Winter Sunset

I love this picture. I took it last week and I have to say that I really love winter sunsets, which is a good thing because winter has now officially hit Saskatoon with the -20 wind-chill of today.
But hey what can you do? At least it's beautiful.

We have now officially reached rigmarole status.

So last night was marked by another day of my glorious intern position at Shaw. There is nothing better than putting lapel mics on dripping-with-sweat hockey players for intermission interviews, running cables around Sask. Place and doing all of the random jobs for the production crew. The upside is that no one asked me to fetch coffee for them (but I did get a new nickname last night: Coffee *****, always fun) and I got to go in to the owners lounge. Being a TVA is fun especially when my watch gets stuck on the captains Shoulder Pads when running a mic cable just seconds before the live interview starts… but watching the Blades loose 5-1 kinda sucked.

Today during church I was offered (and I think may have accepted) a part time job starting in January to come back and be a nanny. I love this family so much, and am really looking forward to my one or two shifts a week playing outside, making snow forts, taking the kids to hockey/skating… but it got me thinking about my identity.

At this point I am a more than full time student, I work for Shaw as a TVA, I pull a shift or two at the Meeting Place as a Barista, I am soon to relapse in to being a uber-nanny, I still in my spare time am a pseudo-musician, and moonlight as a youth leader/musician/filer at my church. I am so glad that my identity does not come from what I do, but rather it’s in who I am in God’s eyes. Sure He has given me gifts and abilities along with the opportunities to use them, but when it really comes down to it I am his precious child.

Now if I could only be done school and actually decide what I want to do with my life that would be something. : ) But hey I figure that we should just enjoy the ride and I really do like the variety.

Money Makes the World Go Round

I have a love hate relationship with Canadian politics. One thing I love is the amazing work the speech writers do. For a long time I have dreamed of having the job of making a really bad situation look good. These are the people that they call when the S*** hits the fan. Its fascinating to see a publicly discredited finance department look trustworthy. For example; Ralph Goodale addressed reporters after the emergency ministers meeting today and I lost track of how many times he said “responsibility” and “accountability”. After the Gomery report made the Liberals look like scandalous money managers, the finance minister got up in front of the whole country and tried to convince us that by putting a $39 Billion Band-Aid on the problem he can be trusted again. I don’t care how much you say accountability and responsibly in a speech, the government’s strategy of paying people off won’t cut it this time. I can just imagine what went on in that meeting; “Hey guys I have an idea, if we paid off all of our supporters with contracts to buy our way in to office, can’t we just buy off all of the Canadians too?” Let’s face it, money makes the world go round, and $39 Billion is A LOT of money. If the Liberals are re-elected I will forever be in awe of two things: how a last minute scam resuscitated the Liberals grasp on power and the sheer stupidity of the Canadian people. No offence to the general public but the liberal spin-doctors have skills. They can make anything sound good.

There is one problem with the addresses that were made after the Ministers meeting; the speechwriters were too busy making the finance minister look trustworthy that they forgot to brief the PM. For his entire speech (all three questions he answered before he ran away from the mic followed by a burst of laughter from the press) he repeated on phrase: “ We have a lot of important legislation to pass, and you either have confidence in the government or you don’t.” That is actually a good answer to the first question that he answered, but when you rephrase that in reference to “why don’t you accept the compromise of the Conservative party” you look like a fool. Lucky for me there was no one home today when I yelled at the TV “Answer the damn question!!!” If they really wanted to pass that legislation they have plenty of time to do it (according to my hero Rex Murphy). And his feeble attempt to mock the conservatives lost it’s bite when it was rephrased the third time as “the traditions of our legislative assembles are clear when is comes to having confidence in the government. We have traditions in place.” Ouch…? I guess this comes out of Martins last ditched attempt to keep his name slightly intact. He has a clear agenda: “I want to Govern!” He as a perfectly acceptable compromise on the table from the opposition and yet he refuses. Admittedly the phrase ‘a vote of non-confidence’ sounds bad on anyone’s resume.

I have to be really careful here. Martin is our PM and we are to respect our leaders but quite frankly I am deeply disturbed by what I see in the Liberals. It’s sad that throwing money at a problem sways public opinion (even if it does nothing to fix the problem) I have come to terms with the fact that we many never be rid of the Liberal party and we will always have major corruption in government. If the conservatives win we will be faced with problems as well. No one is going to be perfect and because of the governmental system it is impossible for a totally honest person to win an election.

I just might vote for the liberals in the upcoming election. It’s better to know what type of faults a government has then to elect a new one. With the Liberals at least we know what to expect.