 whaddya get? Another day older and deeper in debt...
So goes the song from the 1940s that my Dad used to tongue-in-cheek sing when he returned from a week of work on the cranes. The perception of writers used to be that once they were published, there was nothing else for them to do but put their feet up, tend their gardens, raise their kids, and oh, ya, write more novels. The reality though is slowly getting out. I heard a great show on 'Writers and Company' on CBC radio a few weeks ago that comes to mind in which Eleanor Wachtel interviewed writers about their 'day jobs', and it was fascinating what people do to support their writing habit.
I've done many things myself. Planted trees and operated cranes, as already mentioned in this blog. I've also cleaned houses in Montreal, bartended in Bowmanville and waited tables in a gay club in Saskatoon. I've answered phones in English for T-Mobile, and in French for Dell. I've supervised in a call centre, and taught customer care, as well as run a department in a Future Shop, selling computers. I've sold encyclopedias door to door, and bent sheet metal into troughing and siding, dug holes for pools, assembled trophies, given out iron rings to University Alumni, and administered a certification exam for Medical Radiation Technologists. What was my line of work? 
I am among you, building your hospitals! Mwahahahaha....
A few weeks ago also I heard tell of a parent teacher association outside Toronto that wanted to suspend a teacher in their high school because on the side, under a different name, she wrote steamy romance novels.
Had this been my school, I would be congratulating her. What better person to teach my children about writing than someone who actually has gone through the meat-grinder of publishing, and has come out successful!
I was incredulous. Only in North America could publishing a novel put someone on the stand to defend their actions. 'How dare you put your ideas in print and influence our children!?' they say.  Only in North America is writing seen as a sort of inaccessible ivory tower pursuit, something for gonzo unemployed crackpots or professors with lots of money and their head in the clouds. It makes me not want to tell anyone in my'real life' what I do in my spare time, for fear of sounding elitist.
This is my office last week.
The result of that is writers stay underground.
There are enough of us. Think of all the movies you've ever watched, the books you've read, the articles in magazines, the poems, plays, TV shows, the commercials within those shows, the ads in print, the local news, and the websites... all of those had someone sit down and put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard to make it happen. 
Perhaps we should have a writer/blogger/artist movement, in which we take to the streets and show our solidarity for doing what we love?
It would never work, I know. Writing is too solitary. But maybe we could start breaking down this odd stereotype of writers as being disconnected from society. From my perspective, they're the only ones ensuring that our culture is recorded and passed down. So if I find out that one of my kids teachers has been published? Please, teach them the skills, too.Eric is a member of the firm’s Real Estate, Development & Construction industry team. He counsels clients on construction-related planning, contracting and risk mitigation. Eric also regularly defends construction-related litigation, including breach of contract claims, defective work, warranty issues and surety bond disputes.
An experienced litigator, Eric has tried approximately 20 cases, including more than 10 jury trials, in state and federal courts. He also litigates noncompete agreement and restrictive covenant cases on behalf of employers and employees. Eric handles arbitrations and OSHA violations, and he has appeared before the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals.
During the summer of 2007, Eric spent secondment as Special Prosecutor with the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office in the General Crimes Division. While acting as a district attorney, he tried numerous cases and handled a wide variety of motions, plea bargains, sentencings and reconfinements.New Approaches To Safeguarding The Earth: An environmental version of the Hippocratic oath
By Jared BlumenfeldFrom the San Francisco Chronicle Open Forum - August 4, 2003
A bold environmental code becomes law in San Francisco today, one whose overarching framework is called the Precautionary Principle. Through it, San Francisco is taking a significant step away from the Bush administration's anti-environmental policies.
The Precautionary Principle sets out to improve the way we make environmental decisions. While the Bush team asks, "How much environmental harm will be allowed?," in San Francisco, decision-makers will ask a very different question: "How little harm is possible?"
San Francisco is a leader in making choices based on the least environmentally harmful alternatives, thereby challenging traditional assumptions about risk management. The 11 existing laws consolidated in the Environment Code have introduced more than 700 zero- or low-emission vehicles to the city's fleet, conserved 6,800 trees and more than half-a-million gallons of water each year by purchasing recycled content paper, cut toxic- pesticide use in half and protected worker health by designing buildings that use less energy and other precious natural resources.
We acknowledge that our world will never be free from risk. However, a risk that is unnecessary, and not freely chosen, is never acceptable. San Francisco's Precautionary Principle, enacted as part of the Environment Code, insists that environmental decision-making be based on rigorous science -- science that is explicit about what is known, what is not known and what may never be known about potential hazards.
Unfortunately, in today's regulatory system lack of proof of harm is usually misinterpreted as proof of safety. In San Francisco, we want to create a means to take action despite scientific uncertainty about the degree of a given risk. Too often, regulatory agencies get stuck in "paralysis by analysis"; the new framework removes excuses for inaction on the grounds of scientific uncertainty.
The costs of not taking precautionary action are often very high, as we've seen in the case of tobacco, lead and asbestos. Early scientific warnings about risks to health went unheeded by government agencies. As a result, billions of dollars have been spent to deal with the consequences of these problems. Costs include health care and health insurance, lost economic productivity, absenteeism, lost wages and cleanup. The Precautionary Principle process also requires decision-makers to consider possible impact to the local economy.
Our Precautionary Principle calls for a careful analysis of a range of alternatives using the best available information. The goal of this process is to determine whether a potentially hazardous activity is necessary, and whether less hazardous options are available. For instance, our pesticide reduction program eliminated all of the most toxic chemicals used by city gardeners and identified less-toxic ways to solve weed and pest problems, some as benign as using goats to clear weed-choked hillsides or heat cannons to kill termites in walls. Science provides vital evidence for making these decisions. However, elected officials will ultimately use a combination of scientific data and judgments of what is necessary, useful and fair to make environmental decisions.
Both locally and internationally, the public bears the direct consequences of environmental decisions. A government's course of action is necessarily enriched by broadly based public participation when a range of alternatives is considered. This concept of environmental democracy is deeply ingrained in San Francisco's Precautionary Principle.
At the World Trade Organization, the Bush administration is fighting the European Union's right to restrict imports of genetically modified foods; beef containing hormones, and proposed legislation that would require some 30,000 chemicals now in use to be immediately registered with EU authorities. The failure of the United States to adopt the Precautionary Principle is yet another way in which we are ostracizing ourselves from the rest of the planet.
San Francisco's Precautionary Principle presents a historic opportunity to refocus environmental decision-making on reducing harm. In doing so, we are sending a message to Washington: The days of letting polluters and industries set our health and environmental agenda may be over sooner than you think.
Jared Blumenfeld Jared Blumenfeld is director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment.Probably few are lucky enough to buy an apartment or build a house without a mortgage. We all know that it is not a matter of choice at all, because no one in their right mind would rather decide on debt in the bank if it had enough capital to invest in real estate.
Their prices are really high and the level of earnings in Poland is so varied that instead of buying anything, the more on credit, we prefer to rent. This approach is quite understandable, but at the same time it incorrectly assumes no chance to improve our material situation.
We might as well take a mortgage, and then get a really well-paid job and get the option of early repayment. In this case, another problem arises – is it worth it at all? Is overpayment of credit always a profitable solution? Let’s find out.
Mortgages usually have significantly longer repayment periods than, for example, cash loans. Instead of signing a contract for several years, we decide to cooperate with the bank for up to 20-30 years, depending on the loan amount. It is also monthly installments that burden our household budget much more than a classic loan. Therefore, the motivation to pay back such a commitment as soon as possible (or even on time) is really great.
Let’s assume that after 10 years of paying off the