Missed Connections
A fruitless day off, early morning but I force myself to sleep another hour, get up, call friend for coffee but he's not home and so I go on the weekly thrift shop tour.
Lots of attractive women's handbags today. Sadly I'm not a woman. Still I manage to turn up a couple of pairs of jeans, some tea lights, nothing else. There's a dearth of real treasures.
Then home, I attempt to answer some emails but the neighbor downstairs is playing with the fuses, power blinking on and off; internet modem perpetually resetting and eventually give up. Leave to pick up my daughter.
We have a date to go and make her mother's day gift.
Now I've budgeted an hour to get to her school, it's nasty out and so I'll take the bus. It's about 4 or 5 miles from here, sadly there's no direct buses but I can transfer downtown, should be about 20 minutes early...
Should be.
And the #1 to Forest Lawn gets me downtown in record time, but I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and there's no #2 up to her school. Almost 40 minutes I wait for a #2, and by the time it shows up I'm already late....
The stress builds inside like a volcano...
By the time I get to her school I'm almost 20 minutes late, almost an hour and a half on Calgary Transit to travel a total of 4 miles, quicker, in fact, to have walked, bus averaging roughly 3 miles per hour...
But more importantly I'm late and I search the school and she's not there, not surprising, and so I try to find out where she is and I can't and so I presume she's taken the bus home and so I walk over to her mothers to wait for her there....
Now it's 4:00 and the bus shows up and she's not on it.
I wait for her mother in the back of her house.
We track her down to the after care place she's looked after when her mother's working, and go to pick her up. She'd wisely chosen to walk there when she saw that I wasn't coming, and by the time we pick her up, the day, the weather, the Mothers' Day gift building just isn't going to happen.
Dinner, brief nap (an hour), strangely refreshing, that feeling of having slept enough, but it never lasts that long....
Then surf the net, finish the emails unfinished earlier, light cleaning, feed and coddle the cat (who's getting slimmer, I notice, as she purrs on my lap, good kitty...)...blog, scotch and bed.
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- Category: Miscellany
Constantly Napping
The breaks between shifts, between lunch and dinner, you use to clean up the restaurant, reset tables, stock, organize, polish cutlery, put away glasses, and, if you're very very lucky, nap.
I'm constantly napping.
And, oddly, whereas it's seldom I successfully nap while at home, at work there doesn't seem to be a problem. Well, not the same problems.
At work it's always something. The phone will ring, a reservation, or job seeker wondering if we're hiring, or salesperson from a paper mill someplace who wants to know if we need more paper....You can tell the salespeople, they always want to speak to the "Owner or Manager". They're not very good.
On those days the phone isn't ringing there will be the late tables, tables that somehow have gotten a little too comfortable in their chairs and don't leave until 3:00 or 3:30. There's no napping then.
Or, if you're having some success, sprawled out across the comfortable overstuffed leather chairs, the phone hasn't rung and all the customers have left, you've a clear conscience having overstocked everything and done all the side duties and then some, there will be some staff member roaming to the front asking if you need help with anything....through half opened eyes you hiss: "I need your help napping....please fuck off..."
2 or three such interruptions and you're done.
A good nap, at work, might be 10 minutes straight. Which, if it wasn't a sexy dream, is often enough.
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- Category: Miscellany
Sunday, May 2 - 2010
I wake up exhausted. 7:30 AM, only 6 hours sleep but I can't sleep any more, it's a well earned day off and I have to get out and about to earn my nap.
That's what's keeping me going.
So I drink my several cups of coffee, there's a smashing headache in the back of my head by I ignore it and keep going, there are things to be done and once I've done them I can nap...
I'm constantly napping. Seldom do I ever have any success, but I try and try again. Never give up is my motto.
Call family, catch up, call the daughter, there's a rock and gem show at the Hillhurst Community Center today and she'd like to go, make plans to meet, early, I explain, as I have big plans to nap, then set off about my day.
The first stop is the Hillhurst Flea Market, I want to torment myself with the viewing of the many treasures that slipped through my fingers. Walking up 14 St I pass the Colour Me Mine paint your own ceramics studio, mental note to bring the children here to prepare their Mothers Day gifts, Wednesday after school should work...
Then the flea market.
It's a good day. Or it would be if I weren't so damned exhausted and didn't have the frickin headache pounding in the back of my brain, but I set these things aside; there are many treasures to be viewed, the rock lady in the main hall has some loose pieces of Dominican Blue Amber, damn the boy and his penis flute; they're roughly $100.00 apiece which more than slightly exceeds my budget, still it's heartening to find it here, I'll hold off and price it at the rock and gem show...
