I woke up around 7:45am had my waffles and milk for the cbi thing. Checking the conditions outside I saw a bus heading for Clairview station. I made note of the time as above and went back to bed and as usual, sleep came hard. It was 11:30am when I woke up to get ready but I figured well it was bitterly cold yesterday morning. I can always (yeah right) make up for it by going in for Monday afternoon. And I still might just do that. The only thing about putting in the extra hours is my insulin. I know if I took the pill it would free up a lot of my time. But this requires me to go to that flakey Doctor all the way out to the West end. Takes an hour just to get out there. Then I’ve got to worry about diet, take metformin (I should be taking that anyway) exercize etc. There are some complications resulting from the use of metformin as well. Apparently metformin can also cause some weight loss in some cases. Metformin is another diabetic drug I can’t afford to take.

Anne headed back out to the Truck this afternoon to get some more things. 111th Ave just off of 124th st. It’s a good hour there and back. She’ll be back by 4pm but that's her outing for today.

As for me, I’m going to make my blog rounds and finish my first coffee and edit this. I’m in a way glad I didn’t go in this afternoon. I’m up at 10am Monday have an hour to myself and a bit of lunch and then out the door over to Audrey’s and into work for the 1:30pm shift just to shut Rob up. I wouldn’t mind going in for the rest of the week but like I said, it compromises my insulin. I’m worried it’s going to be tampered with, it being exposed to so many people (but I leave my novalin pen/insulin in the business room fridge.) and then having to ask to take my insulin at the end of the shift being dependent upon somebody for my health. We’ve got the “Family room fridge in the kitchen” but how long would my insulin/pen last in there from some shit head kid rummaging through the fridge looking for a can of pop to swipe? Last week one of the kids had his Ipod stolen. I felt bad for him but for all I know that was itself stolen Ipod. That’s the 2nd Ipod I’ve seen stolen in this office this year. For example if I left a can of pop in the fridge even with my name on it at 5pm, how long would it still be there if I wanted it by 7pm? It'd be gone by 7pm. The business room fridge is no better but at least the people there are more or less responsible and the room that it’s contained is locked up. I can do a couple of extra shifts/week that’s no big deal even if it means taking my insulin eralier then usual. Working extra hours is a real problem for me. I want to put the hours in but there are other issues going on.

I was thinking about Robert J Sawyer's party he had last night. Taking something like that on the road would be really hard to organize. I wouldn’t want to do it. I finally admit that for a science-fiction writer the place to be is in Toronto. There are more things happening out there in the SF community then here. Although I love Edmonton there isn’t a heck of a lot going on SF wise. I would have loved to have gone to that thing last night. That’s one of the many things I like about Robert J Sawyer is his generosity. His willingness to give back and he’s a pretty nice guy. We had William Gibson at TWOS last fall providing a launch party for his new book. I could have went to that but at $15 bucks a ticket? RJS does his readings for free. Maybe he had the same kind of deal when he launched “Rollback,” I’m not sure. Robert J. Sawyer will be at Pure Speculation here in October. It’s a convention with a fee to get in but it’s worth it.

Over there at SF Signal they’re talking about reading e-books on cell phones. This is a cool idea but what about battery life? Also you'd have to turn off text messaging, MP3 devices, bluetooth etc. to read an e-book. I'd rather have a cell phone with local AM radio but that won't happen because of the antenna issue. But e-books on a cell phone sounds like a good idea. I  wonder if anyone is doing a market survey on this?

My daily blog roll expedition to New Westminster is going to be suspended for 10 days because Dennis and his buddy are going on a Mexican cruise. He’ll be back next week. If he had a laptop he could have done everything from there still on vacation but there are sometimes when you just have to get away from the Internet and do something else.

Still no word on the Adsense front. They want me to sign up for a Google Account but I already have a GA by virtue of my email address: Jim9Shannon At gmail.com. However AdSense is saying this isn’t working. WTF? Yes I am now totally confused. Thing with AdSense is they have so many daily requests it’s a huge convoluted mess just to get started. AdSense is an administrative nightmare and seems to be more trouble then it’s worth. You’ve really got to know what your doing to get into that game. I’m keeping the ad up there for now and if one of these years Google sends me a cheque (I won't hold my breath waiting) I’d be very surprised. I’ve been in contact with this AdSense support staff (Laura) last fall. I replied last week to one of her last messages to see if I can get a handle and current status on my AdSense account. So far no reply. If she is even still working there. These people get tens of thousands of emails/day so chances are that I’ll get an answer any time soon will be slim to none. The other thing about AdSense is when I attempt to open the main page my OS is struggling to open it. The AdSense page rolls over and over and over as it tries to load. I don’t know if anyone else is experiencing this problem.

I got a call just now from Anne. She got what she needed at the Truck and is sitting inside Tim’s warming up with a donut and a coffee waiting for her bus. It’s still pretty cold out there but it’s supposed to warm up to +1C Monday afternoon. Also it’s getting lighter out there as well. Just 5 more Sunday afternoons and we’ll be at daylight savings time.

Alright, I’ve rambled on here long enough as it is. Time to get on with some other things for today.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

e. Jim