The Long Awaited House pictures

Here are the house pictures. Still a lot of things that need to be done, but it is starting to look like a house!!!

Eco Auto

So, the forms are now up on the internet for the eco-auto program. Someone was posting in response to me a while back as "anonymous" not sure who that was, just wanted to let whoever it was, I just wanted to let you know.

I'm still waiting for the 2008 list to be published.

October? Where did you go?

So, it has been a busy busy month in my life. Well, scrap that, it has been a busy several months. Excursions almost every weekend meant for lots of general chores and home improvement projects during the week. We now have most of the big things on our list completed. Doors are painted white and back on. Kitchen painting is complete. Baseboard is installed. There are several small projects left to do (ex. Fix-up painting, fix-up caulking, doing something between flooring types, changing out light fixtures, getting curtains, making a duvet cover, etc), but all the big projects seem to be done (until we decide to tackle the downstairs… dunh, dunh, duuuunnnnhhh).

So my goal for tonight will be to tidy the upstairs a bit and take pictures to post on my flickr account, so that you guys can see the before and after pictures from our house. We had the before pictures out on the weekend to show J&C, and Wow, is there ever a difference! It was hard to really remember what the house looked like before we moved in. Huge change if I do say so myself ;)

Other than that, not much. I am busy with work. I am busy with renovations.

Somehow wedding planning has gotten onto the backburner. I think I really need to start doing some real wedding planning instead of just looking at bridal magazines ;). Mind you, this isn’t the place for this discussion. I will update my other blog instead.

To have an election or not, that is the question.

So Nej asked my opinion on whether we will be going to the polls again in another short 6 weeks. Long story short, no. Keep reading if you are intrigued on my stance ;)

Okay, first off, I think that right now not too much has changed from the previous federal election. I think the Conservatives might have won a little more support by not doing anything too radical (despite the fact that they COULDN’T since it was a minority government). They played that card well, and have kept most of their radical members gagged over the last two years. That being said, I think they have probably lost as much support as they gained from the left leaning voters who supported them in the last election instead of the Liberals (like say the former PCs). I think that the conservatives KNOW this and didn’t put anything all out crazy into the throne speech that would force the liberals to decline it.

On top of that, I think that the liberals are flailing a bit right now. The party brass is falling hard and fast and I think the restructuring the liberal party needs is right around the corner. That said, they are in NO position to fight an election right now. They need to make up huge grounds in Quebec, and at this point that is not happening. The provincial quebec liberals are also having a rough go at it, so that won’t help the liberal cause at all.

The three parties that have the most to gain by an election today are the Bloq Quebecois (liberals flailing in quebec) and the NDP which stands to pick up a few seats in Quebec (Outremont went non-liberal in the by-election for the first time in several decades and one the NDP their first quebec seat in years). The NDP would be very appealing to quebecer’s right now who are traditionally further left than the rest of the country and wouldn’t vote for the current conservative party but that aren’t separatists and don’t want to vote liberal. A few of the Liberal Quebec seats that went to Tories in the last election could easily go to the NDP if there were an election today over liberal protest and anti-afganistan sentiment in Quebec. The NDP will probably also pick up more seats in the rest of Canada by liberals who see their party in distress or people who voted conservative in the last election but don’t agree with the management of Afganistan. The Green Party is also in excellent position to pick up a seat as well. Never have Canadians been more in tuned to what is happening with the environment, and with the recent strong showing of Jolly in Ontario, more Canadians will likely see that the Green Party could actually win seats in some ridings which would make it more likely for people to vote for them.

So yes, I think the Liberals will guardedly vote for the throne speech. Basically, it doesn’t mean that they have to vote for all the things the conservatives say they are going to do, it just means that the liberals are content to sit back a little longer and see where exactly the conservative are going with this. Basically, the throne speech didn’t include anything new, it was just more of the same conservative rhetoric that they have touted for the past 2 years. Tougher on crime, “better” to the environment (ha!), etc. Most of the points of the speach were actually bills making their way through the house and senate currently that got scrapped when Harper decided he would have a fall throne speech (not traditional). For example the Clean Air Act, which many people think the conservatives wanted scrapped because they had conceded too much to the NDP whose support they counted on to make the bill pass.

If we were to have a federal election today, I would have to think long and hard about who I would vote for. I like Stephane Dion, I think he would make a great leader and a wonderful prime minister, but I’m not sure that the rest of the liberal party is ready to be in charge yet. They talk big saying they are united in supporting their leader, but there are still a lot of people out there licking their wounds and causing shit because they wanted Iggnatieff to be the leader.

