Last night I was talked into going to the bar in Fort Mac by Sister and Peter. The rational was that it was their leaving ESS party. Can't argue with that. So we went, we drank, we danced, we drank, we danced a lot more, I woke up this morning drunk. The waking up drunk was a new experience... as was feeling like utter shit this morning. Remember why I pretty much stopped drinking in camp months ago. Over all everyone that attended agreed that it was a phenomenal time. Now if my calves would just stop throbbing...

After reading the Strata minutes last night the unease I've had in my gut increased. After being tormented by the decision today I officially retracted my offer for the condo. It's kind of upsetting to me in one sense but on the other hand I'm actually feeling pretty at ease with the decision.

There were two main factors that were bugging me. The first was obviously the price of the mortgage I would have to get. As I saw it by getting the mortgage I was essentially denying myself the right to tell the company to go F themselves if I ever really just had it. I'd be tying myself to this job and the big money for a long time. The second factor was that the strata was very hardline against rentals in any form. Even if I had a room-mate in the place with me being away all the time for work the strata could start to cause problems by claiming that I was renting, due to my low occupancy rate. In the meeting it was documented twice that people had bought and were asking the strata to rent, for good reasons, and the strata turned them down flat. In each of these cases the units sat empty for very long times and I don't really want to be paying for an extremely expensive "hotel".

Overall I made a logical decision and I suppose I'm pleased with that but my emotions aren't exactly feeling that right now.

I'm feeling low.

Honestly I didn't think that I'd be writing about mortgage woes before I even had one... Turns out that a certain Orange bank thinks I'm not necessarily a good credit risk. How are they basing this decision? Well because I'm new to my job they don't want to take the risk that I'm not excellent at it. So I had to get my Dad to guarantee it... at least until I've been with the company for 6 months.

So after we got that fixed up I anxiously awaited a call today telling me if they have been magnanimous enough to grant me the priviledge of paying them a great deal of money for many, many years. The call came and... the bastard at the other end told me that I have "significant debt"! Well let me tell you, that was a fucking shock to me.

The Money Monkey then asked me if I could pay any of it down. I asked him what the hell he was talking about. Turns out that my AMEX bill last month was $230 and my Visa was around $300. He didn't tell me that these numbers were from last month so I had a hell of a time figuring out what the hell he was talking about, as I pay my credit cards off every month. That and my line of credit balance of around $900 and the balance left to pay off my car (which is below $5,000) were enough for them to have to think seriously about my eligibility.

The fact that I have a $20,000 down payment and a flawless credit record seem to mean nothing. So as it stands now I'm going to see what happens on Monday before I go the alternate routes I was considering with either the bank or the credit union who have both been actively pursuing my business. I can tell you one thing the Orange bank should change it's advertising because they're not friendly or remotely helpful. I plan on doing my damnedest to let everyone I know about this experience. Likely won't make a big difference in the long run but it'll make me happy knowing that I may have cost them at least one customer.


PS - I'm closing my accounts with them on Tuesday regardless.

THEY ACCEPTED MY OFFER! KELOWNA HERE I COME!

Well I put an offer in on the apartment that I was looking at. After looking at 5 others, just for the sake of making sure there was nothing else out there I wanted, I put an offer in on the original one that I liked. The other's had a number of things wrong with them. In one you could hear the traffic through the walls, in a couple of others the floors were totally destroyed (new carpets and lino needed), in the other's I hated the location. So I put an offer in on the first one I looked at, to be honest it's the one I wanted in the first place, and they came back at $10,000 more than I offered.

This is actually a good thing because I offered them $20,000 less than their asking price. So I am planning on offering them another $5,000 tomorrow knowing full well that they're going to likely stick to their price. Then I'm going to tell them that I'll happily take their price but I want their living room furniture (including the flat screen TV). So we'll see. I'm excited. Stay tuned for updates...

After spending much of the day with Janet yesterday I decided that today I would look into this whole house buying business that seems to be the rage with the kids. So I went onto MLS and started to look around. Well wouldn't you know it but the condo I've been dreaming about was there.

The place is in the building in downtown Kelowna that I lived in once-upon-a-time and that I loved. The suite is bigger than the one I was in and is a corner suite so it's got tons of windows and natural light. The current owners were clever enough to put laminate and tile in throughout. The kitchen is huge, the ensuite is huge, the walk in closet is not so huge... but you can still walk into it. The coulours on the walls were perfect. The only thing not perfect about it would be the $1,400+ a month mortgage payment. Even though I can easily afford that now... it's the commitment that scares the living bejeezus out of me.

This is tough though. Frankly I don't think that it's going to get cheaper to buy a house anytime soon.

