Long time, no blog

I realized I had been slacking off when a reporter asked me yesterday if I had decided to stop blogging… Truth is I took a break over Christmas and I celebrate a really long Christmas. All twelve days culminating in my annual party on Epiphany (always January 6th). Now, I did work over the holidays, catching up on correspondence and phone calls and such. And then, off course, the holidays involve their own kind of work.. baking and wrapping and decorating and un-decorating! And my annual Twelfth Night party takes two solid days of preparation. I can refer you to this week’s Macleans in which (and I find this bizarre) my party gets featured. All those little canapés I am serving were made by me with a bunch of friends who come in for shift work in amateur catering. I prepare about 1,000 of those little round goodies with various yummy toppings. Then there’s my great great grandfather’s punch recipe to make, and lots of other crowd pleasers. I have been holding a party on 12th Night since I was in law school, having realized that a pre-Christmas party was hopeless. All my friends were either studying for exams and when exams ended, were not going to hang around for my party – no matter how yummy were the offerings. This year was a “first.” Without any “notice to media” my party ended up in Macleans and the Society column of the Ottawa Citizen. So, dear friends, supporters, members and blog watchers, I have not abandoned politics to be the latest Martha Stewart wanna-be. I am on the case, tracking the latest “faux vert”/green-scam efforts of the Harper government (although I admit I would love it if they actually embraced Kyoto targets and set a course to reach them), and traveling Canada while the House is closed and it is a good time to build our party at the grassroots. I am attending the founding meeting for a new Electoral District Association meeting tonight in Sydney, Cape Breton, and next week off to British Columbia for events in Vancouver, Victoria, Salt Spring Island, Prince George and Kelowna. At the moment I am in a very snowy Margaree on the Cabot Trail at my brother’s place… hate the thought of the long drive to Sydney in this storm, but, as my sister in law says, a girl’s got to do, what a girl’s got to do!