Am I a snob if...

This morning I was listening to the radio and a commercial for a Boston Pizza promotion came on. They were advertising some Italian special, and the ad was sung in an operatic fashion by some contralto with too much vibrato, which would have been amusing...EXCEPT they set it to the music for Carmen, which is a FRENCH opera. Written in French, by a Frenchman.

I was instantly turned off by the ad and wondered just what uncultured buffoons came up with that commercial. After a few moments of calm, I wondered if perhaps I was being too critical since it is just Boston Pizza, and not the Canadian Opera Company. But still...I can't help but have a not-so-favourable impression of them now.

Am I being too much of a snob?

Benefits and health coverage

At the beginning of November, I went to see the optometrist to get my eyes checked out. My work health benefits do include a little bit of vision coverage, though at a paltry $90 every 24 months, I wouldn't really call it much of a vision plan.

But here's the kicker. My visit to the optometrist isn't covered by this $90. The one thing that I have that's eye related that comes out to under $90, and it's not covered. I called Sun Life, and the nice lady on the phone told me that glasses and contacts are covered, but the actual visit to the optometrist isn't. I don't know what you guys think, but I thought that was pretty stupid.

Stupid HR

For those of you who live in Ontario, you may have heard about this new statutory holiday that our provincial government has instituted. It's called Family Day, and it falls in February. At first, I thought 'Hey, this is great. I get another holiday!' Except it doesn't work out that way for me. Here's why.

Here at UHN, we get 2 holidays a year that they call 'float days'. We can't bank them, but we can take them when we want. What HR has now done is they've taken away one of our float days, and given us Family Day. Grrrr. Their logic is that UHN gives us more than the 9 legislated days off, so we're still ahead. But the truth is I'd rather have a float day instead of being forced to take it on some random day in February. I personally like to use my float days around Christmas time so I can get a whole week off instead of having to be work.

I feel kinda cheated, actually. I feel like I totally didn't get an extra holiday at all. Am I just looking at this the wrong way?

'Springing Forward' in the winter

Most people reading this blog will most likely be moving their clocks ahead one hour this weekend. This change is coming 3 weeks early, and will be ending one week late. I was chatting with my good friend Barry about this a few weeks ago, and we were wondering just where exactly all the purported energy savings were going to come from. Being the resourceful guy that he is, Barry went and looked it up!

Turns out, the savings are supposed to come in the form of a 1% reduction in lighting use. But even this theorized savings has come under criticism. For example, this article regarding a study of energy use with and without DST claims that there are no real savings because any savings that might be realized due to using less lighting in the afternoon is offset by the need to use more lighting in the morning to function in a darkened household. There are also some in the mental health profession who are concerned that those suffering from seasonal mood disorder will be adversely affected by this change as we are now forcing ourselves to wake up in darkness, upsetting one's biological clock.

But whatever the experts might say about the benefits/harms, I personally think that the most interesting part is the fact that the Canadian government adopted this change so that we can stay in synch with the US, and not be an hour off for 4 weeks of the year. I haven't quite decided yet it that fact bothers me or not. After all, I do appreciate the fact that the US and Canada do a lot of business with each other. But does one hour really make a huge difference when I already have to look up time differences whenever I make a business call to the states anyway?

I dunno...I guess I was hoping that Canada would come up with a better reason, and the proof to back it up, other than "Well, they're doing it."

Rough Day

I think today has qualified as one of the most un-fun days I've had in a while. Today was a patient infusion day, so I arrived at the hospital at 7am to get working. Things seemed to start out well, except we have a slight equipment malfunction. Bit of an inconvenience, but nothing we can't handle. The procedure to harvest cells for infusion continues. Send the sample for a stat gram stain in. Usually, this is just a formality, because the contamination would have to be pretty drastic for it to come out positive. After all, our cells bags have nice, clear media in them, and the cells look really healthy. If they were contaminated, that just wouldn't be the case. HOWEVER, this time around, we get a positive. We send a couple more samples just to verify, and the all come back positive. So, we have to break the news to the poor patient who has been pre-hydrating for the past hour and half that we can't go ahead with the infusion. Ugh. And because of the result, you can imagine that we had a whole lot of craziness we had to attend to in the background that I won't really get into. So, thanks to that, 4pm rolls around, and I still haven't eaten lunch. Come home feeling drained and exhausted, looking for some hugs or something. Oh! Except that won't work either since thanks to ITAR rules, Jamie is currently in Ottawa doing work that he doesn't usually do, but was forced to go and perform simply because the person who normally does that work wasn't born in Canada. So, I figure maybe I can indulge in a little comfort food, like pizza or something, to de-stress. But that too had to get thrown out the window since I picked up some gastric bug last night and am limited to the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, apples, toast) to keep my stomach from being angry with me. Sigh...it's just been one of those days...

At least I can still have a hot cup of tea...