Mental refreshment on a bed of anxiety
I guess that title is kind of a recipe for the weekend I just had. I'm more determined than ever to achieve some kind of work/rest-of-life balance, and so in that spirit I banned all work from my mind for the weekend. The only part of this that ended up being not so good was that I awoke this morning with a nasty sinking rueful return to work feeling, which, when you work all the time, you kind of avoid. Also, there was the fact that I realized I hadn't so much prepared a lecture for this morning as thrown together some likely powerpoint slides on Friday afternoon, and most of them contained facts I couldn't really support. Luckily, I had a critical ten minutes by myself following breakfast that let me put together enough to sustain myself through 50 minutes of talking. It seemed to work out ok.
Along with my weekend of blissful family time, planning a nice trip to Barbados in April, going out for my first decent run in almost 2 years (and not having a heart attack --actually enjoying it), some Nordic skiing on what's left of the white stuff (more like Nordic skating really) and then a fun and rare dinner out with all 8 of us at an Irish pub (because we knew our chances of getting into the place, not to mention the kind of welcome we'd get with two 4 year olds in tow) if we tried to do it today, I had this nagging ache in the back of my brain as I watched the financial crisis in the US deepen. This all lended an air of unreality to my family bliss.
It's pretty hard to take things lightly when, reading between the lines of even the more staid and conservative media south of the border, the message seems to be that one wrong move or bit of bad luck right now could lay the US financial system in ruins. Strangely, right now, the Canadian system seems to be ticking along. We're still building houses and making jobs somehow, though I notice that while the value of the US dollar is sinking like a stone against many other markers (and will plunge tomorrow when the interest rates are cut deeply), it's holding steady against the Canadian dollar, which means that our currency must be devaluing as well.
So I'm vacillating between thinking that this is just a slight pothole in the inevitable but so far fairly gradual ratcheting down of a growth economy based on fossil fuels to thinking we might just be staring off the edge of a cliff right now. Take off the blinders and it isn't hard to see oneself in Canada as the neighbour of a lumbering great beast that has just woken up to discover that its credit has run out, it doesn't know how to make anything anymore, it has a long historic feeling of entitlement, and a helluva big stack of weapons ready at hand.
With that kind of subtext, it felt a bit surreal to be thinking about flying to the Caribbean. We looked at the pretty websites and even sent a couple of email questions, but nobody was pushing the "pay" button just yet.
Along with my weekend of blissful family time, planning a nice trip to Barbados in April, going out for my first decent run in almost 2 years (and not having a heart attack --actually enjoying it), some Nordic skiing on what's left of the white stuff (more like Nordic skating really) and then a fun and rare dinner out with all 8 of us at an Irish pub (because we knew our chances of getting into the place, not to mention the kind of welcome we'd get with two 4 year olds in tow) if we tried to do it today, I had this nagging ache in the back of my brain as I watched the financial crisis in the US deepen. This all lended an air of unreality to my family bliss.
It's pretty hard to take things lightly when, reading between the lines of even the more staid and conservative media south of the border, the message seems to be that one wrong move or bit of bad luck right now could lay the US financial system in ruins. Strangely, right now, the Canadian system seems to be ticking along. We're still building houses and making jobs somehow, though I notice that while the value of the US dollar is sinking like a stone against many other markers (and will plunge tomorrow when the interest rates are cut deeply), it's holding steady against the Canadian dollar, which means that our currency must be devaluing as well.
So I'm vacillating between thinking that this is just a slight pothole in the inevitable but so far fairly gradual ratcheting down of a growth economy based on fossil fuels to thinking we might just be staring off the edge of a cliff right now. Take off the blinders and it isn't hard to see oneself in Canada as the neighbour of a lumbering great beast that has just woken up to discover that its credit has run out, it doesn't know how to make anything anymore, it has a long historic feeling of entitlement, and a helluva big stack of weapons ready at hand.
With that kind of subtext, it felt a bit surreal to be thinking about flying to the Caribbean. We looked at the pretty websites and even sent a couple of email questions, but nobody was pushing the "pay" button just yet.
posted by Colin at 1:05 PM
1 Comments:
Try living here.....
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