around here. Monday I played telephone tag for 2 days with my other job. They had sent out a invite letter around early July to have me back for September coming up but somehow the letter was returned to sender. They apparently sent me another letter to the address where I received my pay stubs: Here. Don't they have my resume on file from last year? There was a expiry response date on the original letter dated for July 31st, and based on the over the phone conversation I'm invited back for September 1st. I still need to have the letter filled out, and returned but I can always return the letter by hand, when....it..gets..... here. Mail, the way its been lately is so..........slow.
I wasn't much of a fan of "Sesame street," when it premiered on November 10, 1969. I liked the frog, big bird, Fozzy the bear and the two old guys in the balcony would make me laugh. I was somewhat aware when the show came out but by 1969 I was a 17 years old teen, wearing a body cast living in Coquitlam BC here on Regan Ave most television escaped my attention at the time. I was just 3 months out of a 8 month back operation recovering from scoliosis. I had just discovered Avalon Hill wargaming. Back then, they produced board wargaming like "Blitzkrieg" "Jutland" "1914" and years later my favorite game Advanced Squad leader (ASL) That's what I was into in late 1969. Fast forward to the other day when I heard some of the original Sesame street people were let go from their jobs took me down memory lane. I don't know who Bob, Luis and Gordon are. I'm sure younger members of my family know of them. However learning of the termination of these people, and how said termination caused an uproar over Twitter prompted me to weigh in here. The "if it aint broke don't fix it department," has mentioned to me that this could come back to bite the owners of the show. Its as if the creative owner control system <huh? read my mind and said something like "but they could come back at a future date." Um its called "damage control." Kind of like when Trump said he was "joking" or being sarcastic when asking Russia/Putin to search for those missing emails. What can we learn here? Always make sure when you open your mouth, and something silly pops out always have your damage control team standing by with tools to repair the problem. Some tools are, "double talk," "passing the buck" and the ever poplar "I was just kidding." Or refer to the "Damage control for dummies" book if you have no damage control department, and or edit ones blog post for latter ;)
However, I digress. We are still waiting for the part for our oven. So much so that Anne got fed up and had to go to Walmart to buy a counter top oven:
This sucker cost us $130 out of our nickel and dime budget.
I called the boss at the other job, and he didn't know if there is anything coming up for work. No timeline for anything. I need to go into the office next Friday to pick up my cheque, and hopefully pop into the other place up the street before 4pm with the second letter they claimed they sent me. Anyway, That's about all for now.
tomorrow because of WWE's "Battleground" as we look forward to that for Sunday.
A bit of this and that: I was able to get about 14 hours worth of work this week but right now the office is closed over the weekend. I'm hoping for next week, and I'll be shoring things up for my other job for September as they are moving house. We are still without the part we need for our stove's oven. Unfortunately we don't have the resources to move but this has been over two weeks now. Anne thinks we should be receiving a discount for our rent at least and I agree. We probably could get the part for the oven ourselves, and charge the bill to management. It might even be faster. "Its on order from the gas company," management says. It takes 2 weeks? Don't they have a warehouse here in Edmonton? What do we do now, go to our MLA? There are a lot of empty suites now due to the economy. The last thing management here needs is another empty suite especially in an older building where there are a lot of other options around the city.
We have K-days underway here right now as the midway makes its annual summer rounds to Edmonton for 10 days. K-days was unique among summer midways because of its Klondike theme designed to celebrate the Klondike gold rush back in the day. K-days also had its popular Sunday Klondike promenade. Edmontonians had the chance to dress in period costume and meander around the downtown core. Jasper Ave was closed off from where the Shaw theatre is now to 109th street. The K in K-days meant Klondike. A few years back City council wanted to modernize k-days, so they dropped the K-days name and theme changing it instead to to Capital X. This didn't sit too well us Edmontonians. The name change received such a backlash, that council dropped it without debate, and changed the name back to K-days but the popular promenade was lost. It's just another midway now. This years parade began yesterday morning, and had parade watchers lined up early clogging up parts of the parade route. The city at the last minute had to change the route due to pedestrian volume. Lots of people we're put off by this. Our company for many years had the contract to do on site survey's on the Northland's grounds where the midway was held but we lost the contract this year. I used to think that on site survey's were always on ones feet but I got a different education from one of my colleagues the other day. I asked about working K-days, that's when I learned we lost the contract. That would have given me 10 days of work.
Earlier I fixed up the welcome header above. It reads a lot cleaner I think. Anyway, that's all for now.
has been somewhat restored. I couldn't even hear sounds from the street, and we're about 20 steps from 137 Ave. Now I can hear traffic moving out there from my opened window. My hearing is still being compromised by wax buildup but its getting better.
