Work

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A Frigid Weekend Ahead

Brr! We just got our first cold snap of the winter. It’s not brutal, but I am so glad to not be in the rig. I have to admit that knowing that this weekend I will be warm with indoor plumbing with no effort on my part is making me much less homesick. 🙂

I strung out 150′ of extension cord yesterday and finally plugged in Miranda. After being parked for a month and a half, the battery was still fully charged. It’s not like I had anything running, of course, but it was nice to see that ‘battery fully charged’ notification beeping steadily all that time.

There’s one heater running full blast in the rig now. I just went in and poked my nose it. The rig was chilly, but not cold. I’ve made a note to go pick up a thermometer so I can take proper readings and determine if I need to get a second heater.

I had really hoped to spend time in the rig this weekend and start repainting the study and putting another couple of layers in the kitchen, but that’s not going to happen at 20 below! After working three weekends straight in a row, I think I might have earned a weekend of lazing about and the weather is forcing me to take it. 🙂

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What Is She Doing?!

I was sitting here a moment ago trying to get some work done when I heard the unmistakable sound of a cat rummaging around. I turned and found Tabitha digging through my purse:

She actually pulled out a few receipts and other sundries. It took me a moment to grab the camera and that flailing around distracted her, but she soon went back to her treasure hunt.

It didn’t take me long to figure out what she was after. I’d just come back from head office and had wrapped some paperwork in a rubber band that ended up coming back with me. Ms. Bitha loves to play tug the elastic. So, work, shmork, I dropped everything, fished the elastic out of the purse, and played a round of TtE with my girl. She just flopped down, exhausted and purring. I might be able to get some work done now!

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Dono Sushi, Lethbridge

This has been my second weekend in a row glued to the computer for a big transcription job. Saturday wasn’t too bad because I had a ton of chores to do, so I had ample reasons to get off the computer chair and move around. The downside was that I had about eight hours of work to do today. I decided to just plow through to be done by dinner. By mid-afternoon, I was soooooooore. I knew I needed to go for a long walk, but it was cold (sub-zero!) and dark out there. There was only one option: go out for dinner so I would have motivation to face this bitter fall night.

I went out for sushi on the 31st, so I wasn’t craving it, plus it’s not the first thing I want when I come in frozen from a long walk, but miso soup, teriyaki, and tempura sounded like just the ticket. So I schlepped the 2.5km (1.5 miles) to Dono Sushi  (link is to their menu). Jody’s daughter had told me that Dono was worth going to, but the sushi isn’t as good as that at O-Sho.

Dono is located in a strip mall. I was surprised by the cozy wood paneling decor. The menu is huge, but easily narrowed down if you’re not really in the mood for sushi. I zeroed in on the $13.95 teriyaki and sushi combo–teriyaki chicken, a ball of rice, two pieces nigiri (which turned out to be yellowtail and shrimp), and California rolls. I decided to splurge and ordered a side of veggie tempura ($7.95) and a Sapporo beer (a surprisingly reasonable $5.50). Total with tip was just under $33. It’s a good thing I’m usually  more reasonable when I eat out. 🙂

The food was delicious!

First up was a miso soup. It was heavy on the soy sauce, so not quite to my liking because you lose that unique miso flavour, but the broth was rich and had plenty of spring onions and tofu in it. So, not my favourite miso soup in the universe, but not one at which I’d turn up my nose!

I did find the nigiri to not be quite as nice as those at O-Sho; it was just a subtle flavor difference that could simply be due to the fish coming from a different supplier. I wasn’t crazy about the California rolls because their version has mayo. I couldn’t believe the meal came with eight pieces! That would have nearly been a meal on its own!

The chicken was very tasty and the sauce just sweet enough. I like that the chicken had a strong grilled taste coming through the sauce. It was served on a bed of cabbage and sprouts, which I like for the crunch.

As for the tempura, oh my! Whenever I’ve had tempura in the past, it’s been the same thing–yam, broccoli, and zucchini (which I firmly believe only belongs grated in chocolate cake, but I digress). Dono added three things to their tempura. The first was red pepper. I can’t even begin to describe how tasty the red pepper was wrapped in the tempura batter. It was crunchy but still melted in my mouth. Yum! The second thing was an asparagus spear as long as my forearm (yes, I compared the two). This confirmed to me that the reason I don’t like asparagus is that the people who serve it to me overcook it. This asparagus was firm and crunchy, the second time I’ve had it like this, and it was delicious! Finally, the last thing was acorn squash! Now that was practically a dessert! I sampled all the tempura but left the zucchini. 🙂

The next time I’m in the mood for walking to teriyaki, I will order the teriyaki and tempura combo and add some nigiri. No sense wasting calories on something containing mayo. 🙂

It was a great meal and the walk home wasn’t nearly as bad as the walk there!

