"Schreiber Talks" Okay, now he's got something to say. Very interesting...  | ¶ 2:00 p.m.

  the very next day, you gave it away They're doing renovations on the hallways of my apartment building (for a much-too-long period of nearly six months now) so the electricity was out this morning for a while. I kinda chuckled when I turned the TV back on to CBC Newsworld when the power was restored to see the headline "Schreiber refuses to talk". Wow - shocking. Who knew that was going to happen..?

The first thing I did, actually, was brew a cup of coffee. I had no idea the power was going to be out that long (just over an hour) and I'm a little anxious for my morning caffeine! Time to sip and listen to bewildered politicians discuss their bafflement at Mr. Schreiber's unwillingness to tell them what they want to hear.  | ¶ 11:50 a.m.

  it's not the liquor I miss
I've been having a hard time caring much about this whole Mulroney - Schreiber business that is erupting. I was like, "so yeah, Mulroney got some cash from a dude to do him a favour, years ago, so what..?" And Devin was always like, "yeah, but Mulroney sued the federal government for daring to investigate him and got a couple million dollars!" And I was like, "yeah, a couple million - it's not that much in the grand scheme of federal government shenanigans, and this Schreiber guy seems a little suspect in his motives, don't you think..?" 'Cause seriously, this whole business of "I have some scandalous information that will rock your country, but I'll only tell you if you don't throw me out" is shaky ground. Let's get this straight - we're going to do YOU a favour and keep you out of German prison so that you can tell us something that may or may not be a big deal, but will likely get everybody's knickers in knots..? Uh-huh.

But this morning I saw something on CTV's Question Period that gave me a little more context to appreciate the validity of the potential issues. Craig Oliver was speaking to the author of a book called "A Secret Trial", Bill Kaplan (a great review is here). This is the same man who wrote "Presumed Guilty", an earlier work that actually showed that Mulroney was not guilty of the things he was accused of in the Airbus Affair (another term that makes me yawn). Kaplan discussed how many journalists have been threatened with lawsuits by Mulroney over the years. He said he personally had received several letters, which is interesting given his position in his earlier book (I was just reading how he wasn't so popular after his earlier book, and accused of being a "Mulroney apologist"), but no journalists have actually been sued. Mulroney saved his legal action for the federal government, which I think, given these new allegations, takes a special kind of arrogance. It turns out that although Kaplan is a very smart man and good researcher, he had no way of knowing about certain other information and documents that contradicted his ultimate findings about Mulroney's "innocence". I guess that's what the "secret" trials were all about.

Kaplan made the point that the inquiry called for by Mulroney and ordered by Harper is a rather pointless exercise. A man like Schreiber, who is desperate to stay in Canada, he says, is not going to sit before an ethics committee for a couple hours and give up all his information, only to be deported. And that makes sense. Schreiber's motives may be completely self-serving, but if he has anything of value to say, he's smart enough to withhold it until he gets some kind of commitment from the powers-that-be that his residency status is secure. Everyone is saying that a special prosecutor should be appointed to handle it quickly and effectively. I tend to agree with that; this thing needs to get wrapped up quickly, not drawn out for years.

By the way, I stole that pic above from Rick Mercer's site - it is the object of this week's "photo challenge". Looks like a good one for that task.  | ¶ 1:06 p.m.

  wire hanger thingies
This is a pretty cool idea. Especially for word geeks (like me). It's basically a vocabulary test that results in rice purchases by advertisers for the United Nations food program. Try it out, it's genius!  | ¶ 5:20 p.m.

  I'm letting go, so give me one more chance
I just put this in my Google Shared Items (on the right if you're on my page, or here if you want to get the feed), but I have to put in a stronger recommendation for it. I thought it was a pretty fascinating article, about the social / economic structure in Denmark. Here are a few paragraphs, but read the whole article if you have the chance.

Last year Danish toymaker Lego announced plans to outsource most of its manufacturing to Eastern Europe and Mexico. Of 1,200 blue collar jobs at Lego's headquarters in the town of Billund, only about 300 would remain.

You might think this would make union leaders at Lego hopping mad. You'd be wrong. "We thought it was the best way to keep as many workers' places in Denmark as possible," maintenance man and union shop steward Poul Erik Pedersen tells me. "We aren't against the management. We want to make sure that they make money and we make money." Then, unprompted, he takes the argument a step further: "There are some good things about outsourcing. Where the jobs go, the standard of living is growing, and then they can afford to buy more Legos or other things from the West."

