Expectations Alert - Lowered

I spent this past weekend in a smaller city that's seen better days, staying in a surprisingly good hotel. I'm not always keen on hotel swimming pools (anymore) because I had the misfortune of visiting one a few years ago that was chock-a-block with 12-year-old boys (hockey team), and something kind of clicked in my head.

Sorry, 12-year-old boy hockey teams, but you're gross.

I swam in this pool, though, and it was pretty good. And even though I typically shun buffets, I had the complimentary buffet breakfast.

Maybe I'm lowering my standards in preparation for a very old age in a nursing home.

Outside the hotel was a different story altogether. There seemed to be an inordinate number of grizzled old guys riding bicycles, angry young men high as kites shouting at the sky, and people milling about aimlessly in the town square, looking a lot like they had nowhere better to go.

Later I learned that this city is on the rise, that it's expected to experience a fair bit of migration to it, like it will be the place to be in future days.

In the meantime, the cost of housing seems out of whack with the economy already, so I'm not sure what this will mean for people living there now. Certainly a lot of the people I saw would have a hard time getting jobs as day labourers, never mind anything steady.

Anyway, I read the Saturday Globe while I was there and one article was about the economy in Alberta and the likelihood that Albertans will vote for the United Conservative Party because of it.

This strikes me as a real shame for Albertans, for sure, but probably a harbinger of what's to come for the rest of us, when Canadians elect a Conservative Party government.

Conservatives these days are not what they used to be. There's aren't any Red Tories to keep them out of white nationalist territory, I guess.

And won't it just be so ironic when a year later Americans elect a Democrat POTUS who wants to leap dramatically forward into a dynamic and socially progressive America, while we're being dragged back and down into a lesser version of what we are now.

Fortunately, I seem to have a good start on lowering my expectations of the future.