I can not believe the house prices in Calgary. They’re getting as bad as Victoria! Makes me wonder why I moved here, but then I look out my office window and remember, “Oh yeah! I really like the Flames.” Seriously though! I’ve had this discussion with several people, so I’m sure they’ll roll their eyes when they read this, but what exactly do you call a Calgary Flames fan? When you ask an Oiler fan what they are, don’t they respond, “I’m an Oiler!” Similarly, with the Calgary football team, a response would be “I’m a Stampeder!” or at least “I’m a Stampeder fan!” But “Flames’ fan?” That just doesn’t roll off the tongue, and, in fact, reads like a terrible tongue twister (the sixth sick sheik, anyone). So I propose that us Flames’ fans (ugh!) call ourselves Flamers. Can you see it? Can you hear it now? As Jarome Iginla blasts one into the oppositions net after single handedly evading the entire offensive line, an arena full of Flamers start gyrating with excitement and screaming with ecstatic glee! After the game, young Flamers lean over the guard rails to get autographs or to merely touch their favourite player.

Man, I’m going to hear it about this post, aren’t I?

So odd thing just happened a couple of minutes ago. I’m sitting at my desk, working (no really, I was), when all of a sudden I hear banging on my window. I’m on the 5th floor, so automatically I rationalize that some pedestrian with nothing better to do has scaled the side of the building to tap on my window and criticize my work ethic. So I’m mad, right? I turn around to give this guy, or girl, a proverbial piece of my mind when it turns out that I had been over reacting and it was just heavy snow and hail hitting the glass. Whew! I almost made a fool out of myself there, right?

Roger’s moving in tonight, as far as I know. I warned him that I have no coffee pot to which he replied that he didn’t drink coffee anyway. I thought, well that might work out then. He’s staying with me for a bit before his family moves out to Calgary. I guess he’s looking for a place to move into for the beginning of July, but I don’t think he’s staying that long. I won’t kick him out after 14 day or anything, if that’s what you guys are thinking. But it’ll be good to have some company besides my landlords father who’s staying in the basement until he goes to the States for some sort of surgery.

Had an interesting conversation with him the other day, by the way. I’m sitting on the floor in front of the TV playing a game called Primal in which you are this buxom brunette transported to some supernatural world with your little rock-troll-gargoyle-whatever-the-heck-he-is to kick some demon butt, when my, uh, roomy comes upstairs to join me. First off, I have to say that this game is so mind numbingly dull that I asked Andrew, who loaned it to me, if he would mind if I just frisbeed the disc out my window, across the street and into a brick wall (he said, “Go ahead!”). Gamespot gave it a good rating and so did users of the website which only furthers my belief that Sony is paying them.

Anyway! My roomy comes upstairs because apparently a friend of his or of his family is coming over to fix the leak in the dishwasher. He’s supposed to arrive between 6pm an 7pm, and my roomy asks me if it is okay that he waits upstairs for the repairman’s arrival. I tell him sure, and he proceeds to sit on the futon, one that I’m leaning against, dangerously close to my left hand side. Now he’s watching me dispatch demon hordes in the bloodiest fashion and is sitting inches away. Did I mention that he’s close to three times my age? Well, he is!

I’m uncomfortable at this point, but, as it turns out, I could be even MORE uncomfortable. So here this, um, elderly man is, sitting beside me watching me disembowel creatures from the depths in beautifully 3D rendered fashion, when all of a sudden he starts giving off little grunts and groans after I dispatch each heathen and saying, “Good! Good!” Now I’m a little scared! He watches the entire hour that he’s waiting for his friend. Spooky!

But towards the end he starts to spark up a conversation. My roomy is from Iran; I don’t know if I mentioned that. He starts asking about my family, specifically my children. I tell him that I have two beautiful daughters, one 10 and one almost 8, and I love them no matter how much hair they’ve made me lose. Well, my roomy plants a big hand on my shoulder, leans in close and says, “Some day…you will have a boy!” With only a fractional pause I answered back in the same tone, “No…no I won’t!” He seemed to take this with humour but also as if it were a personal insult and smiled while asking me why, why not? I told him that I was done, no more, nada, but I didn’t mention that it is now medically impossible due to a little elective surgery on my part. He leans back on the futon and smiles and says, “In my culture…we look for the boy!” I’m aware of this, okay, but I tell him that in MY culture girls are as good as boys. I think he could sense an argument coming because he stopped contributing to that conversation.