The way Denmark has achieved its success has made it a darling of European social democrats and American liberals, and the country has been overrun lately with visiting journalists, academics and politicians looking for insights. One of the things a visitor discovers, though, is that Denmark's size and homogeneity--5.4 million people, of whom all but 478,000 are of Danish ancestry--are crucial to how the economy works. "We've been one small nation for 1,000 years," says Hans Skov Christensen, who as director general of the Confederation of Danish Industries negotiates the nationwide bargaining agreements between management and labor every few years. "We're basically a clan."

Informality, disputation and disrespect for authority are core Danish traits. But there are limits, and Danes seem to know in their bones just how far they can push them. The result is an economy that looks like something out of an enlightened management textbook. There are a few clear goals and lots of leeway to achieve them. In one fascinating study, two American sociologists found that Danish line workers have nearly as much job autonomy as supervisors do in the U.S., while supervisors in Denmark have about as much autonomy as upper managers in the U.S.

  | ¶ 12:30 p.m.

  I'm not ready to back down I don't know who signed me up for some bonus spam, but I seem to be getting an overload of emails for somebody called "Shari Barr" lately. I usually scan my spam folder quickly before doing a mass delete, but wowza, has the volume gone into overdrive all of a sudden.

"Don't tell them your secret SHARI"
"shari, name that band and get a shopping card in hand"
"shari, View photos of singles in your area!"

Can someone tell Shari that I'm getting her mail? Spam sux.  | ¶ 11:04 a.m.

  the tea leaves say I'm gonna die one sunny day I suppose this day was coming, but it's still frustrating to realize that the safest bet might be to get rid of plastic as a method of food storage. I have gotten into the habit of re-using plastic water bottles, and I store leftovers in plastic dishes. I gave up re-heating said food in those dishes, but it sounds like I might need to take it a step further.

Both the FDA and Health Canada warns that using plastic containers and wrap for anything than their original purpose can cause health problems. In most cases this means not reusing plastic containers or water bottles.

The main concern is with food becoming contaminated due to leakage of the chemicals used to manufacture plastic, especially when the plastic is heated or damaged. Depending on the type, plastics can contain bisphenol A (BPA), di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), di-2-ethylhexyl-adipate (DEHA) or polyvinyl chloride/PVC. While none of these chemicals are healthy for us, BPA is proving to be highly toxic, linked to different cancers along with endocrine and hormone disruption.

I was also interested to see this story in the Globe and Mail today:

Ontario could become the first jurisdiction in Canada to place restrictions on bisphenol A, a controversial chemical that is found in hundreds of consumer products, ranging from plastic baby bottles to sports helmets and the resin linings on the insides of most tin cans.

Although Health Canada is currently assessing the safety of bisphenol A, Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday the province won't wait until Ottawa rules on the chemical's safety.

It's a challenge to keep track of the safest way to live your life sometimes! I guess I'll be shopping for some kind of aluminum or stainless steel water bottles.  | ¶ 1:25 p.m.

  it's like I'm looking from a distance, standing in the background I'm back safe in Ottawa. What a long, long day. More on that later, but just this for now. After the fellowshipping time after the funeral, we did a bunch of family photos - hey, that's what you do when you realize that might not ever be together again, at least not for a long while. Here is one of most of the grandchildren (and two great-grandchildren). We look like a graduating class, don't we?

  | ¶ 1:54 a.m.

  and if we're lost, we are lost together Tomorrow is my grandmother's funeral. It is a sad time for the Ryan clan, but it is somehow a magnificent event here in Miramichi "city" in New Brunswick. Over the last three days, her seven children have arrived from St. Catharines, Petawawa, Moncton, and Victoria. Her twenty or so grandchildren have arrived from Vancouver, Calgary, St. Catharines, Toronto, Ottawa, Petawawa, and Fredericton. The youngest family member present is my cousin's four-month-old daughter, who took her first flight today. We are a convoy of vehicles travelling about this quiet town back and forth from my aunt's house to the funeral home. There are a lot of tears, but a lot of hugs and laughter, too.

The family received visitors at the funeral home today for four hours, and my grandmother, having lived in this region for all of her eighty-nine years, was visited by hundreds of well-wishers. After visiting was finished, my father, being the eldest of the seven children, called all family into one room and requested that we make a giant circle. So there were forty plus Ryans who stood shoulder to shoulder and solemnly joined hands for one final prayer and to silently acknowledge the importance of this family, our family. Each subset of the clan then approached the coffin to say one last tearful farewell to this family's matriarch.

