Our Valley line lrt is

in full construction mode. Most of the routing of utilities has bee done quite awhile ago. The of the tunnel on the North side of the North Saskatchewan river is in full gear. Support beams and some pylons are set up where necessary. Track is on location. Davis station itself is elevated and its in the early stages of construction. The elevated portion of the tracks are in full construction mode. Looks like Valley line will be completed on time for 2020 opening day.

Hurricane Harvey has dumped a crap load of rain on Houston. From the looks of things, Houston is underwater. Hurricane Katrina is nothing like this. On the news they were saying that over 3,000 cubic feet fell over the weekend on Houston. I don't know how accurate that was.

This boggles the mind but a burger place ran a promo for 15 cent burgers in the Philippines. When the word got out thousands of people stormed the place. The promo was for the 1st 80 people. Good lord are they that desperate for a burger there?

On Friday I'll be able to use my Alberta Blue Cross for seniors. I'm not sure how the process works though. I was going to call them today. Apparently it works out to be a 30/70 arrangement. We pay 30% the Province pays 70%. I also heard that apparently we have to pay upfront and then we get reimbursed by the Province. I don't see that happening. I hope to get answers tomorrow. If that's the case what happens? Does the retailer invoice the Province and the Province puts the difference back into my account, or what?

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.

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. 

Our local weather has been

Spring like with a light rain and snow mix in the evening and its been cold over the last few days. Its been about 4-9 degrees. We don't get the teaming rain like we used to around here for this time of year.

I was lucky to get my #5 bus just after the shorty (short bus) and into the job shortly before 10am. A brief kick-off and surprise Joyce showed up. It meant I get a ride home! Wu who. I actually had a decent day as well getting 4 confirms and 1 online. I'm concerned about after May 15th when this job runs out of work, because my market research job for this month has been in a state of suspended animation for this month. They've got a few projects coming up hopefully next week. What I'm hoping for is my market research job lasting until the end of June. Then after the market research job breaks for the summer I've got a lead on another possible job. A colleague I've been working with since the year 2000 is going over there but its all the way out by Direct buy. He worked there as well a year before I did. Its a long way out but I only need the job until September. Anyway, after work, Joyce drove me home under cold Edmonton skies. Heading East along 129th I noticed Rob had a bit of a crew working. I went to the blood pressure machine after Joyce dropped me off at Shoppers and I got a reading. No paper in the machine to print off a copy so I took a photo. I got home before 3pm. Anne made us a nice lunch before she headed out to her job. I had the evening to myself at last. Let the weekend begin. 

The Valley line officially got underway Friday. There's still preliminary work to be done but that's been more or less ongoing now for awhile. The Cloverdale footbridge will be closed in July. There's a small NIMBY group opposed to this but they don't matter in the scheme of things to come. My concern with these "Save our footbridge" people is that they will somehow get a 11th hour court injunction to stall this line at the last minute. These protestors are doing this more of a stunt then anything else. Anyway I'm enjoying my first coffee and my weekend, that's all for now.

Still working out the

week. I've been at my 8:30pm job but tonight my ride won't be in so I'll be taking transit home and back about 9:30pm. Its not a big deal. What has me concerned is work slowdown at my market research job. I've got to hustle tomorrow at this time to be there before 2:20pm to pick up my $60 cheque, because the boss is leaving out of there at 3pm. If I can get work from my market research job until the end of May, I'll have enough hours for a minimum ei claim to get us over the summer. The job I'm currently on ends May 15th but picks up again mid September. By that time, my oas application is being processed for next year.

At last our Valley line lrt will begin to break ground April 22nd. Finally. There's still a lot of preliminary work to do like soil samples, allocating power and sewer lines (which contractors have been doing that for awhile now) P3 still needs to go over some initial design wrenches such as grade separation etc. For the most part its ready to go. From conception to build, which began about 2007, we're finally here. Wow, ten years later. The first phase will run from Mill Woods mall to City Centre. Its a 4 year project in partnership with Trans Ed. There's a lot of concrete to pour on this one. The best part about this line is it will be low floor. This time the City of Edmonton wants to keep the signalling simple. There wont be the same kinds of issues as facing our poorly designed Metro lrt. Now that Valley is more or less set, the city is trying to find out where to go after this once Metro is sorted out. The next logical expansion in my opinion should be Saint Albert. Saint Albert is an extension of Metro anyway but it won't be low floor. I'm not expecting to see Saint Albert lrt extension in my lifetime. 

Anyway, NHL playoff hockey is just underway. I'm watching game highlights on the news. I'm sympathetic to Anaheim because Shaun Horcoff (ex Oiler) is on that team. I'd like to see him hoist the cup this year. There are no Canadian teams as mentioned previously but there are a lot of Canadian and ex Oiler players on other rosters in the playoffs. Anyway, that's all for now.