supposebly

Windchill -44C. I think it's the coldest morning this winter, ignoring night time lows. The weird thing, tomorrow morning, it will be -7C with -16C wind chill. I better get my migraine pills ready.

-35C this morning. I'm working from home today.

It sounds extreme, of course, but I do think there is a kernel of truth. I wonder if you asked any man what their role models are and see if there are any women in there.

A better life in Canada is not a given anymore. Hasn't been for a long time. Immigrants today, many are well-educated people who can't work because of some red tape or other. Never even mind, that education and work experience got them their permanent residency in the first place. I can't tell you how many people I know who have that problem. My former family doctor took years to retake all kinds of exams until he could work.

I wish I could roar like her.

I had it done this year since I broke my molar all the way down last February. The main reason it takes so long is that your jaw needs to heal/fill in after the extraction, so the implant has a proper foundation. Then the implant gets drilled in, that needs to heal again, and then you can get your tooth/crown. Each healing period takes about 4-6 months. If your bones aren't healing properly, you need a bone graft, which adds another few months. I got lucky and everything healed properly, so I'll get my crown in February. Almost exactly 12 months in total. I'm in Canada and my additional health insurance didn't cover it, so I was out overall 2700 CAD for initial visit and consultation, the implant surgery, and three follow-up visits at the dental surgeon. The tooth extraction and crown were done by my regular dentist and are covered.

How I see it, why go if you don't feel like going?

Another reason why pharmacies should be separate stores.

This is why, even if I would partner up again, I would never again live with a guy. So many men of my generation haven't caught up. The implicit assumption that I'm there to manage cohabitated life, is just not worth arguing about for me. I have an old boyfriend from my 20s I'm still friends with, who has raised his son in the last few years (divorce about 10 years ago) and manages most of the care for his parents. And he was pretty good about things when we did live together. I wonder if he would be the shining exception. There were other reasons I broke up with him but from I remember, that wasn't one of them.

I just noticed the trailer. This looks fun. And I love Margo Martindale. And it has Jamie Lee Curtis, another one of my all-time favorites!

I subscribe to this Good News channel. It helps me not focusing so much on the bad news.

Maybe it would be better if there were more movies about the lead-up to the Third Reich. So many of the big ones are about "beating the Germans heroically" instead of showing how Hitler was able to get to power in the first place. So many imply that this "wouldn't happen here".

Weatherly has a podcast? I wonder if he'll invite Eliza Dushku and non-apologize to her too. I'm surprised Jensen even went to this.

As to the religion topic, that seems to me quite a US thing, maybe a Canadian thing a bit too, and of course in the Middle East. Certainly not in Europe. Well, maybe in Poland for a while. And Ireland. I couldn't speak to Africa, South America, or Asia. Well, maybe it's not a primarily US thing once I think about it. Not that Germany is in a good position right now. The left-leaning government coalition just collapsed on November 4. See Germany moving more to the right with the next election. Unless the more conservative party can siphon off those more extremist votes.

I'm only here as a German Canadian, so while I see a rightward movement all over the world, I am wondering whether some of it can be due to the always widening gap between less affluent and the ever dwindling middle class. Keep in mind, I'm not an economist and I am very panicked about the backwards movement against people's rights and protections. But this post is about my thoughts about the economic pressures that may have contributed to some of this mess. The CBC has an analysis that showed that people with higher education and more money remained with voting Democratic while more people on the low end of the socioeconomic scale moved toward Republican. That has been a development for quite a while not only in the US. The Social Democratic party in Germany with a long tradition of fighting for worker's rights has become a shadow of its former self, partly, I think, due to globalization pressures where cheap goods have made unions who help getting people decent wages less important. And now we have an awful non-distribution of wealth. And most people with money and education vote left-leaning. I think that should give us pause. I'm also wondering if the simple fact that if you spend your whole day worrying about money and how to feed your children just makes every other topic irrelevant. I'm not defending people's choices for Trump, far from it, but I also think it's difficult to estimate what is foremost on people's minds. I'm simplifying, of course, but as someone who's been broke or at least quite poor for most of her life, the desperation and mindset that comes with this kind of situation tends to block out almost everything else and doesn't promote rational thinking most of the time. You think until your next paycheck, if you can pay rent or will be homeless next month, that's it. I've been a lot less stressed and anxious about politics when I had no money. My anxiety mostly went to those places not to my rights as a woman. It still sometimes does because it's actually quite hard to get out of that mindset. We have an ever widening gap between rich and poor and I can't help but think that the strong push for globalization is partly responsible for it. We now have these incredibly powerful multinational corporations that more or less determine/influence policy and in the US, they can even bribe people into voting for someone (Musk) and of course, it's not for the good of everyone. Governments in the late 20th century thought globalization and easing of international trade was a good idea and any counter-movement was deemed "nationalist" or "protectionist" and we still think of that as a bad thing. I was watching the West Wing out of nostalgia in the last few weeks, and they were arguing for globalization and more trade to make governments like China more "democratic" and it will make things cheaper for everyone. I think that aged terribly. And Canada benefitted a lot from that, make no mistake. And the EU too. And now we are so deep in a situation where wages are low, prices have been cheap, interest rates low (compared to the 80s and 90s), that a short-term protectionist measure (Trump's tariffs for everything), will backfire (see Brexit). I'm also not so sure he actually will be able to get them all through. And all the money from globalization and more open international trade went to corporations and no one fought for labor rights, and decent wages because there was less pressure to do that. Hence, weaker unions and a backlash against them. Now, an interest rate of 5% makes it incredibly difficult to afford a mortgage because the wages never increased with everything else. I'm not an economist but I think the world economy is in for a rough ride unless we can find means to redistribute the wealth better. And I don't think that's news. We've known that for quite a while.