I had a good hour 45 minutes when I went to bed around 3:30am. Coast last night was boring, on psychics and mediums. I don’t have a lot of respect for these types of people, sorry. At least the UFO people are interesting. But when George has topics like Bigfoot, NDE’s, Remote viewing, psychic vampires and crap like that is when I don’t listen to the show. I like the science fiction topics, secret societies, crop circles, UFO’s, conspiracy topics, black Opps programs, time travel, that sort of thing.

Anyway, I got my vacation pay last night. I felt good about that and it came to within about $3 of what I expected. So I received $200 out of it after I dropped my cheque off to Anne at her job and she has the rest. Tonight, I’m considering making a trip to Money mart and pay for my website for another year. That’s 60 Euros, which isn’t bad. I think a website is an important tool for any writer to have. Or at least a Blog. Blogger is about the best CMS out there and it’s free. After that, tonight I might also want to go get those last 2 Honor Harrington books. I kind of like military fiction and the story I’m reading now out of “The New Space Opera” Winning Peace, by Paul J Mcauley is pretty good.

I got up this morning at 4am to read for an hour and I’m about 20% of the way through the story. It’s a big story with the best writing I’ve seen so far from the book. I did the cbi thing and went back to bed. As usual I had an awkward sleep, which left me feeling tired and drained. I’m on my first coffee and I feel a bit better.

That and the weather is holding at about +1C with a tiny wind chill. I think I’ll sit at the front of the train and go early to make that payment to Markus and go get those two books so this way I can just go strait home as I’m up early Saturday morning for work and that staff party is tomorrow night. That’s when Robs going to announce the winners for the trip to Vegas. I never when these things, Because we got people there that put more hours in then me they get more credit cards. I keep records of my credit cards and I think I have about 211 credit cards but I combined some of those together so it could be more. But the trip to Vegas contest was only announced around August and people weren’t pushing for them. I wasn’t up to a point as well either. But I’ll know more or less the story tomorrow night. The other thing with this is, we have maybe a dozen people during the day. The front 20 can be more or less eliminated and so can anyone that just started as of a dew months ago. More then likely the winner will be someone from the Day shift like JT, Bud. Or even Sbvere and a Bonnie. It won’t be someone from the evening shift that works just evenings because the 9-7 people obviously make more calls then I do and have more opportunity to get the credit cards. In theory. I mean I’d go if I won. It’s only for a weekend and we’d be staying mostly in a hotel, but if I won, I’d like to go. It’d be with out my wife, sorry. Yeah right like I’m going to win.

Ok about the piano, I’ll be getting this next week because Anne is expecting some last minute reward points and $40 added onto the $150 and another $30 more will get me the better piano wioth the MIDI in/OUT connector. Add that and a USB MIDI adaptor I can hook the keyboard to my computer. Also, next week, I’ll be getting the extra $30 in bonuses and if any of thise Cw invoices net me back a cheque or two I could end up getting another $25-50 bucks. I have that afternoon of the 22nd booked up for buying my 4th book of the month, a nice lunch in the City Centre mall food court and to pick uup my piano. Hoefuly it’s in stock. Then I’ll have 4 days off and I’ll be writing and practicing drivingmy wife crazy with scales.

Tomorrow night is the big game. Vancouver/Edmonton here at Rexal place. Of course the big news this week in Oil Country is Cal Nichol’s stepping down as the CEO of the Oilers EIG Edmonton Investors Group. Remember local billionaire Darryl Katz? Well, yesterday he made another bid for the Edmonton Oilers at $188 million. The team sells out every night and I think the Oilers have as good a team as any in the leagure and any team can beat any other team in this league. Personally I think we’ve got the team equal to where the Oilers were two years ago and the Oilers have $5Mill in cap room. I see them before the trade deadline moving Raphi Torres to the minors for cap room for another big name player. The offre Katz made is a good one. He also pledged $100 Million towards a new state of the art arean North of City hall. Katz lives here in Edmonton he‘s building a mansion on the South side of the North Saskatchewan river. He’s committed to Edmonton. Cal Nichol’s has accepted the offer and as far as I know, the deal translates into $20,000+/share. Many of the 33 remaining members of the EIG have expressed interest in selling their shares. The EIG has up until the end of January to accept Katz’s offer. I think this time they are going to do it.

So, where’s what we’re doing for the holiday’s: It seems, on Monday, Christmas eve, the office is only going to be open until 1pm. We have (a given) Christmas day off on the 25th and Boxing Day off on the 26th. We’re not getting paid for Boxing day. So, I don’t see myself going in on Christmas eve morning so instead I’m going in for Saturday ion the 22nd and Anne wants me to have the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off. That’s 4 days! Wow. I can write a story in 4 days. I’m going to try and get another story out to Static Movement, for their February issue. But this story I call “NXS-17” is about the crew of an unarmed fighter and their adventure into a Rebel planetary system. Right now the story has about 4,150 words, so there’s lots of room to augment the story a bit more. The theme of this story is about betrayal and religion. In Space! I’ve got a Print Canadian market in mind for this story. It should be ready for February or March. The story for SM might not be ready until April or May.

Anyway that’s all for now.

e. Jim