Election Results

I won't try to hide the fact that I'm super happy about last nights results. We all know that I am a strong provincial liberal. Heck, I even had a lawn sign and donated to the local guys campaign. It was also the first election in the last 10 years that I didn't actively campaign due to time constraints. That being said, I was hitting refresh all night last night to see how Steve Jolly was fairing in Bruce. It would have been great if he had one there.

Anywho, to follow up on what we were discussing yesterday on Jen's blog re: MMP, this is from the globe and mail website today. The election results if we had MMP.

Projected election results using MMP system
The mixed-member proportional system that Ontario voters appeared to reject yesterday aimed to have representation more closely mirror the popular vote.
These would have been the seat totals if yesterday's election had been run using MMP, according to numbers available at press time. (The numbers skew slightly: the Liberals would still be over-represented, as they would have taken more riding seats than their total proportion would allow for.)
Liberals
Percentage of popular vote: 42.0
Seats under current system: 71
Riding seats under MMP: 60
Total seats under MMP: 60
Progressive Conservatives
Percentage of popular vote: 31.7
Seats under current system: 25
Riding seats under MMP: 21
Total seats under MMP: 39
NDP
Percentage of popular vote: 16.8
Seats under current system: 11
Riding seats under MMP: 9
Total seats under MMP: 20
Green Party
Percentage of popular vote: 8.2
Seats under current system: 0
Riding seats under MMP: 0
Total seats under MMP: 10


Based on my own calculations, if it was a true hybrid between old and new, it would have been 60+16 = 76 to liberals which would have still been a majority. This system I would support hands down. Heck, it was the system I was planning on voting yes to until about 12 yesterday afternoon until I realized that I didn't understand the system properly. I love the green party. I have signed several petitions to allow them in the debates. I think if I were to protest vote against the liberals today I would park my vote with the greens. That said, I am VERY nervous about the prospect of having 10 MPPs appointed to parliament from a party that has never won a seat in the house. I would have been happy to have them have 3 seats in which they could prove themselves over 4 years to gain more support.

Happy Un-anniversary To Me.

Why un-anniversary? Because the event hasn’t taken place yet ;) Yes, that is right folks, today is my -1 year wedding un-anniversary. One year from today I will be marrying Arash and we will be cementing our relationship for ever more.

So, in celebration of the Un-day, I have decided to open up a wedding specific blog to journal my year of wedding planning fun/stress. Kind of just as a way to put down all my thoughts and keep track of this time so that in 10 years I can look back at it and (hopefully) smile.

Anywho, I thought I would post the link in case any of you all would like to keep up with this time, I’d completely understand if you don’t want to read it as well. I’m doing this more for me than anything else :).

The Blogging Bride

La la la

God today has been a slow day for me. I am currently working on an annual liner report for a major landfill and it is BORING. Not really my thing if you know what I mean. Oh well, it is keeping me busy… kind of. Right now I am pretty much reading over it to make sure everything is okay before I send it off to be proof read. Not sure what I am going to do to keep busy the rest of the week since I thought this would take a lot longer that it apparently did. I started writing yesterday and finished around 2:30 this afternoon. Now I’m just reading over to make sure I didn’t miss anything and that it all makes sense. I should also say that I had all the tables and figures done already so there wasn’t much work that I actually had to do. La La La. I’m bored.

So this weekend I start the search for my wedding dress. I have a good idea of what I want, and surprisingly I am strongly attracted to lace. Weird since I’ve always been very put off by it, but I think it is making a hip comeback. I have fallen in love with a couple of dresses that I would never be able to afford (~$5000) unless my dad wins the 649 tomorrow night. Oh well, I’m sure that I will find one that I love that is more reasonable. Actually, even if I were rich and had money to burn, I don’t think I could justify spending that kind of money on a dress that I would wear once.

Our house is finally starting to come a long. I promise I will post before and after pictures soon for everyone to see. This weekend we got our baseboards in, but we have to finish touching them up. Tonight I will be caulking around the edges so that you can’t see any gaps between the baseboard and the wall. We also have got the kitchen almost all painted. We still need another coat of paint though, damn you yellow paint. I think after painting two rooms yellow I have learned my lesson. Yellow paint = pain in the ass. Seriously, the guest bedroom took 4 coats and could still use another, and the kitchen will be 3-4 (4 for things done with the brush, 3 with the roller). We also still need to paint the doors and bring them back upstairs. Eventually we will replace the doors – I think they are probably original from 40-45 years ago and are in pretty rough shape. Too many things too do. It’s all pretty overwhelming to be honest. Hopefully by Christmas all the things currently on our list will be taken care of. Then it will be time to tackle the downstairs with it’s hideous offwhite/beige walls and forest green carpeting.