BenVimes

Honestly, I always liked getting up early on weekends (at least before I had kids). Those hours been 7 and 10 were mine in a way that my other free time wasn't. Because everyone else wanted to sleep in, I had no social obligations and thus could do whatever I wanted. There was a certain joy to having all my weekend chores done early. Or, if I didn't want to do chores, I could just relax and not worry about trying to align with anyone else's schedule.

It's like when a kid flips off their teacher but uses their ring finger. They'll try to claim innocence because they didn't actually use their middle finger.

I watched some of that original CGDQ stream live, and it's amazing how far they've come.

I've seen the sort. When confronted with the real-world results of their moralizing, they retreat to quoting cherry-picked Bible verses and posting pictures of fetuses ("look how human she looks!").

It's stereotypical, but I want to continue getting fit.

After decades is putting it off, I finally felt inspired to start exercising regularly back in September. I'm going to try to keep that up, and I know it's going to be hard because we'll be welcoming a child into the world early in the new year.

I guess another resolution would be, "try not to lose my sanity dealing with a newborn and toddler at the same time."

The glib answer is that Torontonians think their city is the centre of the world, and people from other cities find that attitude insufferable.

The serious answer is that the current premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, personally hates the Toronto city council for some stuff that happened when he was a councillor and his late brother Rob was mayor. Doug Ford has used his powers as premier to wage a vendetta against Toronto, and it's all apparently legal because of the way the laws governing the relationship between the province and its cities work.

It's not manufactured goods, but Canada imports a lot of produce from the US.

During the last Trump administration, I avoided buying American-grown fruit and vegetables whenever I could.

I fully appreciate that, and it's the same in Canada for many people. I've witnessed it personally. I'm very fortunate to be in a position to handle that sort of thing.

The hospital just wrote it off instead, so the cost was passed to the Canadian taxpayer. Lucky for me, but frustrating all the same. I would have rather the insurance pay like the were supposed to.

Hell, I'm from Canada where we have (mostly) socialized medicine, and the one time I made a claim on private insurance it was denied. That was after I had called them to confirm that yes, my policy (should have) covered that expense.

And it was only a few hundred bucks too, so my frustration was more about the principle of the thing rather than the cost.

The article says "Canadian leaders" but only mentions the Deputy PM by name. That troubles me.

Canada is on track to a Conservative government in our next election. The current Liberal regime is long in the tooth and Trudeau is unpopular. One of my biggest worries is that the new Conservative government will put appeasing Trump over the interests of Canadians.

I looked at a few Canadian news outlets, and it seems that this announcement by the Deputy PM is coming on the heels of a First Ministers' meeting, which is the council of the PM and all ten provincial premiers. Nothing about this indicates that the federal opposition is on board, though the most conservative premier (Danielle Smith of Alberta) seemed to think it was a productive meeting.

With Doug Ford, that's kind of the point. He's in deep with the companies that will be awarded the contracts.