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December 1, 2005 - 7:27 AM Welcome to December! Ok, so you know the antenna joke, right? (Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and decided to get married. The wedding wasn't much, but the reception was excellent!) I told it to our instructors at Shaw, and they loved it so much that they passed it on to their managers who also loved it so much that they called up the Vancouver Shaw building and told them the joke, and on and on my little joke is starting to travel through the corporate offices of Shaw Cablesystems GB. You may moan, you may groan, you may wish to inflict great quantities of pain on me for telling my jokes, but the bottom line (the punch line, I guess you could say) is that they make people laugh.  Barb and Ed should be back from the States sometime today, which means me and my birdies will be going home. It's been a great week, the kids have been great and we've had a lot of fun. I've got a lot of shopping to do this weekend, I'll need to spend close to $800 on ladders, I've got to buy tools, get the van licensed and insured (the white one, not Rusty. He's fine but I'm not going to use him for service.) It's going to be tight for a little bit here as I get everything set up. But once I'm out on the road, all my financial worries should be over. The more people I talk to in Shaw, we (the unit based installers) seem to be the envy of all other departments! Everyone we talk to says, "Oh I wish I was an UBE..." So it's kind of cool to be held in that regard, especially coming into a new company. I talked to the manager in charge of operations (?) yesterday and he was saying that we can't get out on the road soon enough. They are so busy even with over a hundred and fifty installer vans in Calgary they're having a hard time keeping up with the work! With the advent of Shaw's digital phone service, (and also being Christmas) there is an abundance of work like never seen before for the company (and therefore for me) - so that was assuring and exciting to hear. This is a good time to be alive! December 1, 2005 - 11:23 PM  There's no place like home December 2, 2005 - 11:25 PM  I had a awesome time in training at Shaw this week. Today being the last day I even won some prizes in the various games and contests we held. And on a completely different note, has anyone driven by Peter's Drive Through after dark lately? They did an awesome job lighting up their trees this year! It looks great! This weekend is going to be busy as usual... Tomorrow morning I've got to try to find the snow shovel I dug out earlier in the year and shovel the walks. Then I've got to go shopping and buy a present, then I've got to wrap it and drop it off for Brooklyn, and tomorrow night Bo and I are going to King of the Cage. Have you heard of Russel Peters? He is a very funny comedian. And now for a birdie story... When I brought the cage home last night the birds seemed quite happy to be home. This morning when I was changing their seed I left the cage open and came back a few minutes later to find both of them were hiding under my bed. It was very cute. I was going to put them back in the cage but neither one of them wanted to move so I left them there and went to work. Tonight when I came home, they had both perched themselves on the drum kit. One after the other I brought them back to the cage and BOY did they attack their food! Now they're in my room sleeping. Cute little birdies. And that's about all for now. Goodnight everyone. December 3, 2005 - 11:57 AM  Do you ever get a strange phone call? I was puttering around this morning when my phone rang and it was Christel. When I answered the phone in my usual manner, she just burst out laughing. "This must be Christel" I said. "Hi John, I was just thinking about you so I decided to call. But I'm at work so I have to go. Talk to you later" she said and hung up. You are one strange duck, Christel... :P December 3, 2005 - 5:07 PM  Happy Birthday To Boo Today was Brooklyn's 6th birthday! And as the calendar would have it, today was also her birthday party. Rob & Lee's place seems to get fuller and fuller every year, and it doesn't seem like that long ago they were celebrating her 5th. I popped into Wal-Mart on my way to the house to pick up her present... BAD IDEA! I've never seen Wal-Mart so full! It was crazy! If everyone in the store decided to load up on goods and storm the doors, they wouldn't have a chance! I'm sure there was well over a thousand people in the store. It was crazy. Then once out, I wrapped her present in the parking lot and made my way over. Curious about her new world, little Isabelle peers out from her blanket.  In other news and on a much sadder note, I found out this morning that Shirley from Custom Linen died last night at the Foothills Hospital. Best known as The Dryer Lady, Shirley was one of the few people in the plant I actually got to know. We would usually chat in the lunch room about this and that, often laughing and telling jokes. I always used to say to her, Shirley you can't be serious! She will be missed. Sorry I don't have a better picture. Kayla (her granddaughter) was with her when she passed away. December 4, 2005 - 6:15 PM  Chalk one up to another Homeowner's First: Shovelling the sidewalk. This afternoon I went out to the garage to check on the furnace and to my horror I discovered some shocking facts when I looked at the thermostat. Although it's set to keep the garage at only 10 degrees Celcius, it reported that (yesterday) the furnace had been in operation for 16 hours and 17 minutes!!! THAT IS NOT GOOD! I am not looking forward to getting this month's gas bill! Clayton was out in the garage with me when I made this discovery and so we decided to see if we couldn't insulate the garage a bit better to try to cut down on the amount of time the furnace needs to run in a day to keep the temperature at 10C. (Click on an image to make it 'stick') 
There were a number of obvious insulating deficiencies to tackle. First of all there was a 6" gaping hole at the bottom of both garage doors. Take a nine and a half foot door,
multiply it by six inches, that's a hole 4 and three quarter square feet in area times two doors! Big problem.