Well, his friend didn’t show up, so he went downstairs. Now, I don’t want to give you the impression that he’s creepy or anything. He is pretty interesting. It’s just that I found that moment in time to be somewhat bizarre. But we all know that I’m no stranger to bizarre now, don’t we?

I found out that my favouritist author in the whole wide world is coming out with another book. I threw up a little in my mouth, I was so excited! It's called Wintersmith, and it's the 31st book in the Discworld series, but it's also the 3rd book about Tiffany Aching, witch in training. Why am I writing about it here? For one, because I'm a geek and get excited whenever someone mentions that an X-man sneezed. Two, Kristen actually read the first two books about Tiffany and has come to enjoy them. I'm just excited that we read some of the same books, and she's only 10. We also read the first 10 Lemony Snicket books, but come on! Who DOESN'T enjoy those. So this is a reminder to me to tell Kristen that this book is coming out. Unfortunately, it's not coming out till October, so hopefully she'll share some of the waiting pains too. You may remember me mentioning that Sam Raimi's making a movie out of the first Tiffany Aching book, The Wee Free Men, when he's done with all that monotonous Spiderman stuff (just kidding! As a geek, I love those, too). So here's the cover of the book, already designed and brimming with Nac Mac Feegle goodness:

...so does that mean I don't have to buy a lawnmower?

Alright! I've been working here now for two weeks...well, actually, it's been 8 days. You see, I started on a week that ended on a four day weekend, so my first two weeks were four day weeks. Not too shabby, huh!

I'm just having that beginning job blues, though. Maybe I'm the only one who gets it! It's when you start a job, and you know absolutely nothing, and no one has time for you, so you either flub your way through stuff or twiddle your thumbs. Well, my thumbs are getting a little raw, my friends. I shouldn't complain, though, because, now did I mention this? I have a window! Yeah, I know I did. I just like saying it.

This will be my actual first weekend by my lonely lonesome. I may take in a movie or something. I do need to buy a lawnmower because, well, I have a lawn now. And it needs mowing. Because grass grows. No matter how much you yell at it not too.

That's it! I'm going to chase someone down, pin them to a wall and growl, "Teach me!" Nothing says "force" like a good growl. Try it sometimes. It scares small children.

Okay, now I have to write the exact same blog that I wrote yesterday including all the clarity, humour and gut wrenching pain that usually comes with one of my entries. Um, that’s gut wrenching pain for those that have to read it not for me having to write it. I enjoy it too darned much. Obviously! You have to enjoy it to write the same darned article over again, don’t you?

So basically what I wrote about was my trip back from Victoria to Calgary. Now, I have to tell you that after I posted my last blog entry, I went to look at a place that turned out to be something I wouldn’t wish on homeless people. Thus, I became slightly depressed having found nothing, having to make my aunt put up with me and having no company from my wife, daughters and even my dog. So I came up with the hair brained scheme of asking my aunt if she’d put up with me in the middle of May so I could start work and look for an abode thus freeing me to drive to Victoria that night and see my family for Easter Sunday. She agreed, but I said I wasn’t leaving until I took her out for dinner. We went to a local pub where I had some pasta to ensure that I had carbs enough to keep me awake for the first portion of the ride. Carol, however, just had chicken fingers. Now maybe she just really likes chicken fingers, but I owe that lady one expensive dinner in the near future.

Where was I? Oh yeah! Then I drove to Victoria. Simple as that, really. I drove through the night, having left the city limits at around 7pm and arriving at the Tsawassen ferry terminal at about 4:45am. I guess that puts me driving straight through with only occasional stops for gas and green tea and an energy drink at one point (I had to try it. Needless to say, I think it was that drink that helped me survive the last few hours of the trip) for a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes with the time change. Seemed longer! There were points along the drive, though. You know! Points where there were no town lights and just darkness and “Beware of Wildlife” signs made me think that, “It sure would suck to break down right about now, eh?”

But I made it! I had a little nap at the ferry terminal, was rudely woken up by an ferry employee (ha ha) knocking on my window and made it home in time to unlock the door right as Rylee was bending down to pick up an Easter treat in front of me. Her expression was a puzzled one but quickly took on a look of recognition, and she launched herself at me with a Vulcan death grip binding my waist. It was good to be home! Michelle and Kristen equally showered me with affection, and Lilly, our bichon/poodle, nearly turned herself inside out with glee at hearing my voice. It gets rather old though. Everyone always greets me like that. Just kidding! I find it welcoming when I’m not being pelted with stones or over-ripened fruit.

