Aaahhhh. Back in the work saddle after a nice 2 weeks off. Ready to go again. Ran a lot over the break, for me that is. Have run 16 of the last 19 days, mostly 3-4 milers, with only 1 6-miler. The weather has been too cold to gone for really long runs and drywalling, etc has taken up a big chunk of my energy. But they have been great runs for the most part, especially out at the farm with the deer and the elk to watch -- no moose thankfully.

Have been doing a good bit of reading: 2 books especially that have grabbed me are John Ralston Saul's 'A Fair Country' and Alex Ross's 'the Rest Is Noise.' I am not at all sure that I agree with everything that Saul has to say but most of it I do like and he has given me a lot to think about, both about Canada and the United States. That Canada is a Metis nation and that gives it a unique shape and identity in the modern world seems obvious to me but at times he really seems to push the concept beyond it's legitimate bounds. He beats on the nation's elite pretty hard, and for the most part they undoubtedly deserve it. But he does seems to belabor the issue for far too long and into thickets that he finds it hard to get back out of. While he, I think, clearly identifies Canada's national inferiority complex, he misses the fact of the US also having one vis-a-vis Europe, though in the American case it is much more schizophrenic.

Overall I thought it a very good book and hopefully a serious national conversation starter for where we as a country are going and why. I would like to have a discussion of it involving the Aboriginal community and their own perceptions, as they, like Hispanics and other minorities in the United States, are becoming major players on the national stage in their own right and not just the old "What are we going to do with/about them?"