I went to bed about 1am. Since Anne isn’t working today, she got to stay up late. As for me I listened to a bit of Coast and managed to get about 4 hours sleep. I’ll try and have a nap when I come back.

Last night after work I went to Audrey’s and picked up one of my 3 “Honor Harrington” books. The first one. I’ll get the other two next week with my $25 credit card commission from Cw, I hope for next week. The other thing is because I knew the strength of our dollar against the US dollar wouldn’t last very long at above par, Audrey’s books has until the end (store policy) of December to keep prices at US pricing on all of their books. I save $3 on each mmp book there but because of that I don’t get the Audrey’s book club member awards/book. So I have up until the end of this month to enjoy US pricing on my books. I also have the Forgotten Realms Omnibus coming in soon as well and if any of the new books I’ve ordered arrive before the end of the year I get US pricing. As soon as the dollar reached and passed the US dollar the Feds should have offered consumers protection on all products at US pricing. This should be automatic across the board and not up to the whim of business. I’m very happy with Audrey’s books for giving the consumer a break.

I had a nice ride home with one of the kids from work and called Anne as she was right behind me coming out of the tunnel before Stadium. I ended up doing $360, which wasn’t bad but no credit cards. Some of the new kids from India got some high totals. Nothing like line hour or anything.

Anyway, I got home and I entered my totals. I could have done some Cw but it was late and I was tired. I plan on doing some this afternoon when I come home from work and Anne is out. When Rob sends out the Cw invoices from our last sales sheet, and when the customer sends in their cheques my commission on that will be about $106 bucks. Might even be before Christmas. That’s my lodge dues. The other half will be my website and a gift for my wife and we’re going Dutch on our Christmas dinner. It should work out really good.

I didn’t want to watch Smackdown. I was a bit burned out and I just wanted to spend some time researching what order I should be buying the Forgotten Realm novels. I found an interesting fan site that has a list of an FR list by years. But Wiki lists some of them out by trilogy’s. I’ve got The Icewind Dale trilogy in Omnibus format on order but Fr starts with The Moonshae trilogy (Omnibus) and then the Dark Elf Trilogy (also in Omnibus format) so I’m going to order those last two trilogies today. This is what I call “The forgotten realms reading Project.” If I can get the sgj in January and work at it full time, I plan on ordering as many of the Fr books as I can. With the sgj (?) I’ll be able to read more. Maybe one novel/week. There’s two or three Fr new books being released every year but if I can get all the books in the omnibus format, those 240+ Fr books won’t take up a lot of space. That’d be 80 Omnibus editions. I’m still going to read science fiction and that won’t change. After the Forgotten Realm’s books, I’m going after the Star Trek books and then after the Star Wars books. Then if I get really ambitious, maybe even the Perry Rhodan books.

I’m well into my first coffee of the morning. I’ll have another coffee at work but this morning I’m not going to order another breakfast sandwich, Too many eggs. I’ll order a donut instead to help wake me up. I like the Boston banana cream. My blood sugar doesn’t like it.

Now this is right out of the “Grinch that stole Christmas” files. I heard this and my mouth just about dropped into my soup. I haven’t been able to find it in the Edmonton Sun or journal online but it seems Boardwalk no wants to charge already gouged renters for heat. Traditionally heat and water have always been “free.” But Boardwalk now is tacking on a fee just to heat your apartment. Now if this means say the building has a heating bill of $800/month, then that should be spread around all suites in the building. Say a dozen suites means a $67 surcharge. Now I don’t have a problem with that but what will be the real bill to renters already suffering from a tight squeeze as it is? What’s next Grinch Boardwalk? Are you going to charge for water now? How about the lights in the stairwell and hallways? Sure Condo owners are already paying this fee but it’s just another way to gouge renters. So far this is only a Boardwalk initiative and I doubt will happen immediately with other apartment complexes. What few that are left remaining. Maybe I’m over reacting here but when I heard this I had to give my head a shake.

Ok last nights hockey offering for Oiler fans began on a promising note. The game went 1-0 St. Louis. Then the Oilers tide the game and it went that way until the third. Costly turnovers allowed St. Louis to make it 4-2. The Oilers pulled Garon and made it interesting scoring to make it 4-3 with seconds left. MacT sat out Stall and Torres. The Oilers play in Dallas Monday night, Tuesday in St. Louis for the encore and Detroit after that. And wrapping things up for the week next Saturday night.

Also, Epcor (Edmonton Utlities) announced plans for a new 17 story tower to go up across the street from the CN tower. There's an artist rendation of the tower in this mornings Edmonton Journal online. Just Google that and you can see for yourself. Also, earlier this week it was announced that the owner of the Silk Hat cafe won't need to pull out after all because the developer that was going to build that huge office tower on Jasper Ave. pulled out of the project.

While it's on my mind is the steady decline in the price of oil, now sitting at $88 and some change. it went from $96 a couple of weeks ago and dropped almost $10 bucks. This is it's seasonal decline. It'll bottom out at about $50/barrel by the end of January. Then it'll begin to climb in March. At least that's what my spider senses tells me.

So this morning, I’m going to venture out into the biting cold of the morning air. Fortunately I won’t have long to wait if I time it right and I’m out there by 10-9am. I hope I have an uninterrupted ride into Tim’s pick up a donut and relax and start the day. Then I plan on calling Trevor at Audrey’s to order those other 2 Fr omnibus books. Then it’s our 15 min lunch break and Anne today is off to the discount grocery truck. After work it’s home for me and a little nap until 5pm then work on Cw for an hour and try and get some sales. I’m also going to call at work and see about getting some Cw sales. I like using the reception desk phone. After that tonight I’m going to finish off this short story. I’ve got a few title ideas for the story but nothing definite at the moment. I kind of like this story as well but I think I could have some POV issues trying out different things.

Pardon the typos.

Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim