2010 Year End blog

2010 was a year characterized by CHANGE. More changes happened in 2010 than has happened in our lives for a long, long time.

The most significant was our decision in February to relocate (in June) from Ottawa Ontario to Regina Saskatchewan.

Carol

She completed her term as a director of the Ontario Genealogical Society. She hopes to attend the 2012 OGS conference in Kingston. She also continued her post-secondary program of study, which may lead to a designation as a professional genealogist.

Since our relocation in June she has been extremely busy with regular caregiving for our youngest grandchild, Cairo. He reminds us of how exhausting it can be dealing with a youngster in the 6 to 12 months age range.

Dave

Dave’s income tax preparation business had a very successful 7th year of operation. He will operate it from our new Saskatchewan location.

He continued to work ‘out of tax season’ for the Canadian Diabetes Association – this time in Regina, and a few weeks telemarketing for the National Arts Centre Foundation.

His completed his volunteer work in the synagogues in Ottawa and Kingston, and finished up a 4 ½ year term as a member of the City of Ottawa’s Advisory Committee on Equity and Diversity.

Family

Heather was very busy with raising Cairo. She found it a very exciting, if not exhausting, to deal with the ‘trials’ and ‘tribulations’ of a small child. She continued her studies at the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology. She and her boyfriend began to develop an online distribution system for antique and Aboriginal artefacts.

Trey, who is almost 13, continued his schooling in the year and to be an active participant on the world’s largest social network – facebook. He also was able to start using a cell phone for his social communication.

Giovanni, who is now 8 changed schools in 2010. He now attends a school very close to where we live and eats his lunch at our place on school days. The critical illness of his Dad is the reason for the relocation to Regina this year.

Dayvan, who is 7, still lives on Little Pine First Nation. We hear occasionally of his continued good life.

December 25, 2010

Well today is December 25 aka Christmas Day.. a Christian holiday that is a full fledged statutory holiday when most of our country 'shuts' down. But it gives all of us who choose not to celebrate that holiday to do lots of 'catch up' stuff. A nice thing about December 25 is its proximity to the end of the year. I know I am taking this year's down time to do lots of clean up on my computer system.

I also recently decided to move to Windows 7 and this time gives me an opportunity to learn how to use it.

Also those of you on facebook will know I have also moved my email services to the 'cloud'. I will no longer have to worry about saving important messages. Gmail does it for me ((:-))

This 'downtime' allows me (and many others I am sure) to look back on this year. What a year it has been....so many changes in our lives both at a 'macro' and 'micro' level. Once again we will be sending out a year end letter. I suspect I will post it here as well.

As we come closer to 2011 I know for sure there will be one election to come. Residents in Saskatchewan know election day is November 7. It wil be interesting to see if a federal election occurs in 2011. I really hope it does but suspect all federal parties will attempt to find a way to avoid one (especially if any of them think their standing after an election could be 'worse off' than now).

Back to a personal perspective I don't see how 2011 can be as full of changes in my life as was 2010.. but then one can never tell.......

December in Saskatchewan

Hey it's cold here.. but then that is the reality of the prairies in winter...and the view that it is a 'dry cold' actually has lots of legitimacy. Was commenting other day how even though it was -20ish before windchill, if one dressed for weather, one could move around on foot or by car and feel all right.....

Last post I talked about celebrations. We have a nice Chanukah get together a few days ago...lots of camaderie but mostly lots of food.

We have two birthdays coming up which will be full of fun and 'food'. Oh yes and given the festive season we are all into, there will be lots of food as well.

Am beginning to 'worry' (although how much good it will do is open to question) about what will happen in our national political arena in 2011. I see some inklings we may get that long sought federal election after all. The polls however have a worrisome trend.. I have seen some saying the current government may get its majority or at least a strong minority. I can only hope that Canadians understand the impact of giving our current Prime Minister his majority.

The official opposition has been disappointing of late. The turnabout on Afghanistan seems to have been unexpected. The NDP and Bloc continue to in their own ways to carry on...wanting to oppose the government but both seemingly going nowhere.

There seems to be some 'interesting' movement by the Green party. Gee I really hope they elect an MP somewhere in the next election.

Various stuff again

It's been over a week since I last posted. Took a few days to catch up after being away for over two weeks.. but things back to normal.

We're into a month of celebrations here and not one of them is Christmas. Tonight is the first night of Chanukah and on Friday we're hosting a Chanukah party/dinner for family and a couple of new close friends. Later on this month two of our grandchildren celebrate birthdays. We will likely arrange special events for both of them.

As my foot injury has healed i am now back to delivering papers early in the mornings..but fewer routes now as the cold snowy weather means it takes much longer to deliver the papers.

Well what about Wikileaks... I have given it considerable thought and I think my view is summed up by the following short phrase "Yea Wikileaks". Political and bureaucratic leaders need to be accountable for their actions as well as their words. I suspect many things labelled 'secret' or 'confidential' in this world are so marked on for the convenience of political and bureaucratic leaders.

Everyone involved in fields like diplomacy should learn to operate on the assumption that what they put on paper will somehow find its way into the media.

Hilary Clinto need not resign. If she initiated 'spying' on other leaders all she should do is issue an apology and 'carry on'.

Sort of analagous to the situation where embassies often have military attaches as part of their staff. Military attaches seem to be type of people who assess military readiness and capabilities of host countries.. sounds like spying to me.