February blahs

Anne called just before I left out the door for work. It was bitter cold out there. I wore my balaclava it was that cold. I read a bit on the way in and got my dialer. No can collecting today. Super asked me to work AES and that was slow going. It was kind of a slow night for a Wednesday. I got 4 CC sales for a $5 bonus and I ended up with $540. I was glad to get out and over to my train. One of the guys from the front 20 I befriend a few years ago got my attention. I was trying to avoid him actually but he went the other direction. Three cars on the train and I caught the front one and read on the way home.

I looked for Boots but found no sign of him. He’s been gone for 4 days and 3 hours out in that cold. Anne puts dry food out there for him. When I got home Anne called as we gave each other updates. I ended up playing Oblivion. For an hour and watched the news as Anne cooked up a pair of some burrito’s, mexi fries for me. She’s going to make one more pass to find Boots. She thinks the caretakers on the ground floor next to the entrance found him and took him in to the SPCA. Maybe they even took him in but I doubt it. They are cat lovers themselves.

Nasa’s orbiting carbon observatory crashed the other day. This was a great project and it’s kind of a shame this happened. Hopefully they have plans to build another one. In a related article from the National Geographic magazine had a 20 page article recent of the Alberta tar sands and it’s environmental impact. The magazine did not paint a favorable picture of Alberta tar sands. But the article also said that the tar sands are accountable for about less then 1% of the planets Greenhouse gases (GHG‘s) which is pretty good. The tar sands provides jobs for thousands of people (now thanks to the economic downturn) in the hundreds. In related news oil is climbing up to $42 barrel yesterday.

The science fiction community lost another great one. I seldom ever report the loss of SFF authors that pass away but Phillip Jose Farmer, held a special place in my heart. In the 1970’s I read SF but not that much and I almost gave up on SF for a few years there until Star Wars 1977. I began reading SFF again and Farmer brought to my reading palate a sense of wonder lost on my reading in the mid to late 1970’s. Farmer is most famous for his River world series. I loved that series. He died at the age of 91.………………..1:50pm> I got up a bit early to do some research on some charities I like to contribute to. When my income goes up a bit more next month I’ll disclose these organizations as I have 6 I donate to now. One of my favorite charity organizations is The Edmonton Oiler Community foundation.

Anne left out of here for some KFC. Right now it’s -19C/-34C wind chill. Anne asked me if I wanted to take tonight off and I’m thinking about doing this and go in for the 1:30pm shift, but the thing is, I have Lodge next week so it’s hard to justify taking the day off. All markets except the Nasdaq are up. Oil is at $44/barrel this hour. If they can get to $50 in the next week, then I know were climbing out of the recession.

I’d be just getting in now. Anne talked me into staying home for the night. I called in talked to the secretary to let DC or Super know I wouldn’t be coming. I covered my base. My wife went to cash a couple of bas of bottles in and I spent a couple of hours playing Oblivion. I aborted a couple of quests that were no match for me and played half an hour until the Oiler’s/Columbus game then read for half an hour out of “Logos run.”

Anne came back saying she got $25 worth of bottles and had a nap while I watched the hockey game. At least one Oiler showed up: Roli. CBJ had 31 shots on goal and scored 1-0. Watching the Oiler’s tonight was like watching The Oil Kings. The juniors could have played better. Give credit to CBJ because they played a flawless game. They got 19 shots on goal. If the Oiler’s ever deserved the chant “Oiler’s suck” it would be tonight’s game. I’d have joined in as well because this evening, the Oiler‘s sucked. But I didn’t have the night off for that alone. I just needed some time to myself for awhile.

Not much else going on. I’ll have Logos run finished reading by Friday. Still no sign of Boots. We keep looking for him but he doesn’t answer.

