The theme for my opening blog this morning is

weather. At the moment it's -23/-28 out there. Its the 2nd number that concerns me at -28 and it supposed to get colder as the morning progresses to -41. The good news is its supposed to warm up over the next ten days to about -8. I can handle that. 

Yesterday during my commute I bought a blackjack scratch n win ticket at the redimart, and played on the train as it was waiting to pull out of Clareview. I won $10! Wu who. What the hell I can always catch the next train. I went down to catch it and there was a line up as there was this one person two down from me tying everyone up for five minutes. Then there was a debit card, yeesh. Finally my turn. I got my $10 and went to get my next train there waiting upstairs. I knew I was going to be late, what the hell? At least it was bright and sunny on my way in. I got to Southgate and from the platform I could see across 109th my #52. Would I make the connection? I began to pick up my pace in the pedway and hurried down the stairs. As soon as I got outside the doors the bus was raising its entrance and opened its doors for me. Any longer I would have missed it. Whew! 

I was able to make it into the office right on time. I got the Metro, the area manager said, "Hi Jim, cold enough for you?" "Oh, yeah," as I'm taking off my face mask, scarf etc. I told her a brief story as she was heading about where my wife is working and how I tried and failed to write a test to work their. "So she's working this weekend," She said "Well, your a better fit here, have a nice weekend," That was nice. I felt good about that. So I got a hot chocolate, settled in and signed in. By 4:10pm we had 6 people. Looks like a short crew as others began to show up, eventually. At least I never handed in a empty recap at the end of the shift. A colleague from Brazil and I walked down to the bus stop and joined by one of the new girls as we waited in front of Tony Roma's there on 51st Ave and Calgary Trail but the bus was delayed or it felt like it was a long wait because of the weather. Five minutes can seem like 15 in this weather. At Southgate the new girl and I were on the pedway there was our early Clareview train ready to pull out, crap. I checked on the Edmonton/Wild, nhl game tied at 2 ready to go into ot. I'll catch this oncoming Nait train to someplace further up the line where its warm but my iPod Touch battery was in the low red. At Grandin, I checked the game and Minni scored in ot. We're losing too many of these ot games now. That's 5 points we let go. Next game will be a Sunday event I'll watch tomorrow. I got home shortly before 10pm after leaving out of the office before 8:30pm. That late #6 was the difference maker last night. After dinner I was able to watch a bit of the "Late show," shut the computer off and I went to bed.

I'm out of here at 9am. I'm sure its going to be very chili. At least I'm not in at the other job. Their shift for Friday was cancelled and the office is closed for today. At least I have my other job I was at yesterday. I'm in the market research job office on Wednesday at 3:30pm and for Thursday hopefully Saturday. I need those 3 days. The market research job is done for Christmas break on the 21st and the South side job where I'm at today, closes on the 22nd and resumes in March. My 4 hour shift today is done at 2:15pm and I think Mark is there today. He usually drives me and Brazil to Southgate, which makes a difference in this weather. 

So after work its my commute home and I'm going to buy a iTunes card at Shoppers so I can get iM1. If I can make it across the street in 1 piece. I'm home all day Sunday and I have the Oilers game to watch Sunday night. Anyway, that's all for now.