I'm trying to get Goodreads to behave and replace

"In the company of others" with "Truth and Steel" an Everquest book. I started this on the 26th and I'm already beyond the halfway point, it's really good. Thomas M. Reid is an excellent writer.

other then that not a lot of things are going on. I've got today off and I'm just relaxing. Anne's home and about to head out to Walmart. I think they're open all night.

There's been some interesting discussion and development going on about the proposed downtown arena/complex. If it happens. If the katz group is going to do this, now is the time to get it done while construction costs are low before the economy turns around again. Construction costs were 30% lower here the same time last year but that window is slowly closing.

I have the day off today and there's an Eskimo/Hamilton game at Commonwealth. That's on at 5pm. I also want to finish the Everquest book this weekend. Or try to.

Finally I have enough cash to get the Ben Bova Omnibus book Sunday. Yes. That's the last of about 4 Omnibus books I had from the big order in the Spring.

At work we've had a tech guy from head office taking out our notepad and other programs because they were a security breech. We're not supposed to have pens or markers or anything at our dialer's. That makes sense. We are doing one of the worst campaigns our company has to offer and thank God it has a 3 weeks left to go. We might break it up with something else, hard to say. Super sent Darrel and Dave (sitting beside my right and left) home early because they couldn't get anything. I ended up with $145 and no cards.

However we had Calgary/Argos CFL game on and I had double or nothing riding on the Argos tenth strait loss at home. Once in a while you've got to go in on a long shot. I bet DC as well so I'm only out $2 and I paid Greg the rest of that $5 for the cable. The game was tied for most of the night and Calgary was leading 23-20. Toronto couldn't get in close enough for a field goal to tie the game.

Anyway gang, that's about all for now.

Jim

Not a whole lot to report

today. I'm enjoying a coffee at the moment and relaxing. I've been going to bed late and sleeping late. Not good. Tonight I'm going to get to bed early. Yet I recall even in my 30's I'd go to bed about 1 am but I'd be up at 7am for work.

Just on CNN watching a timeline of Doctor administered meds for Michael Jackson. The last does of Propofol he took was about 10:40am June 25th but it was all the other little doses of other things before that. Doses that would knock out a horse. At 10:40 his Doctor gave him 25mg of Propofol and he never woke up from it. Elvis was big on medication as well and so was L Ron Hubbard when he was found dead in his mobile home but that's another story.

Still reading "In the company of others." It's slow going but its her first stand alone novel after all. Julie E. Czerneda is better known for her Trade pac series. I've still got to get the next 2 in that series if they're still in print.

I knew it was going to come to this eventually. BM is opening up the business room for the evening shift and they are going to flood 43 stations with trainees. Pull them in, use them spit them out. Keep the good ones, cycle people in and out of here. Sounds like a boiler room operation to me. The good news about this is more pop cans to take home. This week bm gets my payrol time line details and my payrol issue will be resolved. When that happens I'm going to apply at the other job. If I get it, I'll work 3 days a week there and continue my job here and see how low it can go before they kick me out.

Oh and last night's Raw was excellent. A lot better then Sunday's Summerslam. I'd rate Raw a 9 and Sunday's Summerslam a 7. Incidentally we got a credit on our bill for missing the first half hour of Summerslam, so we got to watch 90% of that for free. Anne's pretty good at wrangling out a deal.

Anyway gang, that's about all for now

Jim

I had a great birthday weekend. Friday I got my book and Saturday Fort Edmonton Park and Sunday Summerslam. I can't complain too much.

despite Shaw short changing me with my Summerslam ppv, (we missed the first half hour and we paid for it in advance as well.) I still had a good weekend. Anne says I can go in for afternoon hours on Tuesday because that's when I need to talk with the boss about my vacation pay. I want this resolved before the end of this month.

Coast has a decent UFO show on this evening and I'd like to catch some of that while I can. Anne didn't have ribs for me but she had pork chops marinating in the fridge and they were tasty and after that I went out for a bit of a walk around the back here looking for Boots absent for a few days now.

Using the Google earth measuring tool in feet I discovered something interesting. Before I got married I'd go often to Bella foodland (a little corner store a few blocks away) to get my Coca Cola fix etc. Using the Google earth measuring tool from my place to Bella is about 745 feet. To get 5 miles by just walking around here, I'd be looking at making a circuit 5 times up to Victoria Drive head south to 136th street down to Sifton school head North behind our place out to the sidewalk. That 5 times is approximately 5 miles. The reason why I mention this is because if I can't get a guards license and when I get my vacation pay I'll join a health club. I like the part time guard job, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday's because it will give me exercise and more chance to read and listen to Coast and make some extra cash. If I don't get the guard job then I'll get the health club membership. I'd rather get the guard job from the same company I worked at 1978 and 1994. The benefits are obvious. The guard job would fit right in with getting a pedometer so I can keep track of how many steps I can take in a shift.

Yes, I had a great weekend. Now its back to the grind. BM gave a bit of a talk Friday saying how the tap shooters wont be the old guard anymore like myself and others. By this he means that if we don't do line hour we get moved to the back 20. There will be a constant flux of staff moving from one system to the other. I don't see them sticking to that with the source that we currently have. It's too much of a headache and sounds like a make work project. That's why I want my vacation pay and the guard job as a back up.

Anyway gang, that's about all for now.

Jim

I had a terrific day out there at Fort Edmonton Park

and I posted photos of my day over there at my website but despite not having any sleep the night before I still had a good time. I also discovered they have Coke in glass bottles. Coke zero that is but they charged like $3 for a bottle. I wanted the bottle. I want to do this again next year.

Anyway gang, that's about all for now.

Jim

I get called into the back compter office with a co worker by

bm and I'm thinking, ok now what? So he says that my bank is phenomenal I just need to pick up my low totals is all. I didn't ask what my bank rate was at but that certainly put me in a good mood. It was a nice birthday present to say the least.

I also finished "The Wilding" early yesterday and there is a short review of it on my web site. I really enjoyed this book.

I've got today and I'm off for a few days even though I have some Lodge duty to do at Fort Edmonton Park Saturday. I'll have all day Sunday to sleep in as Anne is ordering Summerslam.

Anyway gang, that's about all for now...

Jim

No real high points from Monday.......

With this being my 8th novel I've read so far this year, I’ve got about 128 pages left to go in “The Wilding.” I should have the book read before the end of the week. The I can start on “In the Company of others.”

This Saturday I’m performing curator duty with Dale at Fort Edmonton park Lodge. I’ve never been to Fort Edmonton park before although I’ve seen the pictures uploaded from Google Earth of the grounds but I have no clue as to where the Lodge is located. I don’t know if we’re in suit and full Masonic regalia, or how long we’re there for or if we’re there for or if we have to bring our own food or are we going to have a meal or what. Dale is a nice guy and all but we haven’t exactly resonated with each other. I’ll be calling people up today to find out what’s going on. I’ll bring my camera along and have Dale take a few photos of me.

Today the big guys are in the office, yawn. I’m there business as usual and to put my 4 hours in. Greg doesn’t know it yet but I won’t be in on Sunday because for my birthday Anne’s ordering me Pizza and we’ve got Summerslam all ordered. $39.99 + tax isn’t bad. Usually comes to about $45. I order 2 WWE pay per views each year from my “meager discretionary” income.

The other thing I’m observing this up coming weekend is Calgary’s Con Version-25. Now that I know when it’s on I can plan for next year. But I’d like to meet Tanya Huff and Terry Brooks. Get my photo taken with both, all 3 of us together. Next year I’m going to plan for a 1 day trip and head down there. Most likely there’s some from Edmonton venturing down but that’s for 3 days most likely. This year at our own Pure Speculation we’re having Spider Robinson join us and I’m definitely down with that in October…….12:20am> The above was from yesterday afternoon. Anne sat with me while I waited for my bus and I headed into work picking up my 6/49 ticket on the way in. The big bosses didn’t appear to be in but bm seemed pissed that I wasn’t in on Saturday and I had to remind him we made an arrangement I could trade Saturdays for Sundays and that I was in yesterday. We did BOB all night. Yeesh, what a disaster. I got a good haul of empties and no card sales this evening. I came close but the customer was away from her purse. I was glad to get out of there with a $220 total. I got “mugged” by some people I work with on the train crowding around me annoying me. So at the next stop I got off and took the last car and read on the way home.

I watched a pretty good Monday night Raw. DX made a brief comeback but they got ambushed by Legacy. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate last nights show about a 6. DX needs to be Evolution with another wrestler in their ranks. Four would be better or at least 1 other wrestler with them. It was a good show but I’m sure this DX/Legacy storyline is just beginning to develop.

Anyway gang, that’s about all for now.

Jim

I've been having quite a week lately and I forgot to post in here......

....so I'm about to correct this tonight.

We went to bed about 4am this morning and woke up about 1pm. We felt great. Anne went out to do her shopping and I did a lot of reading out of "The Wilding." Anne's out there now getting potatoes.

