update... what almost two years later?

What`s been going on? Plenty, I suppose. I have moved home from the Kensington neighbourhodd in Calgary, Alberta, to a home of my own in the Gloucester area of Ottawa. I'm quite a bit less into politics and quite a bit more into buying stuff to gradually make our house functional the way we want it, photography, and car travel around my region, something I don`t think I took enough time to appreciate in Ottawa, before I moved out to Calgary.

While still in Calgary, I added some other things into my life, and found there was less time remaining for the blog. And there was a Calgary Grit who had the market cornered anyway.

Out in Calgary, I worked at the National Energy Board. That`s a regulatory agency with an arms' length relationship from the federal government. That, and the location much further from Ottawa, and not exactly containing any federal swing ridings, gave me a bit of a comfort zone that a political blog would not be a big deal.

Now back in Ottawa, however, I now work in Communications for EC. As such, I refrain from any comment on federal politics and, it seems, have stayed away from provincial and municipal comments as well, though I still have many opinions on those... I hope whatever past federal comment legacy I may have left in this blog was not too harsh. My basic career goal as a bureaucrat is to work effectively with any Minister's office if needed, regardless of stripe.

What the heck got me on my blog today? Not too much: just watching the top stories in the news. Some of them make me want to comment, I guess.

I see federal election posturing by Michael Ignatieff, counter-posturing by the Prime Minister, and quotes attributed to the Deputy Leader of the NDP that they will want to negotiate to obtain something in return for supporting the Conservatives meaning the Liberals can't defeat the government. To me, none of this does much to constitute "news". Maybe my character has changed in recent years.

I also see a strange and tragic story of a now deceased cyclist, and what I can only suppose is an untold and incomplete story of how this could come to pass. I send sympathy to the family and friends of the cyclist, and to the family and friends, who are many as well, of the person charged, who himself is clearly deeply affected, both in his own psyche, and certainly in his future public career.

The topper, though, is s story from Winnipeg of a young woman smashing or scraping the face of her, or a, baby, a small child, on the sidewalk, at 4:30 in the morning. The sheer sickness of this story, most of it also still untold, teared me up.

The ever-looming menace of the H1N1 virus and apparent untested vaccines now being trialed, are also pervasive, almost every night on the news. But I don't get sick and so I won't be staying home any time soon. I have been sneezing into my sleeve for a long time, though, before it was a best practice...

In good news, it seems that Canada`s recession is technically over. Will this bring back jobs? Certainly not immediately. Our deficit is back and will have to be dealt with at some point as well, which will eventually result in a need for tough decisions and probably decreased spending on our national social priorities. That is generally unfortunate at any time.

What else? Swift and decisive action by Ontario`s government to clean house at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) where it seems a few executives were much too comfortable and lacked judgment of the privilege it was to serve in such appointments.

Bon, Ok, I must go. I'll have to contemplate a new title for this blog, and whether I can re-register the fundamentals, such as its @blogspot name.