Author: Doug Rutherford

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Housecleaning

Someone explain to me why housecleaning is important. I mean, really important. I’m certain that most people have far more important things to do than clean the house. I work all day. I cook. I shop for groceries. I have things I do outside work. Why do I have to clean the house?

Yes, I know people are coming over. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that they, too, have lives and would be far happier taking the housecleaning thing and throwing it on the back burner. So, when you come to their place, you don’t think their house is untidy. You think, “Wow, what fulfilling lives they have” or something equally profound. “They do far more neat things than housecleaning.” Let’s be honest. Shouldn’t a really clean house be the sign of someone with no life.

My cousin Alma’s husband in Northern Ireland sent me an e-mail that sums up how to deal with it. Go to the store and buy a get well card and put a bunch of  illegible signatures on the bottom of it. A whole pile of signatures. Next, place it somewhere on the shelf where no company could possibly miss it. They’ll see it and think, “Hey, he’s been too sick to clean…”

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Weekend Planning

I seem to have a great deal planned, or overplanned, for the upcoming weekend. Its so loaded down that I actually took Monday and Tuesday as vacation days to do everything I had planned.

We have the reading of the play on Sunday, but that needs a fair bit of work to get ready, doing things such as cleaning, getting the BBQ ready, etc. Yes, I am bribing my readers with food and drink. I’m not above that. The menu is rib eye steak, baked potatoes, onions, sauteed mushrooms, cole slaw, potato salad and roast corn. We’ll wash it down with Keith’s and a nice red. You may want to consider this for the next time I need readers…

Once that is out of the way, it’s time to get the motorhome ready for the long weekend. I’ll probably be commuting to work a few days although I’m not sure what Clara’s up for. I will admit that I am not looking forward to the first camping trip without smoking. Maybe I’ll follow the rules. I am allowed to have a cigarette whenever I want. Its just got to come from my emergency pack. In case you’re curious, my emergency pack is the one I was smoking six months ago when I quit. Its been open in a drawer since then. I suspect that the contents may be a little… ahem… dry. OK, a lot dry.

Tuesday afternoon may be a bit interesting as well. A freind has been commissioned to do a photo shoot for Up Here magazine and we get to be models for photos on RVing in the north. He said he’ll try to get us the cover… or put me as the centrefold. Somehow, I can picture myself with staples in my bellybutton now. Its not a good picture…

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The Stupid Weather

I’ll admit that the weather this morning wasn’t too awful. It was raining. We haven’t seen rain since the fall so it was refreshing.

However, on the way to work this morning, that changed. It started to snow. I mean really snow. It was downright depressing.

But, the snow has since melted and it got up to 5° today. So, I decided to barbeque a few steaks for dinner tonight. It started hailing. What’s with this?

By the way, in the last 70 years, it has snowed and accumulated 50 of those years in the month of May. It isn’t new. It just sucks.

Oh, by the way. Its supposed to snow tonight…

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Play Read Through

I feel like an expectant father. This weekend, I’m having the first read through for my play. This will be my first chance to actually hear how it will sound done by actors. Not only do I get to hear but I’ve managed to come up with three really good people to do it as well. 

This will give me a chance to hear it so I can make my last edits before sending it on to a dramaturg. Nakai and Gwaandak theatre companies are bring someone up to do dramaturgy in June and this will probably represent the last big edit before running it in the Homegrown festival next May.

I’ve finallized the reading version and have sent the script on to two of the actors. I need the e-mail address for the third but have sent him a Facebook message and am waiting to hear back. Onwards and upwards…

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What’s Worse than being Sick on the Weekend?

There’s nothing worse than having a whole list of plans for the weekend and being sick and getting to almost nothing. I’m getting really tired of this, no pun intended.

The current guess as to what’s wrong is an infection with the possibility of having mono… again. I really am not that worried about the infection business, but mono will screw up my knee surgery that’s coming up in June or early July and I don’t want that to happen. I had blood work done to tell for sure on Wednesday afternoon so I really should have heard by now. The lab is on site at my doctor’s office so I think that, if I had it, I would have heard by now. I’m figuring tomorrow will be  the last possible day to hear if I do.

So now, I get to compress some things. I have to get the motorhome ready as well as do some housecleaning for company coming next Sunday. I want to take the motorhome out a week from Wednesday night to make sure I get a good site. I may actually go out Tuesday if its ready and this will let me do a bit of commuting.

That being said, I have three people coming Sunday evening to do a read through for the play. There’s a dramaturg coming up from Vancouver sometime in June so I want a read through before the last editing before handing over to be sliced, diced and Julienne fried by the dramaturg. Or not. Hopefully….

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Change in Direction

The term is over, although I am overseeing a practicum but that won’t be taxing, and the election is over and my last CBC blog posted has been submitted and posted. It is now time, or long past it, to start thinking about camping season.

The current plan is heading out to Fox Lake for an upcoming weekend and I may possibly commute the week after as well. It’s about a 45-minute drive, although it is a bit quicker at 6 am when commuting. If you’re wondering what it’s like, the banner photograph on my blog is from Fox Lake Campground (61°14′ 42″ N 135° 27′ 38″ W).

