Our weather is much more

pleasant  then the +28- +29's we've been struggling with last week. At least its good for sleeping. We're getting temperatures of +18, +20. Next week, +21's and +23's that sort of thing. I like Summer weather to be +18-+24 anywhere in there works for me. 

I called Anne on my 6:45pm break at work last night to check our mail. She said it's good news bad news. Uh-oh. Good news is Anne's sister Donna sent me a card and a nice surprise. Since Donna is out of the country I sent her a instant message thanking her. We'll face time her on Sunday. The bad news is I got turned down because of my 2013 income. It said combined income was cause of rejection but the income was not supposed to be combined. It was just for mine only. I knew something was up when I filled out the form a few months ago. My pcn worker said for me to call her within days of receiving any news. The letter said I have a 30 day appeal window but my pcn worker wont be back until September 2nd, which is on a Tuesday. I called my Doctor and set up a follow up appointment for next Monday. The appeal date window is from the time dated on the letter and 30 days from that date. Which should be September 23rd. If we're looking at just business days. The Alberta Government has all my financial information from the form.

Hearing the news about the benefits package letdown was a shock to the system and I could never recover after that job performance wise. Usually I can get 6-10 "sales" in a 5.5 hour shift but all I could muster was 3 by the end of the night. I feel like I'm fodder there anyway. There's two other telemarketers that work with me. One is their computer/software guy and he shows up maybe 3 days/week. Then there's a lady about my age and 3 others on salary that kind of do the same thing but they actually close the customer in the store and 'convert' them to members. I just send out brochures by email. By this time next week if I haven't got a member (something beyond my control) then I'm pretty much gone. The phone room has about 20 stations but only 2 are occupied by telemarketers like myself. So all these brochures I'm sending out to "qualified people" (no old people) if they don't come into the store, that's not on me. That's on the salary people. I must have sent out since I began about 200 packages since I began and only a small portion of those came into the store. They get a visitors pass with the brochure. Or package. Where I work, they've been around since 1971 and here in Edmonton for the last 15 years. We have no competition. If nobody is doing any renovations or projects then we cant turn them into members. I get no members and I'm out of a job. I knew that going in but the job is easy to do. I just hope I can keep it moving forward into September. 

Last night Anne made us some really nice baby back ribs for supper. A bit of a birthday dinner since my 62nd birthday is tomorrow. I had a good sleep over night and now I got to get ready to get out of here.

Anyway I'm about to have my bath a bite to eat and head out of here for my 12:30pm commute to Northgate and catch the #137 to 178th and 107th Ave. it's a long trip. Anyway, that's about all for now.

I'm on the phone this afternoon trying to reach my contact but that failed to connect

and it's been derailed until later this morning.

On Coast this morning the topic is JFK! About time something good crops up from this show but I support this theory.

Then Anne gets up and says she has bad news. Our green budgie bird Chippie died. We had him now for almost 2 years. We lost 3 birds in about 5 years. Just as we're trying to come to grips with this, I get a phone call from the office. I've got x2 5 hour shifts and a 7.5 hour shift added on for this week. That's for this week. At least that's good news. I'm off Saturday/Sunday. But Friday's shift means, I miss the Eskimo game. So I'm in the office and then just before shift starts I get some more bad news: The quota's are back and if we don't make quota we could be sent home. In all my 13 years at my other job I've never been in a position like this. I think I was sent home once and that wasn't because of the boss but because of the manager. Now it's Déjà vu all over again. Not even during my previous job's "ghetto projects" cold calling in a recession was I ever sent home. Sure I had low totals but we were always of the premiss "as long as the effort is there." On one hand I get the hours but on the other it could cost me. So I didn't even take a break because every call was important. I got a "pick it up" warning and I ended up with just a bit shy of quota. I told my wife this when I got home and she said she's getting me an application where she works. I'm going to try for at least 1 day/week there so I can at least get my foot in the door. Earlier I said $10/hour jobs anymore just don't cut it? I'd rather work $10 steady then $11.54 and the stress part time and 2-3 shifts here and there.

City paving crews are finally out there getting our side of the street done. Hopefully it's going to be a quiet weekend for a change. Anyway, that's all for now.