life status: normal

i think my life is back to some semblance of normal after the uproar of the past weeks. on friday, treasury board made a final offer to tables 1 and 3 of the union which our bargaining teams rejected, but there has been a decision made by the national council to take it back to our members for a vote regardless. in about a month, we will be conducting a national vote on the offer and until that time no strike activity will take place, which means i get my life back until that time.

although the bargaining teams rejected the offers, i suspect the majority of members will vote for the deal anyway since our reasons for rejection only affect a small handful of people in the union (most of the roll-backs involve enforcement personnel and grain handlers). ignoring the specific reasons why the offers were rejected, i think in all we have won the fairest offer we could given the circumstances with increases of approximately 10% over 4 years and language supporting a social justice fund among other things – and we didn’t have to concede on any major issue (such as maternity leave top-ups, which the board threatened to claw back). when i compare that to the arbitrated settlement forced on ferry workers friday (the same time our deal was offered) – of a 7-year contract with a 3-year wage freeze and then wage increases of 1, 1, 2 and 2.5 % – it looks even better.

so after a week of staying in the city, i took off friday to meet nathan in princeton for a mini-holiday. i will post more about that with photographs later today.

i returned home last night at 7:00 and wasn’t in the door more than 10 minutes when the phone rang, the call display showing “animal hospital”.

it turned out to be my brother richard calling for help in making a decision about my parent’s dog packer. seems that packer got suddenly ill yesterday, and the people looking after him (since my folks are out of town) asked my brother to intervene. he took packer to the animal hospital (he was barely breathing at this point), where the vet told him that they thought it was ruptured tumors internally and that surgery and aftercare would cost between 6 and 10,000 dollars. my brother was having difficulty deciding what to do, and he had all of about 15 minutes before the surgery would have to start to save packer’s life, so he asked me to make the decision. i spoke to the vet technician on the phone who told me that even with the surgery the prognosis wasn’t good (10% chance he would live, and even then anything would only extend his life by six months) – and given all these factors (including not wanting to prolong the pain and suffering of this poor animal) told my brother to have him put down and order a necropsy so we could get some answers about what had happened to the old guy.

my dad is due back in the country in three days, my mom in 2 and a half weeks. we have decided not to tell them until they are home since there is nothing they can do now anyways and it would just be upsetting for no reason. the whole thing gave me a reminder though, that in some future decade my brother will be calling me to help make decisions about our parents – which seems not too far down the road as they get older.

i am back at work today, staying in town tonight for band practice and a resist! meeting – and will be in vancouver over the weekend for union school (and a show on friday night at el cocal with norman nawrocki).

i guess this is life back to normal – but it never really feels that way.