Whenever I do a Friday night Saturday

shift, rarely am I in bed by 1:30am. I usually go to bed about 3am. That way I can count on a better sleep. I was tired enough to want to pack it in by 1:30am and even though I got about a hour and a half power snooze, I woke up about 3am and laid in bed tossing & turning for about 3 hours. I had enough at 6am. I'm working Sunday from 10-6pm again and by the time I come home, around 7pm, I'll be wiped out. I'll most likely have another power nap. May as well since I'll miss the Eskimo game and the Oilers are wrapping up their 2 week pre season game, which I wont be able to see anyway. Since nothing else is going on I may as well, and I might go back to bed for an hour yet. 

*Update 8:20am I tried for that hour nape but when the lower back aches a bit its saying I've laid down long enough. The "good news" today is I get 2 paid 15 minute and 1 half hour breaks. 

I was sifting through my 250+ YouTube subscriptions earlier this morning to see what I missed. "The Sound Test Room" had a demo of a new iOS app called "FingerBeat." Such a great app for musicians and hobbyists like myself. For under $6 it's worth picking up. Time to shut this down and get ready for my commute. Anyway, that's all for now.

I have yet to hear from my job as to when

the next project is. I'll be calling the office for an update this afternoon. Most likely even though we have work for the summer its going to be something like 1 week on 1 week off type thing. I've got a few options I'm going to call in on. My job is more or less steady but because its project based is unpredictable in the summer. If I didn't have ei, I'd be in trouble.

Update: I decided to check into the office about 5pm and the boss said there's nothing happening for the rest of the week. Something is coming up for after the long weekend. I have a couple of options including a few job leads. One option I might have and I'll be calling tomorrow is to see if this career upgrading school still has its 3 month customer service course. I think one might begin in September. It helps extend my ei claim and improves my existing customer service skills. Also, when where I work has more projects, I might be able to work 2-3 days/week for pocket money. I'll be calling the school tomorrow.

I put another post out there in the "I grew up  in Coquitlam" site. Asking the group if anyone remembers a Mrs. Wilson. I gave a description an address and years. Some people remember her and one member said she knew my siblings and our

family saying we lived around the corner from us on Hailey etc. She asked how Rick, Martha, Jeff etc were. Apparently though my Mrs. Wilson was Mrs Mitchell. The member corrected me from the description I gave her. She knew Jill and corrected me on the spelling of her last name. I got the name wrong but the description is bang on. The group member's madden name was Westover. She remembers when Hailey was a dirt road in1959. The Mrs. Mitchell thread is all but petered out but it was interesting and generated 35 replies. The Google map above shows the area I grew up from 1959-1971. The blue dot is about where our house (still standing) is. I got one more story to go in "Tales of Heresy" and I'm really enjoying this anthology. I've got 4 more anthologies in this series, "Legacies of betrayal" is the next book in the series, book 31. Also a Horus Heresy anthology. Great stuff. Anyway, that's all for now.

First day of Spring and we got a blast of winter

out there, typical. I wasn't out in it but Anne tells me we got about 3 inches of snow on the ground. Nothing like they had back East or anything like that. According to the long range forecast, were supposed to get 3 more days of snow after the weekend. Weather related, yesterday was a solar eclipse. There were only a few places in the world that got to see it live. 

Anne received a coupon for a free pizza/wing meal from work last night as a reward for training new staff. After a bit of hassle spending about 40 minutes on the phone trying to get the pizza, she finally closed the order. Its on its way so hopefully it'll be here in 10-20 minutes. Since our finances are so low right now, the free pizza meal was a blessing.

When the pizza meal arrived we sat on the couch watching George Lazenby's James Bond enjoying our pizza meal and a bottle of diet cola. This was one of my favorite Bond films because of the location Switzerland and guest staring Tele Savalas. I used to like him in Kojack. Speaking about movies, we have got 2334 scene movie points. Just in time for the Summer releases. 

