See you all Monday, except those I'll see today and tomorrow! (As you might guess, the manga list will be late.)

Headed up to Whitby for the next few days. The manga next week post will be late.

Feel free to entertain yourselves while I'm gone!

Just booked my February flight to Toronto for Mattcon 09. Arriving Feb. 12, leaving Feb. 16.

After getting a rec from Ginny, and seeing they actually do fly out of Newark and aren't too expensive, I booked via Porter Airlines, and will be flying into the City Airport. Hopefully this will not be too scary and terrifying.

As always, will likely be at Alan's Thursday night, then in Whitby the remainder of the time. I'd talk about Saturday gathering, but apparently Jason has dibs on this weekend, so I'll let him do all the planning and just straggle along. :)

Yay, Toronto!

Well, I certainly know what 'prorogue' means NOW...

Is there a good blog for keeping up with Canadian politics? The only blogger I know of is Colby Cosh, who a) doesn't blog as much anymore, and b) is rather more conservative than I'm used to.

Any thoughts? Where's the Canadian Daily Kos or Talkingpointsmemo?

Or indeed good blogs about Canada in general.

I have to laugh.

From Bradley, in Hartford CT, to Toronto, in Ontario, selecting a random Thursday arrive/Monday return in February 2009:

$769.

From Newark, NJ, with the exact same criteria:

$214. (That's Continental, Air Canada was $250.)

I cannot possibly fathom what is so hideous about Bradley that it costs an extra 500+ dollars, unless they're trying to phase out all the Air Canada Jazz flights to the US by sheer bullying. Also, isn't the Canadian dollar falling?

So yeah, I think my next trip will be via Newark, and I'll take the train to that airport. It'll be about 3 more hours travel time, but I'll put up with that for that price difference.

Yesterday sucked hard, so the best part of the day for me was sitting on the bus reading Will Ferguson's Canadian History book.

The first part is quite interesting, covering all the major salient points up to the Confederation. The second part, though, deals with the 20th century, and is where the book really takes off. For one, Will gives up on his pretense of being unbiased. There's a lot he doesn't like about Canada's past, and he says so. A lot. The chapter on First Nations was fascinating, the chapter on Canada's anti-semitism during WWII disturbing. He still doesn't like the Bloc much, but has tried to keep Quebec bashing down to only once or twice a chapter. :)

Still reading along, am about halfway through. Peeked ahead a bit, and suspect I will also find the October Crisis chapter riveting. "Just watch me." Whee!

So at AN Nightbreak was reading a book by Will Ferguson called Bastards and Boneheads, a sort of Canadian political history (up to 1999, when it came out). It had cool lists, so I ordered it used when I got home, as if I'm a sucker for anything, it's cool lists.

Starting to read it now, and it boggles my mind how little I know of Canadian history. I mean, really, next to NOTHING. Something about the War of 1812? Wait, so Hudson Bay was more than that shop in the center of Toronto? St. Croix what? And of the list of Prime Ministers, I've heard of Macdonald (vaguely), Diefenbaker (from Due South), Trudeau (the one most Americans know), and then Mulroney and Chretien, who were in office at a time when I actually bothered to watch the news.

Oh yeah, and you guys had a bad winter in 1998? Wow, where was I at the time? Oh right, not there yet. >_>

So hopefully the book will do me some good. The reviews I saw online are less than charitable, but hey, I've read Ferguson's books before, and he's pretty funny, so we'll go with him. I like humor in my history.