Canadian Lyndsay

Today I got the greatest surprise!!

Jillian emailed me today – out of the blue, I haven’t chatted with the girl since before Christmas – turns out she and Peter are arriving in St. Catharines ONE DAY before Dave and I!! How awesome is that! So not only do I get to spend time with her and Peter, they get to meet Dave too! I am so excited. I called her when I got home from work since I can call overseas for free now. It was so so nice to chat with her. Silly Peter, he answered the phone with a VERY impressive Canadian accent. It took me a few seconds to realize it was him! Oh I am just so happy right now. This is going to be a great trip.

Oh I’m so happy, Dave and I both got approved for time off to come to Ontario in July. Since we’re both at new jobs, the best we could do is two days off, and we have to make up the time… so a few weeks of loooong days. That’s okay though.

Unfortunatley, because we’re only coming for a short period of time, there are a lot of people we’re not going to be able to see. We’re not even going to be able to see all of our family. This is the problem with BOTH of us having family in the Toronto/Niagara area.

But number one priority is for Dave to meet my parents! We’ve been dating over a year now, and I’m anxious for them to meet. I know that we’re a ways off from any engagement or anything, but it’s still important to me.

There are two other must-do’s for the weekend – the first being going to the Bombers @ Argos game. That was part of the reason we picked this weekend, we wanted to go to a Winnipeg away game. The other thing is going to Wonderland on the Monday. My sister and her boyfriend invited us. I’m stoked cuz I missed going last year and I can’t wait!

And then… of course… Gino’s pizza. Oh, Gino’s pizza, how I have forsaken you by moving away. I miss you so much. I’ll be there soon.

I really felt the lost hour this morning. We forgot to set the clocks before we went to bed, so while I was happy to see that I woke up at 9:30 a.m., I quickly realized it was actually 10:30 a.m. and that’s pushing sleeping in a bit late.

Yesterday we had a busy day. We went out (that alone is new for us) pretty much all day. First, I had to stop at work to make a couple corrects on the web site that couldn’t wait until Monday (damn them not giving us FTP access from home). Then we were going to the Winnipeg Art Gallery downtown for the 2005 Cannes Lions. By time we got to the art gallery, it was 1:20 (the show started at 2:00) and they were sold out. That sucks! Oh well, they’ll do an encore in October. Still, that’s 6 months away.

Since we were downtown anyway, we went to the World of Wheels car show at the Winnipeg Convention Centre. That, well, bit. Only two Mustangs, neither of which were all that nice. No surprise, we saw Dave’s Uncle Wayne and his fiance Debbie. They’re big Covette people – a Mustang lover’s enemy, but that’s okay.

After that, it was off to St. Vital mall where we caught a matinee of Ice Age 2. Not bad! I enjoyed it. Could have done without the 200 misbehaving children though. I guess it’s to be expected at a kids movie.

When the movie was done, we debating eating out for supper, and decided on Pizza Hut – but we’d have it at home – much more fun that way. So we stopped at Pizza Hut, ordered a couple pizzas for delivery (yes we live two blocks from the Pizza Hut – but in my defense, we were tired and just wanted to go home). So we got home, settled on the couch with our pizza and Superman III!! I love Superman. Can’t wait until Superman Returns. Woohoo!!

I made it until about 10:00… late for me… Dave followed not too much later which is early for me.

So today was all about sitting around. We watched about 6 hours worth of Lost DVDs. Then Dave gets ambitions… lets clean up? What? Why? It’s Sunday evening!

We did a pretty good cleanup. I won’t be around next weekend, and his mom is visiting for Easter, so this was our last weekend to clean up properly together. We opened up the doors to the porch, some of the windows at let the warm weather in. Yes, okay, we hit a high of 6 today – so I know that might not be as warm for you Ontario people, but damn it, that’s nice and warm in Winnipeg!!

Hanging out now, waiting for Desperate Housewives… don’t even know if it’s a new one or not. We’ll see!

I’m selling my Mustang.

I can’t bear to hurt her. And keep getting her stuck in my back alley. I can’t justify moving just for the sake of keeping my car. And I can’t afford a winter beater. So I’ve got to try.

All the details and pictures are here: www.winnipegmustang.com.

Please visit it, pass the link on. If someone in southern Ontario wants to buy it, I’m even willing to drive it out there.

My heart is breaking. I want my car to go to a good home where she’ll be loved and cared for.

Okay I’m angry.

I’m a HUGE advocate of voting. It is just not our RIGHT but our RESPONSIBILITY to vote. Starting from when we’re 18 until we die.

Everyone knows that the younger voters don’t really go out and vote.

I kind of don’t blame them. Here’s the start of my vent.

I cannot BELIEVE how many candidates either don’t have a web site or have a really shitty web site.

I am a registered member of the Conservative Party of Canada but I don’t think I’m even going to vote for my Conservative party representative because:

A) Her website is just awful. Horrible. I want to cry when I look at it. (www.lindawest.ca). I almost emailed to volunteer to redo it for her.

B) Her email? lwest@mts.net. Fabulous. Great to see a good professional email address. If I saw a company with a @mts.net email address (or any other type of personal ISP), they would not get my business. Just not professional.

C) I did email said address (that is the only email address published on said web site) about working as a poll clerk for the election like I have in the past. Elections Canada says that to apply for a Poll Clerk position, you need to contact the candidate with the party who came in SECOND in the last election. So that’s conservative here.

Well, I emailed December 15. Do you think I got a reply? NOOOOOOOOOO…. tonight I did some googling to find another email address for her. So I tried that one. But the phone number on her web site is a cell number, and I haven’t found another yet.

How on EARTH does this woman expect people to contact her with not just questions and issues about her campaign, but maybe even her constituency if she were to win????

But it’s not even her specifically. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO many do not have web sites or make it nearly impossible to find out the issues. And at this time of year, there isn’t much canvassing going on. At least we haven’t had one knock at the door.

It just makes me SO MAD. The Internet is THE most popular information source in this day and age, especially for the younger voters!

To me, it is inexcuseable to let such an important part of campaigning slide.

And now I am faced with a dilemna. Do I…

a) Vote for Linda West (Conservative) because that party best reflects my stance on issues and morals, because I am a member of this party, despite the fact that it is 99.9% confirmed that she won’t win this riding?

b) Vote for Bill Blaikie, the Deputy Leader of the NDP. NDP, my second choice of party. Bill Blaikie has held this riding for 28 years. Everyone loves him. I haven’t been around long enough to experience his services personally. Who, by the way has a website. It’s not GREAT, but it’s a lot better than a lot I’ve seen!

I’m so mad that I’m even in this position. But it’s something I feel strongly about.

UGH!!!!!!