Anyway, gang that’s all for now.

e. Jim

Work, weekends and stuff

My wife left out of here at about 1:30pm yesterday and for a few hours I had the place to myself until I shut things down and locked up. I was able to play a bit of Oblivion, gaining a level and having some fun with that. Weather wise it was nice going in and I read a bit of “Logos run” on my way into the office. Brad Paisley at Rexall place last night. Inside, Rob was there (the boss) with other employees and Rob looked at me, “You know, if it wasn’t for the lack of you not getting CC sales, you’d be the perfect employee.” That was a very nice compliment. Made my night. I sat with JT and some new people at the back and JT and I had a nice talk as it was a slow evening. DC and I bet double or nothing on the Oiler/Flames game happening latter tonight. I’m looking forward to this. I was mulling over the possibility of getting a bite to eat at Burger King across the street on the way home. About the Oiler game tonight, it’s on home ice. Should be a good one. I ended up being 2nd from the top total with the new kid beating me by $25 but I’d been there all week and beating this CFK campaign up for along time. I got a $100 CC sale which was a nice bone they tossed me. I discovered that I lost my reading glasses as well which kind of upset me. The only casualty on the day.

I also collected a huge amount of bottles and cans when I left out of the office. It was off over to Audrey’s with my empties. When I got to Audrey’s they had a crowd of people milling about. A couple of poets had a book signing. Trevor said none of my orders came in. There were a lot of new SFF books to choose from. Most of them were in Trade paperback. I settled on “Space Vulture,” Gary K. Wolf and Archbishop John J Myers. Looks like it’s going to be a fun read. It’s even got a nice kudos from Stan Lee on the cover. I paid and left with my purchase and my train came by with a few minutes wait. I read a bit on the way to Clairview and decided to walk over to Burger King but they were closed. At 9pm on a Friday night? But one car was in the drive through and the counter clerk when the car left let me order a chicken sandwich and fries. That was my lunch for the night. Next time and I’m not in a hurry I’m going to take the #2 bus home and get off on 50th street and get a Wendy’s something.

After I was inside our place I stashed the cans away and hung up my coat, cleaned up, had my snack and watched some of Smackdown. I enjoyed my snack and Smackdown wasn’t too bad. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate it maybe a 6 surfing back between the local news and wrestling. My lunch was good. I watched some news and Anne was just coming in at 11:30pm. No need to make me any dinner. I watched the last of the news and then went to bed.

I had a good hour or so sleep and maybe 2-3 hours of rest but by 5:30am I needed to get up and play some Oblivion for an hour and then go back for a nap. I was able to join the “Fighters Guild” and get a contract to wipe out some rats in a house. After dispatching the rats in the basement I went back to the guild and got rewarded to “Apprentice.”

I don’t know if I want to go out to the West end this afternoon with Chris. I’m going to be feeling too wiped out and I want a good nap and some more Oblivion game time in before my Oiler game. The other NHL game I’m “watching” is Toronto/Vancouver. All I can say is “Lets go Leafs!” Anne said she has a plate of something in the fridge for me to nuke up. Just as well since my cash flow is dwindling. I’ve got to pick up another pair of reading glasses anyway from the dollar store across the street.

Anyway, gang that’s all for now.

e. Jim

Its a mid week thang

After shutting everything down here and locking up I had a brief wait for my bus. At Clairview station I bought a 6/49 lotto ticket for the big $39M draw. I picked out my numbers and got a bottle of diet Coke. I read about 6 pages of “Logos run” on the way into work. I got my dialer but Super opened up the overflow of 4 stations. We can open up about 30 more stations if we need to. I gathered up a lot of bottles and cans. About 20 of them, so that’s another $2.00 right there. Or about $12 bucks/week. Also JT didn’t think S from Vancouver is going to do another evaluation. JT’s pretty good with things like that. I had a slow start but it picked up. By 7pm All I had was just under $300 but out of about 20 of us tap shooters nobody was running away with this. Maybe 4 had anything over $350. I did a lot better in the 2nd half and chalked my slow evening to a Wednesday and I had 4 CC sales as well.

