One week to go in the election campaign, and I actually have nothing of substance to say. Yes, I’m still reading all of the fantastic political blogs out there, watching CPAC, listening to CBC, all that stuff, but it seems like no one has anything new to say. Stephen Harper is still in his high tower, impervious and untouchable, Jack Layton is still whining “vote for me, the Liberals are scary, there is a third option,” Gilles Duceppe is still… oh who cares, I can’t vote for him anyway, and Paul Martin is still blissfully unaware of how badly his party is doing in the polls and seems to think he can still win. So where does that leave me? Well, I’ve narrowed the vote to two candidates and past readers of this blog might be very surprised at who one of them is.

So, since there is nothing new under the sun in the Canadian political field, my attention turns to more pressing matters. Like the fact that it is not raining outside right now. I sincerely doubt that, unless you live in Victoria, you will understand the true import of that statement. So I will say it again. It is NOT raining right now! And no one in this whole city is more thankful than me. Not only because it means I don’t have to wear my fabulous rain pants everytime I exit my dwelling, but because it means my house smells better. Smells better you ask? You heard (or rather read) me correctly, smells better. You see, it seems that in the 1960’s when people used oil to heat their homes, the oil tanks were buried in backyards. Then, when they switched from oil to gas heat, they merely took off the connecting pipe and forgot about the tank. Forgot about it, that is, until a record rainfall of about 26+ straight days. Last Thursday night, there was a slight oil smell in the house. By Friday, it was pretty much unbearable, so much so as to prompt my landlords to call in the gas company. They checked everything out and said it was all fine, no leaks, no CO or CO2 emissions anywhere in the house… blah blah blah… It was only when the fire department came to check it out for us that we discovered the possible existence of an oil tank in the yard. Now you can see where this is going. Saturday morning I awoke to a “BLEEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEEEEEEP” sound directly outside of my window (which I had left open the night before because of smell). There was a guy with a metal detector in the yard right beside my window. Yep, found it. It seems that with the rising water table, the oil has been seeping out and causing the place to stink to high heaven. Lovely. The good news? It stops stinking when it stops raining for a few hours. Hence my excitement that it is not raining right now. The other good news? The tank comes out of the ground tomorrow.