*Update: This morning Anne rescued a semi stray cat she was looking after since last Autumn. The "owners" left the cat out in the freezing cold over the winter as Anne discovered the cat under a tool shed for shelter across from us taking cover from the winter elements. Anne brought the cat fresh blankets and cat food every night as part of her take out the trash routine in the early hours. No matter how cold it was, Anne went out there. About a week ago she noticed the cat pregnant. The "owners" still kept this poor thing left out in the cold, abandoned and left to die. After months of looking after the cat Anne couldn't bare it any more and gathered a cat cage and brought kitty in here and made arrangements with a 24 hour vet service downtown and called a taxi. Anne said she was waiting outside at 5:30 this morning and noticed the taxi speeding by her going the other direction. She came back into the apartment to call the cab company and the taxi driver called her back asking where she was. So she went back out got the cab and had a dispute with the driver along the way. She didn't know about Uber. I said "If you knew, you should have said something like, 'next time I'll call Uber' " That would have shut him up. The cab ride cost us $22. Anne wandered in at 6:45 this morning. The sad part of all this is this pregnant semi stray cat was Skippie's mother. At least now the cat can have her litter in comfort. I said, leave those cats alone. I think she got the message. Anyway, that's all for now.

Lets see now I must have placed

about 3 calls at home to the job lead and all I got was vm. The only thing I could do at this point was leave a message. 

So I headed out to catch my #11 Northgate bus. Much better weather out there today. At pcn I had about a half hour wait, so I read and met my 3pm. I had a chat with my pharmacist about my current woes how it was 1 week ago today I was let go from my job with still know roe. I got my blood pressure checked and a couple of boxes of insulin. I didn't meet up with the aw lady for the medical benefit forms. My appointment said he'd try to raise her but she was tied up. Hopefully I'll get the forms at our April meeting. I called one more time to my job lead and left a message. On my way out of the mall I stopped into Coles and they have 5 Warhammer 40K Omnibus books I could easily spend $100 bucks on. If I had it. I had a 5 minute wait for my #11 home at the Northgate bus loop and home just after 4pm. There were no calls for the day from my job lead. 

I got ready for lodge and arrived there about 6:50pm. Lodge was short with a nice presentation on the psychology of Freemasonry. Good education. Lodge was done 9:15pm and I had a half hour wait at Bay station for Anne. We had a nice ride to Clareview station and walked home. Anne made me a burrito platter, we watched the news until midnight.

Update: I just called my former employer and after a weeks worth of waiting he said my roe gets filed immediately with Service Canada (sc) access code and here I am waiting for my roe in the mail or email. I received a sc access code a few days ago. I opened up a My sc account and called sc and got a real person (probably because its my first time) I was told that the reason for termination was shortage of work but I needed at least 920 hours and I had 200 less then that and even with adding Direct Buy, Pizza wasn't quite enough. They don't have 2 others but when I mentioned Xentel for 15 years, there's more then enough. The sc person said I should bring those hard copies of my roe Monday and the last 22 weeks worked. I'll be doing that over the weekend and in Monday Morning. It takes 4 weeks to make a decision and its already been 1 week. Based on what they have I don't have enough hours for a claim but by submitting my Xentel claim, I should. I'll have a decision by the end of the month, otherwise not much I can do now. I'm on hold to sc to ask how many minimum hours I need to open a claim here in Alberta at this time. I'm on wait time 25 minutes. Ok its (at this time ) 910 hours and I have enough to qualify for ei here in Alberta. They also want what's called labour force attachment. I could get up to 45 weeks, which could be about 11 months. 

I still need to contact my job lead this afternoon. So far all I'm getting is vm. The thing with ei is (or used to) they pay out the weeks waiting in one lump sum. Anyway that's all for now. 

At 10pm last night after 8 and a half hours

I get my last comp. I was tired and drained but ok. I just wanted out of the office and on my way home. I met Anne on her way home at Bay station. We were in good spirits. Anne made her chili and rice bowl and pumpkin pie with whipped cream for desert, yum.
  
