Some thoughts from the past few days, as Blogger has not been letting me publish posts for some reason:

Question Period has been getting awful lately; watching Ujjal Dosanjh try to sound tough on Afghanistan is almost laughable and I'm really wondering how a former NDP premier managed to land the slot of defence critic. Isn't it an oxymoron?

Jane Taber is almost farcical. Did anyone catch her little quip at the end of an interview when she said, "It doesn't take that much effort to lower a flag"? She completely missed the point of what the Conservatives were doing by not proclaiming it a day of national mourning every time Canadian soldiers are killed in combat. Yes, we know that it's a tragedy and no less horrific because it's happening in a situation where we're doing our damndest to help build a democracy in that country, but we have a national day of mourning already: Remembrance Day. Here at Dalhousie the flag always seems to be flying at half-mast, and the majority of the time I don't know why. Most often I hadn't heard about any Canadian soldiers suffering fatalities, no Canadian heads of state were dying, the flag would just be at half-mast. Taber is out of line when she says that the government is being lazy by not lowering the flag. Given the way this conflict is heating up, I don't want to see the Canadian flag semi-permanently at half-staff; it's depressing and it hurts the national morale for a conflict in which support is already too soft as it is.

It's very nice to be done phase one of this graduate program of mine, allowing me to take a few days of rest before plunging into phase two. I was hoping there would be some papers written earlier in the semester waiting to be picked up when I'm done so that I have an idea as to how I'm doing in the course. Alas, I must wait until Friday. I hope that the folks who haven't gotten their stuff done, over two weeks after the deadline now, are able to do so. I've always had a real problem with the idea of a student "not being able" to get a paper done on time, especially when the prof has already bent over backwards to push deadlines back by over a week. It's something of an insult to the majority of students who do get their stuff done before the deadline, in spite of all the other class assignments and distractions. I guess that's why I never had a problem with the heavy-handed approach used by some of my undergrad professors who simply wouldn't accept late papers. But I'm ranting now and could be stepping on some folks' toes. Heaven forbid I don't be supportive, right?

The weather has reverted to being blech again; so much for springtime having sprung. It's more than a shade depressing looking out my window and seeing fog and barely being able to make out the outline of trees that haven't even bloomed yet. It's a far cry from what I'm accustomed to seeing in late April; I'll have to ensure that wherever I may roam from here has a lot more actual spring in its seasons.

What a game last night!! A complete emotional roller coaster, as we were up 3, down 1, up 1, tied, then a double-OT winner. Phew!!! Allow a few less shots though; Huet's been great but you can only pepper a guy with so many shots until he ends up being Roberto Luongo: a great goalie that can make enough saves so that you only lose by one or two goals on a nightly basis and make you look a lot better than you really are. GO HABS GO!