Saturday was a pretty good day.

I’m going into work feeling pretty good and all yesterday. The weather was nice and mild. I read a bit from my book as well on the way in. At the drugstore I bought my 6/49 ticket and got some change to pay JT and DC. I met JT upstairs as the shift was over and paid him that $4. Then I heard about the bomb. Apparently head office is making some cutbacks and the morning shift is no longer. They’re running 1:30pm-9pm now as of Monday. They might even go from 1:30pm-10pm and cut Sunday’s shift off. It’s still 8pm in BC. I might get 5 hours/shift if that’s the case. This actually threw me for a loop here and made me feeling down for the night. At least they didn’t lay me off-yet. I got a couple of calls from Anne while she was on her breaks 6:20pm break and 8pm. I collected a lot of cans and bottles and she said she was going to give me another $20 because of my missing bonuses. I ended up with $360 and 2 CC sales. Nothing stellar. I called Trevor saying I’d come by on Monday and pick up my copy of “Path’s of Darkness." It might be Friday.

After work I went to Tim’s to get a medium decafe and a blueberry fritter. I drank the coffee on the way home. It was very nice out there and still is. Super etc knows I’m not in for today because of Anne’s birthday. I mentioned to JT about how I’m not going to tell her about how the morning shift is being cut back as of Monday. I came in to watch Smackdown and Anne came home and made me a couple of hotdogs and fries for my lunch last night.

Then it occurred to me that they are going to cancel the morning shift, they can still use the dialers for the afternoon/evening shift. JT was saying how when he was on the trip to Vegas sitting beside some guys from our Calgary office that they were scaled back to about 15 people. But this was in the summer before the economy went bad. We had that many people in our office as well before the recession. Apparently Rob etc were pulling in a lot of the back 20 telling them they‘re let go. But Rob never pulled me aside. He was right there watching me pay off JT.
I heard on Ched this afternoon as I was packing my things up that Iphone and Itouch users can pick up Ched anywhere where there’s a wi-fi connection for free. Interesting. I’d love to be able to pick up the Oiler’s game in progress on my way home from work. Gives me a whole new reason to think about getting an Iphone.

If I’m laid off on Monday, the first thing I’m going to do the following morning is get on EI. Then look for work. I’ll be applying at Pizza and see if I can get hired on there. I’m not going to tell my wife what happened just yet. I want to see if I can get a job the next day. If I survive this round then great, I'll remain at my job. I’ve got 3 years until "early retirement." Economic recovery is apparently near the end of 2009. Just how long it will take for the economy to recover is another thing. If I can get another year out of where I’m working then fine. If my company Edmonton goes belly up, then I can go to Pizza. Rob might offer me a couple of suggestions and I know Anne wont like them but I have to keep my job.

I don’t know what’s happened with Anne. She left out of here about noon to mail my T4’s and pick up my insulin. Then we’re supposed to go out for our dinner. Unless she’s changed her mind. I don’t mind going. The weather isn’t bad out there at +1. All we do is board the bus out here, take the train to Coliseum station board a bus to Kingsway Mall and the connecting bus to the Ramada and we’re there. It’s about an hour trip there and back. But Anne might decide to buy herself a birthday present instead and get a Rose bowl pizza. The longer she stays out there the window closes because I want to be home by 8pm ish for the game. The whole dinner would run us about $50 and it seems like a waste of money for $50 just to go out and eat. I’m ok with it either way though. I’m just kind of worried about Monday. With them cutting back the morning shift and with the numbers/resources we have to work with, is my job in jeopardy? I asked Dave if he was concerned and he said something like he works from “1:30-9pm” so it doesn’t affect him. Yeah but a lot of those morning people the ones that haven’t been laid off yet will migrate over to the afternoon/evening shift. There might be no more 5-9 anymore. It might just be 1:30-10pm. 7.5 hours of work with a half hour break. But Rob could tell me that Monday. I might just ask if I could do business instead and work 8:00am-4am. I can get up at say 6:45am get out the door by 7:20am. Best part about business is I not only get my evenings off but I also get my weekends off. I can see my job cutting back Saturday’s and Sunday’s. That’s 35 hours for everyone. I can handle that..........I'm back:

Friggin Oiler’s, couldn’t win a game worth trying. They can go into OT but after that. Forget it. Tonight they went from 7th then 8th and 9th and back to 8th again. They share 8th place with the Wild. Yeesh.

Okay, I got up around 1pm this afternoon. Did my thing and Anne came in to haul me out for dinner. She was out getting my insulin and other things. She brought back chips, dip etc. We left out of here around 4pm under sunny skies at +3C. Very nice. We got out train at Clairview and I read my book with my wife down to Stadium. We caught the #127 after a 15 min wait and then over to Kingsway mall for the #12. We got some good connections. We got to the Ramada about 5:30pm. Their prime rib was awesome. Best beef I’ve ever had. Very nice. I went back for seconds. Even the desert was good. I think our bill was $50 and I gave a $5 tip to our waiter. We paid our bill and headed across the street and I took my insulin in the bus shelter. We made great connections getting back. It was nice seeing the Oiler faithful heading out to the game. We were waiting for a bus at Clairview home and the #183 came by and a brief wait and we were home by 8pm.

The Oiler’s could have easily knocked themselves out of the playoff race all together but they have a game in hand more then anyone else. But they’ve got to start winning some games. They didn’t play very well tonight. I give them a C+ 3-2 Av’s in OT.

I’m not to worried about losing my job. Pizza is always hiring. I can work a Friday night, Sunday and Monday. The only thing with pizza is that bonus money is hard to come by. But if I get hired I can get on right away.

Over the last several weeks I’ve been following the prose over there at Sci-fi guy .ca. The site promotes a lot of Urban fantasy. Nothing wrong with this, but where is the sci-fi at Sci-fi guy. ca? Am I missing something here?

So, for today, on a scale from 1-10 I’d rate today an 8.5. An Oiler win would have made it a 9 and winning anything on this evenings 6/49 would have made it a 10. I slept in on a Saturday, went out to dinner with my wife and watched the Oiler’s lose, but lost on the 6/49. All in all, today was a good day.

Anyway, gang that’s all for now.

e. Jim