I’m over Pledges now. Anne kept me home so I could spend time with Pledges which is why I was never able to work extra shifts. Now that’s changed. Beginning this week, I’m Monday 5-9, Tuesday 1-9, Wednesday 1-9, Thursday 5-9, Friday 5-8:30 and Saturday, 10-4:30pm. That’ll get me 32.5 hours. Beginning this week. There are a few things I want:

Firstly, to get Boots looked after so he can become a member of the family. No one can replace Pledges. I’ve seen lots of family cats but nobody as affectionate as he was. He really loved me and I love him. Always will and each day I’ll think of him but it’s also time to move forward. Second: I want that Blackberry Storm 2. Also I want to pick up a re loaded bank of Montreal Visa gift card. I’ve got a special project I’m looking at starting. I also want a laptop so I can sit out there with my wife in the living room instead of being cooped up in here, which she doesn’t like. Plus, I’m seriously thinking about getting an American Husky cross puppy as a service dog for my diabetes. These are cute animal, very playful and are capable of being housebroken for apartments. They use cat litter boxes. Also, this one might not cost me anything. I can get her from one of the guys at work. I don’t know how Anne will feel about this. She’s considering adapting Boots that’d be tolerable but a puppy? This wont be until the new year if at all.

Anne gave me my allowance for the weekend. My usual $20. Of this I owe $4 from last nights miserable loss against Calgary 30-7 to Warren. If he shows today, I’ll give him that. Then I thought wait now, I haven’t bought a book at Audrey’s since about October 10^th. But I already bought 7 books. The last of the 2 Jedi Order books, the 3 Brent Weeks books and the 2 Dave Duncan novels. I think I’m good for this month. I got a small bag of chips for this evenings Oiler’s/Flames game for later tonight.

Nobody won on the Max last night so it goes up to $40M. A winner was selected for the $323,062.00 prize. That’s 6 numbers including the bonus number. I got 2 numbers on 3 lines. I’m getting ready for the $50M. I might get a 6/49 $13M ticket at the Redi mart on the way home and a Max ticket. That’ll be $7 on tickets.

I‘m working until 2pm for today since I’m working off of yesterdays loss. Anne worked last night for 3 hours. She went out to the South Side for a Royal Pizza for us. I don’t like their Pizza’s. not enough crust. But lately I’ve been craving for a Wendy’s double bacon cheese burger combo and I might just walk over and treat myself before the game. Have a nap if I need one and when Anne leaves for work, head on over. This way she doesn’t need to make me anything for tonight.

Last night Art Bell was filling in for George Noory on the Lunar Hoax conspiracy. There‘s a lot of compelling evidence against the Apollo 11 moon landing by Neil Armstrong. One that sinks it for me is the Van Allen radiation belt. The Lunar module was coated with 3 inches of aluminum and apparently that was enough to prevent the occupants from being exposed?

Then there‘s the pristine condition of the film. There’s lots of other evidence as well out there. It was a pretty good show.

Anne was hinting at Bragging rights. It’s a new PPV WWE concept but we can’t really afford it. Besides, when I get home from work this afternoon I want to catch what’s left of the BC Lions/Riders game on at 3:30pm today and tonight there’s the Oiler’s/Calgary. Sunday night I’m watching the Oiler’s in Vancouver. Lots of sports this weekend.

The other day our WM emailed me asking about doing the EA charge. I’d like to but there’s not enough notice and what with Pledges going yesterday etc it’s been a busy month. First we had Pat and Berry here on the 7^th. Then I had that memory work for the FC exam and now Pledges being put down plus the hour changes on the job.

Robert J. Sawyer is one of my favorite Canadian SF writer. I’ve met him on several occasions and had 2 of his novels signed. Last April 23^rd there’s a photo of him and I at Audrey’s. RJS with ABC TV has recently released “FlashForward” based upon a popular novel of his. I’ve been trying to find out what channel and time this show is on but so far I haven’t been able to find it in the TV listings. Most likely it’s in the evening while I’m at work. I’m going to look for it this week and make sure I get a chance to see it. I think it’s in it’s 4^th episode right now.

Also sometime this weekend I want to get back into reading “The Space Wolf.” I’ve spent way too much time on this book. I began it August 31^st. To be fare it’s only been 8 weeks, so that’s not too bad. I’ve got possibly another week left as I’m aiming to finish at the end of this month. Then I can go on to read Sherri S. Tepper’s “The family tree.”

Also, I’ve been wanting to pick up on some of Rich Horton’s “Years Best” anthology’s. He has Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genre’s. Also this month I’m going to pay a visit to the 82^nd Ave Wee Book Inn. Apparently according to one of the guys at work WBI has a lot of the old Edgar Rice Burroughs’s and John Norman novels as well as a lot of Ace doubles. I think he’s reading “I am a barbarian.” He said he paid $2.50 for it. Sounds like I’ll be heading over there one of these Friday nights soon. Today’s been a long entry. I had lots of stuff to cover.

I’m enjoying my first coffee feeling pretty good. Boots just took a dump and stank up the "office" here. Peeu.

I had a great night last night. I locked the place up and boarded the bus and caught my train to Corona station, walked up Jasper and over the cross walk then turned right heading to the Pharmacy. I got my lotto Max ticket for $30M for Friday’s draw and a diet Pepsi and got my old dialer #13 facing the overhead monitor for our 7pm Vancouver at Oilers. First places credit cards $25 bonus. Second place cards, $10 up for grabs. I had a steady start, a couple of cards. The guy beside me was coming in really loud. Not his fault, he’s a nice guy. I got a nice selection of empties and I was at $380 by break. In the middle of the pack somewhere. More empties and the hockey game tied at 1. I got a couple of $100 sales, bumps and was in second place for the last bonus. Jerry’s girlfriend and Jerry brought in 2 bags of cans for me as she brought in her little Poodle cross cute little thing. Was really friendly towards me. Jerry’s a good guy. The Oiler game was tied in the 3^rd and even though I didn’t get any bonus money I had one of the top totals. We had 10 tap shooters doing Cops. I was just ripping it up with bumps and cards all night. I ended up with $910 and $295 for 5 cards. I was feeling good about my night and when I got outside it was raining pretty heavily heading towards my train.

I found a seat on the train with my empties and headed home. Even with the hoards of Oiler fans on the platform at Rexall didn’t hinder me from giving up my seat. Well, I had 3 bags of empties with me in their way.

When I got home to take off my shoes and put the empties away I checked on the game moments before Monday night Raw with Snoop Dogg. I like Snoop Dogg. The Oiler’s beat Vancouver 2-1. Khabibulin was putting on a goal tending clinic and he was the main reason why the Oiler’s won the game. Yesterday was a great day. Anne made us each a cheeseburger and fries for supper and the rest of Raw.

We went to bed about 3:30am listening to Coast. It wasn’t a bad show. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate it a 6. For most of the early hours of the morning and before bed, read more from “The Space Wolf.”

Anne just now went to go sell the bottles. She’s off today but tomorrow I’m putting in an afternoon and same with Thursday since Jerry said with our new hours we part time evenings can work afternoons. Same as before. Good stuff.

Anyway gang, that’s about all for now

Jim

After doing my banking last night I got home about 9:30pm and I wanted to find out how well the Oiler’s were doing with the Wild in town. I caught the finale minute as the Oiler’s won 5-2. Wow. Penner and Brule each got goals. Wow. At the rate Penner is going he’s going to become a 30 goal scorer he’s already got 5 so far and Brule at least 3. Anne came home immediately after and gave me shit because I took out $200. That was supposed to go towards the cable bill. So now I’ve got to go back to the bank on my way in and re deposit that so she can pay our cable/internet bill this afternoon. I screwed up. I’ll get off at Central and quickly run up and deposit the cash and then head down to Tim’s and get a bite to eat.

I went to bed about 12:45am and then listened to a bit of Coast. I got maybe an hour sleep but couldn’t sleep after that. I went back to sleep about 5am and the alarm woke me for 6am. I got 2 hours or so of sleep. I don’t feel too bad but Anne doesn’t want me to work a full afternoon. The extra 2 hours won’t make much of a difference.

Last night wow. I ended up getting my paycheck no bonus money (through out the office actually) I’ve seen this happen before when management pays out too much bonus money. Also some people are going to have their wages reduced. What? But I had a fairly good night anyway. Last night I got 6 cards for $375 on cards and $565 on total. And our office is last and we’re paying out too much bonus money? Already just me working part time this week I’ve pulled in $655 in credit cards.

Anyway, I’m going in for my 4 hours. Nothing more nothing less. Actually Steve from Vancouver was in today. I wonder if this had anything to do with the lack of bonus money and wage rollbacks?

The good news is the Esks won 22-19 (Argos came close) and the Oilers won here 5-2. Last year the Wild’s record against the Oiler’s was 4-2. It’s been a good short week what with it being Thanksgiving on Monday, Thursday off for the emergent meeting, it’s been a nice week.

This morning, I’m at my bank down to Tim’s and get some breakfast and then put my 4 hours in and then home get my Max ticket and have a bite to eat and a little nap then dig into “The Space Wolf.” This weekend is mostly going to be a reading weekend. I’ve had enough TV.

On Coast last night Richard Hoagland was talking about Nasa’s Moon mission. I didn’t listen to a lot of the details but it looked like a good show. And of course they talked about the balloon boy episode of a couple of days ago.

I’m looking at the markets and the DJIA is down from breaking over 10,000 points. Nice to see that going strong. But what bothers me is why are we in a recession here in Alberta when Oil is sitting at $75 in October? I have an answer. It’s based upon bad policy Stelmach received last year to increase oil revenues. What was he smoking? More on this later.

Anyway gang, that’s about all for now

Jim

I kept on waking and dozing off and on. This is the kind of mornings I need the morning shift because as tired as I was I couldn't sleep. I’d be home now tired enough for an afternoon nap and Anne could use the bus pass. Doing a few split shifts are going to be hard on me and the all day Saturday afternoon is as well. But I get off at 4:30pm and I can rush over to Audrey’s before they close at 5pm on a Saturday or if we get half an hour for lunch I can run over on my lunch break. We’ll be doing this new Schedule next weekend right after the Thanksgiving weekend. That 6.5 hour shift is going to be brutal. But I can use the extra hours. The Saturday just keeps me at my current hours. I’d probably do the split shift, Monday and Tuesday that way it’s just mornings off Wed, Thur, Fri. having Friday nights off will be a lot better for me as well. Anne works Wed, Fri and Saturday so for Saturday she’d have to get an extra ticket. I’ll do the splits when there is no Oiler game on.

Speaking of which they won a game in a shootout at Rexall Place last night. Good stuff. Penner scored his 2^nd goal. The next game is Thursday.

Anne and I were talking here about getting Boots fixed up because we don’t want him to spend another winter out there and playing revolving doors with the other cats. Boots wont travel a bus well so we’re going to take him down to one of the vets near us. It’ll cost us $175. We can barely afford our rent as we’re behind on that this month as it is.

Since this time yesterday we received a 10 degree drop in temperature. We barely got it +1 with a minus 4 wind chill. I haven’t seen the long range forecast yet so hopefully by the weekend it’ll warm up to the high single digits again.

I’ve had 2 awkward days in a row sleeping wise and tomorrow Pat and Barry want to take us out for breakfast Thursday morning. That’s ok they seem like nice people. I don’t mind getting up early again. The great thing about working the morning shifts is that I can watch the new shows when they come on. I haven’t seen Flash Forward or even the new Stargate Universe yet.

Last night on the job Jerry had me move to taps (retention). We were doing Cops for Kids, again. I was surprised even though I had a slow start at least I got a few cards. I ended up with $345 by break. I got 3 more cards for 5 and a $100 card. I was flying. I’ve been using a slightly different tap pitch by mentioning the charity in their Province. As soon as the customer asks “Where are you calling out from?” The sale is lost right there 90% of the time. They get pissed off when they ask that here in Edmonton and area because they know they can’t use the tired old “We only give locally.” I usually get about 6 of those a night. The other thing I’ve been saying in my pitch is asking to confirm their current address. Get them to say “Yes” a lot. That seems to work. I ended up with an $835 total a bunch of empties and a $10 bonus on my next pay-check. That’s what I call a great night. Unfortunately, we’re only going to run CFK for 3 weeks. The high tap numbers will drop off by Friday or Saturday. By Friday I’ll be getting about $600 totals then next week about $400-500 totals and the last week about $150-200 totals. Then we go onto Magic n Miracles. Jerry’s got all the campaigns listed out in order how we do them so we know what’s coming up next. We lost Block Parents though.

Anyhow, it’s time to double check this, post and update my Facebook page and ready for dinner.

Anyway gang, that’s about all for now

Jim

I’m going in at my usual time and I’m going to bring my pay stubs with me and bring everything together for bm this afternoon. He’s got a lot to go over there so I don’t expect I’ll get my VP next Friday or anything. But I’m going to put the VP request in for the full amount, YTD. Not a friggin $34 crap either. I’ll write on the release pay I should be getting back the full amount as well from this cheque. There was no overpayment. I never had anything like what the amount that last Dec 19 email said, on any of my pay stubs. But I’ll bring this all in for bm this afternoon. I’m not expecting any bonus money this cheque. I’m only expecting my full 23.5 hours. But I’ll go in see what I can do and get my cheque and the empties. Anne says I don’t need to go to the bank because she got paid today. If I get my $20 I’ll have enough for a book. If my vacation pay comes back in full next week then I’ll be able to get all my special order books there.

I’m going to try the new Lotto max soon. If there’s still time to get the Friday draw or get the draw for Saturday’s 6/49. Since nobody won it Wednesday it’s an estimated $8. Wednesdays draw was $3,441,246.00. Not quite $4M but I’ll take even 2^nd place.

Anne’s out spending our rent money. Good thing we have a bit of savings but those savings are dwindling fast and we haven’t yet heard from CRHC. No doubt our application is still in a slush pile in somebody’s intake tray. And most likely since Anne had changed her jobs a couple of times we had the employment details filled in, once intake does receive it then its going to have to come back for revision. Hopefully we won’t have to go through another 2-6 months of waiting.

Ok lets get onto some Science Fiction. Robert J Sawyer’s FlashForward pilot debuted the other day on I think ABC. Unfortunately I missed it. I’m working nights so I miss all the good stuff. Entertainment tonight the other night was talking about it. Even though I haven’t seen the show yet, it’s based on the Robert J Sawyer novel of the same name and I’ve been following the threads in his email group. It’s nice too see fresh original Science Fiction for a change. I think its airing on this Sunday night at 8:30pm. I’ll look around the listings for it tonight.

Last night we were able to watch the Oiler/Tampa Bay Lightning game broadcast out of Winnipeg. And this was by accident. TB was the Home team. The game was in the MTS center and there were a lot of Winnipeg Jet jersey’s in the crowd. Also a few “Bring back the Jets” banners hoisted here and there in the arena. The game was tied at 3 until our own D decides to take a foolish penalty during the closing minute. TB scored 4-3.

Excellent! I got my $20 and $3 for a 6/49 ticket and I don’t need to go up to my bank. Good stuff. I can go get my ticket bring that VP stuff into bm and hopefully get that in motion, get my cheque and then hunt for the empties put my 3.5 hours in and head over to Audrey’s and get one of the Star Wars books and head home.

Anyway gang, that’s about all for now

Jim