I haven't been posting because it's taken me a couple of days to recover from the election results here in Canada. It was a dark dark day as we elected a Conservative government for the first time in 13 years. Why am I so glum about this? Well this is Canada and here we generally like our women to have rights, our gays to have rights and we aren't so keen to send our troops to war based on false information. Or at least, I believed that's how we thought. Yet we now have a government that has publicly opposed women's right to choose, gay's right to marry, and has said that if it had been in power at the start of the Iraq War it would have sent our (arguably pathetic) army to war. Oy, what's to become of us with these people in charge? Dare I say it? We could become more American (and as insulting as that may sound it's not meant to be so much as an acknowledgment that we differ when it comes to such issues, and that being the case, I was happy I was on the northern side of the border. now it looks like the border may be blurred).

However, the Liberal government was a disgrace and woefully corrupt. I can't say I'm going to miss them given how they stole money from all our pockets in order to line their own. I was *thrilled* when I heard Prime Minister Paul Martin announce that he would not lead the Liberal party in the next election. Thank God, I've had about enough of him.

Overall, I'm hoping the fact that the Conservative party is being kept on a short leash (by being a minority party and therefore needing the help of another party in order to get anything passed) may actually lead to some good changes here in Canada. Ya never know, this may be better for us than I thought.... so long as their medieval/outdated thinking doesn't take us backward instead of forward.

Whew, am I boring you with all this talk of Canadian politics, yet? I'm sure most of you couldn't give a rats ass and indeed a few may not even have heard we chose a new Prime Minister, but I thought I'd toss in my two cents worth and go political for a bit. It's so unlike me, isn't it? I can't wait to hear all the angry and Conservative comments I'm going to get.

In other news, I had lunch with my new boss yesterday which went really well and we seem to hit it off. We both have a sarcastic sense of humour so we get along fantastically. We also had our first conference call today and I only had to put up with 2 or 3 stereotypical Canadian jokes from my American counterparts in the company. For added fun it looks like I'll be spending a week in Buffalo/Rochester (New York), a week in Tampa and then at the end of February a week in San Antonio, Texas. Lemme tell ya, Texas is about the last state I ever imagined myself visiting so this should be entertaining.

The countdown is on to me officially starting my job on Monday. The boss will be coming up from the US and we will be doing training for a week up here. Yeeeha!!