Despite going in early and my first day back to work after Christmas, I don’t feel too bad. I’ve been out of bed since 6am this morning. We‘ve been in this cold snap for about 3 weeks now and finally there seems to be a break in the weather for today at least. Right now it’s -14C but its supposed to warm up to -10C on the Saturday 9am commute into work.

But after work I’ll get my paycheque cash that and then maybe if I‘m not to wiped out, I’d like to go into the City Center mall and get a $10 phone card (if I got my bonus) get some instant coffee and then go to Rickies maybe get myself a beer and a cheese burger and head home, grab a nap if I can and for a couple of hours and the rest of the night is mine .

Since there‘s no Oiler hockey tonight I can do some writing. I put together the workings of a fantasy short story yesterday. I don’t have a name for it yet but its set in Spain in the early 1800‘s. Yes it is a fantasy. I was doing some research on Spain last night before wrestling and the location is set in the picturesque town of Torla in the Argon region. You can Google Earth it. Most likely I’ll be working on that tonight. I’ll knock off the rough draft this weekend. There’s no time limit on the story. It’s going to be about 5k. I might have the story ready by the end of January and maybe a title.

At the moment I’m onto my first coffee of the day. And what post Boxing Day wouldn't be complete without a picture of my lovely guy, Pledges. This friend has been with me since 1991. I took this photo about 11:40pm last night:

Last night Anne called me on her 8pm break just as the Oiler/Canuck game (in Vancouver) was getting underway. For some reason staff there on her break were talking about the Xbox 360 and other games etc what they got for Christmas. For some reason Anne feels she owes me $300 from my income tax return I received last Spring. It went towards our 42” widescreen TV. She thinks she owes it to me. Mind you we have the 720p LCD version but even without HDTV its still a nice TV. Xbox 360 supports 720p and so does the game I want to play: Oblivion (think Warcraft). I like Oblivion because its not necessarily Internet play and there’s no monthly charge to it to play stand alone. Oblivion is a huge FRPG and its not a flash game. Anne said because I got ripped off of my vacation pay (that’s another story) and I had a lousy Christmas (not really I had 3 days off with my lovely wife) I deserve an Xbox. Maybe. So she wants to dip into our pension fund first week in January and get enough out to pay my website, Lodge dues and buy me the Xbox. The Xbox isn’t high on my priority list right now but I’d play it just for “Oblivion” and other FRPG’s. That is if I can read the font. That’d be kind of fun say after rewarding myself from a good writing session to unwind and kick some Orc butt. I’d kind of like to play an Imperial. There’s also “Oblivion Goty” and “Shimmering Isles.” if all goes well and we can stay away from domestic squabbles and such Anne’s going to get the funds for about the week of January 5th. I’m not going to hold my breath though.

The next full week I’m still going to put the hours in on the job, mostly for CC sales etc. But after about 3 months of that I’m going to ask for that raise. It’s the same rate of pay that all the other tap shooters get and its 2 years in the making. Of course the economy might not be where it is now as it was a couple of months ago but when I’m ready to ask for that raise, I’ll get it to because out of all full time tap shooters, I’d be the lowest paid and that should be an embarrassment to management.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim