Waking up with the

good old cup of coffee this morning to help me take on the day. Its another long one and continues through the week. 

I don't know what to make of this. Week one of Trumps term of office, he appeals Obama care (not good) and then gives the green light for the controversial Keystone pipeline, which for us here in Alberta, could be a good thing. I underline "could" because there could be conditions: One of those early leaked conditions is to have US steel in the ground. The pipes are already in place on our side of the project already. Any left over pipe can be used for the proposed Transalta East pipeline, no big deal. However if one of those conditions is to have domestic workers on our side of the project replaced with foreign workers, no. If the end product in the pipeline is going to be heavily taxed, leaving Canada with a 40-60 split in revenues, no. The US is a nice market to ship our product to but we can also ship our product to other countries like China and Europe. I'm all for negotiation as long as its balanced: "You want that, we want this," type thing. Give and take. Keystone is a nice side income for our oil and will create a lot jobs for both countries and much needed income into the Alberta Government's coffers. The wild cards in all of this is of course, the environmentalists and litigation. Both could tie up Keystone for the length of Trumps term of office.

Meanwhile, the Valley line lrt project is slowly moving along. I'm surprised there hasn't been any webcams installed yet. TransEd keeps sending me my email progress reports I subscribed to. The first length of the project from Mill woods to City Centre, is supposed to be completed by 2020. The only "visible" progress made so far has been the removal of the controversial the footbridge. Now that, its been removed, there is apparently work on the tunnel leading just North of the footbridge to above the river valley on 95th street underneath St. Boniface there and I think the tunnel is supposed to emerge out onto 102nd street by the Edmonton Chinatown multi cultural centre. At the moment TransEd is preparing for lane closures for having the Harbin Gate removed. The removal of that in itself has been controversial. Some of the things I don't like about Valley: First; I don't like how its cutting through my old stomping grounds of King Edward park. Its a mature neighborhood. I don't like how TransEd is using Bombardier as its provider for the trains. I don't like how long its taking to get things underway. Just some of the issues I have with this project but overall I think its going to be good for the city.

I find that getting out of here at 11:15am gets me into the office about 12:35pm. Makes for an 8.5 hour day. Lately if its not that cold, I'll go for a walk to the store just to get some air. Mostly on this project is working on the no answer and answering machine calls. We're about halfway through this project. lots of work coming up. I like these hours and my breaks are spread out 3, 5, and 7pm. Because of the source I don't have to be concerned too much with missing time sheet and that early #5 just before 9am. I get to put my 7.5 hours in right away and "see you tomorrow" type thing. Anyway, that's about all for now.