So, I decided that on the 12th of May, three days before I started work, that I would do the same thing in reverse. But this time I would drive with the benefit of day light guiding my way, not headlights that everyone in an oncoming vehicle mistakes as high-beams and flashes me angrily. I could tell they were angry by the way they flashed. It was an angry flash. It should have taken me just the same amount of time to get back, right? I knew that traffic would be a little denser because it would be when normal people traveled, but how many people would actually be traveling to Calgary, not including long haulers?

Well there were a couple subtle nuances this trip that hindered my progress a bit. The first one being that upon getting up at 4:30am to leave, kissing many foreheads as I departed, and driving to the Schwartz Bay ferry terminal to make the 6am ferry sailing, I discovered that there was no 6am sailing. The first one was due to set sail at 7am! This is a fact that could have been easily ascertained by looking up the online ferry schedule at http://www.bcferries.com/. I mean, I practically live in front of computer during my down time, but apparently in the midst of reading online news articles, comics and interesting tidbits, I was too busy to visit the schedule site and get myself an extra hour of sleep when it would have helped ever so much. Oh well, at least I was there and not delayed like the later travelers.

Next, however, I discovered what expedited my travels from Calgary to Victoria was the fact that construction workers are mostly reluctant to work graveyard shifts. They will work during the day, though. In fact, they will work in five different areas along the highway I’m traveling. Long sections of chewed up pavement and tarring and professionals holding STOP and SLOW signs and grinning evilly when the STOP side is facing you. Yup! I didn’t even get out of Langley until passed 10am.

Let’s see…There was something else that extended my travels. What was it? Oh, yeah! Missing an entire highway. If you look at the a map of BC, you will notice the Trans Canada Highway laid across it. However, there is a marvelous piece of roadway between Hope and Kamloops called the Kokahala, and it cuts down on the winding and crumbling of the Trans Canada Highway. So I get to Hope, and I turned in the direction of highway 1, not knowing that the Kokahala was actually highway 5. This is good information to know and is easily expressed on any map that you can buy at any gas station in any town on any given day. I didn’t buy one, so I ended up in Cache Creek very confused as to why I was there and why I needed to turn off to get to Kamloops. That was my biggest most bone-headed move on this trip.

Lastly, there was a rockslide between Golden and Banff. That was not my fault no matter what you think. My heart sank even further after entering Golden and seeing the detour signs. I just knew it was intended for me. The gentleman stopping traffic on the Calgary side of Golden happily told me that I needed to reroute to Radium Hotsprings in order to reach my destination. That was another 130 clicks added to my trip. I did get to see a black bear along the way, though, and I did get to drive through some wonderful manmade and natural rock formations upon leaving Radium to Banff, and I can now say I’ve been to Radium Hotsprings albeit for a very, very short visit.

Did that make up for the 14 plus hours that I spent on the road? NO WAY! I would gladly make use of Star Trek transporter technology to make the trip. That’s right! I would risk scrambling my atoms and being turned inside out to make the trip instantaneously. Will I do it again? Yup! I have too. I’m driving the family back from Victoria on the 24th or 25th of June, and seeing as I’ll have to drive a U-Haul and Michelle will be driving the van, there will be no sharing of the driving. But at least this time we’ll hit the Kokahala, eh? (I’m so Canadian)

Speaking of U-Hauls, did anyone see the expose W5 ran on them? They have a terrible safety record, apparently, so W5 undercover reporters rented 13 trucks in four major cities, and they all failed safety inspections. Just something else to give me more confidence on the upcoming trip. You can read about it if you click here.

So that is it for today. It’s not recent news, but I’ll get to that in the next couple of days. This should post because I wrote it in Word and then pasted it into the entry box. You see, I can learn from past mistakes. Let’s just hope I don’t miss that highway again.

Oh, here's a great picture taken by my buddy Shannon (who never reads this blog). It's of me, Kristen, Rylee and Shannon's daughter Gabrielle doing the Karate Kid on the peak of Mt. Finlayson. We tried to get the dog to do it to, but she wasn't feeling very accommodating that day.

I'm employed, by the way. I'm pretty sure I told all of you that, but it's been a while since I've updated this blog that my 32 year old mind gets a little fuzzy about certain things. But I am employed. Good company, too. Can you believe I have my own office? With a window? It has a view of the building next door, but I have a window none-the-less.

I just wrote a mildly large post, but naturally when I went to spell check it, it vanished, and the recover post button only recovered a portion of it, so I'll have to write it all over again. But later! For now, I think I'll go back home.