The second thing was that neither garage door was insulated. Just metal. When you stood near the door, you could feel the heat being drawn out through it. This was another large
area of concern.
The third large area of concern was the roof above my door. When they insulated the garage, they must have run out of insulation when they got to this part because there was
simply none there. Clayton and I went to Home Depot, picked up the stuff we needed and went to work. Insulation is pretty expensive! But then again, so is gas and you only have
to buy insulation once...
The first thing we did was cut the sheets of styrofoam to fit the various shapes in the garage door. Not an exact science, but we were able to cover the entire door with
three sheets. After the pieces had all been set in place, we used that spray-in expanding insulation to fill in the cracks and also to hold the styrofoam in place. The result
was fantastic, the door definitely retains heat now.
Once the garage door was complete, we set our hands to insulating the ceiling. Already you could tell the garage was staying warmer, the furnace would go off for several minutes
at a time and the air was noticable warmer, even at the 'cold' end of the garage. Most of the batts we were able to put up as is - that is, they were already cut to the
proper size. Then once the large areas were filled, we cut up the remaining batts to make filler pieces and closed the rest of the areas off, making a HUGE difference in the
temperature of the room.
Now the only major insulating job to do is Bo's door, but because there is a lot of stuff in the way of it at the moment, we've passed that task to the duties of another day.
Interestingly enough, the snow on top of the roof was actually providing a bit of insulation. Actually, truth be known, snow is an excellent insulator. If you've ever
spent any time inside a quinzie (snow cave) you'll know this to be true. One time in junior high, our class went winter camping at this campground in Rocky Mountain House.
We spent a day building two quinzies on a frozen lake, and then three others and myself slept the entire night (where the temperature dropped below -35 Celcius) inside a house
made of snow on a foundation made of frozen water. Boy that was an experience! It's those earlier years of my life I really wish I'd carried a camera around more. A mistake
I don't intend to duplicate.Tonight as I type this my birds are running around my living room, climbing all over my drum kit. This has become their favorite passtime, as they get better and better at climbing and navigating themselves on all the wires running to and fro. They don't even want to go back to their cage! I've been videotaping a lot of them lately and hopefully I'll get it on the computer sometime soon. It really is very cute. 8:36 PM In English class, I was taught that there are five questions you can ask about any event. It doesn't matter what you're talking about, you can almost always apply any of these five questions to it. You can ask What happened - the answer to this question will usually describe the event. You can ask When it happened - provide a date and time, maybe a time period in which the event took place. Where an event took place will usually require an address, an area, or a pair of coordinates. You can ask Who was involved or Who it happened to. Venturing into a bit more detail you can ask How it happened, where events leading up to the event would usually come into play, as well as a more detailed description of the process that became the event itself. All of these questions deal with facts. They are definite, concrete, non-changing facts. The last of the five questions, however, is perhaps the most intriguing and hardest to satisfy: Why. When you're a little kid, (or maybe you know of a little kid now) - what question did you always ask your parents? Madisson and I have often ventured down the path of explanations, where she'll ask me a question, I'll answer, and then she will bombard me with an inexhaustable array of why?'s It is that one question, that simple - three letter word, that occupies far more brain-space than any other question, and is by far the one most difficult to answer. Now personally, I do not believe that anything happens by coincidence. When two people bump into each other there is a reason. When something breaks down and you have to stop to fix it there is a reason. When someone dies, there is a reason. There is a purpose in all things, big and small, and it is the exploration of that fact that causes us to wonder why. Why? When you consider all the infinite possible places I could have been at a certain point in time and all the infinite other places the other person could have been at that same certain time - why did it so happen that we were in the same place at the same time? What was the reason for that meeting? Maybe you've had a dream about someone or something, and you wonder why such thoughts would occupy your mind while you slept. Had you been thinking about that person lately? Did something happen to them? Was it just your mind's means of entertaining itself? Perhaps December 5, 2005 - 9:32 PM Highlights of the day: DJ Tiesto - In Search of Sunrise III Great disc to fall asleep to. Which is what I think I will do. Goodnight to you too. Tomorrow's another day, new. December 6, 2005 - 11:29 PM Pasta Tuesday!   