Last night however I went to get my book over there at Audrey's. The New Jedi Order "Behind enemy lines 2." I also got a 6/49 ticket for the big $16M draw this evening. other then that not a lot going on. I'm still struggling with getting rid of this cold. I've got lots of pfhlem in my throat and sinuses.

Earlier when Anne came in I was watching WWE Vintage showing some of the older matches from Summerslam's from the mid 1990's. Anne made me a soup and sandwich for supper. I'm good with that. I thought Jerry Lawler and Vince McMahon made a great announce team. It was fun to watch. I recall those years especially the last match from 1996 with my first year at Villa Maria apartments. I didn't have pay per view back then or even cable.

Anyway gang, that's about all for now

Jim

Still struggling with this flu/cold whatever it is.......

I woke up with a splitting headache. Just before work Anne went across the street to get me some real Halls cough drops. I went into work and got my cheque. No bonus money or anything like that. Fridays are great because there’s lots of pop cans and I got a whack of empties. Despite what ever it is I have, I ended up doing not to badly sales wise. Super split us up into 3 teams playing most dollars on Credit card sales gets $25 a team player. I had 3 in the first half and a decent total. More empties and Anne called. In the 2nd half I got more empties and a total of 5 CC sales. Our team had the lead but that lead quickly evaporated big time. The first team had something like $880 while we only had $740 by the end of the night. It was pretty good going. I got my bus as it pulled up to my stop to my bank and I got inside with a splitting headache. The same one. As I was trying to do my banking some kids came in off the street plying me with this hard luck story. I didn’t want any trouble. This is distracting. I wish they’d lock those doors after hours so just people with bank cards can get inside.

I did my banking and went to wait for my train at Central and headed home. While coming out of the tunnel I felt better with cooler air relieving me slightly. This nice clean cut young man asked me where Stadium station was. We had a bit of a chat and he got off at Rexall. Anne called me while I was on the bus at Clairview waiting and my head was still throbbing. I noticed this black kid standing in the exit back door as we were heading out and I asked if he remembered me about the Internet business he was running. I wanted him to show me what he has because its MLM based and while I‘ve been there done that, this fellow was completely honest. He smiled and said yes he remembered me but I had nothing to write his number on with at the time but he gave it out to me and like a mantra I repeated the last 4 numbers over and over again until I got home. I wrote the number down and tried to call him but his service providers recorded message said “the customer was unavailable at this time.” I‘ll try and reach him today. Hopefully this is a little side business Anne and I can do together. No it‘s not Amway or Avon.
I got home to catch the mid part of the 2nd quarter Riders/BC game. I had 2 2 bets going on at work saying 1-4 BC will win. There was even a dribble move. Something rarely seen in the CFL. Lions won 35-20. Ching-ching, that’s $5 bucks guys.

Now this is cool: Pulp's Science Detective Meets Comics' Dark Knight Detective In my early twenty’s in the early 1970’s I was read the Marvel “Doc Savage man of Bronze” comic books. Its nice to see DC is reissuing these. According to Fantastic Fiction the publisher ran 192 novels of Doc most of which were written by Lester Dent. I would have loved to get the original novels but most likely these are long out of print.

Ok speaking about business and such like I said yesterday Stats Can released the unemployment numbers for July. Nationally Canada is at 8.6%. Alberta is at 7.2% and here in Edmonton we’re at 7%. This is seasonally adjusted of course when the kids go back to school in September. I’m surprised the numbers are that high here in Edmonton when this time last year we were under 4% Apparently this is the highest the jobless rate has been here in Alberta Stats Can said in 13 years. Anne better keep her job at Pizza and same with me where I am. Without our jobs we can’t get housing subsidy.

Now I heard this story a few days ago on Coast and last night local news ran with the story about the Nasa Kepler mission finding earth size planets. Astronomers are saying that Kepler (the spacecraft) is actually working. They’re using a yellow star like our own and have found a planet but in order to find a planet like ours the mission will have to wait a year or more because like our own planet orbiting the Sun once every 365 days. The article said that the observation to confirm a orbit by an Earth sized planet might be 3 years. First they spot the event, then they wait for the event again, and once more to confirm. But the Kepler mission is taking an area of 100,000 stars. The article suggested confirmation of earth like planets might be around 2011-2012. This is all part of Nasa’s Terrestrial Planet Finder mission. This doesn’t mean that just because there are earth size planets out there doesn’t mean they are habited by advanced civilizations.

Pat posted the winners for his Joel Shepherd Cassandra Kresnov series, I enter as many of Pat’s Give-a-ways as possible. I haven’t won yet but I’m against about a thousand subscribers. The odds could be better of course. The Hotlist is one of my daily blog rounds.

