I worked on CH a little last night catching a few errors. As it stands now on it’s own merit, it’d never get published. I’ve got a few tricks I’m going to pull out of the bag. CH is roughly 5,000 words but the reading level I’d say is grade 5. Most of the SF stories published in today’s market are at least High school to college level. That’s not a blight on the quality of the story by itself. I think CH is a pretty good story. I can make it better by improving it’s grammar and a few tricks I’ve got up my sleeve. By utilizing these tricks, I’m going to turn the story up a couple of notches. At least bring the story up to high school level, that’s the idea.

This morning I took that beer. Nice and strong alcohol content about 6.5.. I was surprised that it tasted like a regular beer. Molson Dry for instance (my favorite beer) is 5.5. Even Anne likes this beer (GW original Gold). I like it as well. There are some beers that are 10.5 alcohol content! Way to strong for me. GW is just right. So when I drank that around 2am this morning it put me right out. Continuing on the topic of beer I noticed in Dennis Hurd’s blog yesterday he snapped a picture of something that caught my eye: BC liquor. I think that BC liquor is the only outlet where one can purchase beer and liquor’s if they don’t want to drink in a pub in BC. I like that. We used to have “Alberta Liquor Control Board” stores back here in Edmonton. I think we had maybe 8 of them in the City before Ralph closed them down to privatize things. The last of these ALCB outlets closed up shop I think around 1992 in favor of independently owned liquor stores. These privately owned liquor stores still have to abide by ALCB rules and regulations. I think there are something like 500 of these private liquor stores in the Greater Edmonton Area. It means that the Province has more taxation power then before so I don’t see them reverting back to the good old ALCB store days. I think there’s just to much access to liquor out there and this could lead to problems. We have a Superstore liquor store across the street. Edmonton has changed a lot since I first came here in August 1978. There’s nothing to bring people downtown anymore. Not like 1978. In some ways the changes are ok, in others, there not. One thing remains constant, beer still remains available.

There’s a pretty funny YouTube on SF Signal today, Darth Vader reciting the Alphabet. An even funnier vid after the jump.

Last night I developed some minor toothache pain-again. Not into full blown abscess like pain or anything but enough to let me know it’s there. Seems to be ok now, just a little bit. When I got up to do the cbi thing, still groggy eyed and all, the pain had eased off. At least so I can sleep.

We like to sleep late on Sunday’s which is why Anne is sleeping past 2pm. She’s got laundry to do. It’s a bog job and she does this every other Sunday.

I wish she would have done it last night. She does a lot of work around here.

As for hockey, I think yesterdays game will be the last of the season for me. Most of the games will be on while I’m at work. The Oiler’s aren’t in it, nor any Canadian team. There isn’t the same kind of excitement when there is no Canadian team in the finale. However NHL Commission Gary Bettman yesterday said that every NHL team will face each other at least once outside the Conference in the 2008-09 season. We might not see any more Canadian expansion teams on his watch (got to have a team in Tampa Bay) although we can’t get a team in Winnipeg. Yeah, lets have a team again in Hartford and Minneapolis. didn’t Minneapolis fold to become the Dallas Stars? “Oh Hartford? Yeah we can get a team in there.” Meanwhile Quebec City has plans to build a 20,000 seat arena and Winnipeg can be sold out every night. Provincial taxes can be offset if there‘s a desire to play. If Bettman has his way, Christ there’ll be an NHL team in Fargo North Dakota and a team in Roswell New Mexico. I’d love to see a team in Hamilton and Quebec City. Heck, I’d even love to see an NHL team in Seattle but that ain’t going to happen.

Anne got up a few minutes ago to go across the street to Superstore. Some drunk went and pissed on the elevator walls overnight. Probably drunks from Bo Didly’s across the street or drunks that bought liquor from the Superstore liquor store. Most likely dial a dopers. This happens a lot. Kids getting drunk and piss in the elevator. Management ought to have a web cam in there to watch these “people” and trace what floor they came off on, I think they ought to have web cams at each end of every hallway between both firewalls in an effort to prevent vandalism. That’d be 8 webcams/building 32 altogether. I don’t know if it’s legal to do this. Probably not.

Weather wise, it’s not bad out there. Overcast at +12C, light winds. According to the weather pixie that is. We’re supposed to get some rain in a few hours, but I doubt it. So much for the global warming alarmists. Last week a petition was signed by well over 31,000 scientests and climate specialists saying, "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate..." Then The White House is saying that Polar Bears are on the threatened/endangered species list, when in fact there are more polar bears now then ever before. Meanwhile Al Gore continues to stretch the truth on global warming. If anything acording to a lot of sources our planet could be going through an ice age. Bush did a good thing by pulling out of Kyoto but what would McCain do? Would he leave the status quo as it is? I hope so.

I’m still reading Ps. It’s a good read but there’s way to many characters each with their own story to tell. In a sense it reads like a anthology. I’m not sure I like books like this. I can see a few characters in a book jumping around in the same scene or in even other scenes and characters reacting to this a bit later. I don’t see a direction here that the book is leading to. The overall aspect of the book is off stage and I think leading up to that end. But there events that have little to do with each other. There are some intriguing SF elements I like though and some interesting story lines. Some stuff is too over the top like K & B is, well I won’t say more until I give a “review.” I’m still looking at finishing this book around the end of June.

This weekend could get busy for me. I want to work every day and put all my shifts in. Maybe even a few extra hours in as well. There’s books I want to buy and special orders that need to be placed and programs to get for my computer. Most importantly an external hard drive so Blogging next week could be a bit spotty, maybe.

Hey, Suns comming out. looks like a nice Sunday after all.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim