Blessed by the Potato

As the expression goes, I’ve been as busy as a dog with three dicks, and got about as much accomplished, too.

In the news lately there’s a scare at University Hospital here in London about a Creutzfeldt-Jakob patient who had surgery performed. The nasty thing about a prion disease like that is that typical sterilization techniques are ineffective; you have to burn the room (or seal it up with the extra asbestos and never use it again) and throw away all the tools. That’s one of the problems we’re having now: at least one OR and a whole batch of instruments is off-limits, and patients are being shuffled around the city in an administrative nightmare (latest reports even have the ER there redirecting patients). I thought they’d be reopening some rooms at my hospital, but it doesn’t look that way (I don’t know if it’s because the closure of our ER department didn’t actually give us any reserve of the type of rooms/instruments needed, or if it just hasn’t occured to anyone for what looks to be just a few days of closure — it would make a bit more sense in one regard since we’re a lot closer to UH than the other ER in town).

Well, it took a few days to unpack the router and everything, but we’re back up here.

The move was absolutely crazy, and we still have more to do! After that last entry, I ended up staying up until about 6 am doing “last minute” packing, and even then we’ve had to make a half dozen trips back to the apartment (to clean, paint, and take things like food, toiletries, clothes, etc.).

The election here was somewhat close, but my preferred candidate ended up coming in second (stupid Liberal stronghold!). Nonetheless, it’s seen as a victory as it’s the first time the Green party has beat out both the Conservatives and NDP. It was interesting to see the voting pattern displayed when strategic (or as some say, tactical) voting isn’t a factor (for most, that is — I’m sure many people still voted Liberal to keep the Conservatives out rather than because that was the candidate they liked the most).

Anyhow, I’ll probably post in more detail later, but for now I’ve got to put some stuff away in the kitchen and hit the sack!

So we’re moving first thing in the morning to our new [rental] house! Almost everything has been packed, and it’s been an intense process, but it’s amazing how much is left. 3 computers and a network to dismantle, the TV and its jumble of wires, plus all the dishes and cutlery. Doesn’t sound like much, but since the movers come at 9 am and it’s pushing 11 pm now this could get interesting. And that’s not even counting all the cleaning to be done (plus removing curtains and picture holders) which we plan to come back on Monday for.

Oddly enough, my Green Party lawn sign was stolen/removed less than 24 hours after I put it up on my new lawn. My landlord did visit that day, so it’s possible she took it, but if she did she didn’t mention anything about it. A bunch of others have gone missing in the neighbourhood, so something fishy may be afoot.

Anyhow, the site will go down for a bit during the move, but I hope to be back up late Monday night, or possibly as late as Tuesday evening.

I’ve been so pissed off at the LED christmas lights they’ve had out recently. LEDs have the potential to make great christmas lights since they’re efficient and can be all small and twinkly, so it was such a shame that most of the lights were those giant gaudy faceted ones. Today, however, I found some at Canadian Tire that have really small white lights with no crazy facets or anything. They’re perfect! They only came in the long strings of 100, but that works for me… and if they’re efficient enough, I might even use them to light my room after Christmas :)

I’m shocked and awed at the government’s latest motion to recognize Quebec as a “nation”. It’s a pretty dumb thing to do in the first place, and can really only lead to division down the road. I’m also really shocked that it’s the Conservatives doing this, since they’re usually the first party to stand up and oppose the “special needs” of the French community. It makes me wonder just what the heck is in the drinking water up in Ottawa: usually we can count on the Cons to make stupid, wrong-headed promises, and follow up on a few of them. Instead, with a shakey minority government, they’ve broken a big campaign promise* and broken out something crazy like this.

Yes, Quebecois have their own “cultural identity”, but so does almost every other group you can think of (muslims, scots, gansta rappers, liberals, protestants, gold prospectors, hockey players). Maybe it’s because I’m permanently locked into an English Canadian mindset, but I just don’t see the Quebecois as being all that special. Yes, they did play a big part in our country’s history, but we already recognize that with a huge amount of protection for the language and culture. [Plus, part of that history was losing a war to the English. Props to my man Wolfe, who included a promise of religious freedom for the conquered.]

I hate to make it an us-vs-them sort of thing, since we’re all Canadians together, but that’s what “nation” status will inevitably do. And from there, it won’t be too many decades before nation-within-a-nation status is transmuted into a full-blown seperate nation, and that will get really ugly.

* – Full disclosure: breaking of said promise has wiped out ~10% of my net worth.