Today, I’m continuing with more FC memory work. With luck I could get a bit of piano practicing in. I’m still working on the chords for “Twinkle Twinkle little star.” or TT for short. It’s such a simple song and I’ve got the animation on how it goes so that should help. Two words for 1 chord held on a 2 count. The first part is C,C,F,C. It’s simple enough. Also, I’ll be reading more of “The Wilding.” But my main entertainment for today is the Edmonton/Hamilton CFL game and then the Winnipeg/Calgary game. So for the most part it’s football on the couch all day. Plus more FC memory work.

If that’s not enough then I’ve got to check my 6/49 ticket to see if I won the big one. Yeah right. It’s not that big of a draw at about $4M.

I had a pretty good week what with getting 20 CC sales and 2 days at line hour. I can’t remember when it was the last time I got 20 CC sales.

For Coast’s Friday night show now underway they are talking about exorcisms and possessions. They can’t talk about Ufology all the time.

Since I’ve got this template I’ve had a block called “For what it’s worth.” My first article was about my ranting on UFO’s but the link wont open for me. I did the coding wrong. Now the brief “article.” Is up and running.

And Finally I added a new article to the “For What its worth Department.” This months topic is the JFK assassination and my thoughts on the topic.

Anyway gang, that‘s all for now.

I'm developing a bit of a cold today...

I've got the runny eyes, scratchy throat type thing. Should be nothing to worry about.

Well, I didn't win the big $35M last night. Two winners split the big jackpot for over $17M. There was 1 winner in Saskatchewan and another winner in Quebec. I got 1 number right. Saturday's draw is $4M and tonight I'm getting a ticket. I picked 2 MLB games based upon Covers.com: FM/WN and AR/PP. FM and AR to win. There's no money riding on this thing.

Anne left out of here just now to take the empties in. I get $10 and on Friday I'll apply that towards my "allowance" and get the Ben Bova Omnibus book. I'll have 10 books left once I get this one. There's the 7 Star Wars "New Jedi order," then there's the 2 Jim Butcher novels. after that there's the CJ Cherryah Omnibus but it's in the size of a regular novel and priced the same way as well. I just might get the 2 Jim Butcher novels. I don't know yet.

Other then this not much going on. It's the dog days of summer. Tonight I'm in the office scratchy throat and all and I'm sure this isn't going to sit to well with me. last night we began BOB and that's September 20th so we're going to be doing this campaign right up until the week before the event. BM will reset the list a few times and we'll get a bit of success with it and we'll take a break from it for a week now and then to break it up.

Anyway gang, that's all for now

Not a bad day for a Tuesday

ETS was running normally yesterday afternoon on my commute and I got downtown alright to Corona station. It felt funny downtown almost vacant like a Sunday, quiet. The front doors to the inside of the building was locked. WTF? Maybe I can go home? I’ll wait until 4:30pm. Super came down with other management and handed me the pass key to get inside as I tossed it back to him. I went upstairs and settled into a vacant dialer. Janitorial was there earlier to get most of empties. I got a few. I had a decent first half in sales and a card. It was a quiet shift not a lot of people there. I think we must have had about 15 of us. Kind of reminded me of what it was like before the recessing hit. The good old days. I got more empties and left out of there with a $5 bonus and 3 cards for a total of $500 on a slow night and feeling pretty good leaving under gray overcast skies. I think it was about +14C out there.

I got my train for home and called Anne while I was at Stadium station. Her sister and husband from Sydney are coming out here in October. I’ve never met them before but they are coming out to meet family and us for a day. So that’s going to be pretty good. They can do this because they are on Donna’s extensive collection of air mile points.

I got home about 10pm just as Raw was underway and it wasn’t too bad. Anne was making us our Sunday brunch breakfast. On a scale from 1-10 I’d rate Raw about a 7.5. Especially the end where Triple H get hung up on while placing a phone call. Is he trying to resurrect DX again?
I’ve been watching the promo’s for CTV’s recent offering of “Defying Gravity” and meant to catch the pilot episode a few days ago. My next chance to catch this will be August 9th this Sunday. Actually 4 countries are involved in the making of this series: Canada (of course) Germany, the US, and the UK. I don’t know what they’ve got for a budget but it looks like a first class production. Speaking of Scifi, I’ve also been wanting to catch “Dollhouse” as well but unfortunately I don’t know what local channel it’s on. According to our listings its on Wednesday nights from 9-10pm. Yeah I’m on my way home from work at that time. I think the first season was released on DVD but I want to catch a few episodes to see if I like it.

Today I’m getting my 6/49 ticket for the big $35M draw for Wednesday night. I’d even settle for 4 numbers for about $75. But wow $35M!