Update: I wrote before the update this morning after I had a good 7 hour sleep. I'm ready to go for another 8.5 on the job today. The first thing I do when I get into the building is go to the elevator, press the button for my appropriate floor, buzz to get into the office, go to the board and look at the sheet of paper posted as to what project I'm doing for the day. If I'm on the current project, good. If not and my colleagues are doing my current project, I know I've been pulled from my current project. (That means a talk with the boss because usually I've done something wrong the day before) If all looks good from there then I check to see where I'm seated according to the seating plan posted on the board, hang up my coat, get my folder, put it on my station, check to see how much time I have before I need to log in. Then I'll have half a sandwich or something with my insulin in the lunchroom, scan the Sun or Metro, a brief bathroom break get back to my station, log in open the project and I'm ready to go.  
     Yesterday I had one of my colleagues from Sri Lanka sit across from me on the other side of the partition and later in the day the respondent could barely hear me because she was so loud. My Sri Lanka colleague is a nice lady  and one of "the regulars" but the Respondent couldn't get half of what I said and a 15 minute survey would have taken 35 minutes, tops. I was having a slow day as it was. One of the regular supervisors knows this about my colleague and would have taken appropriate measures. I think on the day I might have had 6 completions (cmp's) possibly 7.
     I was more or less ok with the day I had. I would  have had a few more but several Respondents bailed on me. Every day I can do this current project is a blessing. I really like it.         
     
Temperature wise we're sitting at +6* right now and apparently we're reaching a high of +10. Sunday -2, Monday -7, holiday Tuesday -8. Today looks like our best day until about mid-late March.
    
I'm still researching motherboards for my pc build.  I'm looking at a i5 or possibly a A8 cpu, 32 Gb Ram, and a 4Tb hard drive. Most likely in 5-8 years or so consumers will begin to see Petabyte hard drives. For the moment though a 4Tb drive will suit my needs, for now. Anyway, that's all for now.

My signature needed to be on

our ALCB liquor license as our lodge secretary and I arranged to meet me outside my office building down town. So in between red lights I was able to sign the ALCB form on the dashboard in the front seat as he drove me home. Normally I wouldn't get home until about 10:45pm when we're doing BC. I got home at 10:45pm last night. In record time, wow!

The payroll officer of my 2nd job emailed me yesterday saying something to do with my tax form. I probably messed up somewhere. Doesn't surprise me. I'll call her in the morning.

*A blog update: I called payroll in Calgary and I messed up on my tax form when I had filled that out when I got hired on. It's all corrected. My 2nd job doesn't send out a pdf pay stub like my first job does.

*At the moment I'm enjoying my first coffee. I had 7.5 hours of sleep but the hot chocolate Anne offered me before bed and the sleep time tea before that had me going to the bathroom about 6 times over night but I still got the sleep I needed.

*This has been on my reading list radar for awhile now: Warhammer 40K Space Marine Battles: "Malodrak." It's available in Trade and I'll probably order it when I have time off. There's also a new Horus Heresy book in there as well "Vulkan Lives" hopefully will be released in paperback in the Spring and same with "The Unremembered Empire" and  "Aurelian."

I wasn't much of a Peter O'Tool watcher but did enjoy him in "Lawrence of Arabia." I was sad to hear of his passing yesterday. We're losing a lot of great Hollywood stars.  

The schedule wont be posted for my first job until Friday so before I go into my 2nd job, I'll call to see if I have any hours over the holidays. Every bit helps. Anyway, that's all for now.

Last night about

9:30pm I began having these stomach cramps Anne gave me some Tum's or something like them and that didn't help much. I went to bed. Of course it was a warm day about +27 out there. I slept until midnight up again feeling a bit better. Anne had some pepto and put about a table spoon in a shot glass for me. I had that and went back to bed and about 2am I got up feeling a lot better. I did some reading from my Space Wolf book and read a chapter in that and then went back to bed.

