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.

The last few days flew by much faster than desired. Every night of the week was filled with a miniature adventure.

Most recently I spent the end of the week attending classes for my Master's Certificate in Project Management, and as usual it was a very educational. This was the fourth session where we learned about Procurement of materials and services, and I found the whole area of 'Contract A' and 'Contract B' and how you go about evaluation of vendors and bids was very interesting. Furthermore, I have discovered that Calgary's weather is on a two week cycle that corresponds to the two week cycle of my course. It seems that whenever the Weather in Calgary is due to be absolutely spectacular for a couple of days, those are the days I'm due to be indoors sacrificing half of my weekend.

Friday night we went out to celebrate Sonja's birthday at Classic Jack's. It was a fun time and a good deal of people cycled through to say hello and wish their best. I definitely had a good time catching up with everyone, but in hindsight a measly six hours of sleep was barely sufficient to keep me alert during Contract Law thankfully my friend caffeine was there to ensure my wakefulness.

Saturday after my class, we met up with the usual gang for another battle involving the Roughnecks. We were triumphant over the Sting, and after a long drought we now face two games in two weeks. Hopefully we can improve on our third place standing.

Today was a nice relaxing day, with a sleep-in, followed by a visit with Peter, and a viewing of TMNT. The movie was just as cheesy as I had expected. It brought me back to my after school cartoon days, and the CGI was phenomenal. I'm not sure if it was worth the big-screen, big-sound price, but it was entertaining. For a PG flick it did have a pretty twisty plot, and they did a pretty faithful job bringing the Turtles back.

Now, I'm standing at the end of another weekend, with another packed week ahead of me. It isn't all stacked on the working side of the coin, as I do have an evening watching Nelly Furtado in the Saddledome. Keeping on this pace, I'm sure I'll be turning around and March will be gone.

It has almost become expected for me to complain about the weekend being over, and I wouldn't want to disappoint. This weekend was especially short, being that the restful portion of the weekend was only a single day.

I've been attending classes for a Master's Certificate in Project Management which is put on by the University of Lethbridge. The course is very enlightening, and after only two sessions I have already learned a great deal about how to properly run a project. The difficulty around the course is that to accommodate working professionals and weekend lovers, the course straddles weekdays and weekends. So until June, every second weekend is going to be a little shorter.

The course didn't stop me from getting out and enjoying myself. On Friday night, the usual crew attended the Roughnecks game at the Saddledome. We were hosting the Toronto Rock, and they beat us down quite bad at the start, and our come-back wasn't there resulting in a 12-9 score in their favor. At the time I was quite dissapointed, but it turns out that we beat them on their home turf to a final score of 17-13.

Saturday night Sonja and I attended a fund raising benefit for a young man who has been found to have terminal cancer. His wish is to take an Alaskan cruise with his family, so the benefit was to raise funds to have the best damn cruise ever. A silent auction, a long drive contest some appetizers and a Flames game on the big screen all come together at Schank's north for a rather nice evening.

Sunday was my only day off, and I spent most of it getting through my list of things to do. I fixed the house's downspouts so my backyard will no longer be a skating rink, I changed my oil, and replaced some bulbs in the Buick. If you think that changing bulbs is a trivial task, try changing the rear low beams on a 2000 Buick. I wish you all the best. After the outdoors stuff was done, I had Sonja help me out with some Photography, then I edited some pictures while plowing through a massive chunk of laundry. After everything was completed, it was almost time for bed. Just enough time to squeeze in a viewing of Office Space