Belinda's Commons Diary

So, here I am - the Member of Parliament in the House of Commons for...well...somewhere north of Toronto. Now that I've finally arrived, I feel totally honoured to be here. But it hasn't been all easy.

First of all, I've had a hard time finding a place to live in Ottawa. There aren't a lot of 25,000 square foot mansions for rent right now in the nation's capital, so I've been forced to stay at this really crappy hotel called the Chateau Laurier. The curtains in my room are this really ugly 70's shade of green, the columns in the foyer are totally faux marble (it's so obvious) and room service doesn't even offer foie gras on weekends. Can you believe it? Oh well, political life is supposed to be all about sacrifice, I guess.

That great big Speech from the Throne thing a couple of days ago was really boring. The Prime Minister looked like a dork in his gray tuxedo sitting there just staring at that woman who was reading his speech. He reminded me of when my parents took me to see Wiarton Willy when I was a kid. I'm not sure why he couldn't read his speech himself - maybe his eyesight isn't very good.

Speaking of that speech-reading lady, I don't know who she was, but, oh boy, her hair could really use some sprucing up. Hairstyles like that belong in a bingo parlour, not somewhere distinguished like that...red place down the hall we all got dragged to Tuesday afternoon. I was almost ready to give her a card for Georgio, the guy I go to in London every couple of weeks, but Stockwell told me that wouldn't be such a good idea. He said I should just lay low for the first few weeks and not draw too much attention to myself.

Oh, and I got my first paycheque today. I think there was a typo or something. It seems to be missing some zeroes. I'm gonna have to go talk to the payroll department about that. I'm sure it was just a simple accounting mistake.

Because of my extensive experience judging kids' essays at Magna, Mr. Harper made me the party's trade critic. I know, it sounds kind of dull, but he told me that it's really important. Like, whenever there's news about trade, or mad cows, I'll get to be on TV to talk about it. Isn't that cool? I've got some like, really boring books I have to read, but it'll be worth it when I get to go on Don Newman's show to talk all about everything I know about softwood lumber. He'll be so impressed.

I wonder if he has a teleprompter in his studio...

Well, I gotta go now. I'm going on an intensive course to learn French over the weekend. I'll be totally bilingual by Monday!

Or avoir!!!

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