One thing you will notice about the content of this blog is that there is no plagiarism involved. Its all written on the fly. I'll occasionally use excerpts from other sources but I'll always link to those sources under "fair use." Even though this blog may be somewhat banal its all original content written by me. It's in a diary format, what would you expect? I have no writers working on this blog. I don't hire a content manager nor do I have a microphone in my ear. This blog is my responses to my environment and the world around me. Nothing is scripted. Not even my wife comes in here to write material. She doesn't even read this blog. On occasion I'll do public speaking, not at a convention level mind you in front of a partisan crowd, nothing that large. Most of the time the public speaking I do is within my lodge in front of about 15-20 guys, and I'll have a shot of Drambuie or something if I know I'm going to be speaking later. Even then I get nervous after doing this for 15 years. And these are guys I break bread with after "the show" that I've known for years. I could never handle myself as a first time speaker in front of thousands of people even with a teleprompter. I'd be stammering all over the place. What you see is original from me.
I'm working on my noon coffee. I've got about an hour or so before I need to get ready to head out of here. I need to be on site by at least 4:15pm this afternoon. If I can get a couple of weeks of work here, we'll be ok. Even work up until 6pm Saturday is all I need. Anne has had some hours dropped from where she works, and she wont go into work until Thursday. I need as much hours as possible. Anyway that's all for now.
just posting a couple times a week instead of everyday. The idea is to help add greater value to my blog by posting less. People don't have the time to go through all the stuff out there. For example, when I'm working during the week I get about 4 hours a day online or at the computer. Even less if I had a full time job. If I had a cell phone I'd be online more often. On the weekends I have a bit more time at the computer. There's such a thing called life, and events of the world, like what happened in Nice and Turkey.
On Wednesday I went to Service Canada thinking I'd have to wait in a long line up. When I got there, no line up. I was pleasantly surprised, or maybe it was because of the time of day. I got the cpp form filled out, and it will be returned back to us. Then we can go ahead with the next phase of our rental subsidy. I also learned, while at Service Canada I should get a oas pension application in the mail the month after i turn 64. That's coming up in August. Thursday I learned where I work, we have some projects the week of the 18th. I worked on one of them last year. The pay period begins Monday anyway, and if I can get a couple weeks out of this round, that'd be good. We got the repair guy to see what was wrong with the stove's oven before the football game. I didn't learn what will be done next. Hopefully by next week, we'll have the oven fixed. Thursday's CFL Edmonton Eskimo's/Winnipeg Blue Bomber game during the first half was slow, 3-13 for the Home team. We won the game on a interception with seconds to spare 20-16. Friday in my email I received a request to come in for a interview at 3pm in the Nait area. Its a 60 minute interview. My wife used to work for this company in a different department before we got married. They pay very well. However, if there is a typing test component to this interview, I wont get the job. My keyboards skills are ok, but my typing speed and accuracy suck.
Occasionally I like to check out the "Next blog" feature to see what other bloggers are doing. Its nice to see various widgets and layouts. A lot of bloggers haven't posted for long periods of time, I noticed. I'm constantly trying to make this blog better. I'm on it everyday, even if its to compose a Tweet, or to access a link to my email. One such tweak I made is to the "About me" page. Its now "About Jim". Also, I recently moved a few gadgets around and removed a few pages. I could do a lot more if I was comfortable using css. Anyway, I'll probably post again on Tuesday. Anyway, that's all for now.
gamer these days, I've been busy with other things. The world is catching on to Pokemon Go. Its "augmented reality." It seems media is more enamored with the hazards of playing the game then the game itself. I can't play this game because we don't have a smart phone. One of those is integral to game play. While I have a new Nintendo 3ds I haven't been able to get into it that much. I know people that have hacked into the device. I could see obtaining a video capture card as long as it doesn't violate my tos. Pokemon Go is very popular on Twitch TV.
The second part of Coast 2 Coast this morning is about the Knights Templar. These are not the same Knights Templar's as in De Molay's era. The Knights Templar's are associated with York Rite Masonry or the Royal Arch. I was initiated as a York Rite Mason in 2002. Any Master Mason York or Scottish Rite (Canadian Rite Masonry) can become a member of the Royal Arch. The Knights Templar's is part of the Royal Arch Masonry. George's guest tonight of course is trying to promote his book, and doesn't go into any of the Royal Arch as far as I could tell. Basically its laid out like this: Royal Arch Masons, Council of Royal and Select Masters (Cryptic Rite) Preceptory of Knights Templar. The Order of Knights Templar is the last degree of the Preceptory. All of this is common knowledge, so I'm not giving away any "secrets" here. I still plan on doing something with the Royal Arch probably in the fall. I'm going to enjoy the second half of the show this morning.
I'm up out of here this afternoon to get this CPP crhc form filled out after lunch. I'll be on the road before Anne heads out for work. That's on my plate for today. Thursday the Edmonton Eskimo's are in Winnipeg, and I'm looking out for that one before management here does something with our fridge, I mean oven. I may be out of action for a day or two. Anyway I'm outa here, that's all for now.
for example, last night Anne just turned the oven on for our dinner. Suddenly inside the oven it began to sparkle, and short out causing a small contained fire. We controlled that in half a minute. No smoke to set off the fire detectors. The oven isn't that old. Without warning it just shorted out. The digital display is gone off the front panel. Anne's working this out with management now. So because of this I've had to nuke my coffee. Microwave coffee isn't the best to drink first time around as it is. First time nuked coffee gets cold faster. Management said all the oven needs is a new oven element. Needs far more then that deary, the electronics on the front panel, the digital display is shorted out. We need a replacement oven. After a bit the front panel works. I turned on the stove element and that works. I'm drinking fresh coffee, at last. Management wrote up a notice saying they will be here to inspect oven on Thursday. In the meantime we have a hot plate in storage we broke out last night. I had bought this just before we got married and we have a bbq outside. Anything can be cooked on the barbie. We're ok for a couple of days.
Anne came back from her outing yesterday, and had papers she got from Capital Region Housing Corporation (crhc) and Taco Time for my lunch. Someone there at crhc reception told her based upon what Anne had said we would qualify for a rental subsidy. I have a CPP form I need to take to Service Canada, they need to fill it out. Since I could be off the whole week, its just a matter of standing in line there. Someone there needs to fill it out for me. I'll leave out of here at 1pm tomorrow. We went down this road with crhc a few years ago, when I was working full time hours at Xentel. It took crhc at that time 2 years to get back to us saying because of our income, we wouldn't qualify. Based on last years income, we would. I'm thinking this round once we have all our i and T's sorted out we'll be able to get a subsidy but I feel based on how slow the crhc is, I'll be on full pension by the time we actually get around to receiving anything from these guys. The crhc is very slow because of all the request's it gets for subsidy. Especially in this economy. In other words we're at t he top of the pile. "Now serving 5,922/1," type thing. Anne wants to try and have the paperwork in their office by the end of this week and most likely crhc will sight the Fort MacMurray fire 2 months ago as the main cause of the slowdown.
So Anne says its good that I'm home. Well in one way but I'd rather be at the office. I still think there's time for that this month and some shifts will be days. I'll be checking up on that on Thursday for next week. Anyway, that's enough out of me.
as I didn't have a lot I wanted to share. I've been blogging a lot lately because I've had time off to do it. A couple of posts a week ought to do it under normal conditions, one would think. I've got other stuff to do, then just Blogging.
I called the Alberta (Adult ) Health Benefit program (ahb) as I was concerned about the postal strike. How would I be able to get the ahb program application form? The strike has been averted. Good news. Apparently as a couple we would be able to access the ahb program if we had a income of under $23,212 since January 2016, say what? That in itself is half our annual rent. Sure I haven't had a lot of work recently, and Anne works part time. Also, this program for me would last us up until I turn 65, next August 2017. From there its another program called Alberta seniors. Anne would still qualify to remain on the ahb program, even when I'm on the senior's program. So in the meantime, I'm unable to get my teeth fixed, and forget about eye ware until after I turn 65. We'd be really up against it if I didn't have access to my pcn for insulin. I can't even get test strips unless I pay out of pocket, and at $100 for a box of 100, so much for that idea. I'd get more respect if I was a new comer to this country or if we had kids or if I was a middle class Canadian. My contact at the ahb program is sending us out an application anyway but its not going to do us a lot of good. There are things that Alberta Health does cover for,and if it wasn't for them, I would not have been able to get into a hospital for my diabetes back in 2004. If I had access to social services (welfare), then I'd have access to all of the above. At the moment Anne and I are just waiting for the next 12 months to unravel and then I can go on pension. Until then I'm grateful she has her part time job, and I have casual work. I still think we're better off then some people. For what it is, we at least have an income coming in. Its not all that bad.
Tonight I'm strapping myself in for 3 hours of Monday night raw. Anne's out getting lab work done, and investigating the possibility of us getting some kind of rental subsidy. That's what she's doing now. The good news is we have a roof over our heads, the bills are paid and some groceries. If I don't get any work for the 2nd half of this month, well that's another conversation. Anyway, that's all for now.