I felt pretty good leaving with my booty of bottles and cans. I cracked open my book as the Clairview train was slow coming in. I think I got another 6 pages of reading on the way home. When I got off the bus out back here I took a look around for Boots. Calling his name but nobody answered. I kept calling for him watching my step on the snow and ice. It wasn’t that bad out there weather and walking. I think it was -7C and no wind chill. Winds were calm so I walked out back by the garbage bins and along the parking lot. No luck. No sooner had I got inside there was Anne calling. We had a nice talk. We think what happened to Boots was he came by looking for Anne and the building security guard scooped him up and took him to the SPCA. I’m going to suggest that she call our local branch to confirm. He might be in some cage somewhere waiting to be put down. The other scenario is we think he wandered to far a field got lost and froze to death. But you never know he’s been gone several times like this before and we’ve always found him but never for this long. I’ve got my office window open and I can stick my head out and every 10-30 minutes or so I call his name hoping to hear from him. I figure if he’s not found by Sunday night we can expect the worst. I feel bad for the little guy. He scratched me a few times but that’s not his fault.

I managed to open a can of stew for supper and I’m just waiting for Anne to come home. I don’t like her being out this late at night. She should be alright though. She usually walks home or takes the bus from Clairview station.

Yesterday I had a nice entry all ready to post but I got a bit distracted. I’m still working on importing this blog automatically over to Facebook. Dennis does it all the time. I’ll figure it out. I like Facebook. It helped me find my family or rather they found me. It’s nice to see they are all Facebook users.

I located Alfred but he’s not via Facebook. I still need to locate Dave but at the moment I’m having some Internet difficulty. It happens from time to time. JT said he switched from Satellite over to Telus. It’s not that I’m not happy with Shaw, they do a great job but I’ve been using the same modem here now for almost 10 years now and it‘s falling apart. Shaw offered to get me over to that “Shaw boost” but if “The Grid” ever gets online, why bother…….1:20pm> My wife finally came home. She was at Walmart doing some shopping and bought me some Cheese Pleasers. Her way of saying sorry for being late. But she came in just as I had Oblivion on fired up and ready to go. I played for about an hour then after shutting it down I did some Facebook and JFK assassination research stuff. By this time I was getting all played out and I kissed my wife goodnight and went on in ahead of her into bed listening to a bit of Coast.

Now I woke about 6:30am needing to pee and the first thing I noticed was my office door closed. I smiled “Boot’s is back.” Anne mumbled how he was all smelly and dirty but she powdered him down so he’s nice and tolerable. Good stuff. We were getting worried there for awhile for reasons above.

I had a hard time getting back to sleep. I tossed and turned for awhile so about 9:30am this morning I got up to play some more Oblivion for an hour.

I was pretty well wiped out after that. Even then sleep was hard to come by, like gold in Oblivion. I’m still level 1. I’m getting used to the lay of the land, discovering tombs and caves. Stuff like that. I decided I’d try and go back to bed get a few hours sleep but no such luck. I got up at noon and dozed on the couch with the local noon news on. There was Obama heading up to parliament hill. Snore. There’s the markets. Oil is climbing back up. Snore. I woke up just as some soap opera was in progress fired up the computer, made my first coffee and so here I am.

I did a bit more reading on “Logos run” and I’m at last just over the halfway part of the book. This is good stuff gang. I hope Dietz does another one with this same characters. The writing is outstanding and I’m having fun with this book. He should turn this into a role playing game it’s that good. Even though Hollywood sucks with lame TV who needs TV when you have great books like this?

Tonight it’s off to the job, Hopefully I’ll be able to get my cheque early grab my dialer maybe even watch a little Oiler’s at Dallas hockey game on tonight in between calls. Should be a good game. I’ll put my 4 hours in run out of there to catch my bus and head on up to my bank, cash my cheque and head home to catch the game highlights. Basically that’s all I’ve got going on for today.

