last night when I got home I went to try and finish “Grasp the Stars” and noticed, Holy crap it’s 10pm time for Smackdown. So I went to The Score channel #94 and, nothing but static. WTF? So when Anne got home (I don’t know how to work half of the TV controls on that thing anyway) she searched for me and Smackdown was on Channel 60, which is an LA station. That meant a ton of commercials. When I got to it, the show was already in progress. I managed to catch a few things and then their main event and that was it. Over by 11.pm. Ok, it must have began at 9pm. WWE keeps bouncing this thing around. Good, I can watch the Friday night news at 11 instead. Works just as well. Anne made me a nice little lunch. First time I tried that new cup of K-dinner or what ever they call it. Not bad.

After the news I watched ECW and enjoyed that. Kind of made up for missing Smackdown. I went and completed “Grasp the Stars” by Jennifer Wingert:

I really liked this book. It’s very deep and has lots of levels of meaning. The location was interesting and I liked the principle characters. There was no real villain or bad guy in the story and unlike a lot of science fiction, there is a lot of infodump, this story was absent of that. Jennifer Wingert’s “Grasp the Stars.” was enjoyable to read. The writing tight presenting little gems of clarity on every page. This story is in 3rd person, with it’s tight prose held my interest right through the end. Also missing from the story were large chunks of paragraphs of description and back story. This is Jennifer Wingert’s first SF novel and I hope I see more of her work. The premise was a little murky and astray in the middle but the action elements made up for it along the rest of the way.

Pros: Great characters, wonderful use of language, setting lends itself well to the story. Pont of view is well handled.

Cons: Premise could have been developed more in the middle, there was no bad guy per se’ but this isn’t the 1930’s anymore.

I’d rate “Grasp the Stars” 9/10. Put it this way, after reading this book “Grasp the stars” anything after will be a hard act to follow. Speaking of which, no sooner had I finnished reading "Grasp the Stars" when I craked open Chrales Stross's "Accelerando". Hopefully I can finnish this book in October.

The Esks lost their game last night against Toronto and the Esks Star quarterback Ricky Ray was sacked with an injury that could have him miss the rest of the season. I don’t know how this CFL play off thing works out but the Esks have one chance if they can win the next game next week in Toronto on hostile territory. It doesn’t look good for the Esks playoff hopes. 

According to Will Rob's posting up another bank report. When, I don’t know. Your guess is as good as Rob's or anyone else’s for that matter with Rob and his new “bonus structure.” He always comes up with these new schemes and they fall apart because in the beginning they’re great and everyone takes advantage of them and when they do, that costs the Company money. “Ooops. Not good. Better rethink this.” Then he starts watering the idea down with conditions. For example line hour always changes with where we are in any givin campaign as the source dries up. I think beginning Monday were doing “Magic” again. We were supposed to do Cancer Recovery Foundation taps. This is how I think it’s going to go. Magic/mornings, CRF taps (afternoon if we get them) and Magic at night. Same thing like we did for Baseball. It’s times like these I’d like to get out of Xl. A nice security guard job like what Charles is doing sounds nice but then he’s got his moments of stress too no doubt.

I ended up having a good night last night on the job with getting 3 credit cards for $65 and a $510 total which was half assed respectable for a Friday night. We also got off at 8:15pm and with a 15 min kick-off and a 15 min break the shift translated in roughly 3 hours of "work." I ended up talking with Charles for a good 20 minutes just surfing the calls and Anne for another 10 minutes after Wills 2nd half kick off. We get away with a lot there and if this was any other call center, I’d have been fired by now. In that regard, this is why I like my job. I read for a bit after work in the office and walked to Corona and read there and waited for my bus. I read on the train home and on the bus waiting at Clairview. I love reading on the train home.

Sometime this weekend or next, I’d like to go get my haircut for myself and the lodge meeting. I missed going to the September meeting but I hope to go to all the ones for the rest of the year. Actually, I’m not going to miss lodge nights anymore. If I need a night off I’ll take it off in between lodge nights. Works out better for them and for me.

Having my first coffee. I went to bed around 1:45am and had no trouble falling asleep even though Art Bell was on Coast last night with a guest. I got up around 6:45am so I think I had almost 4 hours sleep. It’s off to work this morning for the job thing but it’s only 4 hours. I like going in on a Saturday, I’m thinking of getting a book today because we’re almost at the end of the month but there isn’t a lot there at Audrey’s books to choose from. What I’d like to do is go in and make out a special order for October and I think I’ll be doing that next week. The thing is, sometimes it takes more then a month before these books come in and Audrey’s needs a 50% deposit. I’ve got to see if they can order them for me. If they are in stock, then fine.

Once I get home this afternoon, I’m going to have a bit of a nap and then tonight put some more work into F. I’d like to finish off the beginning part of the story. In this case it’s the first 20 scenes. I’ve got maybe 5 more to go. I’m going to compose one more email to Markus (again) with all the URl’s to the static pages. If that doesn’t work and he still doesn’t answer me, then I don’t know what to do. I know it’s Oktoberfest and all there in Germany, so if he doesn’t answer my next email then I suppose I’m resigned to have this ugly looking website. I’ll pay him for one more year but then after that I’m going to save up some money and get my site done professionally and hosted locally. I think with Shaw or something like that. I like Geeklog but most people are using Wordpress.

Anyway that’s all for now

e. Jim