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Week 2 - The Good Samaritan Rummage Sale
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1763
Probably the highlight of the year. An early morning tomorrow, in line by 8:00 AM, by 9:00 there will be close to three hundred people waiting.
It's one of the best sales around.
And tonight was the Christ Church Rummage Sale, also very good, but sadly work interfered. SO many rummage sales, so little time.
There's another one at the corner of Northmount and Northland Drive tomorrow as well, but it starts at 8:30 and I'll be in line waiting for the Samaritan Rummage sale to start. It's a gamble, the Northmount one is good as well, past finds have included rosaries, a gingerbread clock (not working) and a cuckoo clock, a trombone, miscellaneous other rubbish, but the Good Samaritan Rummage sale is the most accessible and so wins out. I'll report on my finds later....
Ambitious Cat
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1788
Outside, having a cigarette, the cat sits beside me when a jackrabbit bounces up.
It's spring and the neighborhood is saturated with animals pairing off, the other day a mallard and drake couple were soliciting breadcrumbs on my front step, something rather romantic about their engagement that invited my blessing, the cat lurking behind the screen door, somehow mistaking my lures as baiting for her benefit....
When they met her they stopped coming around. Still, for a few days they were good company.
Anyways, outside, having a cigarette with my cat when up bounds a jackrabbit.
Now the rabbits, they're everywhere, and this is a fair-sized hare, the cat lays her ears low and begins to stalk him.
The hare, he's not afraid, not of me, not of her, and continues to nibble the grass on the lawn as she stalks him.
She's ambitious.
She hangs out and continues the charade for only a minute or two after I've finished, somehow she's realized that a hare is a different piece of work than a mouse or a sparrow, and abandoning her hunt joins me inside.
Trapped by future plans
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1778
"It's only temporary" I tell myself, and resolve to look for work my next day off...
This job, it's day to day, the money is good, you can bank on it, but the hours, 13, 14 hour days, 3 to 5 days a week, they're killing me.
And the money's good only absolutely, the summing up, add up the hours spent at work and it's only fair, the split days off, lack of stat holidays, it soon becomes merely mediocre.
And there's the precariousness of the position - the fact that you can be fired, let go, at any time. Or perhaps, like so many that have gone before me, simply have enough and not go in again. In fact the big thing that keeps me going in is the fact that each day, each shift, could be my last...
But the day off comes and it's spent with kids and napping, patchwork recuperation for the coming week.
And there are the plans....
Time off in August. 3 weeks in a row. The last 2 days off in a row I had were at the beginning of January, August, it's only 3 months away....
Meanwhile summer approaches and I'm trapped in the restaurant, sunny days and cool spring evenings, outside the birds, sunsets, the ice has thawed enough on the Bow that I can begin again my hunt for arrowheads and Native artifacts, art projects beckon, my life is calling....
"3 months" I tell myself, I owe the children a decent vacation, it's been years...
But this vacation, it comes at the expense of seeing them during the week, and visits now become the cheapened "Take them for dinner and tell me about your week", not the parenting that I signed up for...
And I owe myself too, and life slips by...
I buy lottery tickets, but even if I won a million dollars still I would be broke, there are the innumerable claims upon my finances that could be made by relatives and ex's, the fair division of winnings would not see me take more than a fifth, a seventh, and a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars, not even a house....
I'm hanging on for the vacation, but after the vacation then what? The thought of returning to the restaurant kills me. And I'm hanging in for benefits as well, I'm in desperate need of a dentist and am loathe to spend several months income on restoring my smile to a marginal state. Benefits will reduce that expense. I don't want to lose my benefits....
The money I'm making, the money I'm saving, there are debts still to be paid, vacations to be taken, teeth to be fixed, vague plans to open a cafe, a business of my own, these sacrifices will not be without meaning...
And I'm like a gambler on a losing streak, throwing good money after bad, chasing my losses, trapped by future plans....
And another reminder from Shaw
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Who's Your ISP?
- Hits: 2012
And, in a move very similar to the Domain Registries of Canada scam, a bill from Shaw. Billing until June 4th, despite being told that I was disconnecting service on February 26th and having paid my 30 days notice, still they're sending me bills and hoping that I quietly pay them...
Systematic and premeditated incompetence.
Why wouldn't I? I mean really, it's a bill, don't people just pay their bills and shut-up? Even though for the past 2 months my service has been through Telus?
I don't.
SO I call, am put on hold, eventually choose the callback option and 10 minutes later an agent calls me and gives me my billing over the phone, I state my grievance and she puts me on hold. Crazy carnival music, jazz or ragtime, designed to placate me but strangely appropriate.
The agent picks up the phone and reassures me that it's being dealt with and she's sent off an email....
We'll see.
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