we went to bed about 3am and I passed out easily enough. I owke up at 6:30am thanks to Anne’s prompt of moving the bed around shaking me awake. At first it pissed me off and I noticed the time to read 6:30am something. Time to get up and do the cbi thing. I has some waffles and after I ate them I decided to read for an hour. After that I went back to bed around 7:35am but I had trouble sleeping all morning. I dozed in and out of sleep. Mostly dozing. I think I got some solid sleep for about an hour.

Anne got a call from her sister saying because she’s heading out to site see around Nova Scotia she out the bsm in Anne’s account a little early. Possibly today or tomorrow. The bad news is we’ve got the bsm until next June. So we have it for another 9 months. We’ve been getting it faithfully every month since we’ve been married but the funds will run out. Soon it will come to an end. We were talking about getting rental assistance when the bsm runs out in June. At least we have the application going so what we could do until then is file for rental assistance within a month or two of the bsm running out. I went one step further, lets apply for rental assistance in July for August. For one month it won’t hurt us to work extra hours. But we also have her pension money and CRHC says that’s something that doesn’t count towards assets. So before the bsm runs out we’re going to use that for ourselves and get the big screen TV if not in December in march when it expires before the bank takes it all. All I want is the big screen HD TV the Xbox Elite a PVR and maybe a nice little laptop and the keyboard piano. They’re only $199+ tax anyway. Plus there’s the environmental tax.

Speaking about the environment and all, our PM needs to meet 5 conditions if his minority Government is to stop a non confidence vote and one of those is (2nd on the list) is to accept the Kyoto Protocol. Basically the PM needs support of the Bloc party, which is Quebec separation. The NDP won’t endorse Harpers minority Government because if his handling of Kyoto among other things. The thing is in order for Harper to accept Kyoto the US and China need to come on board. Since China is exempt from Kyoto there is no way it’s going to even get involved. Forget about the US, they’re taking the same stance as Harper and too preoccupied with Iran. I like Harper because he’s a AGW skeptic. Meanwhile, Greenpeace here in Edmonton is targeting Alberta oil sands. I hear conflicting messages within the Greenpeace camp. First I hear them saying they want to put a halt to oil sand activity. Then I hear them saying stuff like they don’t want to stop oil sand activity, they just want to strike a balance between the environment and oil sand activity. So which is it? If they think they can halt Alberta’s oil sands activity, then they have another thing coming. These well meaning but misguided young activist’s seem to be clueless. They don’t realize that the reason why are economy is doing so well is because of oil sands activity. The oil industry is fueling are economy. If they are successful in stopping oil sands activity and then start whining because they can’t find employment, they have only themselves to blame. They seem to have a scotoma wider then my fat ass.

If Harper had a majority Government then he wouldn’t be at the whim of gaining support from all these Quebec separatists idiots. If they want to leave Canada let them. I couldn’t care less. Since I am an Alberta separatists anyway. I’m sick and tied of the national picture interfering in our economy and way of life here.

These young activists don’t seem to realize that if people make a donation to Greenpeace they don’t receive a tax receipt. And I hope David Suzuki’s “Foundation” is next and his tax exempt status is exempt as well. I think Greenpeace still has tax exempt status in the US. Now I don’t mind Greenpeace as long as their activism rests outside of the oil and gas industry. Mo was talking to me about Greenpeace and the DDT connection, and I’ll be asking him more about this tonight for an update. What I’d like to see is all these Gp nuts running around the oil sands area and then having the police haul them away charging them with trespassing. GP is well noted for doing that. Isn’t that a criminal offence here in Canada?

While I’m ranting, lets get real. Most of the labor unions that were ready to walk out last month are whining for their right to strike. Sure most of their other union brothers and sisters in the trades have the “right to strike.” But what about the rest of us non union people? Most of us are getting $8-$12 hour. The trades represent a small portion of the economy. The average trade here in Alberta is making close to $25/hour. They have jobs for life and can never get fired. They can get laid off of course but can never get fired. Union people have some protection. When the economy isn’t as good as it is now, my boss has on occasion sent me home because I wasn’t at line hour. If this was a union, that wouldn’t matter. I’d get so many sick day’s year. I don’t have that working in a call center. I don’t get mandatory 2 weeks vacation either. Nor do I get the chance to go on strike. Also, I’d get all holidays covered. Right now to get my stat pay I’ve got to work the day before and the day after and there are some stat holiday’s that we don’t get paid for like boxing day and civic day among others. Sure union people have to pay union dues and all but still it’s a better deal. The pecking order is like this: University/College education, Union’s, the rest of us. I belong in the last category. I’ve got nothing against Unions per se’ it’s just that non union workers make up for the bulk of the economy and we don’t get anywhere near the perks that union people get.

Tonight, I’m going into work and do the job thing. Rob hadn’t posted the bank report last week so I’m going to ask around to see what happened to it.

Then tonight after work (maybe we’ll be out early) I’ll be settling in to watch my Monday night Raw. Hopefully I’ll be able to blog a bit earlier. Then today. Anne suggested I take tonight off but I already did that for Thursday so instead tonight I’ll let Will know that I won’t be in for tomorrow night.

Sorry about the rants.

Anyway that’s all for now

e. Jim