What a slow day. I was out with another Senior Installer today and we were done ALL our work for the day before one o'clock... I went and got my work van inusured and all that paperwork out of the way and he went and gave his girlfriend a ride to work. It was a very slow day. When I got home I wasn't home for very long when Kerri phoned me and asked what I was up to. I ended up going to the pool hall her mom works at because the two of them were there and the place was dead so they were bored. Kerri and I went to the Boston Pizza by my old house for Pasta Tuesday (which was awesome) but being there with Kerri made a great thing even better. When we left the table I placed one of the wrapped boxes from under their Christmas tree where we'd been sitting and told the waitress I left a present for her on the table. huh huh Kerri and I hung out at the pool hall for a while more and eventually I dropped her off at home. Hopefully with the classes I'm in tomorrow I'll be able to steal her for lunch. It's not the same not being able to see her at lunch time every day. Last night I woke up at about three in the morning. I think I had to pee or something, the memory is a little vague at this point but I got up for something. I have not experienced an ecstacy comparable to the feeling I got when I lay back in bed and pulled up the covers, knowing I still had a couple of hours to sleep. That was simply orgasmic. Waking up again the second time, however, was not nearly as pleasurable... But one plays the hand one is dealt. And right now it seems I've been dealt the sleep card. Goodnight.  December 8, 2005 - 9:25 PM If the mood should hit you and you wanna... Baby, I don't mind     December 10, 2005 - 10:48 AM  My training at Shaw is coming to a close as I get ready to go out on my own. I've still got to get plates and registration on my van, put the ladder rack back on it and get the shelves and compartments in the back all set up. I also need to put the rear heater back in. So there's a bit of work to do on the van still. The task for today is to get together the rest of the tools I'll need. I have most of the cable-specific tools already but it's the basic hand tools I am still short on. Shouldn't take too long to solve that problem though. It's gorgeous outside! I went Christmas shopping last night with Kerri and her mom and sister. Nothing like shopping with three girls, I tell ya! Kerri bought a shirt for the Custom Linen Christmas Party. I think she's going with Chad so I'm going to have to find some other way to get myself invited. hehehe Speaking of Custom Linen, one of these days I'm going to have to give Lorne a call. I don't think he heard the news yet that I got the job at Shaw! When I left Custom Linen I still hadn't heard from them and I haven't talked to him since. Oh, and in other news, yesterday I lost my Shaw hat! This has been driving me nuts because I've torn my living area apart with no luck. There really isn't a lot of places it could hide and I know I had it when I came home, but as to where it went - I have absolutely no idea. And somenow I burnt the top of my left ear yesterday. It feels like a sunburn but it's on the inside of the ear (like, the part between the top of my ear lobe and my head, not actually inside the ear itself. So I really want to FIND the hat so I can see if maybe there was some chemical on it that burnt my ear somehow. It's very strange but the hat has simply disappeared! Swine hat... Well, I guess I'd better go do something... You might find this hard to believe but I could sit on my computers all day! hahaha LaterzSome say we're better off without knowing what life is all about I'm sure we never realize the way. It's too late.  Give me a chance to make you happy December 11, 2005 - 8:30 AM  Christmas is coming! Last night I put up lights all around my living and bed rooms. It was really cute too, last night my birdies slept on the drum set and this morning when I put them back into their cage, the blue one was cocking his head sideways trying to figure out what these new lights on the ceiling were all about. He was looking around most curiosly. He's such a cute birdie.   Speaking of cute animals, my puppy was being VERY cute last night. I was over at my parents' house for the afternoon and so of course I had a shadow about me the whole day. Later on in the evening after supper, I lay down on the couch to take a nap. When I awoke, there was puppy fast asleep ON TOP OF ME! He had curled up on my tummy and also gone to sleep but in such a way that it would not be possible for me to get up and leave to go home without him knowing. After we'd had our nap, we went for a walk and it was absolutely gorgeous outside! I couldn't believe it. Running through the field with just a sweater on, pocket full of Spitz and my best friend running in front of me... Those are nights I want to remember. He's such a good puppy.  So you may be asking yourself, Why is John's Christmas tree on a rocking chair? Well my friends, the answer is quite simple: My Christmas Tree Rocks! huh huh December 15, 2005 - 6:53 AM  Another 14 hour day... And once again we discover that the world is shrinking at an extranominical rate! Yesterday I was training with an installer who covers mainly the Airdrie / Crossfield region. Long story short, we ended up doing an Internet install for the mom of a guy I knew back in elementary school - Bobby Boccabella. As soon as I saw the name on the work order, I wondered if it might be some relation. I mean, how many Boccabella's can there be in the area? But as soon as the door was opened, I recognized his mom and surprisingly enough, she remembered me and quite a bit about me and my family. She remembered my mom's name, she remembered that my dad has black hair, a moustache and an accent (which she loved - don't we all?) She remembered Blair too! Not bad, considering I haven't seen or heard from her or her family in at least 15 years... Crazy. And speaking of crazy, I must be getting more sleep these days because I am waking up remembering a lot more of my dreams. Last night I had not one, but TWO dreams about Carmen. I suppose I should look her up, give her a call and see what she's up to these days. I haven't really talked to her much since the houseboat. And because we have Shaw Digital Phone, the long distance isn't! Thank-you Shaw Cable! December 18, 2005 - 2:35 AM  |