Sometime over night we had a extensive thunderstorm roll through here over night. It was due to the warm weather buildup  during the day. I didn't catch much of it because I had other things on my mind ^ but this is what Anne told me. It's overcast now. 

I've got a brief shift today off at 3pm. Next week, I'm on from 5-9 plus Sunday's. My hours are slightly reduced but my bottom line is ok and I get a bit as well. 

I'm thinking about going into Audrey's and LM after work to get a book and a device called iRig midi, if they have any in stock. It's going to hook up to my Maschine. 

The above was my blog post this morning.

* Update: I felt a little better going into work but I didn’t know how long I’d last the day. I was still feeling queasy.

I left the office at 1pm and back at it at 9am-5pm. After work I went to Audrey’s and got the 2 remaining Horus Heresy books. I’ve got 17 more to get for a total of 31 in the series. I also cashed in on my Audrey’s club points to get the books for free which is a good deal. After that I went down to LM and noticed they have a for lease sign  on the building. Uh-oh. I picked up my iRig midi and paid for it from that Visa gift card Big Fish Audio wouldn’t take. Also, LM has the new Yamaha and said for $120 I can open an account on them and take them home. They’re the 7“ woofer‘s and are going to be a great complement to my Cubase 6. I was told that LM is pulling up stakes at their 109th location and are moving in August. All the way out to 149th and 137th street. Yikes! That’s a few blocks away from the Shrine club. With all the opportunities couldn’t they have built it closer to downtown? Even Northgate. They’re not going to get a lot of walk by traffic out there.

There air was just what I needed to be out in the Sun and I felt better. After LM I went over to 7-11 and I got a bottle of diet Cola and saw a raisin tart. I thought about using the 2 Visa gift cards. There were 2 line ups and this lady smiled beside me as I was trying to see how much I had on each card and she said, “Excuse me but could I pay that for you?” “Oh, that’s ok, I have enough cash on and these 2 cards have only small enough amounts on them. I’m just trying to exhaust what’s ever left on them.” I think she was s bit put off when I declined her help but I would have embarrassed if I said, “Sure.” Something like that would be un ethical. I think the 1 I used for LM had maybe $3 left on it and the other one had maybe a buck or less as it was declined. I had to pay out of the $5 bill and I had one of the cards in my hand to rip up and got distracted helping a child move her bike out the doors and when I returned the credit card was gone. There was this black woman that took my spot and my Visa card was gone. I think she took it but the guy at the counter said no. I wasn‘t about to make a scene over a credit card that had a couple of bucks on it and embarrassing myself and the suspect. I had a bit of time on my hands and sat on the bench and enjoyed my little tart  treat in the warm afternoon Sun before heading East along 102nd towards NorQuest there and moving along 108th street to Audrey‘s. I asked about ordering the next 4 in the Horus Heresy series but apparently the next one “Dark King / Lightning Tower” is out of print. Audrey’s online is offline so I can’t check right now. In a email this afternoon they said they will see what books in this series remaining are still in print. Maybe I can get them at Games Workshop in WEM.   

I caught the train home and thought now that it‘s 3:10pm I may was well wait for Anne as she should be on her way but after about 20 minutes in the hot Sun (I didn’t mind). Finally I could see her walking from our place and explained I worked until 1pm and she seemed happy to see me. I said I was getting the Yamaha monitors and I gave her the bus pass she gave me her keys and I walked the rest of the way home. I thought about going into Bo didley‘s across the street for a beer but I realized I didn‘t have any card/cash on me.

When I got in I had a shower and cleaned up and felt a lot better getting that sweat off me.

That actually sounds like a good idea after I get the monitors and a shower I‘m going to head over to get a beer across the street and watch the football game or parts of it. Sounds like a fun time. That way I can meet with the guys tomorrow at BP‘s and watch some football on the big screen TV‘s and head home. I still will have enough to take Anne out to the movies Sunday, nice. Anyway, that's all from me for today.