Also, I was able to read a bit at my dialer last night. I’m enjoying “The Wilding” but in many cases the author uses too many repetitive similes. I’ve seen the same simile repeated on the same page, nothing wrong with that of course, You can feel the unconscious narrative flow of the authors prose when this happens. It’s kind of special to watch the flow unfold.

Not much is going on today. I’m going into work as usual and get my 6/49 ticket. I’ve been asked by people I work with if I ever won the big jackpot would I quit my job? I don’t know. You see there’s only so much of anything one can do before you get board. My wife say’s she’d volunteer her time. I don’t know about that. I like my job. I just don’t like the stress it can sometimes cause me but that‘s why it‘s called a job. I’d like to go into work one day with the knowledge that I’ve got $35M ($!7M me the other half my wife) behind me. I’d work Tuesday through Friday 5-9 and go to my bank, maybe once a month. I’d fly under the radar type thing. I’d dress the same way. Carry no bling. I wouldn’t drive around a fancy car because I don’t have a license anyway. I wouldn’t flash around a lot of money. There would be no signal to anyone that I’d have a lot of money. Yeah I know, I’m dreaming. We had this fellow a few years ago and he ran a fleet of gumball/plinko machines. One day Doug didn’t see me looking while he was going through his wallet. He had a stack of payroll cheques half an inch thick in his wallet lined up like a wad of bills. He realized at the last minute I caught a glimpse of his wallet. He smiled and closed it up making a mock “oops” kind of a gesture. “aren’t you going to cash those?” “Shh,” he said. “you didn’t see anything.” I don’t carry a wallet but I’d go to the bank once a month to cash the cheques……………1:05pm> My wife’s sister Donna is coming out today and the girls are going out this afternoon. It’s Donna’s birthday today and last night Anne went up to Walmart to try their digital photo print machine. She had to wait about an hour but she got a lot of prints from our trip to Jasper early last month. Anne made a photo album for her as a b-day gift. At .20 cents a photo that’s pretty good. I think the print size is about the size of a paperback novel, less maybe 20% off the top. Decent prints too.

I’m still determined to go in for tomorrow for the 1pm shift. This week I want to sit down with bm and go over my vacation pay. There was an over payment of a few dollars from their end of $6 and some change but nothing that would warrant them taking away hundreds of dollars from me.

Anyway gang, that‘s all for now.

Saturday was very, quiet very strange

My wife left out of here about 4:15pm yesterday. She called on her break saying that she got into work with 10 minutes to spare. I didn’t do much Saturday. I woke up about 1am watched what was left over of the Winnipeg/Toronto game. 13-12 Winnipeg. Toronto’s home loss record is now at 8 games!

I couldn’t feel it what with the fan on my back all afternoon but apparently we got up to +31C as a high yesterday. Anne made some very tender side ribs for my supper but they were really greasy. I don’t ordinarily like side ribs but these were pretty good. On a scale from 1-10 I’d rate them a 7,

The bird cages were outside and the clouds were growing dark and the wind was picking up. I decided to bring the birds inside. We got some rain but the real casualty in all this was at the annual Big Valley Jamboree (a popular annual country western music gig in Camrose about 2 hours South of Edmonton.) the strong winds tore the roof off of the main stage killing one person and injuring 15 others. We Didn’t get much rain here but this was a scary storm. Not as bad as the storm a few weeks ago though. Even Heritage days was called off around the supper hour.

My entertainment last night consisted of watching the Riders/Calgary CFL game. The game started off slow but built up to a whacky finish. It ended up 24-23 Saskatchewan but the last 30 seconds were a real nail biter. It’s always good to see a Calgary pro sports team lose hehehe.

Oh, Friday after work when I went to Audrey’s they had one more day of their 20% off Science fiction Fantasy book sale. I thought Friday was August 1st. I’m running a day late it seems. We’re back on track now, I picked up the RA Salvatore’s Dark elf trilogy rather then the Ben Bova Sam Gunn Omnibus. I can get that next weekend at regular pricing. My next special order will be The New Space Opera 2 and 5 Warhammer Omnibus books.

Anne called me at her 8:30pm break saying she was going to deposit our rent money into her account. We’ve got the August rent taken care of, rental subsidy process underway and the August bus pass. Except for her lack of hours things are more or less stabilized. We really need that rental subsidy under control. Friday afternoon bm encouraged me to come in from 1:30pm-9. I’d like to and I just might. As for me, I’m out of here later today for my 2-6 Sunday shift and I’m back at about 7pm.

Anyway gang, that‘s all for now