Andrew Underwood

Today was a day off after 6 days of work. I worked just as much in one week as I did in the two weeks before that. There was all that rain that made it hard to work in.

A few days ago there was a tornado that touched down close by. The storm that accompanied it brought large hailstones. There wern’t that many but they were big.

Bargaining for sleep

0530 radio alarm goes off
Continue sleeping
0545 buzzer alarm goes off
I need to be gone by 0640 [T- 55m]
Macro necessities
-Food (Usually cereal) [8 -– 10m]
-Bathroom (Wash face, brush teeth) [10m]
-Dress [5m]

Micro necessities
-Pack a lunch (1st priority) [8 -– 10m]
-Read the Internet [arbitrary]

I stare at the alarm clock after turning it off and try to think what time it should be reset to so I can get a few extra minutes of sleep. It’’s easy to waste vast quantities of valuable morning minutes surfing the Internet, reading email, checking blogs, checking website stats, reading news. It comes down to the time between 0545 and 0600 being used for sleep or Internet surfing, or both. Often I still feel really tired so I reset an alarm to 0600 which gives me just enough time to do the things I need to do, everything except the Internet. If I’’m extremely tired I’’ll sometimes hit the snooze on the 0600 alarm propelling me into the red zone at 0610. This means that I won’t have time to make a proper lunch. This doesn’’t happen too often, but if it does I try to make a couple of sandwiches that I can have at break and then go buy food at lunch break.

One morning I didn’t have time to make anything for lunch, plus I couldn’’t find my wallet so that meant that I wouldn’’t be able to buy anything either. With no time to make anything I hastily grabbed a loaf of bread, better to have that than nothing. One guy at work always brings the raw materials for a sandwich and makes them right then and there at work. Coincidentally he forgot his bread that day so we traded. My bread for his sandwich fillings of salami, cheese and mustard. It turned out my wallet was actually in my car wedged between the console and the drivers seat. So I would have found it if I was really hungry and searching my car for loose change in desperation.

More flood pics

I ran from my house down to the High Level Bridge to take some more pictures, because at the time the sun was briefly out. I stayed up on a coolie to get a better view. Up there I found a whole lot of cacti and I also was surprised by a duck who flew out from right beside me because her eggs were there. This was also my first encounter with mosquitos this season and had me running through a golpher hole, cactus infested mud obstacle course. It started raining (again) on my way back home.

This van was sitting outside my house since the afternoon and it’s engine was on. After my run I looked inside as I walked by and it turned out to be a photoradar van. So here’s a photo of the photo radar van and it’s right in front of my house for anybody reading this today…

I can’t belive that it’s actually this bad

I had to laugh out loud multiple times when whatching this video clip [hackcanada.com]. It’s snippets of the worst (I hope) arrogant and ignorant news casts to air on Fox news and CNN. Apparently we’re ‘allowed’ to exist on the same continent and “Canada is essentially Honduras except colder and much less interesting”. The one guy goes on to say how dependant Canada is on the US. I’m pretty sure that we have the resources and economy to sustain ourselfs if the US fell of the map. I’m guessing that US on the other hand would not do very well if we put an embargo on even one of our exported resources like lumber, energy or water. Well, I had better get back to dog sledding.

Gah

So it’s been raining for days now and not going to let up until about Wednesday. This has been hampering my efforts to work. In other news the torrential downpour has caused water to start leaking into my basement suite. It’s not too bad, I just need to mop up an 4L pale once in a while.

My Palm PDA stopped working yesterday, it wouldn’t turn on. So I did the logical thing and changed the battereies, checked the contrast, but to no avail. Then, I tried hitting my Palm with my palm and it turned on. I would have never thought that would work, especailly for something that runs on ICs and solid state memory.

So right now I’ve just been sitting at home, mostly passing the time by playing Star Wars KOTOR 2. I’ve been playing for hours and hours and all I really want to do is get my lightsaber. I want my lightsaber damn it! Really, I just want to finish the game so that I can format my hard drive, because it’s about that time.

Southern Alberta Rain, Flood

After getting groceries today I detoured out of town (Lethbridge AB) to take some pics of the impending storm system. I stumbled accross a place called Cottonwood park and got out to take some more pictures of the Old Man River that runs beside it. Here is a link to a satellite image of the area above which the pics below were taken. The floodplain is totally… flooded.

Fashion Show Skinny

You might recall that I said previously that I was going to be a model in a swim wear fashion show. Well that happened last night. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really interested in fashion. I’m more of the type that wakes up in the morning and picks the black computer shirt off the floor that smells the least. This was more of an opportunity to meet some people in Lethbridge, and being brand new here, I needed something like this.

It went very well, there wasn’t a single moment when I was nervous or uneasy, and the modeling part went very smoothly for everyone. I met lots of people and made a few friends. Plus people kept on buying me drinks and Guinness was on special so that was a significant boost to the good time factor. I left at about midnight because I had to work in the morning.

This morning I felt great and went to work less tired than ever even though I only got about 5.5 hrs of sleep. We only worked until noon because it was raining pretty hard. Luckily I have a handy dandy raincoat that is made specifically for working in so I was kept dry and toasty, except for my legs, but they had a modest layer of mud providing some kind of hackneyed insulation. It is going to rain tomorrow as well and we can go into work if we want to but I think I’ll take it off because roofing and rain isn’t really a safe combo. I slipped twice today, it’s not bad unless your shoes are muddy, because if that’s the case the coefficient of friction is