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The long weekend continues.
I’ve been having a lovely long weekend here. I go back tomorrow, and there is another long weekend coming up – next Monday is Family Day in Alberta, so I’ll have two short weeks in a row. I watched a good chunk of the Alberta Economic Summit on Saturday – lots of talk that points to an eventual sales tax for the province. It was not the most exciting way to spend the day, but it was interesting.
When a huge chunk of the provincial economy comes from oil and gas, it’s probably a good idea to look for a more stable source of income to avoid boom and bust cycles. I can’t say that I’d be especially happy about a provincial sales tax on goods and services on top of the GST, but it does seem to make more sense. So now we’ll wait and see what happens with the budget, and where the cuts will be coming from.
Meanwhile?
I finished The Reverberator (it was not as big an ending as I’d hoped, but it did end well). Then I started Georges Simenon’s Three Bedrooms in Manhattan and finished that up yesterday.
I really enjoy Simenon. I read The President last year – the first time I’d read anything by him – and I’ve been keeping an eye out for new translations of his work. His characters are often blowsy and worn down by life. It’s often raining or cold. And the love stories are always embittered and cynical. But he has a way of spinning the story in such a way that you want to read it through to the end. It’s not that you want to see the characters ground down even more – they do find peace and love and contentment, of a sort. Sometimes. The language is simplistic and concise, and the plot seems to be a straightforward journey to a logical conclusion…but it’s still entertaining. Still interesting.
I’ve got a couple more Simenon novels on my bookshelf, waiting to be read. For now, I’ve got a bunch of library books out – more poetry books and several collections of Neil Gaimen short stories.
It’s nice to have a couple of days off. I love my job, and my coworkers, but I also love lounging around in my pajamas and comfy clothes, reading books.
3 Responses to “The long weekend continues.”
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Grad school is done. Now reading whatever the heck I want.
No sales tax in Alberta? Here, Wisconsin’s sales tax is 5.6% (5% state, 0.5% Milwaukee County, and 0.1% “stadium tax” to pay for the construction/maintenance of Miller Park, the Brewers’ baseball stadium). Of course, there’s no national sales tax in the US…
I quite enjoyed The President as well, and also The Train, so far my two favorites of the Neversink Library’s offerings. They also encouraged me to go out and buy some more Simenon, including one of the Maigret novels, though I haven’t read any of them yet.
My city’s sales tax is 9%. Where the money comes from is only half of it. Where does it go? California spends 51% of their budget on school.
Did you survive your week at work?