I can't believe how long it's been since I wrote. Work has been so psychotically busy it's just sick. Things are going good but I'm really looking forward to going home again. This time in I've been dealing with some sporadic sever depression that I think is a result of being exhausted a lot. Just to be sure though I've got an appointment with my naturalpath while I'm home.

Right now I'm procrastinating on packing. Can't figure out why because I really want to go home... but I pack so much I'm tired of it.

Today two things happend that are of some significance. The first is that I withdrew from my online course at Athabasca University. The new job is just not leaving enough time to focus on it and learn. While I'm chagrined at the money I've lost on it I'm somewhat happy that I won't have a WF on my transcrips in case I ever decide to take another course from there when I have more time.

The second is happier in that I decided that it would likely be a good idea if I set up a, for lack of a better term at the moment, "program" in which our office will set personal and work goals, share and encourage each other on with them. The inspiration I got for this is from the Canadian Business series of articles entitled Canada's Best Workplaces. They had a feature article on one of my previous employer's 1-800-Got-Junk? that focused on the company's practice of encouraging employees to set goals for themselves in both their personal and work lives. I've borrowed the concept form Got Junk and expanded on it for my own purposes.

What I proposed to the girls looks like the following:

1. Goals
a. One Short-term Personal Goal (1 week)
b. One Short-term Professional Goal (1 week)
c. One Long-term Personal Goal (6 months - Year)
d. One Long-term Professional Goal (6 months - Year)
e. One Life Goal - Huge and Outlandish
2. Personal Development
a. Find one blog or web-site that you will devote a maximum of one half-hour a day that you believe applies in some way towards the acheivement of your goals (mine is going to be Canadian Business I think)
b. Meet every Wednesday at 2:00 for a quick informal meeting to discuss progress on goals for the week, set new ones and share one thing from the readings that you found interesting and would like to share
3. Encouragement
a. Each of the goals will be posted on a space on our bullitin board visible to everyone in order for each of us to maintain accountability towards our goals

I believe that I'm really not the only person who feels the way I do at times while I'm stuck up here. Of course I'm talking about those feelings of hopelessness and complacence that so many people all over the place feel all the time. I recognize that it's not just the people in my area of the country but many people in general. I digress, the purpose behind my deciding to presenting my "program" to my girls are I don't want them to feel as though they are stuck in a place in life that they're going to be forever. I want to help them acheive their goals both professionally and personally. I want them to help me reach my goals for the office and department. I want to grow as a Manager and a Leader.

One thing I have to say about my Boss is that he's shrewd. I just recently found out from some people that he's known company wide for coming in and turing operations around. He'll use whatever means necessary. I am proof of that.

Happily he's willing to stand behind me and what I feel needs to be done in the department. So in that light I'm working towards my first firing. I inherited three young ladies from the previous Manager and two of them are good, while the third is not. The problem with her overall is that she is infuriatingly slow and when I ask her about something she get's very defensive and snappy. The fact that she's making me crazy as well as making the other two resent that they're pulling all the weight means she's got to go. I'm going to be working on her written warning letter tomorrow.

I learned while working for HBC that when someone is not good in a job it's doing them no favours to keep them around. I wouldn't be in the position I am now had someone not made the observation that I didn't fit there. They were right and I'm happier for it. Of course it's taken a long time to come to that conclusion but it's there none-the-less.

Surprise, surprise...

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	High
Wrath:	Low
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	High
Lust:	Low
Pride:	Very High

The Seven Deadly Sins Quiz on 4degreez.com

I've been back on site for a few days now and while it took me a day or two to get into the swing of things I'm doing well. Everyday my department has another minor sucess and that's where I'm getting my motivation from (I'd be lying if I didn't say that the pay-check I got this week didn't make it so much more worth it though). I came back to a spotlessly clean office, well as spotless as a construction site can be, and found the girls had made a few other minor improvements. Made me happy that things didn't go to hell while I was gone like my last two jobs.

Today I put together, hosted and moderated a very sucessful meeting between our company, the site owner and the support companies (housing, and bussing) on site. Everyone left the meeting surprised at how much was accomplished in the one hour that I had alloted for it. That of course left me feeling pretty proud of myself. Working with a group of people who were all significantly older than myself and had many years experience working in the kind of environment we work in.

While I would count today as a pretty good one career wise there was still the reminder of what I'm missing in the outside world. The friend I was going to the Gwen Stefani concert with, actually the person that I bought the tickets because she promised to go with me, backed out. I'm absolutely incredulous and somewhat depressed at how hard it is to find people to go to a concert with... especially when I paid for the tickets! So yes, my social life has degenerated to the point where I can't get people to come to a free big name concert with me.

I guess the point o f life at this point, for me, is to work and get as much experience and make as much money as I can. Living is for turnarounds and later in life.

I'm spending money like a rock star! Yesterday my Dad and I went on a wine buying trip through the South Okanagan and came back with a trunk full of wine, 20 bottles to be exact. We then stopped and had dinner at Sumac Ridge and I won't hesitate to state it was probably one of the most exquisite meals I've ever had. I started with an appatizer of mixed olives and Steller's Jay Brut! A combination I NEVER would have though of but it was oh, so good. So yes, yesterday was a very nice and very expensive day.

It's not my imagination... the air does smell sweeter in the Okanagan. It's good to be home, even though the heat is killing me.

The last few days at site were really long and I'm so completely exhausted right now it's sad. Yesterday on my way back from work to camp I was going to walk (there's a great backroad that's been closed to vehicle traffic that helps me get SOME exercise) but I was just so tired I couldn't get my butt out of the seat of the van. Well as we drove up to camp one of the local residents came wandering out of the woods, stared at the van then ran back into the woods. When I say local residents I am, of course, talking about a black bear. So I'm thinking that I'm going to go to a hunting supply store and buy a rather large can of bear spray before I go back.

As soon as I got off the plane today and headed back to Vernon my first stop was the bank. First I went to see my broker; who informed me that I would need to stop contributing to my RRSP's in about three months because I've already almost maxed them out. Secondly, I'm excited to annouce that I was able to get a bank draft for $4,000 that I am going to send to Ford tomorrow to help pay off my car! So as much as I bitch and complain about the, at times, futile feeling of working where the bears and the moron's roam free there are some major benefits.

The next few days look like they're going to be leisurely and relaxing. Tomorrow I've got some appointments, Thursday I'm driving my beautiful, almost fully paid for car, down to the Penticton area to sample and likely buy a case of wine and Friday we're going to Nakusp to seriously get away from it all. Yes, life is good.

Two more get ups and I'm out of here. I'm really looking forward to going home... not so much because I'm looking forward to going home but rather because I'm really tired and am looking forward to a break. Things in the office are running so smoothly I don't think anyone can believe it. I had document control come in to clean up our files at the beginning of the week and they took not two, not three but EIGHT bankers boxes of old useless files out of my filing cabinets. Originally we had thought we were going to have to get another filing cabinet, until I started questioning what we actually needed to keep. Making some other major changes as well, spent some time today cleaning out the hard-drive, which was cluttered with multiple copies of the same documents in many different files. Took a long time and I was stunned at how much crap was in there but it's all gone now or in a file I called Donna's File of Mysteries (we also have a bankers box that is sitting in the office getting fuller and fuller that I call Donna's Box of Mysteries) that is only in existance in case we get audited or something bizarre like that.

Overall I'm feeling pretty good about things at work right now. Of course I'm a little bit anxious about leaving for my eight days but... there's no way I'm not going. Things will look after themselves.

G-L-A-M-O-U-R-O-U-S! For some reason that's how I'm feeling tonight. For no other reason than I had a pretty darn good day and I've been listening to Fregie's song 'Glamourous' off and on all day. I think I'm going to be heading to Vancouver again this turnaround as Marcie and Frank are having a going away party and I really, really want to party again. These periods of stress and bordome in between just drive me to it. That and the thought of visiting my friend MC at Harry Rosen and possibly buying a suit's got me pretty pumped. Yep, glamourous that me! *Rolling eyes*

I've been super busy hence the lack of updates for the past while. Seriously my day involves getting up at 5 to be at work for 630. I work until 530 or like tonight until 7 then I come back to my room, watch an episode of Nip/Tuck (a fantastic show I just found out about) then I go to bed. I've just finished watching the show, so now it's time for bed.

There are a lot of times when I fall into one of those funks where I start to question everything I'm doing. I think these situations are somewhat valuable because they get me to think and question what I'm doing. I think about the fact that I'm up here and that I'm very much alone. I think about the money that I'm making and I ask myself what do I have to show for it? Then I think about the experience I'm getting and I ask myself what the hell are you going to do with the type of experience you're getting right now? I suppose I'm being hard on myself as usual but the future is a scary place to be when you're in the present. It's even harder to be there when you're alone.

Check this interesting little thing out.

Hello all you Happy People! Well things are still going along well. I'm starting to get the rythym of how things in this new company work. Overall I'm enjoying it and I have to say that even at this early juncture that I think it was a good move. I'm busy, the girls in my department (yeah, I am in charge of a department of women, what a surprise) are a lot of fun. Management is supportive, if not somewhat overbearing at times but overall they leave us alone. Yes, I'm rather pleased with things at the moment. Although there's a huge amount of work to done I know it's only a matter of time before I get things working.