The circle of life has some powerful moments.  | ¶ 11:33 p.m.

  you don't have to put up a fight, you don't have to always be right I've been reading a great book lately called "Healthy Aging" by Dr. Andrew Weil. He's a very knowledgeable writer with very practical advice on improving lifestyle habits in order to maintain optimum health throughout one's life. Although I think my father has mentioned the concept to me before, this is my first significant exposure to the idea of "compression of morbidity". That is, to have an enduring quality of life into one's final years, and when the end comes, it does not drag out. Seems like a reasonable plan, right, to not prolong suffering..?

That happened today, in the Miramichi area of New Brunswick. My 89-year-old grandmother, after recently being diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, left us to breathe freely in the next life. Katherine Ryan was a huge part of my father's life and he will feel this loss tremendously. Her seven children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren will gather to bid her farewell on Tuesday.  | ¶ 11:54 p.m.

  too sober to sleep, too drunk to cry I did something wrong when planning our Buffalo trip last weekend. I assumed that since the concert venue was right downtown we'd be able to find a hotel room in the vicinity and we'd be all set, so no need to make a reservation, right? But apparently there was a hockey game on Saturday - maybe even against Toronto - so it turned out that all the hotels downtown were pretty much booked solid. Eek.

We were cutting it close to show time, so when I saw the "Lafayette Hotel" sign shining a few blocks ahead of us, I figured it was worth checking out. Well, the word from this website is that "In its heyday, the Lafayette Hotel was considered one of the 15 finest hotels in the country", but let me just say that it is far, far from that state now. Hell, it was built at the end of the 19th century, so it is well past its heyday. Full of potential, but not living up to it. Definitely needs a little love...

When we got to the front desk to say we wanted a room, the woman handed us a key and told us to go look at the room first before deciding to register. We laughed most of the way up in the ancient elevator, down the super-wide hallways, to room 609. The room was not fancy, that's for sure, but I didn't quite know what we were looking for. It was clean, too hot, and seriously old-fashioned, but we were a little anxious about finding something and weren't about to be too picky. It ended up being super-cheap, too, so that was a bonus. One thing we hadn't anticipated, however, was the super-thin walls and the super-trashy neighbours who spent most of the night yelling at each other. I even knocked on the wall at one point and was able to request in a non-yelling voice that they respect our decision to, um, sleep given the late hour. Pretty amusing, that whole adventure. But I don't recommend it, especially given that it was in an end of downtown that seemed a tad sketchy.

It really was surprising how rundown, dirty and poor a lot of that city seemed. Maybe I'm just good at finding the roughest parts of cities (I've toured them in Seattle and San Francisco too), but it seems like many US cities are struggling. Devin and I talked about how the US may not tax its wealthier citizen as much as we do in Canada, but isn't it something to say that, to a certain extent, we at least take care of our own..? Healthcare, education, social assistance of various forms - I'm proud that we are better at sharing our wealth. You just have to read the various articles outlining random facts about Americans having a higher infant death rate (in my shared items recently), or the one about how most developed countries have citizens who are progressively getting taller, but in the US, because of the unequal distribution of social services and basic healthcare, they're not keeping up. Kinda random, yeah, but food for thought.

More randomness:

I've started watching the ABC show Brothers and Sisters this year and am loving it more and more with each episode. They were kind enough to do a re-cap show at the beginning of this season, and I'm pretty much hooked. The only problem is that I keep forgetting to watch it on television, am not even sure what night it's on (Sunday maybe?), so I end up downloading it. This week's episode was particularly good, I thought. Check it out if you're looking for a quality show to watch.

When I upgraded my banking fee package recently at the Royal Bank, they were kind enough to send me a $150 gift card for the Bay as a token of their appreciation. So a couple weeks ago I went appliance shopping. You see, I'm a fan of minute rice, mostly because it's so quick and easy (and goes good with cheese!), but I know it's not really the best rice you can eat. I just never had the patience to wait for traditional rice to cook on the stovetop, and wasn't really a fan of the way it turned out. Enter in Stacey's new rice cooker: add rice and water, turn on and walk away. The machine just knows when the rice is cooked and shuts itself off. Pretty quick, too - genius! I'm totally going to start buying fancy rices like Basmati.

My second purchase was a small food processor. For pureeing stuff, I suppose. Monday I took it on its first test drive with potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots, for a kind of cream-of-potato-and-carrot soup. It turned out awesome!

