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01:25 - 24.06.06
diversity
According to one scientist this is mathematically the happiest day of the year. I suppose that could be correct, but the difference could also be like that between Boolean and Euclidean systems, where changing a couple of postulates (assumptions or "value" statements) means one system doesn't have intersecting parallel lines and the other one, which allows for the curvature of space, does. Doesn't seem to be such a big deal until one realizes that most of modern technology needs parallel lines to meet, in theory. Personally the happiest days in the year for me are those I spend with friends and family, whether face to face or otherwise.

Today was better than the past few days though. My one son, who's partnership is unstable, spent a couple of nights sleeping in my living room this week in the hammock I bought a couple of days ago. I don't have any other beds left in the house you see. They are going for marriage counselling, so I don't feel uncomfortable providing interim support. If they weren't trying to work on their issues, then allowing that would be a big mistake - at least in this situation. He decided going home for the weekend was a good option and I agree with that too.

That stance was brought home in another way, when the one fellow who emailed me through the high school reunion website, contacted me again today. Guess my first instincts were correct. He said the usual "the wife doesn't understand me..." and "since I'm going to be in your city this summer... can we get together". From other comments he made, he must have just gone down the list of female alumni looking for "divorced" in the profile and an email address. Since I wasn't a paying member on the site, he sent his email collect. How very nice. At the very least at my age, I think I deserve a much more creative attempt at seduction. I've been hearing all those other lines since a week after the boys'Dad left well over a decade ago. It's a pretty tired and cynical attempt, isn't it? How insulting. I guess he gets credit for being brutally honest though. Does he really think that any female wants to be a side dish, just because he hasn't got the cojones to deal with the problems in his primary personal relationship. Does he think divorced women are so stupid or desperate that we can't read the big red warning signs from that kind of discourse? I haven't responded yet. I will when I've calmed down a bit. The one positive thing, I guess, is that I can see from my own son's reactions that it isn't a inherent "nature of the male of the species" thang. This guy just isn't a very nice human being in his own right. My son, even at nearly half this guy's age, is twice as mature and already a much better man than this loser will ever be.

The cats, meanwhile, seemed to enjoy the new face around our house. Mind you, they must have been talking with some of the outside cats that come around to visit from time to time. Some of those were likely jettisoned from a home when a new human arrived, I think, because our babies seemed to be afraid that we were going to show them out the door, once they realized this additional son was staying overnight. It did earn me a lot of extra affection and attention from all five of our felines during the day when we were alone though. They also weren't quite so, umm, independent as usual. They kept their "bad selves" muted. At least that is how I interpret their behaviour.

Another news story that caught my attention was this further report about the voter fraud committee and their recommendations. It sounds as though there was a lot of corroborating evidence submitted, to what I have written about witnessing over time, that gave the members a great deal of concern. Apparently the only person who tried to minimize it or blow off the testimony was the head of Elections Canada. Although I agree that systemic elector fraud is a very serious problem, I do have some very grave concerns about the recommendation that every person in Canada be assigned a personal identity number that must be available and producible for any reason required by the government. Theoretically we already have those as soon as we start working. They are called social insurance numbers and they have been at the center of some fairly substantial fraudulent identity cases for at least decade. Unless the government is proposing to indelibly attach those numbers somehow to our bodies, I don't see how it will work. I seem to recall hearing about that kind of identification system before. Tattoos for everyone on their left arm; colour coded even. That was implemented 66 years ago. Hmmmmmm. Seems to me that if the problem is systemic, then it is the system that needs to change rather than branding individuals.

That news story might explain some of the pettiness I've had to cope with this past spring during my pre-election assignments though. I know that EC is aware that the evidence I've reported to them was also provided to all the candidates and political parties running in my area during the one meeting we were required by Elections Canada to hold on the quality of the elector lists. I simply gave them the same report and documentation I had given to EC itself. That is the report that my ex-tech believes is why we were assailed by those phony reports to the tax department that caused us some problems. I also finally managed to talk with the landlord directly. He has rented the space I had booked for certain, but he thinks he might have other space available. I arranged to touch base with him next week when, hopefully, I will have been given approval for the hours I need to pursue renting another space. Guess it depends on how big that fit of pique in headquarters in Ottawa about the voter fraud committee is.

I dealt with the one bank again today and I think my guess about just getting a bad customer service rep was accurate. The problem still hasn't been resolved, but at least the bank representative acknowledged it was their responsibility to deal with it. I called the correct telephone number that was given to me by the new customer service rep. The first rep kept insisting that I had to go to the other bank in person. Why when they had never been contacted about the funds being transferred? The bank who caused the problem doesn't use humans to answer their phones for the issue I was concerned about. One has to leave a voicemail. That still isn't very comforting - especially when they don't get back to you, but a Friday afternoon is probably not the best time to ask for a quick response, right?. At least not on the happiest day of the year, with a long weekend looming next week, then two whole weeks of Stampede partying to look forward to after that. Folks around here really let their hair down for the first couple of weeks in July which is not conducive to productivity otherwise, you know. Work hard, play harder is our motto.


The final news stories that caught my eye were these ones related to naming a major roadway in our quarter of the city. Now the municipal and federal governments take the issue of assigning names to public infrastructure very seriously. Legislation abounds, with all sorts of protocols in place. Traditionally, major ring roads in this city are named after the tribes who signed Treaty Number 7. The only tribe that doesn't have it's own road is the Blood Tribe. Well yes, Blood Trail might be too predictive, mightn't it. However, in their own language they call themselves "Kainai". Kainai Trail actually has a very nice ring to it - for a ring road. The debate right now is about a new secondary road in the area. The term Metis - for the biracial children of aboriginal and European couples - is still considered perjorative around here by some people. You see the Metis had the unmitigated gall to defend their homes and territory when the settlers showed up and claimed it as "empty, virgin territory". Seemed to the tribes and fur traders that their presence there for centuries prior to the settlers arrival constituted a claim to the land of their own. The settlers saw that resistance as treason to their Mother countries overseas. They took it upon themselves to use whatever means necessary, including genocide, to get rid of the rebels. I find it odd that our Prime Minsiter would apologize to the Chinese immigrants who were treated so badly when they were brought overseas to build the railroads, although the apology is well deserved, as well as other immigrant groups who suffered systemic discrimination, but that the original inhabitants of this country and their descendants are still seen as pariahs. In the naming conventions for roads in Calgary, there is provision for calling a road by the name of a person who had a major impact on the development of our part of the country. Maybe instead of Metis Road it would be more acceptable to name after the Metis hero who was the first head of a western government in the prairie provinces. For example, calling it the Louis Riel Trail makes sense since it runs parallel - with no intersections - to the Deerfoot Trail.

When I woke up this morning I was dreaming about being in hospital. It seemed to me that I had recovered from a life threatening illness. I was still sleeping upstairs in a private - isolated - room, while all the rest of the family was sleeping in a family "respite" suite downstairs. I was surprised to learn from one of the nurses that even the boys' Dad and his family were waiting there. For whatever reason, I woke up in the middle of the night after having recuperated enough to know what was going on, to the smell of smoke. It was coming from the suite where the family was staying. I got out of bed and managed to get downstairs somehow. When I walked into the suite I could see my newest granddaughter in a bassinet playing with her toes and crowing with delight. She was wearing a sunshine yellow sleeper. The rest of the family appeared to be asleep, although I thought I saw my ex's mother peeking around the corner of her blankets. I noticed a thin trail of smoke coming from behind a small table that had a lamp on it. The light was on and it was plugged in to the outlet behind the table. A lot of paper had been piled around the plug and it appeared that the plug had been pulled out slightly so that there was deliberate contact between the paper and the electrical wires. The papers were just starting to flame, so I grabbed the rubber electrical cord and pulled the attached plug out of the socket. By that time some of my own family were awake and they helped me put out the flames safely. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the ex's mother stamp her foot and storm out of the room. She's not even a nice human being in the dream time is she. I'm going to go back to bed now I think and see if I can't have dreams where only really good happy human beings are allowed. It is the happiest day of the year, after all, so that should mean the happiest night too. Unless of course the mathematical values used to calculate that are different. Hmmm. Good night y'all.

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