Camera Critter Meme

Thanks to Crazy Cath I found out about a new meme that Camera Critters has posted. You have to post a picture about critters and that was just right up my alley. This weekend I went to Courtney on Vancouver Island for a union event with some friends. (more on this later) While we were driving around town in between events we happened upon these adorable critters in a residential area!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game!

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Carbon Tax - I Did My Part!

The controversial carbon tax DIVIDEND cheque finally arrived. Yep our Premier sent us all $100.00 to spend because he felt the price of gas wasn't high enough to convince us to get out of our cars and on to those non-existent buses South of the Fraser. This morning I heard one of his ministers trying to explain how this all would work. I was fascinated. According to the government here is how it is going to work:

• The government gives us $100.00
• The government adds a 2% gas tax on July 1st (gas is currently $1.48 a litre)
• The government lowers our personal income tax 4%
• In a few months the government will raise the tax to 4%
• A few months after that the government will raise the tax to 7%
  

Now according to the minister we should be really happy because with the lowering of the personal income tax and if we use this money to buy more gas we could end up making money or breaking even!

Now that was an incentive I couldn't refuse and my government said it would make a real difference to the climate and everything... so I took my cheque and went to the US where I got $20.00 more gas for my cheque than I would have in Canada!

This Was Just Too Good To Pass Up!

The following is thanks to rainlillie at Great Minds Think Like Me . I can't remember when a video cracked me up like this one!

A Screech In!

I went to this event on Saturday night.I had a great time. I laughed a lot. I have known Diane for about thirty years and she always puts a smile on my face. For her 65th birthday she had a screech in. Getting Screeched is an old Newfie (Newfoundland) tradition.

No! I Tis not Screeched!

Monday with Maxine

What a way to start the week!

A Little Bit of Sunshine -YEAH!

Today the sun finally shone and it was warm.... yes warm! Now it is almost July so it should be warm every day, but this year it has been down right cold. Cold, cloudy and miserable. However this afternoon it all turned around and to celebrate Miss Lucy and I went to Elgin Park for a long walk this evening and ended up walking to a place called Stewart Farm which is a hertitage site.
It is a very lovely place as it sits right on the edge of the water and has these beautiful lawns rolling down to the waters edge and surrounded by rose bushes.


The trees are loaded with birds all of whom like to sing the night in. It was very lovely.
I tried to capture it with my lens. I hope you enjoy the experience almost as much as I did.

Sweden Law Allows Goverment Access to Internet & Telephone

I can hardly believe what I am reading. Sweden has passed a law allowing all cross-border internet and telephone traffic to be monitored. The law allows the military National Defence Radio Establishment to monitor Swedes' Internet usage and content from e-mails, phone calls and text messages.

I am stunned and I fear it may come to a country near me in the near future. I cannot believe that people would actually allow this bill to pass. It would be like having all your snail mail letters and parcels read by the mailman before he delivered them. I find it scary and I will quit using the internet entirely if they ever pass such a law here.

The article in The Province Newspaper does not say what the thinking behind this is, but one can assume that it was done in the name of security for the people. For the life of me I cannot understand how violating my freedom and my right to privacy keeps me safe. Yes the world is a scary place, but for me it would be a whole lot scarier if my right and my neighbors right to privacy and freedom were taken away.

Benjamin Franklin said "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security".

I wholeheartedly agree - what do you think?

The Case of the Washed Up Feet UPDATE!

Who would have thought that there could possibly be more? It appears that another RIGHT foot has been found washed up on the beach this time in Campbell River. It was found by a couple walking on the beach this morning. (This makes me rethink myh walking habits) Police say it is in a size 10 sneaker.
Either there are a lot of one legged men out there or there is definitely something strange going on.


****HOLD THE PRESSES! There has been a surprising twist in this story. The last foot (6th in the series) has turned out to be a hoax! Someone put an animal paw in a sock and stuffed it in a tennis shoe. Sick ...very sick thing to do. The police still have no idea who the other feet belong(ed) to or where they come from. ****

The Case of the Washed Up Feet

The police are treading carefully around the issue of the 5th foot in a sneaker found today. Yes, that is correct one foot in a sneaker! Last August a right foot in a sneaker was found on an island off the coast of British Columbia. Since then three more feet all of them right feet and all of them in a sneaker have been found washed up on various beaches around the gulf islands. The police continue to tell us that the feet have not been severed meaning I am guessing that they broke away from a body that is/was in the water? Today Delta police... yes read that DELTA as in where I live, found a LEFT foot in a sneaker on Westham Island. ( You can get a great bottle of wine at a winery on Westham) Police are not saying if the sneaker is a match to one of the previous right footed sneakers.

What will happen if the shoe fits errr... matches?

How many bodies are losing feet out there and when will it end?

Also with DNA and all the other scientific stuff today why can't they determine who these loose feet belong to?

Police are being very tight lipped for fear of putting their foot in their mouth.

Are police shuffling their feet on this one? Stay tuned for more breaking details in this case.

