00:46 - 04.09.06
Labour Day
Happy Labour Day, dear diary. Bits of good news filtering in through the day. My sister's sister-in-law called to say her airplane tickets had arrived. She sounded pretty excited in her voicemail. Her landlady had opened the envelope because it was sent in care of her. She was about to toss the tickets out when my sister's sister-in-law caught her up. It was an easy to understand mistake. All the vouchers for whatever one orders appear to be "fill" for advertisements that also come in the letters. That may be a security item in some ways, because thieves would be looking for something considerably more substantial. At least now everything else will fall into place - I hope. Number three son told me the landlord had sent out a crew on Friday night to look at the garage door. They got an estimate and the landlord appears to be taking care of it. Another weight off my mind. My youngest is spending most of his free time this holiday weekend working on his school books and that is great too. Grant you the temperature has been hovering around 30C/80+ F for the past few days and it looks as though that trend will continue for at least another few days. Given that sunrise is around 7 in the am now and sunset is around 8:15 pm one can at least be grateful for shorter days that mean our temperatures don't blow even higher. The other issue right now is the pall of smoke from the forest fires along the British Columbia/Washington border. Right now I have all the doors and windows open trying to get the house cool enough for sleeping after the Bhangra workout - an hour of tripping over my own feet - but the air quality is so bad that I am gagging and coughing as I write this. Bleagh.
I had a dream last night where my sister next in line in age to me and I, had moved into two very nice homes sitting side by side. They were still under construction so we were trying to move in whilst allowing for the continued work on the interiors of the homes. We seeme to be in a suburban setting, but up on a hill that was lined with rimrock. Very pretty. My Mom and Dad came by for a visit but seemed in a hurry to get on to the party they were dressed up to attend. We didn't discover until after they left that they had arranged to have our yards, which were quite large and unfenced, covered with sod so we could enjoy our new outdoors as well. The front yards were doing fine but it appeared that a flood was occurring even as we watched in the backyards. The sod was literally drowned under the tidal wave of water. I can't figure out how one can be situated on a hill and yet still be flooded in the higher ground in the back, while seeing no water in the front yards. Strange. My sister and I were trying to stop the erosion of the sod, but it was literally melting in our hands. Can't figure out the meaning of that dream at all.
So back to Labour Day and newsworthy items. This story from Saudi Arabia about water conservation might be helpful for countries like ours, that have never really had to be careful with consumption. This rediscovery of one of Leonardo Da Vinci's workbooks was fascinating. This debate about health care in California was interesting too. The point that was made that even though Canada offers universal access to health care - at least in theory - it is considerably less expensive than the what the US spends per person even with so many of their citizens being disenfranchised. What also should be added is that their economy suffers significant loss of productivity as a result of the additional sickness and disabilities that go with no coverage. Health care, like education, are investments that pay off a minimum of five times every dollar spent. That is the data from longitudinal studies in Europe and Canada. Even with that data available some of the dinosaurs in our country seem to want to take us down their garden path so that they too can profit from other people's misfortune. Maybe dinosaur is too kind a label eh? Even better would be preventative health care, but that isn't dramatic enough for prime time is it? Of course it doesn't help national productivity when the workplace also becomes a barrier to same does it. Whether it is a health, environmental stress, or equity issue workers are often left fighting to do their jobs despite the negligence or ignorance of their employers about the impact of those choices on their own bottom lines.
Speaking of which if I ever want to tighten up my bottom lines - if you know what I mean - I'd better go let the cats out of their cool room so we can dance the rest of the night away. Good night dear diary.
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