I had a brief wait for my bus this morning. I wanted to take some pictures but my batteries ran out of juice. Heading into work on the train was just as busy as any other Saturday morning. Normally because of Christmas weekend we’d have fewer people on the Clairview platform. I got my Tim’s breakfast sandwich and headed into the office to find my dialer and save a seat for J. The Team competition along the back wall was Bud, JT and Me and Jay on Team B. We had a modest turnout today. My first call a $15 credit card. Rob showed up a bit later and by this time, I had 3 credit cards. Our go Home early goal was established on the board. I didn’t care about my total on my recap. I only cared about credit cards. I was in my “game zone” despite recovering from my soar throat. Despite the lack of our Team Captain, Danny not in today. We’ve got I think one of the strongest teams in the room. John McD is a solid credit card writer, So is Dawn, so is Jay and I’m no slouch either on a good day. A couple of laughs today. JT was being a bit infantile but it was kind of funny mimicking the sound of a phone trill: “Winston Line two.” Even Bart our former General manager showed up today and made a cameo. I got into the act as best my voice would carry. “Bart, line two.” That got some reaction. We were having fun. Also because I’m evenings only I don’t have to be there for Monday morning. I lose 2 days but I have my stat pay Brendan the family day manager clarified all this at the break. The credit cards were coming in fast and furious for our Team, Team C gave up. We were already closing in on 25 minutes off. I like this credit card for time off early thing. It’s a good idea. The Baker Centre is an older building. Probably built around the 50’s and quite often we’ve had people get stuck in the elevator. Today it as he security guard locked in girls from our phone room. We had fun over that one. I got an unexpected call from Charles wishing me a merry Christmas filling him in on the jocularity going around. Anyway, our team knew we had the credit card race and for the $50 more or less locked in. We’re taking a break from this Christmas week but here’s why I’m making such a big deal about the OTH Teams; At the end of the campaign the team with the most credit cards/points wins $2,000 to be split 7 ways. That’s $300 each. Plus there’s $50 bucks at stake each week. That motivates me. I was glad to get out of there a half an hour early, wishing everyone merry Christmas and shaking hands.
I was glad to get out of there and catch my Clairview train home. I called Anne on the way home and she returned my call at Clairview. I elected not to go out this afternoon as I was feeling pretty drained not having enough sleep from earlier. I can always save the reward points for some other time in January.
Ok, Anne was out and about getting the time on our cell phones before they expire at midnight. I had a near scare as I’m trying to recharge my camera batteries and I accidentally hit the power bar button off. Yikes. I desperately need an external hard drive. Anne was also out there getting me a new blood sugar reader. This one is the latest in reader technology as it has a one size fits all for test strips. It’s called The Contour. I’ll be using Contour after I run out of test strips. I’ve still got another set of hundred and another container to use about 80% full. I’m only testing myself once a week now. My Doctor would want me to do it at least 4 times a day. If I had to implement everything my Doctor wants it’d cost me about $2,000/month out of pocket. Our company doesn’t have a medical plan for part time workers and Alberta monitoring gives me $550/year. It basically breaks down like this:
Test trips 4 times day= 1,460/year. Test trips are $1.00 each/$910
Insulin: $60/month=/$720
Lancets= /$135
Needles= /$450
And I haven’t taken Metformin into account as well because I don’t take it. All together $2,215 year. That’s $185 extra dollars a month just for my health and we don’t get anything back. I checked into “Aids to daily living” and that’s a program for AISH recipients and seniors. So, this is another cause for me to change jobs for the health benefits alone.
Anyway’s that’s about all for tonight. Anne’s cooking our breakfast because we’re going to the Sawmill tomorrow. Cell phone’s are set up things are looking good. So after breakfast I’m going to spend some time trying to figure out ideas for The Hierophantic task and get that going. I’d love to have the ending framed in my head and the beginning part mapped out. I also want to get some keyboard practice in as well tonight and even work some more on my short story. On a finale not tonight Anne and I have been talking about this for awhile now but if the status quo remains more or less the same, by this time next year I could be looking at getting a Macbook. Drool.
Anyway, that’s all for now
e. Jim
