03:26 - 25.06.06
baby days
I spent most of today looking after my newest grand-daughter. It was my son's - her Dad's - birthday you see. The day he was born was the first day that a Garfield cartoon was published. The similarities are striking despite the difference in species. Both have dashing blond blue-eyed looks. Both have a razor sharp wit. Both love cheese and lasagna. I was babysitting because my daughter-in-law wanted to take my son out to buy him some new clothes and then take him out to supper. When they returned she was giving him a hard time because, at a fairly nice restaurant, he still chose to order their lasagna. Now it needs to be known that my son is renowned for his home-made lasagna. No restaurant could possibly beat it. Her complaint was that if that was what he had wanted for his birthday nosh, then they could have just stayed home. My son's comment was that it was the fact that he didn't need to cook that was the gift. Since, under normal circumstances when they are both working outside the home, they contribute equally to the preparation of every meal that makes sense.
The trip to their home took just over an hour - bus, train, bus. I was lucky in that there was almost no wait time in between connections. Often the trip time can be almost doubled because bus frequency is half that of the train - if one is lucky. Today I reached my bus stop and watched as the bus arrived within a minute. The train pulled away from the station just after I had sat down. The only wait was for the next connection and even that was only five minutes. Got to talk with a lost tourist in between and that was rewarding since I actually knew where he needed to go. The scenery on the way to downtown was a sight to be savoured. The constant rain has meant the city is now clothed in deep shades of green wherever one looks. The river is running very high both from the rain and the mountain run off. The other thing that is obvious is that it is a Calgary summer. Endless road construction with orange detour signs all over the place and the regalia that always accompanies the Stampede visible on the most storefronts one sees. Squeegee kids looking famished trying to earn a burger when the traffic lights are red. Ouch that part hurts. My son was commenting that even the bridge into the one of the main Stampede Park entrances was shut down for repairs. It must be in incredibly dangerous shape for the city fathers to decide to do that now. There is a sign posted saying it won't be reopen until sometime in August. The shop he works for is located within that area and he said the traffic is so tied up at rush hour now that the employees can't get in or out of the office. It is so bad, that his boss is considering shutting the business down completely the week of Stampede. Because it is a tradesperson's market in our city, it won't hurt their bottom line and it may save their sanity.
The annual petroleum show was one of the conferences held at the Stampede park all of last week and there were two other very big conventions also vying for space in every hotel, as well as on the roads and in restaurants last week so that might have been part of the traffic problems too. Not likely to slow down during the rest of the summer either. What with the back to back music festivals and the endless string of conventions too. Add in the summer tourists who are using our city as a staging point to prepare for their mountain vacations and we become a very crowded place for about six months. The people attending the medical convention - being of more modest means - were having to stay in hotels as far away as Red Deer; a city about 60 miles north of us on the main north-south highway. When I was small, I often wondered when we travelled that route if it would ever become like the corridor of endless cities and towns found surrounding Los Angeles that we had driven through on various holidays. I guess the answer is yes and I am very sorry to see that becoming a reality. Prime farmland and prairie range lost you see, not to mention the urbanization of the foothills/mountains. My son was remarking that he had seen a US fighter jet screaming along the one air corridor over the park last week and it had rattled him a bit. I told him about the military planes that fly overhead near us just before any new military offences overseas. Don't really need a newspaper where that's concerned anymore.
I called the bank several times before I left for my day with my granddaughter and finally got through to a real person. He seeemed genuinely concerned, but explained that the part of the work where there were problems for me was out-sourced and that company didn't operate on weekends. He said it would likely be Tuesday earliest, before he would be able to get the full story. Then depending on the problem he would be able to advise me what needed to occur to straighten things out. It's fortunate I had a credit card - finally - so that I could pay for my groceries last week. I don't have any cash right now and I don't want to spend any money anyway until I am certain I have another contract. I did e-mail the one agency rep who had called me about the full-time position and had asked for the updated resume. I haven't heard anything from her for 10 days and that isn't really a good sign. I did ask for feedback on my resume's composition in that email, because while I was looking at some of my staff's documents I realized how easy it is to misinterpret or misunderstand something that someone else has written. Sometimes it is because one doesn't have enough knowledge of another person's work experience to judge what skills they are offering to bring to the table. I know I am so immersed in my own work that it is very difficult to know what level to write or present your own experiences to a prospective employer without writing a book. She still hasn't responded, so I am hoping that just means she is taking the time to thoroughly review what I listed chronologically. As a consultant that is the only format I really find works for me. Maybe there is a better approach, but I know from some of the resumes I have received that one of the biggest turn-offs is some of the "professional formats" that some applicants have probably paid a good deal of money to have created. All packaging and no substance. All I am looking for is a portfolio of skills that I can build into my teams so that they are "complete" as a working unit. I'm can't even guess if that is a similar requirement for other employers. Hopefully she will be able to offer me some insight given that their agency deals with multiple clients.
Oh yes. I did finally get a response from the local elections rep about extra time to look for another returning office. She claims that she isn't in a position where she can approve that. She says I have to go back to the people who directed me to her in the first place. Then to top it off she says I should have found alternate space during the first office search. You know the one where she and the head office refused to approve payment for almost half the hours I needed to negotiate the agreement I finally got? I sent them all the news story about the .2% vacancy rate for commercial office space, but apparently that isn't a good enough reason for it to take so much time. Don't take the bait Grasshopper. Anyway time for dreams about the day I had playing with my grand-daughter. We had a lot of fun singing together, playing peekaboo and all those other baby games. Next time I think I'll start reading some of the stories that my guys grew to love so much to her. I can't wait. Good night dear diary.
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