The Hilton Chronicle

So the dust has settled on yet another federal election and once again we are faced with a minority government. As one commentator put it, we now have a chance to "test drive" the Conservative administration for about 18 months. I must say I was impressed with Steven Harper's victory address. He seemed very forthright and focused, however, it will be interesting to see if he, as with any other political leader for that matter, can live up to his promises. The Liberals couldn't and some of the things the Conservatives are promising seem pretty far out there. Reducing the GST? I'll believe that one when I see it. But it is good to finally get a young, aggressive PM who is not a lawyer from Quebec.
I have a few days off now to complete the work on the spare room. I had to do some repairs to our paint job which I damaged taking down the old ceiling grid. Should've done that first I guess. Not a big deal and the room should be finished by the weekend.

Posted 1:24 PM by Jeff

Friday, January 20, 2006

Balmy January

Here we are getting close to the end of January already and there still hasn't been much of a winter here yet. It's quite unbelievable really. I don't think I've ever seen the lawn in January.
Of course everybody is getting geared up for the big election this Monday and based on the polls it looks like it's going to be very interesting. That is if you can go by what the polls say, but, nevertheless, I think it is going to be very close. I just get a kick out of the nasty commercials each party is running to put the other leaders down, but I think that the Liberals are grasping at straws with some of their accusations.
Our spare room renos are nearing completion. The paint is on the walls and it looks very nice. I got the organizer and the doors on the closet and we picked up some new ceiling tiles and a light fixture yesterday although I have not been feeling too energetic about installing them as I am on midnights at the moment. However, I have some days off next week and that should be good to get everything completed including setting up the bed and the furniture. And not too soon either as we may be needing that room within the next couple of weeks for a special guest. More about that later.

Posted 7:44 PM by Jeff

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Mac Goodness

Finished up painting the guest room last night and it's looking pretty sweet. We had to go with four coats in order to cover the dark blue that ran up half the wall. Now I just have to repaint the baseboards and replace the ceiling tiles, which I hope to get done this weekend, and then we can set up the bed. Oh, I guess I'd better finish off the closet too.
It tried to snow again the other day and we got a bit of a skiff but not much to write home about. Today the sun was back out but the temps have been staying below freezing so the roads have not been melting and remain a bit slick.
The big news the other day was that Apple finally introduced the Intel powered MacBook and as I am not a big Apple user I was not too interested. I'll wait till Microsoft releases Vista this summer to see what kind of a debacle that is. In the meantime it's interesting to see what the Macheads think of the new machine and from what I've read they are not impressed. Granted, Intel can supply a wider range of more powerful chips than Motorola/IBM could, but I guess they have stripped a few features off the Macbook, presumabley to aid in the power consumption which is up with the new chips. So it will be interesting to see where this goes as they roll out the new machine. Boom or bust, Apple still has only a small percentage of the computer market. Now lets see what Bill Gates has up his sleeve.

Posted 10:12 PM by Jeff

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Back to the Humdrum

So after a week into the new year there isn't much news to report. Things have pretty much gone back to normal. Everyone is back at work although school doesn't start for Sandi til tomorrow. We've started work on repainting Nikki's old room which will now become the new guest room a little bit bigger than the existing one which at the moment is piled up with stuff so we can't have any guests. The new paint job shouldn't take as long as Nikki's room to do as we are only going with the one color and we are leaving the baseboards in place. The closet organizer is built and just needs to be assembled and we'll need to buy another set of closet doors. Always something to do.
It's a couple of weeks to go before the election and so far we haven't heard a lot of campaigning although I can't imagine anyone west of Winnipeg even remotely thinking about voting for the Liberals. Can't say as much for those Easterners, though.
We're into the second week of January and still no appreciable amount of snow anywhere and we're lovin' it! And I'll bet the city is saving a bundle on snow removable. Too bad they can't divert a bit of that cash to pothole repair.

Posted 5:04 PM by Jeff

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