Anyway, gang that’s all for now.

e. Jim

Family day long weekend here in Canada

I had fun going over Facebook and Twitter earlier but after that half mile walk, I needed a nap. Anne was out shopping and bought some CFL light bulbs. The ones that last 9 years or so saeth on the box and should save us a lot on our monthly utility bill. We’ll see the real differences next month when the bill comes out. Hopefully we can cut it down to about half.

After fooling around on Facebook, Anne called me in for supper: Baby back ribs and her foiled potatoes. The ribs were excellent. And now I get a couple of hours to do my thing before bed. Incidentally, I’m enjoying these CFL light bulbs. We’re doing our bit to help the environment. Everything is so much cleaner and brighter in here now.

Tonight, we’ll most likely be in bed by around 4am and I’ll be up around noon. Because we have these nice fluorescent lights it’s easier to read and I can read the Sunday Sun morning paper now. I used to like doing that. About 7:30pm tonight it’s the Oiler’s at Phoenix and after that it’s Monday night Raw. That, and I’m going to try and walk my mile, get some more reading done, piano practice and maybe even get some writing done as well…………3:50pm> We went to bed at our usual time but I had trouble sleeping. I was itchy and scratching all over, rolling around back and forth in bed. For about 2 hours I did this. I just couldn’t sleep. it was awful. About 6:30am or so I got up to read a bit out of my book. I felt drowsy and tried again. It was a bit better but this time less itchy-scratchy. No, not the Simpson’s. This doesn’t happen very often.

I finally got some sleep after about 9am and woke up about noon and decided I need another hour. It’s my day off after all right? From there I got some additional sleep and woke up around 2pm. I’m for ok now but this cold is still in my system. I'm not over the worst part of it yet. When I got up Anne had gone out shopping. She mentioned she was going out to the veggie mart.

Well gang the weather out there is cold here in the big city. We’re currently sitting at -13C/-19C wind chill. In other words, it’s cold out there folks. The long range though for next weekend looks promising as it’s supposed to warm up.

When I get over this cold I’m going to start my mile/day goal. When I did that half mile yesterday, I could really feel it working. My legs got stronger. This weakness of my legs really surprises me because I used to do a lot of walking before I got married. But I don’t get a lot of exercise these days and it’s taking it’s toll on me. Being diabetic doesn’t help much either.

Speaking about exercise and all, now don’t quote me on this but I read that because of the new Harper budget people that join health spas and clubs hee in Canada get a rebate. It’s the Feds way of trying to combat obesity. Makes sense because it would save in the long run a lot of money on the health care system. I like this. I think the idea is you join a health spa/club first and then when it comes time to file your taxes you can claim that as an expense. Same with a new computer as well. I need to talk to my tax guy about this just to confirm.

Speaking about Facebook, my friend Dennis Hurd (see his Blog in my links section) wrote on my wall that I can import these blog entries as a note/link on my Facebook wall so it would show up automatically under my RSS feed. I’m not sure how to go about doing this. I’m looking around kicking the tires. Basically I’d like just a few lines and a link to “read more?” type thing. I’ll figure it out.

And finally Anne came home with her stuff and is now getting me chips at the dollar store across the street. That’s to munch on for my hockey game/wrestling tonight. I’ll get the fallout from yesterday’s big pay per view show and the elimination chamber. Too scary kids.

Anyway, gang that’s all for now.

e. Jim

Day 1 of my 2 days off

This diary used to be written in hard copy. Ink on paper. I used to write in it everyday and it would be like a sounding board. In a way.

When I went from paper to MS Word in August of 2005. I decided to type instead of write by hand because it got to the point I couldn’t read my own handwriting. Besides I can add headers and footers and post photos to my blog in various ways. I didn’t get the digital camera until 2006 and that was kind of neat to put photos on my blog. Would I go back to paper and pen again? I doubt it. This is much better.