Canada's Great Shame

Between 1922 - 1969 hundreds of native children were forcibly taken from their families and sent to church run government supported residential schools where the main objective was to "take the Indian out of the child". Along with the trauma of separation came further victimization at the hands of sick care takers who often beat and sexually abused these children. Some of them never made it home. Some of them, never having been in a family, didn't know how to raise their own children. Some turned to drugs and alcohol to dull the pain of years of abuse and neglect. When I read the stories of how these children were forced to live I remember a long ago visit to the residential school near where I grew up.
Sechelt had a native residential school and some of the children attended the same high school I did. I made friends with a girl named Ruth and one Saturday day I got my mother to let me visit her at the school. I can still remember being appalled by how my friend had to live. She showed me where she slept. It was a small metal bunk in a room filled with bunks. Each of these bunks had only enough room between them for a child to stand and that is all. She showed me where she and the other children washed. It was a huge room with row after row of sinks and a large communal shower. No privacy was afforded any of these children. If robbing their dignity and their families were not enough these children were often inadequately fed and clothed. I have never forgotten this place and the sadness I felt knowing that my friend went to bed every night with out any one to comfort her or treat her special.
On Wednesday Prime Minister Harper apologized on behalf of the citizens of Canada and the government for robbing these children of their families, their culture, their dignity, their religion and in some cases their lives. It is about time we accepted responsibility for what we have done.
I hope that this helps with the healing that must take place for these people and the generations that have been effected by it, but I wonder .... is it too little too late? I often wonder what happened to my friend Ruth. I hope she found her way home to her family and found a way to heal from what we as a society did to her. I hope she found the love and caring that was rightfully hers, but denied her by ignorant government rule and greedy hypocritical religious leaders.

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."

Black Elk

EEEKKK! - Friday the 13th!!

Iraq - Is There Any Question?

Rainlillie over on Great Minds Think Like Me posted this video this week and I have watched it twice now. It is a very powerful speech. I don't go here in my blog very often, but I cannot help but ask the question.

Is there any question that this war that has killed 4,000 Americans and wounded over 30,000 was based on lies?

Carbon Tax - Ain't it The Truth!

Our provincial government has implemented a carbon tax on gasoline. Gas prices are going through the roof as every one knows and our government has decided that we need another tax on it. I am all for getting people out of their automobiles or at least into smaller ones. I too would like to see the earth a cleaner greener place, but why don't we tax the corporations more for the pollutants they spew into our air all the time? I don't think we will ever really make a dent in our carbon foot print unless we have a combined effort to do this and not just taxing an already over taxed and over burdened segment of our province. The government recognizing that there would be a major back lash over this gave every one a carbon tax rebate of $100.00 every four months and then encouraged us to spend that money on making our lives more green. With the price of gas being so high the price of most goods has gone up as well and because we are hosting the Olympics housing is at a premium and very costly. Most of us will be spending that hundred dollars on food and it probably won't be high priced organic either.

A fellow co-worker sent this little gem along to at least give us all a chuckle;

The provincial government is sending each and every one of us a $100 Carbon Tax rebate.....

If we spend it at Wal-Mart, the money will go to China.
If we spend it on gasoline, the money will go to the Arabs.
If we purchase a computer it will go to India.
If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.
If we purchase a good car it will go to Japan.
I we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan...
and none of it will help the BC economy.
The only way to be sure to keep the money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes, weed, beer and tattos since there are the only products still produced in Canada.

Where Did She Put the Jewels?

One of the stories that caught my eye one morning last month was about a man in Tampa Florida who hired a woman off the internet to clean his house in the nude. The maid is supposed to have arrived in nothing but a cotton dress which she took off and proceeded to clean the house. However, while she was cleaning she also cleaned out $40,000 in his wifes jewels. When the wife found out she proceeded to divorce him, but I am not sure if she divorced him because he hired a nude maid or if she divorced him because of the missing jewels. Some how I suspect the latter. This story left me puzzling over some things. Why would any one hire some one to clean their house in the nude? Better still - why would anyone clean someone's house in the nude... don't they know what those harsh cleaners do to your hands let alone more sensitive parts of the body? But my most burning question is - If she was wearing only a cotton dress where did she hide the jewels to get them out of the house? Ahh.... don't you just love the internet. Before we had to rely on major news papers for our source of information who knew what we were missing!

Rumours Of My Demise...

have been seriously over exaggerated. I will admit that I have been buried under a sea of work and for awhile it looked like it would kill me, but I am woman and I have survived.
I have missed blogging and I do try and get a look at everyone else's blogs a couple of times a week, but I am usually so tired that I don't have the energy to do much else, but browse.
It is an election year here and I am very involved in my constituency getting other people involved so we can be ready when the writ is dropped. Politics is a very strange addiction I think. Most of the people I am involved either love it or hate it. Believe it or not even though I work in a politicians office we have people working there who have no interest what so ever in politics. As I have been involved in this most of my life I often ask myself why? I don't have a lot of answers for it other than I have always been interested in politics and how governments effect the people who elected them.
Being so busy means I have very little time to chat with friends or e-mail them for that matter. Today my British friends have flown across the Atlantic to the US to travel by car across the country. If they are reading this I hope they know I am sending them good thoughts for a safe and happy trip. I hope they understand and forgive me for being so busy these days. Have a good one guys - send me lots of happy pictures.
However, no matter how busy I am I try to spend some time each week taking pictures and walking and playing with Miss Lucy. Almost every weekend I go to a park or the beach and snap pictures. Despite the fact that the weather has been miserable it still is very much spring. The blossoms on the wild berry bushes are out and so are the bees.










The bunnies are back in my yard driving Miss Lucy crazy.

My favorite - the wild daisy's are everywhere you look.

Being able to get out for a few hours every weekend to snap pictures and play with Lucy keeps me sane. I am going to try and get a few minutes to write this week. Lots to catch up on.