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Posting On Demand ;)

I got a comment from faithful reader Gary on my last post about my not posting for a week. I thought he was exaggerating. But no! I haven’t posted for a week!

With the week I just had, how can that be?! Oh, right, I don’t like to post too much about my jobs. Well, I will be sharing one anecdote shortly, but I’ll just say first that right now I am working about 30 hours at my outside job and at least as many for myself. That leaves me just enough time to sleep, cook, tease my cats, and keep The Apartment tidy. It doesn’t leave much time for bloggable activities. 🙂 Just hang in there, okay? This will all be worth it when I go south this spring and have new border crossing stories to tell. 🙂

So this week’s amusing anecdote is once again brought by some of the most laughable Canadian organizations, our telecom companies.

Try to follow this…

A new tenant called Telus to have his internet connected. A Telus rep came to do the hookup, but discovered that the wiring was bad from our box in my office to the tenant’s apartment. He told me to call Telus to have them install a new line.

“But you’re Telus, why can’t you do the work?”

“Actually, I’m a sub-contractor for Telus. I can’t do anything without their authorization.”

Oh, okay. He gave me the business contact number for Telus. I called and was told I needed to call another number. I tried that number and it was not available in my area. So I called back Telus and decided to try my luck with another rep.

“Oh, we can’t help you. Your equipment is with Bell. You have to call them and they’ll contact us so we can get a subcontractor to do the repair.”

(I swear I’m not making this up.)

I was given, again, the number that didn’t work. Thankfully, I caught the rep before he hung up and he was able to dig up another number for Bell that he said would work.

Next, I called Bell and explained the situation to them. “Well, yes, it’s our equipment. But why should we have to call Telus? Call them back and order through them. They’ll send us the information. Then call us to schedule the repair so we can schedule it with Telus.”

(So Telus can then schedule it with a sub-contractor, right? Really, I cannot make this stuff up.)

I hung up with Bell and called Telus again. This rep said the same thing as the last one, informing me that the person at Bell was completely wrong. Here, try this number, you should get someone smarter.

So, back to Bell I went. This rep agreed that Bell had to take my order, but she needed to do a credit check on the company, never mind that we have an account with them and that we’re asking for a line to be repaired, not a completely new one to be put in, yaddi, yadda, call me back when you have the mountain of information I asked for, bla bla bla.

I decided to go up the chain of command at my company and get some advice. It took some persistence on my part, but I was finally advised to have the tenant call Telus, tell them at the first install failed, and that they need to come fix the line.

The tenant looked at me like I was an alien when I told him this, trying to figure out how this was going to work since he obviously had no authority to have major structural work done in the building, but he went along with it. He came back a short while later to tell me that Telus had no idea what he wanted but they’d be sending a sub-contractor tech to talk with me the next day.

The sub-contractor arrived on schedule(ish) and discovered that there wasn’t really anything wrong with the line. The first technician missed something that was easy to repair…

As my best friend would say :::head desk:::

Next week, I have to go through all of this again to get three new lines hooked up for our intercom system. I’m starting to understand how some people end up throwing their phone through the telecom office window!

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This and That

It’s been a busy week and I’ll definitely be putting in a couple of hours this weekend. Work is still going great!

Jody can attest to the fact that the apartment is definitely looking lived in. I keep bringing in things that I need (tonight it was the breadmaker). Moving out is going to be a lot of work! I’m still not that comfortable living here. The noisy fridge is a pain and I don’t like that people in the hallway can hear what I’m doing. My maintenance guy gave me some weather stripping to put between the door frame and the door as well as a door-sweep for the bottom. I installed them this afternoon (he’s got enough to do!) and noticed quite an improvement. You can still hear things outside, but the sounds are muffled. I have the second worst designed apartment layout; most of the others have an L-shaped hallway with the living room way at the back so there’s a ton of privacy. My hallway goes straight into the living room area.

One of my tenants came to let me know that one of his buddies is interested in buying Miranda. I let him know that MY RIG IS NOT FOR SALE!!!!!! She’s irreplaceable!!!!!!!!!! And priceless!!!!!!!! I went in Miranda this evening and had to leave quickly; I miss my home so much. 🙁 But I have almost a full month done of the six before I can go back.

The weather is still gorgeous with today being on the cold side of chilly. The sun is glorious! I still haven’t plugged in Miranda since I still don’t have enough extension cord, but I got good news: maintenance has been needing an outside plug near where Miranda is parked and it’s going in by early next week! I’ll only need one extension cord to reach it. Yay! Once I have heat inside, I’ll be able to set aside some time and budget for painting and fall cleaning. The weather has not been cold enough yet for me to be uncomfortable with there not being any heat inside.

That’s the latest scoop in Raeland!