Count me relieved. I was not looking forward to a Wildrose victory, and this is the second best result. The best would have been the Alberta party getting a bunch of seats, along with everybody else, and we could have amused ourselves watching a minority government go through it's paces. Probably several of them. You learn a lot about people and parties in such a situation, watching them deal with the issues of the day. I still don't get why we decided to give Harper a majority government after his various abuses of power as a minority, and you have to know that Wildrose is cut from the same cloth.
We can all hope that Ms. Redford has taken a big learning from this election, and will try to force her arrogant and smug party to mend its ways. I totally believe her party got so many votes only because many voters were holding their nose, fearing Wildrose lunacy more than they wanted to turf the bastards out. Which they need.
I'm happy the pollsters got it wrong. That's one good result. I love to see them get egg on their face like this. I love it when the electorate proves their models aren't right. I hate getting phone calls from them, and despise their loaded questions. If one gets me on the phone somehow, if I don't blow them off, I will lie to them. Deliberately and with malice aforethought. I will either mix up my answers to the point they are so contradictory as to be nonsensical. Or I'll give responses that are completely false to what I believe. That's if I don't just tell them I charge money for providing answers, and they are no different than any other client, except my clients get an hourly rate. Pollsters have to pay by the question, and none has offered to pay me yet. I encourage you, in fact I exhort you to do the same. It's fun.
I also hate it when political parties tailor their platforms to what the polls tell them, or create wedge issues based on poll results. There are days I'd like to outlaw the whole polling industry. All of it. No more polls by political parties, by advertisers, by manufacturers. No focus groups. Nothing. Decide where you stand and put you or your products into the market to be judged on their own merits. In the mean time, lie to pollsters to introduce more uncertainty in their data. I do not suggest being rude to the poor sod making the call. Consider a life where this is the best job you can get.
I once watched one Alberta election, and the news organization called a majority government within 5 or 10 minutes of the polls closing. Last night it was about an hour and 45 minutes, which is probably a record. So you can understand why I was a bit slow getting started this am. I was not in the mood to swim. I had some stuff to do right after getting home again, and then prep for and deal with a client meeting. That took most of the morning.
After a quick lunch I got into the vapour barrier project, working on the area above the washer/dryer and the wine sink. Above the washer/dryer wasn't so bad, but above the sink was brutal. Here's a couple photos.
That's looking up towards the working area, with the fluorescent light right there to complicate things. I ended up having to take the light out.
When I stand, crouched, on the sink framework, and nestle my chest against that horizontal 2x4 I can just barely reach where the plastic and tape had to go. Of course there is a heat vent to complicate things. Also, there are a couple nails pointing down.
Here's the finished job, and you can see one of the nails in the top left. Amazingly enough, there was no blood shed in this section, but I attribute that to very careful planning and cautious movements. I actually channeled some engineer buddies that have done hazard assessments, and thought very carefully about what could go wrong. I suppose spending some time on the weekend looking at videos of people doing stupid things and almost certainly requiring a trip to the hospital afterward was also a prompt for being cautious.
To say nothing of what Linda would do to me if she came home from work to find me unconscious on the floor, bleeding, and who knows what other consequences.
My plan was to go for a run after doing this and getting the washer dryer area put back together again, and before it started raining. After spending way too long crouched and twisted and reaching into that tight space, there was no way I was going for a run. However, I think I will go down and do some core and stretching.
In other news, here is a very small part of our bookshelves.
What we have is nearly 5 cubic feet of obsolete paper. I can't remember the last time I opened that encyclopedia. I can't imagine what would impel me to open it now. So what do I do with it? It was expensive when we bought it in the mid 80's. They aren't printing them anymore. But there are probably a lot of homes with a set tucked away somewhere so it's not like they are rare. I don't think I can just throw them away, and I'm not even sure they are recyclable. Any suggestions? Anyone want them?
What is this "Alberta Party" you speak of? I'm not sure they were even in our riding, I didn't see a single thing from them.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the pollsters are so wrong, we don't even get live pple anymore just robocalls from pollsters too, so we never answer those. They should get their lazy @$$es off of their fancy technology and use some common sense in some of their newfangled techniques. Like robocalls.
Those robocalls got so bad (pollsters and candidates) that Evie has started asking if a robot was calling every time the phone rang and we don't pick up.
Ooops - sorry I ranted in your comments. I should rant on my own blog.
Alberta Party only ran in 38 ridings. They are new. What I've seen of them looks like a promising alternative to the liberals.
ReplyDeleteTopical rants in comments are fine.