Last night I was playing Oblivion for a few hours. We had our wine. Anne was stressed out from her job. But we went to bed about 4am after I took my insulin and I slept ok for 8 hours. I got up to play Oblivion again and completed the first quest and discovered a few tricks about strategic movement around the world map. My character is not strong enough to complete the 2nd quest. This took me up until about 2:30pm and my wife got up to go over to the truck for a few things. it’s a discount food truck. There’s several of them scattered all over the city.
As for now, I’m having my first coffee. It’s -12/-20C out there. It’s supposed to warm up by this time next week. We should be around -4C.

My blood sugar level’s (bsl) were fairly high last night, registering 10.1. Right now it’s sitting at 9.3. The trouble is I’m not getting any exercise and that‘s going to be a huge problem for me down the road as a diabetic. A few years ago when Pat worked here he had bought a pedometer. Even though with the weather out there as it is I wouldn’t recommend anyone walking around for long distances on icy sidewalks. Treadmills are too expensive. I used to walk in the hallways to lower my bsl and I might do this yet in an hour or so. The thing is this doesn’t tell me how much distance I’ve traveled. A pedometer (thanks to Thomas Jefferson) measures each step and translates that into feet, yards, miles. I don’t need to do this all in one go but I’m going to look into getting a pedometer. I’m looking at getting a cardio health kit from London drugs. I decided that an early goal should be 1 mile/day. Some recommend 10K steps/day, which equals to about 5 miles. But what about the weather? The icy sidewalks? For starters, I can walk inside the apartment building back and fourth in the hallway. I just went and walked from one end of the hallway to the other and its 77 steps long, approximately. It’s going to take about 30 minutes from that little walk to lower my bsl. It seems that there are 2,000 steps in 1 mile. To get a mile’s worth of walking in the hallway I’d need to walk back and fourth for about 13 times. That’s about 1 mile.

I’m going to try this and see how long it takes me to walk a mile here in the hallway. It’s 3:30pm now. It’s now 3:45pm and I walked 5 times or about 770 steps. There’s no way to tell for sure unless I go get a pedometer and I believe I can get one at the pharmacy I pass by every day on the way to work. But what interrupted me was my crazy wife coming home from her shopping. Still I feel pretty good about that and I worked up a bit of a sweat as well and I feel pretty good about myself. I’m going to do the rest later. I don’t really need the pedometer in this case but I’m not always going to do my walking inside. That’s why I need one. And from now on I’m going to take the stairs up from Corona. But I’ll be looking into that pedometer when I go back to work Tuesday. My bsl hadn’t dropped much 9.1 down from 9.3 but it’s a start.

Anne’s making our brunch and an hour after that, I’m going to do the other half of the mile Five times.

My wife had retrieved my mail and my new bank card came in. It has chip enabled technology. I don’t think the last card I had was chip enabled. ID theft is a big deal these days and yet on the job I get anywhere from 10-20 CC sales/week. And I’m just part time. Out of 14-17 tap stations, that’s pretty good.

About time. Obama pushed his stimulus $787B package through at last. The military was complaining that there was nothing in it for them but this wasn’t a budget bill. Meanwhile Ed Stelmach has been holding press conferences about what we’re doing here in Alberta to give our oil a better image. This has been in the works for months now but good timing because Obama’s trip to Canada begins next week. Hurry up Ed, brush the dirt under the rug, company’s coming. Kind of reminds me of Catherine 2nd’s visit into the country side of Russia in the 1930’s. One good thing about Obama’s energy bill I like is the energy efficiency, up to 50B. Of course the Republicans are critical of the bill. No kidding.

After brunch I’m going to spend some time with “Logos run.” I put a little bit of a dent in this last night. Hopefully I can get past the books half way point.

And finally, I didn’t win the big $25M 6/49 draw last night. Actually, nobody did. However I got 1 number out of 6! They usually carry this over and often double it. It could go as high as $50M but it’s fun to play. I usually win about $10 bucks every now and then.