And because I know you want to see more of the Blue Rodeo show, here's a clip of them accompanying young Justin Rutledge (an amazing Canadian artist in his own right). It was a "Blue Rodeo & friends" show, so Ron Sexsmith and Luke Doucet also made appearances. What a show.

  | ¶ 2:24 p.m.

  they handed you a map to show you where to go
We drove to Buffalo, New York on Saturday to see Blue Rodeo play. The city failed to impress us (pretty rundown) but the show was AMAZING. It took five hours to drive there, but seeing Blue Rodeo play in such a small venue (the Tralf) with a crowd of only a few hundred people as opposed to an arena show with many more was so, so worth it. Just look how close we were. I took some great photos and captured a few good video clips too.

And yes, my kitties were not happy with me when I got home this morning. We had intended to come home yesterday. But yesterday we spent a little time in the Walden Galleria Mall in Buffalo (the one nice thing about that city) before crossing the border and driving to Burlington to meet up with Scott. By the time we sat down and had some dinner we realized just how tired we were and weren't feeling much like doing another 4-5 hours driving to Ottawa. So we ended up crashing on the floor at Scott's hotel before driving back to Ottawa this morning. I usually leave plenty of food for these greedy girls, but they were cleaned out when we got home.

Here's a Blue Rodeo peek. This is one of my favourites from the new album, called "This Town".

  | ¶ 12:28 p.m.

  Kitty blog Dear Mom & Dad,

I hope you're having a nice time on your weekend away. I'm not - Silky ate all my food right after you left on Saturday and she's been taunting me ever since. I really am hungry. Next time, just take me with you so I can eat. Okay?

Meows,
Salsa

~~~~~~~~~

Dear Mom & Dad,

Salsa's a big liar. If she tells you I ate all the food, don't believe it for a second. Right after she heard your key in the lock yesterday, she cornered the food dish and didn't leave until after she had licked up every last crumb. How am I supposed to get any meals around here?? Please come back and feed me.

Meow meow.
Silky  | ¶ 10:04 p.m.

  no one sees me but the silver moon Devin's workplace is having a bake sale tomorrow for a United Way fundraiser. I was trying to help him out with a volunteer contribution tonight by making a classic (in our family), "fudgy brownies". But, um, our oven kind of sucks in this apartment, so it's hard to know just how long stuff is going to take to cook. I kept checking and checking and the brownies were still gooey, so finally I took them out when the edges seemed pretty cooked. I let them cool and went back much later to cut them into bakesale-sized pieces. Only to realize they were still very, very gooey. Argh.

So I put them back in the oven for a while. They're cooling now but I'm afraid to check them. I suspect they're kinda messed up.

I used to be such a good baker...  | ¶ 11:27 p.m.

  stars all aligned in a runaway sky Well, after a red-eye flight from Calgary froo almost missed her flight to Nassau yesterday while dozing by the gate in Toronto (they were about to remove her bags from the plane), but it looks like she has found herself a beach in the Bahamas. I didn't ask, but I think the guy showed up this time.

  | ¶ 5:58 p.m.

  that boy there, well he's playing the fool For some reason I'm suspicious of the job reports that come out that continue to be consistently and mysteriously "better than forecast". Especially under Bush, who seems to have people willing to fudge numbers and data all over the place to make his presidency look like less of a fiasco. So I was interested to see this article in the New York Times about how the markets (i.e. analysts) didn't seem to trust the report either.

Some economists saw distortions in the data. With seasonal adjustment factors removed, nearly half of the gain in private jobs came from an estimate that the Labor Department makes each month about how many jobs were added by new businesses, known as the “birth and death” model. The Labor Department did not actually find evidence of these jobs; it assumed they were created based on historical patterns.

A separate survey of households, also conducted by the Labor Department, presented a very different picture of the job market. It showed that fewer Americans over all were employed in October. The labor force shrank by 211,000 jobs, and 465,000 Americans said they were no longer working or seeking work.

So yeah, he's doing a great job, Mister Bush is. And he's quick to point it out for you if you missed it:

President Bush, speaking in Columbia, S.C., said the report offered support for his administration’s economic platform. “This is now our 50th consecutive month of uninterrupted job growth, the longest in the nation’s history,” he said.

That country is headed for some rough times, that's what I think. And we're all going along for the ride, whether we like it or not.  | ¶ 7:08 p.m.