Isn't It a Shame?

There's been a remakrable lull this month on the blogging circuit. The rate of bloggage has substantially slowed at Ali's site, Chimon's site site, and murtle's site. This has meant less time reading blogs, and more time doing work...*shudder*.

I think all said and done we've got a lot to be proud of in terms of Canada's performance at the olympics. There were many disappointments, most notably in terms of men's hockey - and many fourth place finishes....but there were also many moments to bring a smile to your face. The speed skater that's won 5 medals is a pretty prime example. I was also thrilled watching the men's skeleton, with Canada finishing 1, 2, 4.

I'm really looking forward to Vancouver. I wonder if I'll end up going to see anything? Certainly would be fun I'd imagine!

Life is full of challenges - big ones, and little ones, and we all face challenge in our own unique way. Me, I like to take challenge head on.

Today, I faced what was, without doubt, the biggest challenge of my week.

Lentils.

Yes folks, you read that correctly...the devious, difficult world of lentils; the little green guys we can't seem to live with, but surely can't live without.

I was at the grocery store and saw them sitting there, a 1kg bag of the dried green lentils for $1.69. It hit me, like a brick in the gut, that I'd always been curious about lentils. First off, what kind of name is that anyways? Beans...well beans just seems right to me. 'Lentil' however always makes me think about the catholic tradition, Lent. Second of all, why are these things SO cheap? Do they have an unfairly bad rap? Are they undervalued? Underappreciated? Or, is 1kg of this stuff REALLY worth less than a coffee from tim hortons, or a ride on the TTC?

Most of these dried bean-type foodstuffs require overnight soaking(for the record, I always bought 1kg of dried red beans. more on this later). Lentils however do not. They can simply be simmered for an hour to release their wonderful flavours.

I ended up doing these guys up with some carrots and red peppers and some curry powder....in the future I'd think about adding diced tomatoes, onion, garlic and ginger...the curry powder I think is a key ingredient.

I really feel a sense of self accomplishment...I feel victorious...like I won the Battle of the Lentil.

Three things:

i) I had a totally new experience today. I was sitting in Quiznos with Laura and this dude walked in. He went into the bathroom, then came out. The place was basically empty, so I was amusing myself by watching him. He went up to the cash and looked around(the staff guy was busy cleaning something up away from the cash), and put a cookie in his pocket. Then he went and said something to the staff guy, and walked out of the store. I really didn't know what to do...has anyone else ever seen someone steal something? What would you have done? This was a big sketchy looking guy...I dind't really think that it was advisable for me to make a scene about it since he might well have waited around then kicked the crap out of me on the street...I feel strangely violated by the whole thing.

ii) I think our kids are going to have such a different experience than us - not only in terms of technology(internet, ipods, etc) but also in terms of food. "Golden" Oreos, cherry flavoured oranges and orange flavoured cherries.

iii) Is it true that Alberta is planning on eliminating their personal income taxes next year? They already have no sales taxes....

As many of you know, I'm a Smallville NUT. Now, none of us expect television to closely match reality, but sometimes there are trends that are hard to not laugh at.

For example, every Smallville character drives a brand spanking new fancy car - somewhat unusual for a bunch of high school kids with little to no income. Detective extraordinaire Chloe Sullivan drives a VQ Beetle. Smallville's sexy starlet Lana Lang generally speaking drives a nice brand new SUV. While this is a stretch, we could all easily pass it off.

Where I get amused is with Lana's tendency to "zone out" while driving, and end up in car crashes. This girl I kid you not has totally her car atleast 10 times in the past 5 seasons. minimum. And generally speaking in ways that wouldn't presumably jive with the insurance company "well you see...suddenly out of nowhere there was this alien...". Assuming for a minute here that she could afford to keep replacing these 30,000 dollar suvs, what kind of insurance company would possibly be crazy enough to keep insuring her!?

I think computers have on one hand allowed us to do some pretty incredible things (ex, Lord of the Rings, the Incredibles, etc), but on the other hand it's taken away some of the magic of REALLY doing things. And I think that's something that people take for granted...

Remember the cool Honda commercial where they had all those moving parts that rolled into each other setting off a chain of events, like dominoes? The one that took them something like 300 tries to actually get right? I wonder how many tries it took to get this commercial right back in the 80s? Check it...serious cool. A bunch of cars doing coordinated stunts.

You gotta pat Bell Canada on the back and congratulate them for being good at milking their customers for all it's worth.

I'm sure you all at some point or rather (and by 'you' I really mean 'your parents') had one of those black rotary dial phones. The ones that you didn't own, but rather rented from bell for like $5/month. For 20 years...meaning you ended up paying $1000 for that cute little black phone. I was actually reading an article online about a lady in the states who had moved in 1985 and had kept her little black phone as a momento, an antique. Well, she's just now realized she's been paying for it to sit in her closet for the past 20 years, and the cost associated with it ran in to the $2000 range!!! Can you imagine!?

I'm the only person using/paying for the landline in my apartment here - the other two people have abandoned ship and moved over to cell phones leaving me paying the bill. It's relatively expensive all things considered equal - close to $40 per month when alls said and done. Why?

Actual phone line. $20.
Bell Answering thing. $7
Network Charge $3
"Touch Tone Service" $3
Phone Care $5.

Let's look at some of these a little closer...

