Boxing Week

Too Angry?
I may have to go off the polit­i­cal com­men­tary for a while. It’s just get­ting me furi­ous and there’s no point any more. I did what I could — more than most, I sup­pose — and it’s up to oth­ers to take on the fight. With any luck, Pam and I will have avoid­ed the com­ing crash. Already I’ve seen some omi­nous signs of the US Nation­al Debt start­ing to appear in the news again. It’s unfor­tu­nate that Cana­da is still so depen­dent on the US as a trad­ing part­ner, but even they are wis­ing up and increas­ing oil exports to Chi­na, who I no longer have any doubt will be the dom­i­nant super­pow­er in the com­ing decades. In the mean­time, I am going to have to just shake my head and hope that my fam­i­ly and friends are able to dodge the bul­lets as well.

Box­ing Week
You know that the hol­i­day sea­son has gained a larg­er foot­print when peo­ple start nam­ing the peri­od between Christ­mas and New Year’s Day. With Christ­mas falling on a Sun­day this year, Box­ing Day fell on Mon­day. That meant that the entire rest of the week would be a down-time for a lot of com­pa­nies (includ­ing mine), and stores are run­ning post-Christ­mas/Year-end close­out sales to take advan­tage of so many peo­ple who now have time to shop. The result is that Box­ing Day has become an entire week. We’ve even seen signs on mer­chant win­dows around town that say ‘Box­ing Week Sale’ on them. I sup­pose that’s one way to avoid the crush of peo­ple all try­ing to take advan­tage of a one-day event.

A US Visit
Tomor­row, Pam and I are going to ven­ture back into the US. While I’ve already done this a few times since we moved here, Pam has not. I won­der if I’ll start to notice more dif­fer­ences between the US and Cana­da. It will also be inter­est­ing to use our pass­ports and my work per­mit when we re-enter Cana­da. I’m not expect­ing any trou­ble, but it will be yet anoth­er first.