I have Carrera in my upstairs bath. It is breathtakingly beautiful and so soft looking. It makes me sigh when I look at it as it just surprises me how beautiful it is. However, I must say that I do worry about it. I am not one of the easy going types who could live with etching. The reason is because it is just so beautiful it would be like the young Brad Pitt with acne. It would be a shame, a tragedy!!! I know I could never live with that in the kitchen. As much as I drool over it I would have a cow if it didn't always look as it did on day one. Call me shallow, superficial, I don't care! It's too expensive to think of it not holding up to the look it had on the first day. I have been looking at some of the white granites and find they vary so much. I love some of the Bianco Romano slabs but others are just plain and unexciting and so nothing for me. If you could find the right slabs it would be a contender. I don't mind the yellow in them, it's the ones that don't have any veins or character and are just speckles that I don't like. I am having to replace my kitchen granite since we had a sink failure and also the granite I have is all pitted and chunks of quartz or mica whatever are falling out. The guy who sold it to me is out of business and the fabricator who agrees it has "issues" and probably was not resined and has too many cracks and pits has offered to give me a great deal on replacement which turns out not to be so great, it's still in the $4K range, but it would be closer to 6K if full price. I'm sick about it. But that is why I am still in the market for granite. For some reason I have had such bad luck with everything we have done in our reno. I am not happy with any of it. I should have used a KD and not tried to do this on my own. But back to slabs, it's hard to not love the quartzite and marble but I just know I couldn't live with it and not obsess. I admire those of you who can!

Yes, it was Nelly Furtado in the blue dress. I also thought it was a poor choice for her. Made her look "broad across the beam." The color was good, though. Although I have never been to Canada, I have heard the Canadian National Anthem many, many times. Our local baseball team - the Sacramento RiverCats (Triple A team for the Oakland Athletics) - used to be in Vancouver, Canada (where they were known as the Vancouver Canadians), before being purchased by Art Savage, who moved the team to Sacramento starting with the 2000 season. The Edmonton Trappers (at the time affiliated with the Montreal Expos) used to come to Raley Field to play and the Canadian National Anthem would always be played in addition to our National Anthem. And, of course, I have heard it played at various Olympics medal ceremonies. :-) As soon as that girl started singing, my husband looked at me, and said, "Oh, no..." But, that happens with our anthem a lot, too. I don't know why singers think that they have to make an anthem "their own." It was written a certain way - sing it that way!

Yes I voted for NDP (Megan Leslie-she was amazing!) A travesty she didn't get in but I understand the red tide that swept the nation-we finally realized we had to pick a side, orange or red, to get rid of Harper. A shame because I could even see myself voting progressive conservative for the right candidate-emphasis on progressive. The merger really ruined the party imo. as for Trudeau, wasn't a fan in the beginning. I definitely thought he had more hair than brains and I'm not sure how far my opinion has strayed on that subject. But I really so value, so much so that I kinda teared up when I thought about it just now, his emphasis on building a strong team, coalition building and reaching out instead of the secretive, centralized, iron fist style we had unfortunately become accustomed to in the past 10 years. Just the fact that we are once again reaching out internationally, and actually have a census again, makes me feel like I have my country back instead of this weird pseudo-dictatorship that I felt oppressed by for the last decade. It really is all about the team and not about the figurehead. As a bureaucrat, albeit provincial, I know what it's like to work under a minister who can admit their weaknesses and ask for research and input compared to a politician who has a very authoritarian style. You definitely get much better thinking and innovation under the first style. More adherence to best practises and scientific thinking in my experience as well. I won't say which leadership style I'm languishing under currently.

Pruitt-Igoe may have worked if it had been executed as originally intended. In my city, a high priced trio of concrete high rises built for slum clearance in the 1960s still thrives blocks away from an old trio of public housing high rises from the same era were partially imploded in the early 2000s. Actually they were able to maintain one or two of the highrises after rehabilitation and rethinking of the project, while most other clusters have been imploded. The construction methods of both were about the same. What happened to Pruitt-Igoe? 1) they did not budget for maintenance. Maintenance was almost non-existent. 2) they gave apartments to non-intact family units and female heads of households. One early family said that her parents were married and they divorced so they would be able to get an apartment in Pruitt Igoe rather than stay a family of 8 or so in a slum. 3) the fixtures and finishes were chosen with the assumption that the tenants were going to vandalize them. The lightbulbs were bare and in locked cages. The tenants could not change a bulb in the public spaces if they wanted to. One person said as kids they tried to figure out ways to break the bulbs (cold water thrown at them). 3) they kept white applicants out. they kept applicants at the higher end of the income pool out. they helped and encouraged white applicants to buy in suburban developments and helped them get mortgages. 4) as systems started failing due to lack of maintenance and vandalism, they moved people into better buildings and out of worse buildings. The worse buildings were taken over by squatters and drug dealsers. The police and fire department stopped answering calls to Pruitt Igoe. If Pruit Igoe had been properly maintained, managed and implemented as was originally proposed it may not have become such an abysmal failure. The other aspect of International Style living is that mostly-white occupants of similar high rises had cars and other places to go and their children had other options for recreation and went to better schools. They weren't trapped in their 20th floor unit.