I do have a bit of work to do first. Step 1 is getting the RV ready and there is a lot that needs doing. Some of you are probably rather aware, I spent a lot of time working on it last year as well. There are a few plumbing issues left to resolve, including getting a new grey water tank welded up and installing it. I also need to replace the fitting on the water heater where water enters it as it is leaking like a sieve. Doing plumbing repairs in anything with as little space as an RV is no fun at all but, the sooner it’s done, the sooner I can start repairing something else. This is how things work, isn’t it? It certainly appears that way in my life.

I also need to spend a bit of time setting up the trailer and the new boat. We’re looking forward to actually getting the bottom of it wet sometime next month when the ice leaves the lakes. Hopefully, that will happen before I go for knee surgery next month… an event that will probably prevent fishing for a few weeks.

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I’m Going to Trademark the Expression ‘Unite the Left’

This is the last of my CBC Your Take blog entries. Thanks to the CBC for the opportunity to write them and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them over the election.

Unite the Left is probably going to be a phrase you hear reasonably frequently in the near future. This is due to the Liberal Party being devastated in last night’s election, and this result was also seen in the Yukon.

Larry Bagnell, the Liberal incumbent who has held the seat since 2000 lost (by a rather narrow margin of less than 1% of the total vote) to Conservative Ryan Leef. Larry received 5,290 votes to 5,422 votes. In 2008, the Conservative candidate, Darrell Pasloski, won 4,788 votes and 32.66% of the vote. Ryan Leef won 634 votes  more than the CPC won last time when it was running a very popular local businessman.

What happened in this election? Larry Bagnell garnered 1,425 fewer votes this time. This is important in that about 1,330 more people voted in this election than in 2008. The population, using estimates, increased by about 2,000 people over that time.

Where did Larry’s votes go? I think much of the answer can be seen in that John Streicker, the Green Party candidate, received more than 1,150 votes more than he did in the 2008 campaign and Kevin Barr, the NDP candidate, received more than 1,030 more votes than the NDP representative did last time.

This was a bit of a suprise, since many people thought that either Larry or John were a shoe-in for the seat and last week, the local polling firm placed Larry as receiving about 44% of the vote. Ryan Leef was supposed to garner 24% of the vote (a result that, once again, reaffirms my belief in the correlation between polling and witchcraft).

How similar will these numbers will be when the official results are released? It will be interesting to see if the increased number of voters reflects an increase in the youth vote or not.

So, I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out. And, I’m also looking forward to seeing how many people want to use my new trademarked phrase… for, of course, the appropriate fee.

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Local Election Coverage

Just a quick note on election coverage here in the Yukon. CBC Yukon will be airing coverage after the polls close at 7 pm PDT and will also be airing comments posted to their Facebook page (@cbcyukonforum).

Don’t forget that desseminating election results using social media before all of the polls in the country are closed is an offence under the Canada Elections Act.

My assumption is that everyone has their code phrases down… e.g., the trout flies at midnight or Egg Management Fee!

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Kinky Stuff

Seems that Sun is pushing a news story that, in 1996, Jack Layton was interviewed after being found at a massage therapist’s clinic in Toronto that may also have been serving some other purpose… one probably as healthy but not as legal. Keep in mind that he was, according to Toronto police, doing nothing wrong nor was he arrested. Sun is reporting this based on an unnamed source.

This kind of news by insinuation makes me laugh, simply because Sun was forced to deal with this last week… only they were the targets. Last week, Sun was complaining bitterly that a Conservative Party campaign consultant working from the US fed a them misleading news story about Michael Ignatieff’s potential involvement in the Iraq War. The supposed picture of Ignatieff, when a higher resolution photo was ctually produced by the party, was obviously someone else. The party fired that consultant in question and Sun management have been publicly fuming since.

The OPP, by the way, are investigating the leak of police information regarding Jack Layton. The individual involved, if found, will face rather serious breach of trust charges.

The one thing that gets me, of course, is that I go for massages. My wife does too. Not only that, she goes to the same masseuse as I do. Sun TV must think the two of us are REALLY kinky…

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I’ve Made Up My Mind Now

There are three campaigning days left. The candidates will be spending the next days working overtime trying to get you out to vote and, of course, to vote for them.

Traditionally, I tend to make my way to the polling station early on polling day, and this time around will be no exception. Yes, I have made up my mind as to who I am voting for, although it was largely done through process of elimination. There were two of the four candidates eliminated quite quickly. One thing that may suprise you is the fact that the first one I eliminated would be the candidate from the party I normally support. Normally is a relative word, however, and the fact that he was the first candidate dropped from my list is of no suprise to me. My party last fielded someone I saw as a viable candidate in 2000 and there was no difference this election.

The second candidate I dropped would be one whose philosophy differed from mine drastically. Two things helped me decide. I don’t really support his party in particular, and his performance through the campaign strongly indicated that he was in no way prepared for the job anyway.

That left two. it took me a while to decide, as the one candidate I eventually decided was not getting my vote did seem quite passionate. But I’m really not a big fan of his party either and some of his approach during the campaign made me wonder if he was capable of the job. Yes, this means I decided based on the people I wouldn’t be voting for to select the one receiving my vote. He isn’t the ideal choice, but, I guess, he’s my choice.

This probably represents my last post before voting day. All I can suggest to you is: Vote. Even if you cannot find someone who matches your viewpoint on how the riding should be represented, at least submit a blank ballot or mark them all. If you don’t participate, you have no right to complain when things don’t go the way you’d wish.

Enjoy your weekend.