March madness at it again.

I was very apprehensive leaving out of the apartment yesterday afternoon. This grew more evident the closer I got downtown. But in the office I asked DC where do I sit? He said something like “how about in your usual spot?” Really? Bud moved and W was also leaving. Then JT said that the morning tap shooter crew are still working. It’s just the back 20 not working mornings. Instant relief. Rob said nothing to me. Everything is business as usual. JT etc stayed until 7pm. I decided to gather a bunch of cans and bottles for home. I did ok in the 1st half but only one CC sale. I think I was at $250 in the first half. I felt a lot better.
I tried calling Anne about the job situation but she wasn’t answering the phone. I had a slow 2nd half and the source we were doing was drying up and we had to do semies in the last hour. This is usually a 2 week campaign anyway. I made a 7pm pass at the bottles and cans and got a few more. I ended up with a $350 total. Nothing stellar that’s for sure.
I had a quiet train ride to Clairview and a brief wait on my bus. Anne was busy with housework when I came in. It was -10C on the way home. Not bad. I’m just happy I have my job, everything’s fine.

Monday night Raw had a few surprises in store. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate the show about a 9, Anne made us a great dinner of pork chops and her tin foil wrap potato’s and ET. This was a great way to wrap up a day that had a bit to much drama in it for my liking.

I mentioned before this week has a lot of things going. My wife’s birthday yesterday, Saint Patrick’s day today, tomorrow is OTH, Spring is on Friday. It’s going to bean busy week…………1:10pm> The cat woke me up around 11:30 this morning. I could have slept for another hour, easy. Then my wife had to get up a couple times back to back. All the cats come in and I’m up feeling cheated of potentially an extra hour of sleep. Anne felt a need to go over to the pet store to get a cat house or some damn thing.

Again the local issue of homelessness was in the news this afternoon. Beware of rant: Apparently between the province and the City of Edmonton, there is now $3B put out to get rid of the homeless problem. But wait now, the same story said there are something like 3,000 homeless people on the streets here in my City. I don’t know how many in Calgary but I image it’s a bit more then 3,000. So, lets say there’s 8,000 homeless from all across the Province. That’s about $375,000 per person. I wonder how many of these homeless people have jobs? Maybe a year ago I’d guess maybe 2 thirds. Now I’d say about half. How many of these people are from out of Province that recently arrived? How many of these people were in halfway houses? Probably most of them in the major cities. So what happens when the City finds these people a home? Their monthly rent is going to be as high as ours. Is the Province going to pay for their rent as well? That’s a pretty good deal rent free and a new home. Most likely that comes with lights and water. What about food? Easy, that’s why we have food banks. Wait now, a roof over ones head, free power and water, free food! Meanwhile the working poor (Which I consider myself and my family.) are paying $850 rent on a 2 bedroom apartment. My wife has to go to the food bank down the street at least once a month, We have jobs both working part time hours and like most families were just getting by. Pardon me if I sound like I’m whining here. That’s not what I’m attempting to say but it seems to me that $3B is a lot of money for about 8,000 people that are homeless here in Alberta. Yes I can work more hours at 56 years old being diabetic and having scoliosis of the spine might be hard on me. My wife has her own health issues and it’d be hard on her but we shouldn’t have to when all these homeless people are getting such treatment. People may ask me if I’ve ever been homeless? Yes, once around 1976 for a few weeks in between the job I had at the Army & Navy store in New Westminster BC. But I was housed up in a big room with about 4 other guys and we got meal vouchers for the pacific café 3 times/day. I was waiting for my unemployment at the time. Sure I’ve never had to sleep on the streets or anything but that’s only because I’ve got to much pride in myself. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for homeless people but I have to wonder about this “$3B plan,” to eradicate homeless people here in Edmonton/Alberta. Of course there’s a lot more to it then that. More on this later.

Ok, onto other things. There’s been some discussion going on about the Sci-Fi channel and it’s seemingly lack of SF content these days. I don’t know about this since I don’t watch a lot of TV. I’m too busy doing other things like piano practicing, Lodge work, my job, reading and finding time to play some Oblivion etc, to really notice. Yes, I’ve noticed “Space,” our version of the Sci-Fi channel here in Canada, has been running some monster movies and other stuff not really related to Science Fiction. For example right now Space is running a STNG episode “The most Toys.” The only problem I have with these specialty channels is they seem to have about 10 episodes of anything. Except the new stuff and even then. I mean you can only run so much of anything but with so much Sci-fi out there you’d think that Space could just stick with SF content. There’s enough SF movies out there they could run those in the evenings and all the rest during the other times. I think it has something to do with licensing agreements here in Canada or Canadian content.

Anyway, as for me…I’m in for my usual 5-9 and hopefully they’ll have the hockey game on. I get to watch a bit of that. Then it’s home and more of the same. Sorry if this reads choppy today I‘m not quite awake.

Anyway, gang that’s all for now.

e. Jim