I had about 6.5 hours

of sleep, so I got out of bed about 9:50am to do my thing: Kettle on the stove with water to boil, turn on the computer, shave, shower fix coffee and about 5 minutes after 10am, I’m at my diary. Now I’ve got about 40 minutes to myself.
I had a decent day yesterday, although I had a slow start and was last on the board total wise but at the end of the shift I had a call and the caller talked a lot. Why couldn’t I have had this call at 6pm? But she was able to stay on topic even though she kept me on the phone as most of my colleagues had left but she did make the sale and James got her on a card as well. Good stuff. It wasn’t anywhere near top total for HDI but I was 10 away from line hour. I had about $190 I think on card as well for the day.

Here we go with another franchise in the making of a book series for young readers: “Hunger games.” It’s about a bunch of teenagers out to kill each other. Here’s a synopsis of what the books are all about from Fantastic fiction: Katniss (there’s never any female protagonist with names like Martha or Jane or Susan) is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games." The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When Kat's sister is chosen by lottery, Kat steps up to go in her place. The Hunger games is causing a hysteria among teens because that’s it’s target audience. There’s already a movie that made its red carpet debut the other day. Not my type of thing mainly because of its intended age group, but looks like. Kids love it especially teenage girls but at least it has them reading, so that‘s a good thing. If I had children (that I know of) I‘d rather they be reading stuff like this then going out to a Rave taking tainted ecstasy.

I‘ve got another full day today as it‘s a Friday and that means after work run up to my bank cash my check and head home or better yet, out to eat. I‘m thinking about going over to Bo'diddly's Pub & Grill across the street after work tonight. Mainly because Anne doesn’t get home until about 10:40pm then she’s out at Superstore buying us a deli pizza or something and it’s not ready until 11:45pm by the time I want to eat. I have trouble sleeping if I have a heavy meat on a late Friday night especially when I’m up at 8am Saturday morning for work but I‘m not sure yet. I might just come home anyway.

So rather then going out Saturday for a bite to eat after work and since I need a USB hub at Future shop so I’ll get that instead and head home for a nap and get Anne’s “on her break at work phone call” I get around 8:30pm to wake me up Saturday night.

Tonight is another Oiler hockey game as they are in Florida again for a back to back game. Then they play on Sunday at 1pm, so I want to catch that game.

Doesn’t look like I’m going to make it for Lodge this tonight. I’d like to go but I want a full 37.5 hours on my check this week. I want to be able to go to both of my Saturday Lodges next month so I’m working the next 3 Saturdays including this one. Anyway, that’s about all for now.  

Not a lot going on.

I woke up about 5am and couldn't get back to sleep.

Last night I wanted to talk to my boss about having Friday off to go to Strathcona Lodge for their MM degree this Friday but throughout the night I began thinking that, I already went to 3 Lodge events this month: My mother Lodge, practice, March 15th MM degree. If we didn't have the MM degree this month I would have made it out but I need the hours and because of the above I can't justify going. 

I don't know about heading out to RJS April 11th as well either. I mean, I'll get the book and all but i might miss this reading. He'll be back next year.

Last night I discovered this page called "Desperation moral." All things Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). It's a huge resource of third party ASL products and 1 I like is Critical Hit. So much so I made a link to their site on my list of links in my Blog sidebar. They've got a lot of good things, most of it all ASL. Speaking about I checked and made a list of all the ASL official products that had come out over the last 12 years and there's been quite a few. Multi Man Publishing's most recent offering "Festung Budapest" is a historical ASL modual. I'd like to get this product but at a $130 for something I might not ever play is a huge waste of money. 

I want to go to Ye old craft lodge and if I work the 2nd Monday and the rest of the week, I'll have 37.5 hours and off on that Saturday. Then same with the 3rd Saturday, work that Monday and I can take that 3rd Saturday off. I'm allowed 2 Saturday's off/month. I've been working every Saturday so far this year and I've missed a lot. I can go any night I wish as long as I put the Monday night in. Anyway, it's back to bed, that's all for now.      

My wife being off from her job

today was in bed by about 5:30am. When I have a day off and I'm in bed by 4am that's not a good sign for the next day having to much sleep on the 1st day getting back to work. She was up tossing and turning in bed waking me up at 8am this morning. I wasn't happy but I managed to get back to sleep, barely. I could use another 2 hours as it is. 

Looks like a nice day out there, sunny and -3C. I remember the day I moved into my first apartment here in Edmonton, March 15th 1985. I found the apartment that week and when I got my check on that Wednesday (working for the Army & Navy warehouse) right in the middle of the '80's. The Oiler's were winning Stanley Cups just about every year and it was  like one "big party." I was 32 years old having the time of my life. Well, sort of. Hard to believe that was 27 years ago. Weather wise it was a little warmer then we have it now but not by much

I was in bed by 1:30am this  morning listening to a bit of Coast. They were talking about Egypt and the pyramids and how researchers of today tried to recreate the moving of stones of similar size and they couldn't do it. They were even talking about this huge boulder excavators were trying to move recently and they couldn't move it without heavy duty equipment. How did the ancients move these huge stones? Some believe in the traditional method of thousands of workers painstakingly moving them inch by inch. Some have really esoteric ideas like sound waves, hot air balloons etc. I've heard a lot of different ideas. I even had the notion that the workers chiseled out the stone into pieces and it was melted down to form a cement like substance and poured into molds. But who today really knows? Anyway a full l8 hours from me today, so that's about all for today. 

Lately I’ve been

on a “Monkee’s kick,” way even before Davy Jones passed away a couple of weeks ago.

