Yesterday was so busy I didn’t even get any diary work done. I think I woke up around 1pm and had a coffee did a bit more outline work for HT and I had to get ready to head out for our annual Christmas dinner. We were out of here about 3pm and headed downtown to catch the number #2 bus dodging the homeless in the stairwell at Corona to the street level. I’ve never seen the homeless problem here in Edmonton this bad before. The #2 bus was packed but we managed to push our way out,this time of year and all. When we got to the Sawmill we were escorted to the dinning area. Everything is usually about 30-50% more expensive there. Just the Tiffany stained glass lamps over our heads were about $2k each. The only thing I could eat in my price range was the Prime rib. When it arrived with fries the meat was too rare and had to be taken back. Anne was disappointed as well. My bill came to $30 including tip. For what we got out of it? Well at least we got out of the house even though we wasted about $55 bucks. Next year we'll go to the pub part. I made 2 mistakes this weekend. The first was buying that part three of Roger MacBride Allen’s “Shores of Tomorrow” and because it was the end of a trilogy (I thought it was in Omnibus format) Trevor said I didn’t need to buy it. I did the honorable thing and picked it up anyway. I should have asked him to shelve it for Cory Doctorow’s last book “Someone comes to town someone leaves town.” I love that title but it sounds cyber punkish to me. That was mistake one. Mistake #2 going out to the Sawmill. Next year Anne and I are going to find something better. Personally I like The Keg over the Sawmill. We got home after a lengthy wait for our bus but the weather co-operated with us so it certainly wasn’t cold out there.

When I got home I made a coffee and worked on the outline for HT. I’ve got most of the beginning planned out but the ending is a bit fussy. I’ll figure it out before it’s ready to print.

At this point during Christmas Eve week while I have time off, it’s been quite a year. I like to do a year in review: January started with the article on the paper about the company I work for and that caused us a lot of grief. I published “Zombies of sleep.” in Static Movement. February: The Ryan Smyth Trade, laser surgery difficulties. March: Anne’s birthday at the Sawmill. April: I met Robert J Sawyer and Minister Faust at my first book signing. The housing crunch making news. May: having toothache pain. Cat troubles. Still buying a book a week, June: Laser surgery restored my ailing vision. Signed up to a gmail account to get F transferred over onto Gmail. Computer crashed shortly after fixed again then crashed. July: Picked up a printer I couldn’t use because my system has week Ram. I should have stored the printer away for later use. Tried using a KVM switch and a router with little success. August: Cell phones. Got a small increase in pay and housing assistance forms for later. The Buzzcocks and The Stranglers. September: Onto the 2nd draft of F. October: Contacted my family through Face book. Received a rental increase. Discovered music lessons on YouTube, Jeff and Doris. Contacted Charles as well. Met Charles after 6 year absence. November: Big power outage. First visit to another lodge. December: Got a musical keyboard. Cw and land line phone. So far this year has been chalk full of things going on.

This up coming year I’m going to try and publish another short story. I also see changing jobs for a sgj and that could be in the forecast if Rob Won’t pay me more money. If I can get the sgl that is. I’m also going to write another novel and continue to work on F. The task this year is to get F as published read as I can before sending it out. I'm going to test the publishing waters and get a few rejections and then send it out to agents instead of publishers and of course to continue work on HT. Another big first this year for me was I read 4 books. I'm lucky if I can get to read a book a year.

Ok, absolutely nothing going on today. My wife got my cold and now it’s her turn. I’m working out the tail end of my cold and working on my first real coffee. Anne had shoved a grill cheese and my insulin on me to interrupt my first coffee.

This is the only time on a Monday night I don’t watch Raw, because it’s a “Tribute to the troops show.” It’s not a “real” event. I don’t watch Smackdown anymore but I do try to watch ECW. Smackdown is just boring. I don‘t like the World Heavyweight Championship that came over with WCW. It’s not a natural part of the WWE even though it first appeared in 1999. If Smackdown was a live event I’d probably watch it. Before I got cable in the early 1990’s I settled for watching a magazine wrap up of WWE events and that was good enough for me. I didn’t really become a huge wrestling fan until Raw. Although I did enjoy Stampede Wrestling even though it was on for an hour. I enjoyed Ed Whalen. The show had a more intimate feeling then the huge WWF corporation. It didn’t have the flashing lights and explosions or intro music. I like Raw because it’s live even though in most cases I can only catch the encore version at 10pm.

 Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim