Like the mail its been slow around here this past week with not a lot going on around here

I've been just holding the fort sort of thing. Its pretty much the dog days of summer. I'll be editing this again tonight. That means a blog edit tweet to follow sometime tonight.

Yesterday the statue of Wayne Gretzky was taken off its pedestal at Rexall place for a makeover. The statue was installed in 1989 the year before the Oilers won their 5th and last Stanley Cup in 1990. Meanwhile the Rogers place arena is in its finale stages of preparation before the building is officially open. September 16th is when the NHL begins its training camp in the new building. At the moment work crews are finishing up Rogers Place arena. On the inside, lots of seats to install. At the moment they are working on the scoreboard and work continues outside. From what I've seen, they have done a lot of work on the inside. Its a beautiful looking building. There is still a lot of work left on the Winter garden. That's the "Oil drop" extension of the Oilers logo where fans will enter from the plaza area but that won't get completed for at least another year. In the meantime Wayne's makeover continues. When he's done, he'll be standing right outside the main doors on 104th street for all to see. Most likely that's another ceremony to take place when the statue is installed. The Oilers love ceremonies.

Our Valley line lrt project was in the news this week. It seems the "Save our footbridge" Not In My Back Yard (Nimby) group has now submitted a court injunction to stall the project. During the design stage of this project there have been many open house public consultation meetings. Even before and when this group was formed. Even the Mayor met with this group and heard their concerns. The footbridge they are talking about is the footbridge just outside the Muttart pyramids that crosses the North Saskatchewan river. The Valley line route intends to cross the North Saskatchewan at that point where the current footbridge is to the North side of the North Saskatchewan river. This footbridge is set to be demolished this month.  The footbridge there has been standing for decades. It's almost at the end of its shelf life anyway. The city wants to build a lrt bridge over the river to the other side where the lrt will connect to a tunnel (to be built) leading up to 95th street, and run down 102nd Ave. The new bridge will have a newer replacement walkway for bikes and pedestrian traffic underneath the tracks of the lrt bridge. Its all one component. This was part of the initial design of the lrt bridge. The Valley line train is low floor heading right into the heart of the city of Edmonton. The Nimby groups lawyer found a small clause in a legal document when the footbridge was put together, that says something like "The footbridge can not be dismantled or demolished until the Province provides the City of Edmonton (coe) a written letter saying they can do so. The Province (Alberta Government) has invested $600 million dollars into the Valley line project. Its a no brainer for them. Every day the project is delayed will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The court date is August 16th of this year. If the court says "No work can be done until the Province sends the city that letter," then the Nimby group wins, and can plan for another move to stall the project. Or the judge can dismiss their concern out of court, realizing the AG has invested $600 million on this project and the coe did everything they could to meet the concerns of this Nimby group. In other words the City negotiated in good faith. The plot thickens.

So for today, I'm out of here in about half an hour to get some insulin at my pcn and then to pick up a small cheque at my other job and home. We still haven't received a letter from my September 1st job but I'm good to go there anyway. We have yet to get the cpp form back I sent in to be processed July 15th. So, we're waiting for 2 pieces of mail. Also, we haven't received our oven replacement yet as well. We did receive our utility bill. Bills take top priority and ads of course. Anyway, that's all for now.