the idea early this morning was to go to bed, early. I was in bed by 2am. Coast was really good last night talking about a secret Third Reich weapons project called The Bell and other Nazi clandestine operations. It was a good show and I stayed up for an hour and a half of it. They even touched on the Kennedy assassination weekend.

From the How did I miss this department? Over the weekend we had the son of Jessie Marcel (from Roswell UFO) and a 2 day UFO conference held at the Space Science Center. From what I heard it was a pretty good event. Not that I believe in UFO’s per se’ but it is a fun topic. Until a President of the USA comes out in his first term and says something like. “Yes we are being visited etc.” Then I’ll believe it or if it happens to me and I see a real honest Et kind of a UFO I’ll remain a skeptic.

Speaking about being a skeptic, my little essay on global warming is stalled. It’s in the shadow of a topic far more important to me: My novel project F.

I’ll be getting more into that this week already approaching the 10th scene 2nd rewrite. I have a few mini scenes within the scene as well but still in the same location as the overall scene. I do this to change the point of view of the characters around as # marks the spot for a pov shift. A gap in the line spacing is a scene shift and # is a pov shift within the scene. it’s just a chance to have the supporting cast from their pov contribute to the overall scene. I don’t do this a lot but if I have 5 main characters the Lead will have most of the scenes in his/her pov. The antagonist will have a large amount including the villains supporting cast. One or two. The confidant may have 6 shared # scenes (or pov shifts) same with the Romantic Lead. The last scene I wrote last night had the # break for a pov shift of the Romantic lead.

Okay getting back to what was going on overnight I listened to as much of Coast as I could endure being tired and drowsy I turned the volume right down and I tried to pass out. This was about 4am and my left leg ached. It’s better now. However at the time this was going on I couldn’t sleep because of that and the amount of sleep I had from the night before. So, I had an urge to read more out of Jennifer Wingert‘s “Grasp the Stars.” I’m really enjoying this book at pg 280/482. I have another 200 pages or so left to read. Since I’m a slow reader, I should have the book wrapped up by the end of this month and then I can start on Charles Stross’s Accelerando. I ended up reading from about 4am until around 5:30am feeling drowsy again and a need to do the cbi thing. I took a bsl reading sitting at 9.8 something. I’m always sitting at a high number overnight.

Anne is up lying in bed watching her soaps. She’s going in for the her 3:30pm shift and I’ll be going in for my 5pm shift and returning to watch my Monday night Raw. Got to watch Monday night wrestling!

What else? Oh, this weekend we had Yesterday the Terry Fox run for cancer. Ok, allow me to think out loud here for a bit. The TF run world wide raised around half a billion dollars for cancer research just on one weekend. Pretty amazing. What’s even more amazing is the fact that after 30 years since Terry Fox lost his battle with cancer and billions of dollars latter we still haven’t found a cure. Same thing with Aids. Something smells here. I’m not suggesting society doesn’t continue with these noble efforts to raise funds but I have to give my head a shake and ask, will we ever find a cure for cancer? The US spends billions of dollars a year on security and intelligence, yet have they ever found Bin Laden?

I believe they “have found him.” US intelligence knows exactly where he is but they can’t revel this to the world at large. Why? Because it will upset the balance of power in the middle east. Osama bin Laden is protected somewhere in the mountainous regions of Northern Pakistan. Maybe Ed Dames has tried to remote view him but even if the CIA this afternoon haul bin Ladin out in chains the ramifications of such a move would have far reaching implications then just to satisfy our need to get rid of the dictators in the world.

I draw the parallel’s from cancer research and funding to bin Ladin only because they serve to remind us that all the money in the world won’t find us a cure for cancer. And all the billions of dollars spent on intelligence won’t bring us any closer to finding bin Laden or hauling him out in chains like OJ on this last weekend. So what does all this spending and fundraising do? For the Intel community it means that we’re getting better at intelligence it’s, it’s own cottage industry even though the trickle down effects are negligible they help us in ways that may not be immediately evident. Cancer research? It shows that as a society we care about finding a cure. If it does anything else at least it gets us involved and that’s a good thing. We get involved by raising funds making a donation. We might not be able to haul bin Laden away but at the same time we have stronger Intel resources that aid us domestically and abroad. Cancer funding helps cancer research and I also think helps aid us in our quality of life. Ok so the analogy was a bit lame.

Weather wise here it looks like another nice day. But autumn is this week already. It’s been a good summer.

In early May I went to my first book signing and met Robert J Sawyer. I had severe toothache pain in may as well. In June I got my eyes fixed. We got Pledges fixed up. I got my w98 computer fixed up only to find it crashed on me again. We were watching the "affordable housing" situation across the City, it being in crisis mode right now. The Province had to step in. I put some extra hours in. I got a raise up to $10 dollars/hour. I had all kinds of trouble with a new printer/scanner that wouldn't work for me. I was able to get my money back though. I spent $70 on a kmv switch I can't use because of my crashed w98 computer (again) and a router I can't use because of the product key. There's $50 bucks down the drain. Plus $80 previously getting the Geeks to repair my w98 computer. Well over $200 bucks on computer equipment I can't use right away. We went to Capital X and had some really hot nice weather. The Edmonton Oilers off season was interesting watching Kevin Lowe trying to make some big trades. We received a substantual rent increase hanging over our heads for December. We got word some extra funding from Annes family we have been receiving since we got married in 2000 will come to an abrupt end in June of '08. The economy here strong and rolling along despite labor unrest. I completed the rewrite to F. We got ourselves a new cell phone and went out to the Keg and Ricky’s. I got myself a lot of good novels to read and a lot of good music. I turned 55 year sold. I discovered The Buzzcocks this summer. It wasn’t a dramatic summer but it had it’s moments.  This summer was full of ups and downs. More downs then ups but we survived barely intact and I'm still optimistic for the  balance of the year.

Anyway that’s all for now

e. Jim