Anyway, bloggers that’s all for now.

e. Jim

Just testing WIndows Live Writer, its got some bugs

Work went surprisingly well last night despite this cold. Dave, JT, and myself were holding down 3 dialers in the back. I collected a whole bag of bottles and cans and came out with a pretty good haul walking towards Audrey’s. I could feel my blood sugar level dropping and had a yearn for a Boston cream donut or two.

I picked up Peter F. Hamilton’s Book 3 in the “Night’s Dawn” trilogy. I could get around to reading it this year or next. I’m a little burned out reading “Pandora’s Star” and “Judas unchained.” And if that wasn’t enough I read RA Salvatore’s “Icewind Dale” trilogy. All three of these books were at least 1,000 pages each. The “Night’s Dawn” trilogy combined is something like 3,576 pages in total. It’s going to take me 6 weeks at least to read book one etc. At the moment I’m kind of burnt out from reading large books like these. I’m even struggling with “Logos run” at just over 300 pages and suffering with this cold, I wont get around to finishing this book until the end of the month.

After Audrey’s I got myself a couple of Boston cream donuts to help raise my bsl reading up a bit and ate them on the train home. Slightly on the colder side last night but at least there’s no wind chill. It’s going to be -22C this morning but no wind chill and that’s ok.

Tonight after work I’m heading home but making a side trip over to the liquor store to get my sweetie and I a bottle of read wine for tonight then home to check in on the Oiler game in LA, see how that’s developing. After that have my nap. It would be nice if the Oiler’s won to complete my weekend.

8:15am I passed out three on the couch with the weather channel on snoozing for about half an hour or so from about 7:05am there for a bit until the budgies fluttering feathers in their cage woke me up. I’m feeling really lethargic from the cold/flue. Anne suggested I have a long weekend off but I’m going to go in for my 4 hours, despite the cold. I can grab a Tim’s breakfast and head for my dialer. The morning half will go by fast. It’s the afternoon that drags on slow.

6:25pm At least I made the effort. I went into work, and I even bought some Tim’s breakfast and a diet Coke. I wasn’t doing to badly on CFK pulling in about $320 and 2 CC sales just before noon when I went up to Super stated my condition and he made the suggestion if I would like to go home. I nodded yes and I got a few more sales finishing the hour for $360. I’ll get at least 21 hours and as long as I come in Tuesday, I’ll get my stat pay.

I walked to the LRT taking the street side and headed for home. I decided to wait for Anne because I might miss her if I went home. I had to wait about an hour though and bought a 6/49 ticket for the $25M when there she was working her way down 139A Ave towards the station. Of course she wondered why I was here at this time of the day and getting in the train headed to her job, I explained the situation. I rode in with her to The Bay Station and continued on the rest of the way to the HSC and rode back again to Clairview and walked through Superstore parking lot and to Superstore liquor and bought a cheep bottle of red wine. As per my wife’s instructions.

Anyway, bloggers that’s all for now.

e. Jim

Friday and a cold developing as well, yeesh

I don’t think anyone these days puts much stock in Friday the 13th. But sure enough over night I get a cold/virus. I got early signs of watery eyes, scratchy throat and runny nose. The only thing that works for me is sleep and time. I should be over this by this time next week and I’ve got to go into work tonight. Uggh. I’ll try it out for the first half.

After work last night I hurried over to my bus by Tim’s and I caught the #5 to my bank and there in and out. I even caught the 9:20 pm train to Clairview and home at my usual time.

After watching the news and supper I got a chance to play Oblivion. I’m still at Level 1 with 40 gold. But I did learn how to Camp and I got out further North West. Game time wise I’m in a week with only 40 Gold. I haven’t found any place where I can buy and sell.

This is going to be a short post today. If I can hold out for the full shift after work I’m going to get Book #3 of the “Night’s Dawn” trilogy.

Anyway, Bloggers that’s all for now.

e. Jim