Making It Up As I Go Along #356

WEDNESDAY...
— Barely slept last night. Somewhere around 3 hours give or take... it wasn’t real deep sleep even when I was out. The badness of getting back on day shift.
— Work goes better than I expect. I don’t get too foggy in the head with lack of rest.
— Snowy day. It’s fine going to work but probably 20 cm falls while there and the drive home is an hour long with traffic and poor road conditions.
— Supper around 7:30 and a bit of TV before bed by 10:30. Hopefully sleep is better tonight.

THURSDAY...
— Slept better last night than the night before. Still, it’s sad when 5.5 hours of sleep is considered a good night.
— Work is alright. And the drive home doesn’t take an hour this time... thank goodness.
— Little nap but needing to stay up late tonight to get back to my more natural sleeping patterns and night shift.

FRIDAY...
— Regular pre-night day. Up around 10:00. Watch some DVDs. Nap around 2:00. Work... it goes pretty good. Hit the gym and tweak my knee a bit... it’s sore the rest of the night.

SATURDAY...
— Watch some afternoon hockey on TV. Montreal beats LA by the skin of their teeth. Good stuff.
— Work is busier than expected. Most Saturday nights are fairly quiet but we kept going pretty steady until around 2:30... then it started to slack off.
— Tim Horton’s killed me today. Went to get two chilli’s for Melissa and me. The cashier barely understood English, and I had to tell her twice. The person at the food dispensing line seemed more understanding... and this caused me to accept the bag of food without inspection. I get to work finding only one chilli instead of two. I paid for two... but got one. An e-mail will be going to Tim Horton’s on Sunday, let me tell you!

SUNDAY...
— Bed by 7:00 AM... sleep until almost 1:00 PM. Get Steve and we go to softball. We lose again... but play pretty short handed with spares so 11-8 seems like a small victory. Although it wasn’t a good team we played. Oh well.
— Groceries on the way home and watch the Super Bowl with a grocery store pizza.
— Good football game but I tire of the players acts. Back when I was a kid watching, if a player made a good play, he was joined by team mates and they patted him on the back or showed their support for him... and he accepted it happily. Now, players seem to want to get into open space after a big play... so they can do a pose or punch their own chests or flex muscles... it’s all about the individual now. Blah!

MONDAY...
— Hang with Melissa a bit today. Get her at the garage and go cell phone shopping... for me. I know, it’s weird. I’d have gotten one today too except their computers were down and they couldn’t process. But I should get it tomorrow.
— Lunch with Nick and Melissa after that then home for the evening.

TUESDAY...
— Out getting the cell phone. Got a Blackberry. It’s pretty neat.
— To the hockey game with the boys. LA beats Ottawa 1-0. Not a great game but some good fun and a fine meal before it.
— Up late figuring out the new phone.


You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out? I Think Not.
It has happened. The freezing of hell has commenced... I have a cell phone. Not even a cell phone... a Smart Phone!... not even smart... a Blackberry! I’ll soon be making my pitch to buy a hockey team and move them to Hamilton. It’s the only next logical step. For pete’s sake... I even have a Bluetooth thingy sticking in my ear! So now I’ll be able to wander the streets looking like a mad man talking to myself. I’ll be self conscious and point to my ear whenever I pass a stranger... “I’m not mad... I’m talking on a Bluetooth.” I’ll say as I make my turn into a Starbuck’s for some $12 coffee based beverage.

Why get the phone? Well the reason that put me over the top was the new job. 12 hour shifts... driving the highways at 5:30 in the morning... and the amount of dependance we have with our co-workers in CPSIC all added up. Stuck in traffic and leaving someone who’s just worked 12 hours to sit and wait an extra 20 minutes... the least you can do is give them a call.

Plus I’ve come across too many annoying moments over the last year or two. The thing in a little city is that if you miss someone, you can go home in ten minutes and reconnect with them ten minutes after that. In Ottawa, you can drive for a half hour... miss the person... and then drive another half hour back. An hour of driving for nothing.

I have stewed and hated while standing around the airport. Either I’ve missed a connection and the people I’m flying to don’t know it. Or I’m waiting near the baggage pick up as friends or family have never shown up.

It’s an awful thing standing in the massive foyer where loved ones wave from the floor to other loved ones as they swoop down the escalator... standing there is the greeting goes on... and the crowds dwindle down to near nothing. Finally, they diminish to the level of a few airport employees striding by me as I watch pilots and flight attendants drifting down towards me.

You don’t know how much of a loser you feel like until you stand there alone while pilots come by just as that baggage carousel grinds to a halt with some 1980s style baggage left abandoned for the rest of time. Sometimes I’ve felt like taking the bag so together we can fend off loneliness. I could take it home and sort through the oddly smelling socks with holes in the toes and take some little trinket that was bought in Deer Lake Airport some fifteen years ago. A snow globe perhaps. I’d lay it on my shelf and, whenever I’d look at it, I’d remember that time at the airport when my company didn’t show up and I had no phone to get the message with.

So instead of buying $3.00 gum in order to break a five and get on the payphone to see what happened... I got a Blackberry. Where it all comes to me quick as can be. Calls... texts... e-mails... I’m all powerful now.

And now when I go pick someone up for the movies or supper, I can call when I reach their home. No need to park and ring bells or push buzzers while I act as a doorman for the apartment building’s tenants. Now I can stay in my car, tap a few buttons on ol’ Blackie... and beckon my friends downstairs where I await them in comfort.

Hmm, perhaps, upon a re-read, I should not call my Blackberry “ol’ Blackie.” It may get me into all sorts of trouble. I could name it after the inventor... Jim Balsillie ... yes, my Balsie... umm... no, I think not.

I will have to follow Sam’s lead and call it my BB. It will bring all sort of memories of childhood. With BB guns being shot into tree stumps as we sat wishing said stumps were really birds or squirrels. Each time I speak of my BB I shall thing of Ralphie in A Christmas Story... as all he wants for Christmas is an “Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!”

You see the joy a BB can bring? Some may want them for the convenience. Some for the looks. Some to communicate with friends and co-workers. But how many can say that they got their BB to remember the joy of a Christmas movie. And with a Smart phone BB rather than a toy gun, there’s no fear of shooting my eye out!