The Bell Answering thing is nice and certainly handy...but at $84/year + tax = ~$95/year I'm sure I can buy a radio shack answering machine for much less than that. I hardly ever get phone messages(that aren't so old lady yelling chinese/italian into the phone), so I'm paying like $3/message. Please, feel free to leave me a message any time. All said and done, we've had this phone line since 2002 meaning close to $400 for the bell answering thing.

Touch Tone Service...$3? See, this I just don't understand. Like...? I'm paying $40/year to have touch tone? I'm sure I've now paid bell close to $500 over the years for the priviledge of having touch tone?

PhoneCare...$5. This one I love. When you move in and or get a new line with Bell, they heavily encourage you to add this to your line...then they require you to keep it for one year. Essentially it's "insurance" for if either you need someone to come to fix the phones for something that isn't actually Bell's fault, or for if somehow your phone gets damaged by the phone line. I called this morning to see if I could cancel this...and yes, in fact PhoneCare had been on the line since 2002(when the first roomie moved in here). So 4x12x5 = $240+tax = $270 for phone care. I think Bell counts on you forgetting what the heck it is after that first year, and just blindly paying your bill.

My next plan of attack is to get rid of that $7/month answering machine, then the phone will actually be down to a much more reasonable cost.

Point of the story - bell makes lots of money off monthly things

I bet you thought you were all off the hook in terms of political blogging now that the election's over. Not quite.

As I'm sure you'll all remember, our Prime Minister Stephen Harper ran a campaign on one very simple principle - cleaning up ottawa. Those liberals had a "culture of entitlement" and were all round sleaze balls that rewarded their cronies and supporters with generous benefits, often at odds with what might be best for canadian taxpayers. HOW DARE THEY!?

Well, lo and behold. Our new minister of International Trade HAS NEVER BEEN ELECTED. Yes, that's right...he didn't even RUN in the last election. Huh, so who is this guy? You guessed it! Co-chair of Harper's 2004 party leadership campaign, and co-chair of the Conservative election campaign this year.

But that's not all. Harper, who as part of his push to "clean up government" promised to change the way the senate works(currently by appointment) to make it an elected position (a politically neutral committee would elect senators ) has once again changed his tune. Yes, this very same man(the un-elected Minister) was gifted a position in the senate today.

Harper was quoted as saying "If you look carefully at what I said in the election campaign, I did leave open that possibility". Perfect, he's not LYING to us, he's just not really telling the truth...sorta like the $400/year health "premium" isn't a tax.

One other aspect of canadian politics that infuriates many people is "crossing the floor". Take Belinda Stronach as an example...elected as a Conservative, but decides half-way through the term to switch parties to become a Liberal. It really..seems...dicey.

Well, this takes the cake. David Emerson, elected a mere month ago as a Liberal, has ALREADY switched parties, before the house is even in session! Yes that's right, elected a month ago as a Liberal, now part of the Conservative caucus. Kinda..well...infuriating isn't it? Talk about pulling a fast one.

Now, I don't want this to turn into anything politically incorrect, but I'm just curious.

There's some major turmoil right now surrounding a cartoon that was drawn and published in a Danish newspaper that shows Muhammed wearing a bomb-turban. Obviously this isn't exactly a politically correct thing to publish, but it doesn't violate any free speech laws, and the paper has issued an apology.

So then, what's up with these muslims in two countries now having BURNED DOWN as many as 4 embassies now!? Like we're talking about mammoth protests, violent protests, and presumably tens of millions of dollars of destruction.

Why? It seems that the root of the problem isn't even that Muhammed with a bomb for a hat is bad. It's actually that ANY image/picture/drawing of Muhammed is against Islamic law.

But here's what I want to know...if it's against the law to have ANY image of Muhammed...then how does anyone know that the cartoon actually WAS supposed to be Muhammed, rather than just...some...guy?

I remember when Mach3 first came out, that there was a lot of talk about just how many blades one could possibly need on a razor.

There was an abundance of satire surrounding the issue. The Onion, Saturday Night Live, Letterman, they all had some fun at Gillete's expense, imagining a 6 bladed razor, a 12 bladed razor, etc.

Then Schick came out with Quatro. The 4 bladed razor. I found this humorous, but pointless.

Ladies and gentlemen. Gillette has now taken it one step further. You can now buy Fusion, a *SIX* bladed razor. Yes folks, you read that correctly. There's 5 blades on the main part of the razor, and strangly one on the top/back that's supposed to be good for sideburns.(This could in fact be a novel idea, but I'd be worried that it's just one more way to cut yourself!).

When will it end?

My life lately has been unordinarily mundane.

It can be summarized as follows.

Work: slow and painful.

Home: boring. Most of my free time being spent working on this stock portfolio tracking spreadsheet that'll make my life easier come tax season.

Laura: seeing her on the weekends. playing squash a lot together. But almost exclusively just "casual" hanging out - no going out, no special events, nothing substantial to report.

So there haven't really been a lot of bright spots on my calendar lately.

Until yesterday.

Shoppers Drugmart is having a sale on Nature Valley granola bars...you know, those crunchy ones that come 2 in a sachet. The peanut butter ones.

$1.69 per box. Seriously sweet deal.

However, the joy, the pleasure, the highlight is that each box comes with a free thing of Blistex lip balm that's worth like $1.

So now I have 7 things of Blistex. Lip balm anyone?