Camera man has put out some collection of hundreds of vintage lighters, some novel and unique in terms of shape and design, a few minutes sifting through them to see if there are any Dunhill's or DuPonts, none, onward, the watch guy has the same-old same-old, the $10.00 table guy has some interesting bits of jewelry but I'll see if they're there later (they weren't)...
There are some new vendors, new antiques, a wonderful old accordion for $150.00, again out of reach, many other treasures, nothing worth buying but plenty of hope. Apparently I missed out on some treasures at the garage sales. And there's the crazy lady from the old "Education Funding Thrift Store" that went out of business both in Bowness and on 37 St SW; she's still got her crap priced high, used battery operated "Rolex" watches for $50.00 apiece, others, she's not here to try and sell anything, really, just needs a forum where she can force her opinions on others and sure enough she's trapped a prospective client and gotten in his ear....
Once finished I walk down to 10th Street, time to kill, stop in the Second Cup and view the artwork, then down the street, there's a Market opening in one of the buildings at 11:00, some sort of local, sustainable arts and Crafts market (tried to find a website so I could link to it, but couldn't); I'm early so I'll bring the daughter and we'll come back, when we do there's a slight $2.00 admission, but it's worth it. Inside are a couple of dozen vendors, all local artists and used resellers, the emphasis is on "Local", there are some talented painters, curious knitted and felted stuffed animals reminiscent of Miyazaki's films, some live music in the back, more exhibits and vendors upstairs, some flea market and carefully picked used items; it's a fun atmosphere.
We hang out about 45 minutes, there's lots to see, I'm regretting not having the boy, he's of late been calling everyone a "Hippy" and for once he could use the term without misapplying it.
From here to the Hillhurst Rock and Gem Show, which is quite good, we find some fossils, view an exhibit of Native artifacts (we've found better, and the girl realizes it), dinosaur bones, exhibits of picture agates and jaspers, gems, opal, quartz crystals, peridots and emeralds, garnets and rubies, citroens and ambers and finely carved rock sculptures, there are some cheap stones we can use as fillers for the loot bags for her upcoming birthday, we watch a demonstration of someone using wire wrapping to create jewelry and I realize how painfully incompetent my attempts were, it looks so easy (or the demonstration looks easy, which is the mark of a good craftsman); there are others on chain mail and embossing metal but we pass, I could spend the day here, there's a world of inspiration, but all in all, about an hour and a half and we're done.
Now it's time for my nap, and I get home, lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, finally giving up to wash some dishes, do laundry, take an Advil gel-cap for the headache, it sticks in my throat and so I walk down to the 7-11 and buy some diet Dr. Pepper, it clears it and I can feel the headache dissipating and somewhere in the back of my head there's a line of reasoning that's making not the Advil but the Dr. Pepper the cure for all ills, make dinner, read my book (an unprecedented 40 pages in a row!), up some bids on E-bay and receive final notification that I've lost, (damn! I have to figure this out better...) - the Edo period portable Buddhist shrine has gone to another lucky bidder for the difference of only $6.00; blog, read some more, then bed.
And I sleep my full 8 hours.
This morning, 2 cups of coffee and an hour and a half blogging, there's almost 4 hours before I have to go to work but there's dry cleaning to be picked up, dishes to be done, have to shave, bath, empty garbage, and so the unpacking will have to wait...
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- Category: Miscellany
Shaw, again
On Saturday I called Shaw yet again about the mysterious bills that keep coming my way.
10 minutes on hold, after the initial 3 minutes inputting and confirming my phone number.
The helpful agent confirms that I owe several months billing, I have her review the notes, she sees the errors, puts me on hold and then transfers me to the disconnect team.
Now the "disconnect team" is the biggest scam going. The reason you're transferred to a disconnect team, and put on hold, is because a certain percentage of disgruntled users (disgruntled users? Shaw?) will grow impatient and hang up, thereby not disconnecting their account and remaining on billing. I'm disgruntled as well, but I know the system and so wait. Another 10 minutes and I've reached technical support.
I inform technical support I wish to disconnect my account, and they tell me I've reached the wrong department, If I'll just hold for a few minutes they'll transfer me....
Systematic and Premeditated Incompetence. I've still to write that essay, but I know the model I'm going to base it on...
Another 10 minutes and I reach the disconnect team. It's a full time job this, disconnecting one's internet with Shaw. And she immediately sees the errors, disconnects my account and backdates the disconnect order to the 26th of February, when it was initially requested, so I don't owe them...
And here there's a pause as she studies it all...
I don't owe them a thing.
It's funny that, because as I paid my account up a full month in advance as required I should have a credit, full months credit to be precise, but she won't say and something in the pause tells me she realizes it, and if I wanted to stay lost in the system I could then request my credit be mailed out to me but really, really, I'm just done...
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- Category: Who's Your ISP?
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