Stop the Merry Go Round... I'd Like to Get Off.

I find it incredibly odd that when I go back in my blog and look at the same date a year or even two back it’s just uncanny how I’m often thinking about or feeling the same things presently that I did then.  The past two years now has involved Marcie and Frank on the same weekend in August for the Wine Weekend, and now three years in a row I’ve had Vancouver on my mind on today’s date.  There are a huge number of these ‘coincidences’ and it’s just weird.  Maybe it just comes down to the fact that our lives tend to be one continuous cycle.

What A Rotten Day...

There are always going to be people in your working life that are difficult to deal with.  Unfortunately there also seems to be some sort of cosmic joke that causes these people to be in positions that effect what you do on a daily basis.  A bigger problem happens when these people are dumber than you.  In fact life is just plain interesting if these people just happen to be completely stupid.

How is it that incompetent people seem to gain positions of authority or power?  Is it just because of age or, dare I suggest, experience?  Are these the things that seem to get people promoted?  I hear all sorts of stories about people my age (26) doing phenomenally well, getting promoted, and doing all sorts of fabulous things while having a fabulous life yet I seem to know very few of these people.

Today was one of those days where the grass was greener in the other Province.  I woke up this morning missing Vancouver terribly.  All day the city and the life I used to have haunted me.  While my work life there was unspeakably awful (while I was with HBC anyway) I definitely had a good social life.  I miss my friends there, miss the climate, the pulse of the city and the general sense of a mission that people in the city seemed to have.  Here I’m surrounded everyday by 1,000’s of miserable people with a good portion of them being terrible human beings.  Sure the argument can be made that these people are missing their family’s, not in good health, blah, blah, blah.  Reminding myself of the good things here can be difficult.  There is NO comparison between here and Vancouver, hell there really isn’t a comparison between here and anywhere so I just need to keep reminding myself that the grass is as green as it needs to be.

With any luck tomorrow will be a better day.

Well it's another Saturday at the Lodge. We're sitting in the office with my iPod blasting Whitney Houston telling us she wants to dance with somebody that loves her(it's on shuffle and that's the artist playing right now). I've literally spent the morning cleaning up parts of the mess that my replacement made. Overall he did a good job just wasn't paying attention to a bunch of stuff and let it slip through the cracks.

This last turnaround was wicked fabulous. The wine weekend was absolutely awesome and everyone wants to know how I'm planning on topping it next year. The limo was an absolutely inspired idea. Technically there are a few things that I need to keep in mind for next year, mostly involving food quantities as we had enough this year but just enough.

As usual I'm happy to be back here for the moment. Although yesterday was my first day back by the end of the day it already felt as though I'd been here for a week or two. Today is a little better because at least my demonic phones arn't ringing.

Heads up to Raph and Wifey, I maybe heading your way for a night or two in the coming weeks.

Just a quick update

Just a quick update

The wine tour went off without a hitch.  Considering that I took two bottles of wine with me in the limo and we were drinking it before 11 before we even got to the wineries probably helped.  The fact that one of our party members was drunk before we made it to the first winery was just hysterical.

Will write more when I feel like it.

It's That Special Time Of Year!

Well it’s finally here, it’s Wine Weekend!  This is the weekend that I invite a bunch of friends up from Vancouver and elsewhere up to Vernon and we have a day or two of touring wineries.  Aside from a few diva moments last year the event was phenomenal, this year is going to be even better.  For this years events we actually rented an 8 person stretch limousine!  I’m terribly excited about the whole limousine thing because every other year we’ve had to travel in two separate cars and that’s just no fun.  Last year, not thinking very well, we went clubbing the night before and the majority of the participants were terribly hung over the next day.  Couple the hang over fact with the lack of air conditioning and you’ve got a not so fantastic experience; so, no clubbing the night before this year.  

Everyone is arriving here tonight and I’ll be making dinner.  Then tomorrow after what I imagine will be a quick breakfast we’ll pile in the cars and make our way to meet the limo.  After five hours of touring in Oliver we’ll probably hit a beach somewhere and then make our way back to Vernon.  All in all I’m SUPER excited.

Unwanted Body Hair!

I really do think that there is something to be said for people being TOO comfortable with their bodies.  As I live in an all male dorm it’s not surprising to see guys running around in various states of undress in the evening or early morning.  Well there’s one guy in particular who has absolutely no problem with walking the entire length of the hall in his briefs and flip flops.  That in itself would be bad enough, add in that he’s a middle age dude and is absolutely the hairiest guy I’ve ever seen and it just pushes it over the edge.  There’s something to be said for decency and this Dude just doesn’t get it.  I usually try and stare at the floor, while passing, but invariably he waves with a big smile and say’s “How’s it going?”  Ugh, let me be uncomfortable already!  

Fucking Morons, they're EVERYWHERE!

Sometimes people make me so angry I just don’t know what to do with myself.  It’s usually those days that you can find me at the end of my shift screaming my frustrations out on some unsuspecting cardio machine at the gym.

Today, after a multitude of frustrating experiences, the one that set me off involved a new hire.  I get a phone call around 2:00PM, I’m almost loath to pick up my phone lately as it’s always something that’s not going to make me happy, buddy is calling from the bus station in town and wants to know where his ride is.  Well I’ve never heard of him before but I do find his dispatch slip and on it, it states “will call for travel arrangements”.  The fact that he didn’t follow the directions of his own Union annoyed me as it was.  I told him that I would have to see where my driver was at and arrange for him to be picked up.  I told him to stay put and call me in 45 minutes.  45 minutes go by and he calls back.  I tell him that the driver would be leaving at 5 and to just stay where he was.  For some reason buddy is all worried and tells me that the bus station is going to close at 6.  I said “well take your stuff outside and sit on the curb, but DO NOT go anywhere.  Driver leaves and goes into town.  An hour and a half I get a phone call from him asking where buddy is?  As I have no idea where he went I told driver to wait another 10 minutes and then come back.

As I’m sitting at my desk finishing off a few last moment things I get a call from the other Lodge asking if we were expecting a “buddy”!  I almost went through the phone.  It turns out that Buddy had decided to take a cab in.  So not only did he waste my drivers time he cost the company money.  A few moments later the cab pulls up Buddy walks in the front door.  I remained at my desk and let one of the blondes deal with him.  Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I asked him if he always completely disregarded directions?  He stared stupidly at me and then said “I’m new here!”  I was flabbergasted, I felt like asking him if he was new to the fucking country?  What the hell does that have to do with anything?  So cause your new you can’t follow directions?  After a few more words with him I just couldn’t take it anymore and went on to ignore him.  The only thing that gives me any sort of pleasure is that the cab ride cost him well over $100 and we’re going to charge him for the cost of the trip to town as well!  Fucking Morons!  They’re EVERYWHERE!

Somewhat along the lines of yesterdays topic we've had some mildly interesting events up here of late. Last night I was awakend by the screech of the fire alarms, as usual my response was to think to myself "oh well I'm gonna burn cause I ain't getting out of bed!" Sure enough after going off a number of more times the damned things shut off and I continued to sleep.

This morning as I walked to work I looked at one of the doors to one of the other dorm blocks and wouldn't you know it, it had red security tape on it telling everyone 'this area is closed do not enter'. I got into the office and it was sheer chaos. Seems some Son of a... got drunk last night and decided to discharge a fire extingusher all over the dorm. So because of this Moron we had to move all 200ish people out of that dorm and over to one of the other camps... at 2 in the morning. So this morning they were all on their way back and we were doing room transfers forever. The absolutely stunning thing about this whole situation is that not even two months ago another group of jack-asses did the same damned thing in another dorm and it's just finally been opened again.

Are You Interesting....?

Am I interesting?  Are you interesting?  And by who’s standards?  For that matter is anyone really interesting?  

What is it that makes so, so many of us humans out there so terribly interested in what someone else is doing?  Everyday when I sign into MSN Messenger, MSN Live Today pops up and tells me all about what’s going on in Hollywood.  Or rather I’m told about the latest antics of those that someone (or something) in Microsoft’s head office has deemed to be ‘interesting’.  Of late the unfortunate (for the reader anyway) subject’s have tended to be either Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan both of whom are reported to lead not just interesting but fascinating lives.  Generally I don’t find these two young ladies interesting aside from the fact that they seem to be driving the cars and visiting places that I’d like to be driving and visiting.  As Paris and Lindsay are hardly Road & Track or Conde Naste Travel staff writers I wonder what it is that makes me even remotely interested in clicking on that link to see what’s up.  I digress…

Everyday the insane things that happen around me would probably be interesting to someone, somewhere.  Unfortunately by the time I finally get back to my computer and contemplate posting I’ve either completely forgotten about what I was going to post about or I look at the situation and realize that even though in the outside world said situation would be completely inane in my world it’s repetitive and boring.

What kind of things do people want to read on this blog?  Do you really want to know that I had a bagel with an egg and bacon in it for breakfast along with a bowl of Sunny Boy hot cereal?  Does anyone care that I just bought some new underwear off the LaSenza web-site (free shipping people!)?  Do you want to know my opinion of World events (Israel is completely justified in their attacks on Lebanon, but should show more restraint).  Here’s something that’s going to keep you coming back to read more, I bought the new Nelly Furtado album ‘Loose’ off of iTunes and I really like it!  

In short I guess I’m curious about what it is that makes people stop at my site to see what it is that I’m writing about?  Is anyone aside from Wifey reading this thing (I’d still keep writing just to keep her informed)?  

The two blogs that I read faithfully are ‘Zoey’s World’ and ‘With Tongue Firmly in Cheek’ I read Zoey’s world because I find her very entertaining as well as informative.  I read Artem’s blog because he’s a good friend of mine in Vancouver and it’s a great way to stay in the know about the going ons in his life.

Let me know what you think?

Ring, ring, ring goes the... bank account!

The past few days have been absolutely wild up here.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been as productive, or as busy.  The sheer volume of work that came at me on Monday was staggering.  I was trying to train a new person for one job, that I don’t usually do, while trying to make sure that my two full time jobs kept going.  There were periods during the day that I just stood in the middle of the office and spun in circles trying to decide which phone to answer first as my two lines were ringing non-stop and the front desk phone and my co-workers phone were both holding a ringing marathon.  Weirdly enough I just love all that’s going on here and even though it’s really crazy it’s somewhat energizing.

There are down sides to all this though in the form of the crash that I know is very likely to come.  There are times when I wonder what this is all going to get me, where is this going to take me in life’s journey?  Somewhat depressingly I sat with one of our Kitchen workers today at supper and we started talking about wages.  This guy puts out sandwiches and baking and keeps the lunch room clean and he’s making around $80,000 a year!  The incredible thing is that because this is his last year of work before he retires he took a pay cut in coming here.  He used to be a janitor at another camp and was making between $100,000 – 120,000 a year.  I’m making what I consider to be pretty good money but it’s nowhere near the lunchroom guys!

Burning out...

14 hour day number two, done.  God am I tired!