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

Hey hey, we're into a new month.

I’m having an easy day off today. My wife is out running around spending money. Yeesh. I played a couple hours of Oblivion finding out more things about the game I didn’t know before, like weapons. Right now the only damage most weapons do for me is 2 regardless of what weapon it seems to be. A 2 handed Warhammer (what I was using) takes away the use of a shield. So I repaired a broken Longsword that does the same damage as the Warhammer. I equipped the Longsword and put the Warhammer away. Bam! My Armor class rating went from 2-8. Love it. I need some gauntlets and a helmet of some kind and that will increase my armor rating even more. I’m playing a level 3 Imperial.

Well its overcast and looks cold out there. Snow must have came down overnight as it’s showing up on nearby roof tops. Nice way to bring in a new month but March can be like winter with average temps around -12C. Usually by the middle of the March temperatures around here climb to about the -2C as an average. We’ve been known to get a blast of snow around end of March early April. Daylight savings time is next weekend. That to me is a sign of Spring.

Just now I watched Star Wars The Clone Wars. “Jedi Crash” pt.1. I enjoyed this episode. I’m still waiting for the Star Wars live action TV series. I think I can keep waiting. This economic downturn might affect this concept as well. According to some sources the live action TV series will debut in 2010 or 2011. My guess is in 2011. That is if the economy doesn’t take out any of the major networks. “The Clone Wars” isn’t bad though in the meantime.

I can’t recall what night this was last week but while I was working the phones talking to Mrs. Jones in my home town of Coquitlam BC. Her address was on Hailey. Hailey runs North South intersecting Regan Ave. My neighborhood growing up in the 1960’s was between Smith & Como lake, Blue Mountain & Robinson. Blue Mountain Service station on the corner of Como Lake Ave and Blue Mountain had been there for years. As kids we used to go there to get 10 cent soda pops. Across the street from the Service station on the SW corner for the longest time was a wooded empty lot. So I asked Mrs. Jones what’s there today and she said it’s a Presbyterian church. This must have went up in the early 1980’s. Another piece of closure added to my life. Back in the 1960’s early 1970’s we had only one church in the area and that was the church of The Nazarene, on Como Lake Ave West of Robinson. I recall early when our family moved into the area about 1960. The area West of our house was being prepared with bulldozers and other earth moving equipment.

This week has a few interesting things going on. Firstly we have the NHL trade deadline Wednesday. Will the Oiler’s make a move? They need a major goal scorer but nobody at this stage in the game has 50+ goals this season. On Thursday, I have my Lodge night and I think we’re going to do an EA degree.

Last nights Oiler’s/Wild game was a bitter sweet win for the Oiler’s. Near the end of the game, Oiler’s team Captain Ethan Morrow got a stick to the face, eye area and went to the hospital. There’s no update about the injury. I’m also keeping an eye on the Columbus at Vancouver game. The Canucks won 3-1. I don’t know if that helps or hurts the Oiler’s.

I’m making some pretty good progress on my book “The third lynx.” This time, I hope to have it read by the middle of March. In theory. Then I can go onto read “The Blood red harp,.” then it’s James P. Hogan’s “The Legend that was earth.” After that (May?) Greg Bear’s “Darwin’s Radio.”

Oh and even though we’ve had Boots here for a few days, Anne had the balcony doors opened up to get some air and Boot’s jumped. Yup he’s out roaming around again.

Anyway, gang that’s all for now.

e. Jim