to try and get that done on the day of the race – especially since my race was at 07:30 on Sunday morning.

We got to the mall and I found the registration table for my last name. I received my running number (which was above 33,000), and then started to head to the area to pick up the T-shirt I was to wear while running. I then saw that on a table off to the side they had square pink pieces of paper that said, “I’m running in Celebration of…” and “I’m running in Memory of…” with a space below to write in a name. I took one of the “Celebration” papers and wrote “My Mother! 5 year breast cancer survivor” in the space, and added a couple hearts with the marker. I turned around an mom was starting to cry, and darn it if I didn’t start to tear up too. She then told me I had to do a “Memory of” page for Aunty Marie (her sister – died of lung cancer before mom was diagnosed), and Nanny (her mother – died of complications after heart surgery). I couldn’t say no to that, so I did another paper with their names on them. I took enough pins to pin them and the numbers to my racing shirt, and we went to go get the shirt. After we got the shirt, we walked around the mall a bit and checked out camp Snoopy in the centre of the mall.

We then headed back towards the hotel and stopped at TGI Friday’s for lunch.

After lunch we returned to the hotel, and had some rest time. A friend of mine from Los Angeles was flying into Minneapolis to watch me race on Sunday, and was going to be at the hotel around 14:00-ish (2pm). I grabbed a quick shower, and crashed until 15:00 (3pm).

Then the absurdity of a Murphy’s Law moment began. I knew that my friend from LA should have been at the hotel by 15:00, but hadn’t heard from her yet. So, I decided to head out to my car to grab my cellphone to call her (I wasn’t going to pay long distance rates from the hotel room). I got to the car, turned on my phone, and called her cell. I got her answering machine, so I hung up, waited a couple minutes and tried again. Again, I got her voicemail. I went back into the hotel and got to the hallway where my room was only to see my mom calling out to my friend who was looking for our rooms.

We all got together, said our hellos and headed out to the Mall of America to do some browsing, and looking around the mall. The evening went really quickly, and we all went out to dinner together (more Mexican food!), and had a really great time. After dinner my mom headed back to the hotel and my friend and I wandered around the second and third levels of Mall of America window shopping, and talking. We found a wine store on the third level, and my friend bought both me and my mother a bottle of wine each as gifts. I bought a bottle of wine for all three of us to split, and we headed back to the hotel (the mall was closing).

The three of us split the bottle of wine I bought, and had a great time just talking about all kinds of things. As we wound the evening down, I walked my friend back to her room, and stayed in her room for a while talking more before I finally left to get some sleep before the big race day.

All-in-all it was a great day, and great to meet my friend from Los Angeles for the first time!

We didn’t get out of Winnipeg until late afternoon. We got to the border crossing around 16:00 (that’s 4pm for anyone who can’t tell time on a 24 hour clock). We stopped for supper in Fargo (I think), and had Mexican food. We were going to go to Outback Steakhouse, but there was a big line-up of people waiting for tables inside the restaurant.

After that is was lots and lots of driving, with a couple pit stops for gas and washrooms breaks. We were getting close to St. Cloud Minnesota around 23:00 (11pm), and I stopped to find us a motel. Well, it seems that highschool works differently in the US vs. Canada, and they have prom 1 month before graduation (whereas we have it after graduation). So the Motel 8 wanted to charge us $80 USD for a room for the night. I balked at that, and decided to keep driving to Minneapolis.

I finally stopped driving at the last possible rest stop before Minneapolis, and we slept in the car over-night. Well, mom slept – if snores were chainsaws, I think she felled half that Amazon that night. And she had such creative snores too! I always assumed everyone had one or two snores, but my mother was a veritable symphony of snoring tones and styles.

Check in tomorrow for more non-stop mother-snoring action!

I am taking my mom on a shopping trip to Minneapolis for Mother’s Day. I am also going to be running in a 5k race on Sunday May 8th, in support of breast cancer research. My mom is a breast cancer survivor (5 years and going strong), and I wanted to run the race on her behalf.

I have been very ill the past week, and thus the lack of regular posts. I am going to back-post some of the Lifestyle entries that I usually make, but it may not happen until next week (I am going to the USA as of tomorrow and won’t be back until very late on Sunday night).

More political posts and another letter to Judy, soon to follow…

Below is a letter I sent to my MP this morning. I am contemplating sending it via email as well, and booking an appointment to see her in person (since she must meet her constituents).

(address removed)
May 3, 2005

Judy Wasylycia-Leis M.P.
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Dear Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis:

To summarize the issues in this letter:
1. Internet Service Providers should not be required to keep extensive logs of private and legal online communications.
2. The government must not stop Canadian citizens from making personal-use copies of their legally purchased software, music, and movie media.

Background:
http://pch.gc.ca/progs/ac-ca/progs/pda-cpb/reform/statement_e.cfm

Here is the reasoning:
The purpose of the Copyright Act is to support creativity and innovation in the arts and culture. To design a new Act on the failed and draconian Digital Millenium Copyright Act of the United States of America, would be a disaster for Canadian culture, and innovation. Also our court system could become clogged with law abiding citizens who make personal use copies of their music, software, and movie collections for no personal financial gain. An implementation of the proposed changes to the Copyright Act would unleash another “Gun Registry boondoggle” onto the Canadian people – creating criminals out of law abiding citizens at the expense of Canadian taxpayers.

Internet Service Providers like Sasktel should not be made to keep extensive client usage logs for possible future prosecution by various copyright-based industries. I don’t want to pay for that system to be put into effect, and I don’t think most people do. The phone companies are not forced by the government to record the content of phone conversations, only police can do that with a proper warrant. ISP logs are going to be equivalent to phone-taps, and that’s a violation of my privacy. It’s doing the job of the police, and is for the sole benefit of an industry basing its profits on an outdated business model that is no longer realistic for the Canadian government to protect.

The private copying levy, which consumers pay each time they purchase a blank CD, has raised more than $120 million over the past five years, the majority of which is scheduled to be distributed to Canadian music artists. Both the Copyright Board of Canada and the Federal Court of Canada have concluded that payment of the levy covers personal, non-commercial copying such as Internet music downloading.

It is completely unfair to be paying a levy to artists organizations for purchasing blank CD media to make home-use private copies of legal CD music, and now to also be unable to legally copy the music I’ve paid for off of Digital Rights Managed CDs. If copying CD music is going to be illegal, why is the government collecting money from the product for an illegal activity? I’m satisfied that the current levy is helping to compensate artists from illegitimate copying, and no new law is required to prevent me and other people from making sensible backups of our legal music, software, and movie collections.

Your representation in the House of Commons on this matter is greatly appreciated by me, and other supporters of personal liberty and innovation in the arts. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Keith Young

We’ll see what kind of response I get. I’m also writing a letter to her about my displeasure over the current form of the Child Care program that her party is endorsing. I’ll post that when I am done it as well.