In more ways than one: both Sally and are operating with brains in a fog and the clouds outside have decided to camp out on our doorstep.   We can only see about 25 meters.  Oh well, it is just a fog and a cold and we’ll live.  Into every life a little plague must be inflicted, eh?

Speaking of which, a good friend has an incapacitating disease.  It was one of the reasons for us going to town on such short notice.  This man, amongst the strongest and healthiest I know and who has always treated his body as a temple, is fading before our eyes.  They don’t even know what it is!!  Man, oh man!

I often chant from the wooded pulpit the blessings bestowed on those who grab life by the horns or, at the very least, have Sal grab ém and share them with me.  You know, carpé diem.  And this just reinforces that.  He deserves more.  His wife deserves more. Everyone deserves more than just work, work, work and then a dinner party.   I confess to being a bit bummed out by it all.  NOT for me.  I am a lucky one.  But I feel very sorry for those trapped by the rat race and not having a chance to live fully. 

Most of those reading this are my contemporaries.  The 55+ crowd.  We’ve covered a few miles, we have.  Sometimes traveling together for a while.  So, anytime spent writing about the capriciousness of life is wasted on us, really.  We know how fickle it can be.  We’ve all been fickled a few times.  Still it bears repeating: life is not a recipe.  You can’t win at it.  Nor does accumulating stuff give life meaning.  The magic of our existence is just that – magic!  And it has to be enjoyed and fully experienced to get it’s meaning.  To do otherwise is a waste of opportunity.  I have no idea what dreams you may still cling to but I urge you to manifest them as much as you can as soon as you can.  At 62, life is not quite yet short but long term planning is no longer much of a topic for Sal and me. 

The end of October represents the onset of winter for us.  Didn’t use to.  When I was living in the city winter always happened without me noticing.  One day I was driving in the rain and the next, I was driving in the snow.  “Wow!  Winter!” I exaggerate a bit, of course, but I was definitely not in tune with the seasons back then.  Out here, it seems, you can tell the very day it shifts.  There is a ‘nip’ in the air.  For us, it was around October 10.  One day, we were in shirt sleeves and the next we were setting the fire.  We are definitely feeling the onset of winter nowadays.  Once again: it all happens so fast!

I’d prefer to keep this blog all about my daily life out here but phlegm production has little to offer in literary terms so, if you’ll forgive this minor rant – what the hell is wrong with this picture?

Some old granny, admittedly a cross and angry woman, gets ten months in jail for civil disobedience protesting highways, the felling of old growth forests and the like.  She may be grouchy but I like her values.  Anyway – they sentence her to ten months in the slammer!  She pays her dues and then appeals the sentence (they can’t give her the time back) on principle.  She thinks she was done wrong.  The Crown compares her to a serial pedophile, a criminal who is so habitual in their misbehaviour that she may have to be regarded as incorrigible and locked away forever.  Imagine what our justice system would have done to Ghandi?  Their reaction is a smidge of an over reaction, it seems to me, but that ol’ Crown can get pretty testy itself.  Hell, show some contempt for the system and you can be put away for being ‘rude’ to the judge.  Such a justice system requires careful watching.  Even more so nowadays.  Walk tenderly on those eggshells, my friends, Big Bro is watching you a lot!

And so I watched them.  Loved to watch the Basi-Virk trial.  A farce of colossal proportions.   These two low-on-the-pole minions of Gordon Campbell facilitated the corruption of the sale of BC Rail.  They were on trial as the minor scapegoats and that was bad enough.  Of course they plead innocent (and they are in the sense that that they were just doing their bosses bidding).  Half-way through this multi-million dollar trial, the government decided to promote the judge sitting at the time and so they had to start all over again.  More money, more time.  The trial was finally getting near the end and, when it appeared that the prosecution was about to call the minister responsible to the witness box and, likely, the premier as well, Basi and Virk ‘cop’ a plea.

Typically when a plea is offered, it is a reduced charge type of compromise.  Not this time.  Basi-Virk confessed fully.  100%.  “We are guilty as charged.”

All the investigations and all the trial time was for nought.  They did it!  They were bad.  They took a bribe.  They facilitated a deal that was dubious at best, nefarious by confession and most likely corrupt as all hell and they had cost the taxpayers millions in the process.

The judge’s job was made easy.  Only sentencing remained.  “You have to pay back the bribe and you are under house arrest for a year.” 

“Huh!?”

Basi-Virk pleading guilty to a crime that harms the public and they get nothing!?  Granny goes to jail for sitting cross-legged disrupting traffic?  What about the all the money Basi-Virk wasted?  No fines?  No jail time?  How about paying the court costs or should I pay for that like all the other taxpayers?  House arrest is a joke!

So is our justice system.

Honest – happy blogging next.