continued from my website

I got into the office and paid my regards to the staff in the business room. They were doing baseball. I had a brief talk with Gerry as he gave me my check. We had a laugh at how I'm (for now) in first place in our office pool. We also talked that because I'm full time now I qualify for 3 weeks off. So I'll take another week off just around Labour Day weekend and the last of my 3 weeks off over the Christmas holidays. On my way out the office I went and got a Proline ticket for 2 games yesterday (they won) and 2 games today. The Flyers lost, so there goes my $3. $7 bucks went out to gambling and add the 6/49 ticket for this evening and there's $9 just out on gambling this weekend.


I went to my RBC bank walked up to City Centre mall to get my monthly bus pass ($84.65, that's $1,015.80/year.) Consider a vehicle, if new minimum, $15,000 plus insurance plus parking downtown which is about $250/month it makes a bus pass look real good. I tried to find a pay phone (now becoming an endangered species in its own right) but the only one I needed was occupied. I went upstairs to the main floor and no booth but the ATB bank was there and the reception dialed for me. I had a chat with Anne saying I got the bus pass and I was going to go get a bite to eat at Rickies. She asked me if I could bring her back a KFC treat, but there wasn't time. It was already like 2:15pm. I had fries and chicken fingers and diet cola. It was a nice lunch.

After I paid my bill I went over to City Centre mall (east side) and decided to go up to Coles and have a look around. I checked on the Star Trek Omnibus books there and sure enough, they are of the Starfeet Corps of Engineers series. Or Star Trek sce. I was going to pick one of them up but the inside book cover didn't exactly tell me what book it was. I'd have to check when I got home. lets see what they had in terms of Star Wars. They had some of the Clone Wars books in Trade yet, re released by Del Rey, but I learned later this is old news. I decided upon Star Wars #1 "Fate of the Jedi."

I wanted to see if I could hook up with Anne before she got off work and I noticed a bus there along a bus stop heading towards Jasper ave. I took that to Bay Enterprise Square station and worked my way to Anne's office and waited until 4pm but that's when I realized she's upstairs working. I caught the train home and watched hockey all night.

I decided against going to Lodge this afternoon as I need some more time by myself. I don't know what I'm going to do tonight, most likely read as the Nashville/Vancouver game won't be on until 9pm tonight. Anyway, that's all for now.

I'm tied for first place in our

20 employee inter-branch office NHL hockey pool. I've got 98 points and my counterpart in Calgary has the same. For now. This could change dramatically through out the playoffs. By the time of the third round I could be in last place. You pick the players (20) you think are going to be in the finale. I'm picking Vancouver/Tampa to be in the finale. Both Vancouver and Tampa are in a game 7 situation and could be out by the end of the week. Its fun to play though.

Other then the game going on for tonight, not much else is happening. It's +15 out there, very nice. Anyway, that's about all for now.    

We left out of here

about 4pm yesterday for the Ramada/Edmonton Inn on Kingsway next to the Air museum. It was a beautiful Spring day, little wind. The best part about the day is I was with Anne and we got out together. We made the right connections, five minute wait for our bus, the LRT was running on a Sunday for a change. We had a five minute wait for the #8 at Rexall through the ghetto part of Edmonton (118th Ave West of Rexall). Everywhere you turned to look there was either an auto body shop/yard or a street church or something boarded up. The City is trying hard to clean this area up but its going to take years.

We had about a 10 minute wait at Kingsway. Other then the rubble a backhoe was trying to remove the only thing left of the McDonald's there was the Golden arch. The city is getting ready to  bring the NAIT LRT line here right up along the Royal Alex hospital ending right across the street from us and they look like the city wants to remove more homes along the LRT path to NAIT. They should have this line completed by April 2014. It's 3 years away. Its going to be easier for a lot of students to get to Grant MacEwan University and shoppers to Kingsway. I imagine the terminal where we were waiting for our bus is going to be torn down within the next 3 years to make way for a new station similar to the one over there at Southgate. The current Kingsway bus terminal will be right near the Royal Alex. We almost went to Moxy's there on the corner. Anne hadn't been in there for awhile and I think the last time I was in there was 1994 when I was taking a math up grader course at AVC/NorQuest. The class wanted to have a finale get together with the teacher etc. It was a good time but Anne didn't want to there. 

