Canada politics

Canada is our neighbor to the north and the closest foreign country to where I live. (probably only a 6-8 drive or 1-2 flight to Canada). I am interested in world politics and feel I have a lot of (sometime useless) knowledge about leaders and recent history of other countires. However, it dawned on me that I know almost nothing about Canada and I have no idea who their prime minister is. While I know of the Fidel Castros, Hugo Chavezes, and Vicente Foxes of Latin America, the Tony Blairs, Jaques Chiracs and Vladmir Putins of Europe and the Hamid Karzai, Hosni Mubarak, Ariel Sharon, and many others of the Middle East, I don't have the foggiest idea who the Prime Minister of Canada is. Granted, a lot of this is because the news media doesn't really cover Canada, (Canada just isn't in the news quite like the middle east) so I'm sure many people don't know either, but I just feel weird that I have no idea who the leader is of the closest neigboring country. I think for a lot of people it may be easier to name every Russian/Soviet leader of the past century or every Israeli Prime Minister then just one leader in Canada. Let's see the Soviet Union had Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltin & Putin, Israel has had Rabin, Peres, Netenyahu, Barak, and Sharon while Canada had ???. Come on Canada! Make some news so I know who your prime minister is.

fog on Friday the 13th

I don't know if it's just me, but last night may have been the foggiest night I have ever seen. You could barely see 100 yards ahead. I don't know what the official visibility was, but it sure wasn't much. It looked almost eerie outside. Maybe it's appropriate that the heavy fog came on Friday the 13th.

New Years resolutions

I hope everybody had a happy and fun New Years Eve! Can't believe how far into the 21st century we already are. 2005 was a pretty good year. I traveled to some new places I had never been to before (Caribbean, New Hampshire&Maine, Oregon) Met some cool new people, reconnected with some old friends I hadn't talked to in a while. I hope 2006 is another good year.

Every year people make new years resolutions and generally people make some of the same ones (lose weight, pay off debt, etc.) Two of my new years resolutions are:
1) drink less alcohol
2) spend less time in front of a computer.

Drinking less alcohol is a resolution I made the last few years, and for parts of 2005 I did a good job (I think I went over a month this summer without drinking a single beer) but over the last few months I feel like I'm back in college going out multiple nights a week. If you look at my previous posting from the other week about going to bars you can see that I've spend much of my 20's inside drinking establishments. I still like going to bars because it's fun and I'm sure I'll still be going to lots of bars in 2006 and still be drinking beer, but I'll try to do less drinking than in previous years.

My blog is somewhat counterproductive to #2 since maintaining a blog will require more time in front of a computer. Since I look at a computer screen most of the day at work I want to lessen the amount of time I'm in front of a computer at home. I guess how much time I spend in front of a computer is a function of the weather. During summer when there is daylight past 8, I'm often outdoors whether riding my bike, hiking, playing basketball or traveling somewhere, but in the winter there isn't much to do so I end up spending a lot more time at home and a lot more time in front of the computer. Looking at a computer screen all day isn't really a bad thing, but it's something I would like to do a little less of in 06. Plus I'd imagine it's got to be bad for your eyes to look at TV and computer screens all the time.