There are some smells, aromas that are pleasant to wake up to. Bacon frying, the smells of fresh cut grass, lilacs after a rain in May. Another is the aroma the way instant coffee smells when you crack open the seal for that first time. So when Nescafe coffee said soon the old traditional jar will be replaced by a metal/plastic canister that resembles a package of Pringles potato chips I was skeptical. My wife brought me home a coffee refill and the jar is gone. This was sitting in our cupboard for the last few days now and I opened the container and put the kettle on. There was the metal seal. Pull and peal off. I waited for that fresh great coffee smell and nothing. Dead. Man was I disappointed. I enjoyed that aroma after cracking the seal open. New isn’t always improved. No kidding. Maybe I got a bad batch but the coffee overall tastes bitter and flat, by "improving the look" they ruined the taste everything. A good product gone bad. I’ll still drink the coffee but I’ll be looking for another brand. This really sucks.

At 5 pm I’ll be calling Neil for that ride to the lodge tonight and I’ll be buying him a beer at the festive board. It’d be a great night if Neil is going and I can get a ride and we’re not taking anyone through the FC ritual, just a regular business meeting. I’d like that. Because I’m missing work tonight that means my hours on my pay cheaque will suffer next week but I have my stat pay to make up for it. Besides on Mon-Tues, I’m going into work from 1:30-9pm because of my eye surgery Wednesday. I’ve been waiting since Nov 20th for this and I’m not going to miss it. If I’m off work for a few days at least I’ll have 2 full days off. Hopefully I can show up for Saturday. By working the Friday, if I can I’ll have 24 hours on my cheaque, so I won’t feel so bad missing tonight then.

Today I’m going to work more on "BGS" and maybe finish the rough draft this weekend. I’ve got lots of time before it needs to go out the door to WOTF. I’ve got about 6 markets after that the stories get filtered down to after that the ezines can have them. There are a lot of markets that pay by the word and I’ve picked the top 6 and I’ll work down. I had 12 but once the response times are factored in by the time a story gets to an ezine might take a couple of years. So I’m only going to go to the top 6 and after that they’ll go to the ezines in theory. But I’ve got stories planned for WOTF for this year and next. Most of them are already written they just need to be enhanced and worked over. But as soon as I’m done with my eye surgery I’ll be resuming "Rb" and I’ll be working on that over the first quarter and then the revisions. Hopefully, this will be ready to go out the door by Labor Day weekend. "MOF" will be hard on its heels but this is all part of my big plan for 2007.