Safety is Swell

I'm currently very proud to live where I do.
I just finished a gawdawfully long course on Occupational Health and Safety, the safety regulations and all that good stuff so I can be our safety dudette extraordinaire and be on our college OHS committee, inspecting and handling safety complaints and being an all round safety do gooder. I'm already the safety nut around here for our labs and the one who trains everyone in lab safety, so I thought I'd make it official (plus, it's always the people (*cough* me *cough*) with the ability to hurt themselves on cotton balls and rubber tubing that end up the safety nuts...). It doesn't hurt that it gives me a bit more clout when have I tell off the grad students and lab staff for doing unsafe stuff in the labs ("no while working with concentrated acid you can't wear shorts and sandals...").

Our province has always been a labour province, an NDP province mostly...we pioneered unions and health care, sent Tommy Douglas to the Prime Minister's chair in Ottawa and were the province that pioneered the occupational safety acts. *We* were the template for the rest of the country - the first to say "no you don't have to do that if it's unsafe. And you can't be discriminated against for refusing". To say that your boss can't just make you do unsafe things or mistreat you for profit...and we have a giant book of regulations to say when they have to do to keep you safe at work to show for it. I've spent days learning the regulations about things and I'm really proud, at the moment, to know we in Saskatchewan are the ones who have helped lay out how important it is to treat each other with respect and dignity. To put people before profit and respect our fellow man in our daily lives. I could almost hug a wheat bale to prove it...but they're pokey and itchy and full of bugs and I really should get back to work. Currently, I could rant about how our new provincial conservative government is trying to destroy our social programs, affordable housing and lifestyles, union's right to strike and our worker respect in as short a time as they possibly can in pursuit of profit and being a "have province", but noone wants a provincial political rant on a friday morning. Suffice it to say our current prov. government are asshats, but we still live in a great place...and we'll move on.

So yeah.
Saskatchewan is great.
It's sunny, the pelicans are on the river and it's a beautiful friday so far.
Groovy.