Friday, November 30, 2012

Couple of rants and a rave or two

Well the Thanksgiving Holiday, or lack there of, came and went without any real consequence, the only  to note is that the Christmas Holiday Season is upon us. The exterior of the house is lit, simply because it has been rather warm and Tracy suggested that I get the lights up while the getting is good.

We have this light switch/ timer thing that is a royal pain in the ass. It seems that an electrical engineering degree is needed to operate the thing. The Christmas lights come on every morning promptly at 5:00 am and stay on until dusk at which time they no longer come on. Damn inconvenient if you want to  see the lights, I mean getting up at 5 am is for the birds. We have tried to disconnect the switch, reprogram it for different times all to no avail so if we want the lights on at night we have to manually use the switch that is on a timer, like I said PITA!

I have mentioned a couple of times about the driving situation here in Toronto. To prove my point I will paraphrase the local paper, if paraphrase doesn't work I will call it writers privilege:

A few weeks back it seems that a pedestrian was stuck by an unnamed vehicle, while the pedestrian, now at this point laying prone and unconscious, so technically no longer a pedestrian, was struck by another vehicle. The driver of the first vehicle left the scene while the driver of the second vehicle having noticed they  ran over " the pedestrian", remained at the scene, and called the police. The following statement is true, I mean you can't make stuff like this up: The police arriving on the scene ran over the " prone pedestrian", again, seriously.
 Wonder who they are going to charge and with what?


Kay was on a terror last week having to bake something nearly every waking moment. She was finally satiated when we made Pavlova, which is one of the hardest things to make specifically because you need patience, Kay is 9 need I say more. After having to restrain her I was able to get the egg whites to listen, God knows the kids don't! I will say that fortunately or unfortunately Kay has mastered the art of making homemade whipped cream. Which is a blessing I suppose because the cream doesn't last very long around here neither does the vanilla essence but who wants to be responsible for years of therapy because you denied the budding artist their medium, oops sorry I digress.

We are in the middle of labor disputes among the teachers union, the school board and the government of Ontario. The teachers are unhappy about a piece of legislation called Bill 115, which basically eliminates the teachers ability to negotiate, maybe Ontario legislators followed the case from Wisconsin a couple years back and figure hey why not! Well the kids in Jimmy's school seemingly have had enough of no extra circular activities and have decided to strike today. It appears they have launched a campaign via facebook, got to love social media and kids access to it, to  all meet by the 8 graders lunch area ( after lunch of course, who wants to strike on an empty stomach) and peacefully sit down to strike the lack of after school sports programs, and to be effective they have decided they will strike way after the bell rings!

Last piece of news to note our Mayor has been booted out of office because of a conflict of interest. He apparently used some city funds to pay for an event for his football team. Yep and when given the opportunity to repay the money and no harm no foul he said" It is the work of the left wing trying to get me out of office!" What? The ruling Judge had this to say about Mayor Ford :

“In my opinion, the respondent’s actions were characterized by ignorance of the law and a lack of diligence in securing professional advice, amounting to willful blindness,”

 On the bright side there is a bake sale at school today!