back to reality. I spent most of an enjoyable evening in Google Earth and aerial photos of New Westminster. The earliest one I could find from the Air photo archives is from February 1982, Douglas College was about 70%. I was trying to find my old building where I had that small studio suit for 2 years 1974-1975. The furthest they could go back for me was February 1982. I left 1978 and that was the Anderson house (1976/77) and the run down apartment where it was torn down to make way for Douglas college on the corner of 4th and Royal. But I had some good times living in that little studio suite. The rent was affordable. I didn’t need a bus to get to work, I could easily walk to work no problem, I was 22. But New West is nothing today like it was then, I mostly hung around the downtown area not Uptown. I ate my meals mostly at the Fraser café and Pacific café. The pacific café building is still there and so is the Fraser café building. Even the old Army and Navy building is still there,

Well, I had a nice weekend. I wish I had all my weekends off. I’m tired of going in Monday/Saturday. I’m seriously thinking about taking that job at pizza. I like their hours if I can start and work from 12-5am. I think I might apply. I’d work Mon 12-5, Tues 12-5, Wed 12-5, Thur11-5, Friday 11-5 and Saturday and Sundays off. That would give me 27.5hrs/week. They won’t pay me $10, I’m sure they won’t take $2 bucks /week off for a social fund. It is in bound calling. I’d much rather do the security guard job of course.

 I have this uneasy sense of apprehension for missing Saturday. I’ve a feeling shit’s going to hit the fan. I hope not. I don’t mind where I work now, it’s just I need a bit of time off every now and then. I mean I don’t take smoke beaks I’m always on time, I’m seldom off my dialer and I bank good totals. I figured it out that a smoker takes two five minute smoke breaks in a 4 hour shift. That accounts for 10 min/shift. In a six day work week those smoke breaks translate into 1 hour. Now I don’t mind a co worker having a smoke. That’s fine. But if this afternoon Rob/Will are going to play games with me for missing Saturday, I’ll remind them about the collective time off smokers take. Not that I want to get into a pissing match with anyone. (The only resistance for taking Saturday off I might get is from the rest of the people I work with because if we have 10 tap shooters and 20 non tap shooters Rob will give us $2/hr more onto our hourly rate. I’d forgotten about that over the weekend. We made the cut last Saturday. But since Rob introduced this new scheme we‘ve only made the cut once.) Ok, getting back to the smokers taking time off, 1 hour/week translates into 52 hours/year. In my case working there for (next Saturday will be 7 years going into my 8th year) 7 years without smoke breaks would mean they “owe me” 364 hours. That’s 91 4 hour shifts, 52 into x4 is 13 hour shifts. Not just that but the turnover in staff we have is high. plus I’m usually in the top 3 high totals every night. I don’t think rob has anything to say about me taking Saturday off. But because of this new “incentive” I’m going to take Monday off instead. Also to be fair, I did not go in for my lodge night. I elected t go into work instead. I can always use that as my excuse for tonight though. “Um you didn’t hear me say I’ll be off Saturday instead?”

I feel bad I didn’t get any serious writing done this weekend. I did a lot of planning on my forthcoming space opera project though. I don’t have a set of characters though but I’ll be working on that over the next weekend. As for TS, I’ll be pulling that together over the rest of this week. I’ve got some plans for the story. Working on getting it out copy ready by Halloween. Also, I plan on the 15th to add some more scenes to F as well, getting it to 100k before the real rewriting goes.

Anyway that’s all for now

e. Jim