Ongoing Letter - Allan's Place
Allan's journal to the world. (Sounds important, doesn't it?)
I shocked the world today. I walked into Good Earth Coffee House and ordered … “Earl Grey tea, please.” The server, stunned, just looked at me with wide eyes for 3 or 4 seconds. I wish I had a body cam. She turned to her coworker and said, slowly, “Earl Grey tea.” The coworker widened her eyes. “Okaayyy.”
I’ve been coming here for several years, on and off, and have always had coffee. But, once in a while, you have to shock the world.
I gave my 112th blood donation today.
They take half a litre every 56 days.
Someone asked me, “Is that a pump? Are they pumping it out of you?” No! It’s not a pump! It’s just a bag of blood sitting on a platform that moves back and forth every few seconds to stop the blood from coagulating, or whatever blood does when it sits still. The heart is a pump. It pumps it all around; and if you put a hole in a vein and let it out into a bag, your heart doesn’t know the difference. It just gets pumped out. No biggie.
We had the furnace ducts cleaned yesterday by the 4 Seasons Home Comfort people. $262.50 later, we have clean ducts. But it didn’t do any good at first because a transformer blew apart. How? Something about a faulty ground wire. There is normally a buzzing noise from the furnace (the old transformer did that), but this morning – no buzz, and no heat. Another technician came today to fix it, no charge. Now all is good.
Had to happen sometime.
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We’re going out for supper at Mr. Mikes.
Happy birthday to me.
Not for a few days, but soon.
I’ve been searching non-stop for employment since convocation in April. I have had a few interviews and spoke with several employers, but pretty much all positions posted online require minimum 3 years’ experience. There are repeat job listings rewritten with “This is not an entry-level position” included in the job description.
Wow. We were just talking about this the other day. The Water Tower (formerly Ric’s Grille) is reopening. news I wonder if they’ll be more successful than the Ric’s Grille restaurant franchise.
Yesterday was a bit of a bust.
M&F got a flat tire yesterday. The only time Floyd leaves without his phone, and he gets a flat tire! They called me, but for some reason my phone didn’t vibrate. Floyd began to jack the van up and had 4 of 5 lug nuts off, but the last one was a locking nut, and the lug nut key was nowhere to be found. A Hutterite man stopped to help and looked for the missing key, but it simply wasn’t there. Someone else came by and called AMA. It all got sorted out in the end. Today Floyd went to Murray to ask them where the hell the lug nut key was. It’s on order.
I witnessed an accident yesterday. A Jetta came flying around the corner, and a Silverado couldn’t stop in time. Scrape! Nobody was hurt. I stopped, offered witness, took pictures, and gave my phone number. I even wrote up a report, like a good citizen. accident near Safeway 2018-07-03 I like details. The unfortunate thing is that a couple of days before I took the chips out of my dash cams, so I have no video. The only day my dash cams aren’t working, and there’s an accident!
I put on an office shirt and nice trousers and went out to a couple of places to hand in my resume. I didn’t actually get to any place. I had a list yesterday longer than my nose of things to do. The day got away from me.
And, Floyd’s computer crashed, seemingly while doing a Windows Update. I tried and tried to get it working again, but disk errors abounded. (Yes, that’s a word.) In the end, it turns out the disk isn’t the problem. The computer itself has a faulty piece of hardware. So, he’s getting the little red Gateway laptop our neighbour gave me. It’s not the fastest machine in the world (another AMD), but it’s not 9 years old, either.
Yesterday has come and gone – thank goodness. Today’s a brand new day.
As payment for helping G&A with their computer, I was given a radio, the Philips L3G03T (“T303“), the latest item in my collection of old technology.
It was purchased in England in the 1960s before G&A travelled to Canada with their three kids. It was kind of a major purchase back then for someone counting pennies (pence, actually) to immigrate to Canada. The radio takes two type 276 9-volt batteries. I can get them online for only … get this … $22 each! (plus $120 shipping), and All-Tra Batteries here in Lethbridge doesn’t carry them. Too bad. It also has a power input port, but I have no idea what voltage it would take. The batteries are connected in series, making this an 18-VDC radio, but there is some circuitry between the batteries, so I don’t want to take any chances and blow the thing up. So I’m guessing I won’t get to hear it play just yet.
I was at Centre Village Mall last Friday doing a CANstruction installation when mall security came around asking who owns a brown Kia. Uh oh. Now what? Someone hit my car in the parking lot. I went out and found a guy standing there waiting for me and my car’s front end sitting on the ground. He backed into the stall next to mine, hit my car, decided to move forward, and pulled off the front end. We talked with mall security and a witness from Save-On Foods then drove to what he thought was the accident reporting place. Just as everyone had said, it’d moved to downtown to the main police station. We went there, spent an hour reporting. Police took pictures. So now I’m waiting for his insurance company, Cooperators, to contact me to arrange repairs.
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As the title of this journal entry states, today is the last day of classes for this term. I did my final exams for STS-2260 Statistics / Applied Research I and EDD-2268 Architectural Design II. The goofy thing is that I think I did much better in my weaker subject, Stats, than I did in the one that gets my blood going, Architecture. But we shall see. My other two classes – ENF-2250 Fluid Mechanics and EDD-2255 Process Design I.
I got a subscription at the suggestion of my Architecture prof – Fine Homebuilding. I haven’t gotten my first issue yet, but they did offer a free two-week online subscription. Nice, except that I can’t print, can’t store it for later, and can’t get past page 32 of the issue. I also asked my prof about a magazine I read ages ago called Architectural Digest. His idea is that it isn’t what it used to be but is still an interesting read about various architecture of well-to-do folk around the world. But I’m more interested in ideas and such that will help me in the ordinary-folk architectural world.
I’m finding it hard to play the banjo and use a normal (i.e. cheap) mouse. Why? Ages ago, on my 16th birthday, I guy hit me and Ron Ripley while we were crossing the street on our bicycles. His leg was broken and fingertip torn off, and my hand was broken. To this day, my right ring finger bends somewhat toward my middle finger when curled. I got a new mouse – the CAD Mouse from 3D Connexion – and even put racing stripes on it, allowing me to speed up my Revit, CAD, & Inventor use. If only putting racing stripes on my banjo would help me play faster and better.
Sundry things:
Tomorrow I’m getting an oil change for my little Kia, pulling the forms off our experimental concrete blocks, and giving blood.
