00:07 - 13.09.06
Rentable
I spent a few hours searching for election office space today dear diary. Maybe 2 or 3. When I had first received permission to work on that project again I had done a quick check of available sites both in the regular local newspapers as well as on the net. What I found actually scared me. Less than a page of listings on the net and less than that in the papers. Today was better so I guess I just hit a bad patch. Phew. There are no "perfect" choices of course and it looks as though the most difficult part is going to be the handicap accessible issue. Most of the reasonable properties are on the second floor and it doesn't appear that most of them have elevators. I'm hoping I can persuade a landlord to allow me space in a small office on the main floor in addition to the upstairs space. 10 hours isn't going to be enough to swing a deal, unless I luck out on the first or second try. One of the other Returning Officers works in real estate project management and their comment didn't make me feel any better about the situation. They stated that with their connections that they could probably find something for me without too much difficulty. The problem being that anything they, or I, secured this month would likely be gone by next month. Got to give it a try anyway.
My eldest son arrived around 10 pm last night but left for his home not long there after. Sewer backup in the laundry room. He was feeling a bit frustrated about it because he works such long hours that time on the phone trying to track down the correct city department could take some time. His partner has a mild form of bi-polar disorder and can't manage those types of tasks very well. I decided to see if I could at least find the right voicemail and help him leave enough information to be going on with. There is a new service line operating for the municipal government. I dialled that and got a real person - at 10:30 pm no less. She was very polite and asked several questions to try and decide how to proceed. My son talked with her for about 15 minutes then headed off for home. There had been an accident downtown between a train and two pedestrians so it meant he had to take the long route home using only off time busses. Just before 1 am he called back to let me know that an emergency repair crew had already been and fixed the problem. Tree roots were the main issue I guess. Pretty cool eh? I was sitting and posting to you after talking with my son when a flash almost as though from a camera lit the room coming from the window in the duplex west of me. Can't imagine what they were photographing at that time of night. Things today were pretty quiet from there thankfully. Maybe they will try work out their family problems after all.
In the news? Well this fine arts newsletter always has one or two items of interest. To carry on in the vein of my office search one of the biggest problems facing people who are at the lower end of the wage scale is finding and keeping a place to live. Homelessness is reaching a crisis state as landlords increase their rental rates for very modest accommodation by thousands of dollars. Maybe another look should be taken with respect to the Nordic countries. As I've noted before dear diary I have had work assignments with some of their countries' companies. Even with very high taxation and generous social/education/health programs they are still doing better than we are with respect to their economies. One of their leaders was in one of the offices and their comment was that they had learned from the devastation of World War II directly and so their value system puts human capital at the top of their sustainable development scale instead of near the bottom. It would be wise to learn from their experience rather than waiting for some similar disaster to overtake our countries before we learn that lesson. Waco or Oklahoma City writ large. I'm not talking of the terrorism mantra that is obscuring incredibly poor national policy decisions either. I'm also more concerned with Mother Nature since we seem to have governments that refuse to consider the long term consequences of their political grandstanding. End of rant and time for bed. Good night dear diary.
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