Love those May flowers!

I saw the most beautiful boulevards and traffic circles filled with flowers today as we drove through the City of Flowers. Just beautiful all the colours!! Must've been all those April showers we had! :P Today it rained, too, so no laundry got done. This is a tricky time of year to get laundry done and have it line-dried. I should really set up some kind of drying system under the deck outside, but I think the high humidity when it's raining would inhibit drying, even if it were out of the rain but still outside.

It's been a very busy few days, going right into the city each day for the past four. I took yesterday off rowing, but did instruct tai chi for 2 hrs. Today I rowed 7 kms, despite nearly leaving it too late (we had to leave about 2 mins after I finished rowing).

Today I listened to the news in the car, being as unplugged with the media as I usually am, to catch up on current events:

It was the federal election in Canada today. The Prime Minister is the incumbent Steven Harper. Locally we saw the first Green MP in Canada get elected in the nearby Saanich-Gulf Islands area with the election of Green party leader Elizabeth May. It was very interesting to listen to the live election results coverage and the kids (especially the older one) were quite interested in what was going on. I always take the kids into the polling station with me and explain the process. I've never had a problem taking them in there with me and today was no exception. I think role-modelling is a way of underscoring the importance of voting.

In today's news the other very much talked about piece of news was the death of Osama Bin Laden, nearly 10 years after 9/11.

And it was also tax-deadline day in Canada. Typically it's midnight on April 30th, but because that fell on a weekend this year, it was extended to May 2nd at midnight for netfiled returns but paper returns still had to be postmarked April 30th.

When we were at the petting zoo in town the other day we saw the pygmy goat kids named Will and Kate. They were sooooooo cute (okay, all babies of any species are cute). There was another goat mama who had had quadruplets (!!!) and the two boys were named Henrik and Daniel (after the Sedin twins from the Vancouver Canucks). Very cute, but someone was buying one boy and one girl from that litter, and personally, I thought it was just wrong to split those boys up. They ought to have gone to the same home. I couldn't believe Will and Kate weren't sold yet and really had to restrain myself from putting a deposit down on them. That being said, do I really *need* pygmy goats around here?! I haven't even got a barn built for them (although we certainly have the space for goats), and even though they don't come home for 3 months, it's still insane to take any more animal critters on at this time. See? I can show common sense and restraint... at times. LOL :P (oh, and btw, if i haven't mentioned it, i really enjoyed listening to and reading about the royal wedding. i listened to the highlights on bbc radio on friday and just loved that the speech by the priest sounded like he'd read the Anastasia series. i kept hearing references to the series in his words.)

Well, that's about all the news from here. I've got some great books calling my name right now, so I must end my ramblings here.

Namaste'