I’ve been working on a lot of website stuff lately but I’m back. I went into work at my usual time yesterday, 4pm and took a couple of pictures of a construction site just behinds Clairview station East on my way into work. Last of the construction around here, for now. It was a slightly grey day out there and a bit on the colder side as you can see from the temperature clock in the photo below. I wish that clock could measure wind chill. I didn’t get my Tim’s Roll up coffee so I just went strait into work and got my dialer. Cancer Recover Foundation. Ugh. And that ugh, showed because it was really tough going. The list from hell. I think John McD and I were the only ones using the disclaimer which accounted for everyone else doing so well. Fortunately I was able to get some reading done at my dialer between calls last night. I got a call on my cell phone at my dialer from Audrey’s books and they said my Timothy Zahn book “The green and the grey” is in. Good. I’ll get that one and another book/3 there for me. Anne called. I hadn’t got my cheque in yet at the time she called. About 8pm I asked Greg about the cheques and later he handed them out about 8:30pm and I didn’t get my Good Friday stat pay. Sometimes the boss pays it sometimes he doesn’t but I did get my full 16 hours. I ended up with a measly $200 total on my recap and I had to fight like hell to get it. Most of the calls were semies. Still no credit card sales. Some of these people I work with are pulling in 3-6 credit cards/night. Lately I’m lucky if I can get one/week. I don’t know how they do it. I'm going to have to go into the back room there and listen to how these guys pull out credit card sales. Greg usualy sits at the station and listens in to each call and can go back on every call from any occupied station. I did my best to put that shift behind me as I left out the door. This time I got my train on time without waiting and I got a seat going with the train and read.

Right now I’m reading Elizabeth Bear’s “Undertow the tide is turning…” Or simply “Undertow”/ Ut. I’ll have Chapter 3 done by this morning. It’s not bad but some of the language is way over my head. When the author gets into a descriptive scene there’s a lot of strange language. Words that are not familiar to me. Bear strings them along where at least I can follow, somewhat. She likes to use a lot of different POV scene switches and I like that in my reading because the other way suggests a lot of padding unless the story is in first person. I hope to have Ut read by April 15th if not earlier. After that, it's either Willaim C. Dietz's "Runner" (sequel at Audrey's) or L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s "The eternity artifact" or "Helix" by Eric Brown. I'll most likely read "The eternity artifact" because it's in first person.

It looks like the Oiler’s are moving downtown, eventually. The City did a "feasibility study" this week and building the arena downtown "makes sense." One location is the postal lands area but this is Federal land. The authors of the study have I think 6 locations to pick from.  Price tag for this arena could be $450M-$1B. There isn’t any architectural drawings. Why not stay at Rexall place? A couple of reasons; for one the lease expires in 3 years and this is one of the oldest buildings in the league. Personally I'd like to see the arena built adjacent to Belvedere station, there's that huge parcel of land I go by every day but the City wants to build it downtown. The other location would be right across the street from Canada Place. There's a lot of derelect housing in that area. I think the study group will announce the location of the new arena in the summer. Stay tuned.

I get $10 for my allowance this week because of Wrestlemanina coming up on Sunday. Good stuff. I’ll have my baby-back ribs and a beer and enjoy the show. My first time watching a PPV wrestling outdoor event.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now.

e. Jim