Finally our bus came along. It loops twice and returns before heading out. I love summer Sundays. I love the way how lonely and quiet the City is. Just as we got off Anne said she needed to go over to Canadian tire to get some garbage bags and suggested I save us a seat. I wasn't very happy about this. I expected her to be about 15 minutes so I timed her on my ITouch. My wifi settings said they had wifi but I think that's just for hotel customers. I should have brought my camera along. Next time were out and about, I will. I had to fend off the waitress a few times before Anne came over before my timer went off.

I was all prepared to have their Sunday buffet but Anne said they don't have that anymore, they just have their 3 course prime rib dinner. I said ok but then disappointed I changed my order to the usual standby: Bacon cheeseburger with fries. Seemed like a long ways to go for a cheeseburger when for all it did me I could have for the same money, walked over to Wendy's here for the same thing but I got to see where the City was as far as progress in the LRT. I read in my Connect2Edmonton message board the other day how the McDonald's is being torn down and it was nice to get out anyway. I think there we were the only ones in the cafe that time of day because their Sunday breakfast brunch is the most popular. For a fair sized parking lot, it must have been about 20% full of cars. None the less I enjoyed my meal despite missing the Canucks/Hawks game.

We had a ten minute wait for the bus back to Kingsway as it left exactly at 6:30pm. We had a short wait at Kingsway but this drunken sweaty native sat down by the courtesy seats in front of us wanting to shake my hand. No way. I don't know where that hand was. I smiled and nodded. The worst was we had to endure the Oder hoping he wouldn't barf all over us as the bus waited for what seemed like an eternity at the turn light. Thank God he left when the bus pulled into the terminal. The guy got on favouring his "broken" arm. Why the driver let him on other then that in the first place I don't know. That part was a little scary. I was glad to get on the LRT platform at Rexall. A brief wait and to Clairview and a brief wait for the #11 bus and home.

We got inside the apartment at 7pm for the 3rd period. It was tied at 2. Beautiful. Anne went up to Walmart to do some shopping, while I held down the fort to watch the rest of the game. I was hoping for a game #7 in this series, Vancouver scored 3-2 and Chicago got a penalty shot making it tied at 3 and into the first overtime. About halfway through the 2nd OT Chicago scored for a game #7 in Vancouver. Hard to believe at one point Vancouver had a 3 game lead on the Hawks in the series and was ready to close them out last week. I'm hoping for Chicago 8th place win the game Tuesday. That'd be beautiful and it'd shut all those Canuck fans up, President's trophy winners, first in the league. The Hawks were my fathers team in the 1960's. The original 6. I also don't like how arrogant the Canuck fans are like they are expecting to go all the way to the finale, "when we get the cup," this, "When we get the Cup that," my brothers are big on bragging like this especially on Facebook. They bash the Oilers (my team) but say nothing about the Leafs in no better position then we were this last season. I don't say anything like, "And how many Stanley Cups have the Canucks won in the last 40 years?" I can't wait for game #7 when (and if) the Chicago win and let my Facebook pause speak for itself.

Anne made me a nice supper and we watched the news and the new season of Doctor Who. Anyway, that was my nice day off yesterday and I have the whole week off, with pay.Sorry for the long post. Anyway, that's about all for now

This was yesterday's post going out late...

Its not to bad looking out there. I don’t have a lot on my plate for the rest of the day except reading and watching some hockey.

In an upcoming JFK book by author William Lester, there’s been a lot of buzz lately about some top secret memos how JFK asked the CIA for information on UFO’s. It’s not so much that JFK asked for information but its the timing of his request: 10 days before he was assassinated on his way to give a luncheon speech in Dallas.

Prior to JFK‘s assasination JFK wanted to see the UFO files because at the time there had been a lot of UFO sightings in the Soviet Union and JFK wanted to have the information to say to Khrushchev something like “these UFO’s are not American technology, we are not trying to be provocative etc.”

Its no secret to JFK researchers that Kennedy had an interest in UFO’s. One of Kennedy’s biggest critics was the CIA. Kennedy asking to see top secret information on UFO’s shortly after botching the Bay of Pigs is kind of like tossing oil onto the fire JFK had lit earlier. Imagine the CIA at the time looking at the memo. “Now he wants to see the UFO files! Of all the nerve.” JFK didn’t like the CIA either as he wanted to destroy the agency and he might have succeeded if the assasination hadn’t happened. I‘m not suggesting the CIA killed Kennedy, far from it. But if Kennedy hadn’t sent that memo, I wonder if JFK would have been assassinated at all! The memo sent to Lester by the CIA, released under the FOIA had been tested for age of paper font and ink, the whole thing. The memos are real and not faked. More on this later tonight on Coast to Coast. I‘m looking forward to this one.

I felt good heading

into work this morning and I managed to sang the dialler I had Monday, so far so good right? I got nothing the first half while all about me got sale after sale. Then the boss said we could modify Thanks for the earth day card/“what we were saying which helped and I began to treat this like another campaign we had and I began getting sales. I felt a lot better. My total wasn’t anything stellar or anything but I was making the effort. I had a decent LRT ride home and coming up the stairs my right knee began to ache with every step. Uh-oh. Arthritis creeping in. I’m hoping its just temporary.

Other then that not a lot going on lately. I’m just waiting for the week to wind down and then I get 10 days off to relax around the house etc.

One of my co workers I have as a friend on Facebook came by to visit just before lunch break. I said, “Thanks for the earth day card.” He looked at me funny. I had the email still in my Itouch buffer and I said the post came in at 3:01pm, Friday. He said that’s odd because he was working with me on that day, this last Friday. I know he can post from his cell phone. My brother does that from his Blackberry. He said Facebook has been having some hack issues lately. And then I realized that I had a similar type card, request whatever from another Facebook friend a few months ago. The first one of these hacks had got my Gmail account to raise some alarms and they went and suspended my email. I just ignore them from now on. Anyway that’s about all for now.

Its been a pretty

good week thus far and I can't complain and to wrap up the week I'm having a cold beer.

Our office and Calgary are having an inter office NHL playoff pool and I'm in 6th rank position. It's a $20 fee and out of the 20 of us its winner take all. I have yet to pay out my $20 but I will Monday, which could mean I could win $400 when it's all over I've been pretty good picking hockey but not so good picking MLB.

Lately I've been tinkering around with an interesting free music score software package called "Musicscore." I'm having some issues with the sound quality especially with the drum score as it's sounding mono-steal-drum like. This will do until I get Silebus. Anyway, that's about all for now.
. 

It's been a great week

I‘ve been having a nice couple of days at work this week. The other day I got a Facebook message reply from an old friend I hadn’t seen since before I got married. We used to play Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) but even though I hadn‘t played the game in like over 10 years I‘d still like to get into it, so hopefully he got my message reply and my phone number to call me back but it took him forever to even find my message to him, it could take me just as long for him to reply back. I‘d like to game over the next long weekend.

So far I haven’t heard any new information on the proposed upcoming Star Wars live action TV show. What I know is they are looking for writers and plan for 100 hours. The series is supposed to take place between “Revenge of the Syth“ and “A new hope."

We got a lot of snow today as it started coming down about 8am this morning. I think we got 6 inches of it so far and its still coming down. The boots come back on tomorrow morning. Anyway, that’s all for now

I'm having a pretty

good day today and just winding it down this evening.

This morning I got into the office without incident just the way I like it. Most of the snow is melted out there now.

I tried calling Anne at about 3:30pm and found none picking up the phone, kind of telling me she was out as our gst check had come in. I got home shortly after 5pm and she was all happy. So after supper she went to get her BBQ because the one we had for over 10 years had broken down on us. It was time for a new one.

I was doing some research on DAW's and any that had note composing tools built in but couldn't find anything so far. Apparently Silebus is supposed to be able to merge with most DAW hosts.

I got a feeling that my income tax return is coming in shortly as I'm going to use it to try and get the Iphone 4. If I can't get that, then I'm going to get "Addictive Drums." Anyway, that's about all for now.

Having a decent Monday night

=The first day back from Spring break and the trains were packed. I think a lot of the extra traffic had to do with people giving up their cars because of the high price at the pumps with gas. There was a story on the news about drivers and driving habits. Seems people would rather give up on things like eating out at restaurants a bit or missing an extra Tim’s coffee in the morning then give up their cars. What with the upcoming Federal election the Liberals/NDP/Green want to put pressure on Alberta oilssands development to tax the crap out of them to help pay for their “election promises.” and you don’t think that’s not going to increase the price of gas? Better believe it will.

Early this morning Boots had jumped again. I keep telling Anne because she goes to bed about 4am and opens my office window boots is let out to early. If anything she should wait until I get up because Boots won’t go out wandering during daylight. It makes for a long day for him. There’s a utility shed just behind us here in this Edmonton housing complex he hides all day then comes back around 10pm.

I had a decent day sales wise getting at least 3 sales and more then 2/3rds of it on card, so I can’t complain. I had a good day today and I even got to read a little this afternoon from my Star Wars book “Vector Prime” in between calls. On my afternoon commute home I couldn’t believe how much the snow on the ground had melted. About 80% of it is gone. It’ll all evaporate by the end of the week.

Anyway, I’m going to post this, so that’s about all for now.

I had a enjoyable night at the

the Lodge last night. I made a few mistakes but nothing I’m told was major.

Donna (Anne's sister) took us along to Jasper 2 years ago this July. She took this photo of us in the mountains on our way to the Miette Hot springs.I was losing my hair about this time. I'm tilting over because of my scoliosis. Just thought I'd share this photo:

I was on time this morning but ended up with no sales on the board. It wasn’t a very good day sales wise today. I got my cheque at 3:30pm and was surprised to see I got a nice ammount! Also, we got shut down at 4pm. I headed over to Scotia cashed my cheque and picked up Robert J. Sawyer’s “Wonder.” I‘m missing book 2 but it‘s on order.

The weeks not quite over yet but I had a nice one, with Monday going out to meet RJS and having Audrey's letting me get a book signed and letting me keep it for me for 5 days. Classy act. Then winning money on Pro-line was nice, Thursday with Lodge night and today even though I didn't make any sales, I got a decent pay cheque. All in all, this week was good.

After I got the book, I waited for the train. Most likely standing room only. I decided I’d get on the Century Park train and took a long ride there and on the way back kind of napped on the train. At Clairview I decided to go get some beer for Anne and I and I made it in time with about half an hour to spare before the Wild/Oiler game here at Rexall. Anyway, that‘s about all for today.

I updated my

My pages above and added new content and images.

I had a decent

I had a decent sleep overnight except for the last 2 hours or so, what with Anne waking me up and me making so many trips to the bathroom.

I’d like to get “Torchlight 2” when it comes out for the Xbox, but apparently it’s only out on Xbox live. I‘ve been seeing this talked about on Xplay and it looks good. Probably ready for July.

