Devauld.ca

Part I: here

Saturday was going to be a day to get things done. The first order of business was getting some rough lumber planed for a raised garden we are building. I picked up a Portable Thickness Planer when Canadian Woodworker was having it's Spring Sale. All-in-all it's an excellent unit, was easy to set up and was able to make cuts on the 4x4s we had purchased almost 1/8 of an inch at a time.

Thus, Sonja and I spent a good deal of the afternoon out in the shop, with the back door open our heads covered in safety glass and hearing protection while we fed our nine, sixteen foot Fur 4x4s through the planer. We made quite a pile of shavings, and in the end turned some ugly old timbers into beautiful clean wood for our project. It took us some three hours to get the planing done, and we were right on schedule to get cleaned up and head down to the final Roughnecks game.

For those of you that have not experienced a hot shower after working in a sawdust filled environment, the feeling is second only to sex; slightly above a good sneeze. It felt glorious getting all the dead tree off my body, and I was sitting relaxing as Sonja finished up her routine to get ready. We were set to leave, but we couldn't find Sonja's purse.

We scoured the house, went out to the shop, checked the cars, double checked the house, and that little black bugger was nowhere to be found. Sonja started to think that someone stole her purse, but I didn't buy it. It was simply misplaced, and it would turn up. Why would someone just take Sonja's purse when thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment, XBox games, laptops and computers were all very visible standing at the front door? We were still investigating our environment looking for clues to it's whereabouts, and we found the footsteps outside.

Clear as can be in the fresh snow, a set of footprints wandered off our shoveled trail to stand outside the front window of our house. Then the steps retrace back to the walkway with a slight turn at the end towards the main door. Pieces started falling together in rapid succession. We were out in the shop all afternoon, with a loud power tool that could be heard for blocks. We live right next to a bus stop that probably had over ten buses stop during our three hours in the shop, and anyone walking by would have seen us working away. Someone sees us, wanders around front to see if anyone is in the front of the house, checks the door to find it unlocked, and in they go. It may have been timed that we shut the planer off to adjust the height, and they bolted.

The whole situation seemed odd. We wondered why anyone would just take the purse. If they were looking for cash, it wasn't the best target as we had some money sitting on the kitchen table. Furthermore, if you wanted to take something of value, there was a lot of it sitting in the living room. Regardless we started the necessary wheels in motion, canceling credit cards, bank cards and declaring identification stolen. The Calgary Police paid us a house visit to take our statement, and get everything down on paper.

Later, we received a call from the security people at the mall next door and they found some of Sonja's cards outside the Rogers video, cementing in the idea that the purse was stollen. Sonja is still working out the kinks of having most of her identification and access taken from her on somebody's stupid idea.

It's been a while since I have left my impression upon the internet, and as a result quite a bit has happened that I think warrants a mention. These events are so spread apart, and random that I figured that I would roll them out in stages. Actually it has nothing to do with the content, I just wanted to put up more pictures.

As Thursday marked the start of the weekend, we had an excuse to hang loose and have a little fun on a school night. A company that Sonja uses placement services through was having a customer appreciation night, which seemed like the perfect place to mingle with strangers and have some fun. They put on a mock casino and it was a good time.

To start with, you are given $60,000 in funny money that you can spend at any of the gaming tables. I was at first looking for the Craps tables, as that is really my game. It only took a couple or rolls to figure out that I didn't want to play anymore. For the sake of simplicity, they removed all the bets but a subset of the Line bets, and no-one bet on don't pass, thus there was really only one bet. Adding to the simplicity was the fact that everything paid out 1:1 so it was a losing scenario all around, and I decided to find a Blackjack table instead.

I learned after a while at the table, that the gambling was the second fastest way to make more of the funny money. I discovered that you would make much more moola from smoozing with the people who had it. Utilizing both methods, we managed to get our hands on $420,000 of the coupon grade money.

Finishing off the night was an auction of the donated prizes, using the funny money. It was a nice departure from the usual door prize drawing, and because of an active and funny auctioneer it was rather entertaining. We held out for a 'Romantic Night at Home' package which included smelly things, a bottle of liqueur and a fondue set. Not bad for a nights festivities.