The only thing I have for this afternoon is to take Anne out down to Earls just over here for her birthday dinner.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m making some phone calls before I head off to work. I’m calling the Shrine cub to see if we can book Biffs lounge for Sunday August 19th. Then I’m calling Neil to let him know the date I have to put that in the masters message for April. Then I’m calling one of my other colleagues asking him if he could print off some tickets for the BBQ. I’m sure there is a deposit on the lounge. Then I’ve got to call our secretary and find out where we can get the meet. Maybe I can make the call out at the regular meeting to see if anyone has the space to have the BBQ at their place. WM said in our chat over the phone yesterday he had it at his place at one time and it saves a lot of money. I’m sure Biff’s lounge isn’t going to be cheap even if it‘s only going to be an afternoon.

Still on Masonry, with our ranks at our regular communication dwindling, I‘m wondering when it‘s my turn to take the big chair, who am I going to get to take the JW chair? Guy is here but he has yet to take a chair beyond JD. He might be asked to do the SD. Andrew has been here for 1 month. If we can get our new MM to take a chair when I’m SW, it’s going to free up our current Tyler to maybe take the JW chair but that’s not my decision to make, I’m just thinking out loud. When you’ve been through all the chairs, you can go into any chair, you don’t need to go in any kind of order. Anyway, that’s about all for now.

Anne had mentioned this

morning (when I talked about Robert J Sawyer coming to Audrey’s April 11 for his usual Spring book signing.)and she said I’ve been doing that for about 4 years now. Then I realized, just look at how many hard cover RJS books are on my shelf. They are all signed first run editions, unread. I want to get paperback editions of Rollback, his WWW trilogy and this Spring he’s bringing out “Triggers.” That’s going to be about a $30 hit this Spring.

I was going to do some recording this morning but I’m a little wiped out. Most likely I’ll do this when I come home after work on Saturday after BP’s. I’m going down to LM and get a mic cable and then walk back to Bp’s have a drink with the gang and then take the train home for a nap and after Anne calls do some recording and watch a bit of the Flames/Oiler’s game.
This morning during my commute I want to get a lotto Max/6/49 ticket. The Max is worth $50m and the other $13M or something like that. Then I want to pop  into my Scotia bank and drop in a $20 for service charges. I want to keep that account open because I want to get that “Electricity” program and my Paypall account going, by uploading $10 this weekend.

If I get about $1000 on my income tax return, I’m going to get a new laptop. I tagged it’s a Gateway 15.6" AMD Phenom II Quad-Core N970 Laptop for $569. It’s got only 6 Ram but that’s all I need. For the most part after that it’s mye 2.0, Electricity, Komplete 8. There’s a few other programs I want other then that like Xfexpansion’s Tremor etc.

This morning it’s off to Scotia bank drop in that $20 do the 8 hour job thing, off to my RBC bank and home. Anyway that’s about all for now.   

On my way home

after 9pm, I usually like to stop in and have a decaff black small Tim's coffee to take with me on the train. I did last night and managed to hook up with 2 of my fellow employees Darryl and Karen. They're usually at the back of the train because it's closer to where they have to get off at Belvedere station. Belvedere station is the one before mine at the end of the North line in Clairview. Normally I'm boarding just under the escalators as the train rolls in about 9:10pm. Yesterday I rode in with them because Darryl hooked up with me on my way into work yesterday morning. 

Okay, so here we are riding home and at Stadium some kids are begging for money from local passengers. Where's ETS Security when you need them? So this other fellow boards our car about where these 2 kids were bothering people for money. This didn't sit well with this new passenger who told these kids in no uncertain terms to stop what they were doing. I heard the new passenger mention how he's a MMA fighter and he wouldn't want to mess with him because he fights for a  living. "Your getting out at the next stop," he said before the train was ready to board out of Stadium and his buddy got off right there wanting no trouble. One of the bigger kids that didn't get off while the getting was good was involved in a verbal exchange of some kind and I saw the kid mouth off to the guy and the guy came up to him and wrestled him in his seat and to the floor. Darryl looked around to see this and the MMA guy who had this kid pinned to the floor asked somebody to get his bag for him as he was heading out and essentially taking out the trash along with  him. This all happened really fast, within the span of 2 stops. The kid the MMA guy had pinned to the floor of our car I could see was laid out on the concourse floor as the car pulled out. Hopefully that will teach the kid a couple of lessons; 1, don't go trying to panhandle for money on the LRT (you never know who your going to meet) 2, don't go bad mouthing people you don't know in public, you just never know what your going to get. 

So that bit of drama was interesting. On the last leg of my ride in at Clairview on my bus home I rolled up my rim on my Tim's cup I won a donut. That's 2 coffee's and a donut. Last year I didn't win anything. Anyway, that's about all for now. 

I didn't get much sleep overnight

having so much sleep,12 hours Saturday/Sunday and about 8 hours Sunday/Monday. Last night I was lucky if I got 4 hours and I've got a full day today, yeesh. 

I managed to get a practice vocal track for the song "Louie, Louie" but it's clear I need a better mic and even better mic control. My vocals are ok but I've got to find that spot between "just right" and where it cracks up on me giving me static. I need a condenser head set mic set up.

Other then that, not much going on for today. I could use a year off but on my terms, if I ever got the money. I know the year before I'm on full pension, (If I last that long) I'm taking that year off, so realistically I've got about 3 years of working full time. Then it's off to do a different kind of telemarketing, recruiting canvassers or gathering stats on a part time basis. I don't know yet but it's not going to be full time. Anyway, that's about all for now.