I had a blog post ready to go yesterday but got caught up in other things. I’m onto my first coffee and for the most part today is another reading day. Despite what the “Currently reading” block says, I’m currently reading, Star Wars The New Jedi Order: “Vector Prime.” Its by R.A. Salvatore. I’ve read some of his work in the Forgotten Realm series. I think this predates that. This book is almost 11 years old but I have it new. It’s been on my shelf for about 3 years now. Probably out of print. The story takes place 25 years after “A new Hope.” R.A. Salvatore is a “Fantasy guy” but I’ve never gone wrong reading his work. The series itself has 21 books in it by various authors. I’m not going to read the whole thing one after another of course.

Over the past couple of nights before bed, Anne and I have been watching this National Geo series 2/2 on Freemasonry. The first part of the show was good but the 2nd part while interesting exposed a lot of the conspiracy parts of FM, beginning with the oldest about Jack the Ripper, then the Leo Taxil hoax which some evangelists still like to propagate, even though Taxil admitted publicly what he published was a hoax. Then there was the one about the P2 or Propaganda du. The P2 had been an irregular Masonic body since and had nothing to do with the United Grande Lodge of England (UGLE) P2 was even an illegal lodge even by the standards of the Grand Orient of Italy. There’s a lot of controversy over the death of “God’s banker’ Roberto Calvi. I just know the skinny on it. But aside from the conspiracy aspects of the documentary, I thought the series was handled very well.

Because of the Lodge night, I’m missing Wrestlemania. Just as well, we can’t really afford it anyway. In a couple of hours, we’ll have our brunch. Neil is picking me up outside my place at 6:30pm for the practice tonight, which is why I can’t watch Wrestlemania. But some things are more important then others. Sorry Wrestlemania, next year. But I’ll probably get the next pay per view anyway. The results will be in at 10pm anyway.

Last night the Oiler’s broke out of their 10 game losing streak in Vancouver of all places. If we had kept Penner and Hall not injured (He’s not even going to the World juniors because of his ankle injury) and our starting goal tender, Khabibulin played 45 games this year he won 10 and lost 31, the others were shootouts. Losing 31 games is a huge ammount of points. NK lets in way to many soft goals and then he redeems himself while the team is down 3-0 by playing spectacular. Even if he won half of those games he lost the Oiler’s would have 30 points more then they do and we would be where the Flames are now. There are those that would say, it’s our defence. It‘s not the D. I would agree if NK had say lost 50% of his games and we have a young team this year but NK should have been way better then the money he signed for. As long as we have NK, I’m afraid the Oiler’s won’t make the playoffs this time next year, unless NK really picks up his play. To be fair to him, he has had off ice distractions and injuries that didn‘t help matters much. When the new season starts in October and everyone back and healthy and a few tweaks to the line up and if the Oiler‘s can avoid series injuries and NK is the goaltender he was with Tampa Bay then maybe the Oiler‘s might make the playoffs. Anyway, that’s about all for now

I left out of here

at my usual time about 8am feeling pretty good.
I got into the office about 8:32am. We changed campaigns back to Circus and I did ok pulling in $125. In the afternoon I got nothing.

This week I won twice on my Pro-line for a total of $25. The good news is the boss gave the option of working from 2:30pm-4:30pm in family or leaving now. I decided to leave early and handed over to my bank and I discovered if this was ll Anne had to pay our rent, then we were in trouble. So I had some time on my hands and at 3:30pm I waited in the lobby of her downtown office building a few blocks away. She wandered in shortly before 4pm and was surprised to see me. She said, everything is ok and asked if I could pay the rent to the caretaker when I got home. I was reluctant but ok.

 I had a pleasant LRT ride home and paid the land lady the rent saying Anne will be paying the balance next Friday like she said she would.

I bought a Pro-line ticket for the only 4 games earlier and all but one came in for me. I put $5 bucks on it for a chance to win $43!

When I got into the apartment and got comfortable, I played around with a song I'm in the process of creating. I got the bass rift for it and the distortion guitar chord progression. When I have a finished product I'll put it up on my YouTube channel. Anyway, that's all for now.