Sudbury: yeah

We got back from Sudbury late Sunday night. We drove up Thursday night to prepare for a conference that Kate's dad was giving. Kate and I did the food prep and the prep for the hall that the dinner was in. We supplied lunch on Saturday and Sunday as well, bagged lunches.

It was quite busy for us. It's remarkable how much work goes into cooking for 35 people. I barely even dealt with food and I was busy all weekend. My tasks included picking up items, carving pumpkins, delivering goods, setting up tables and chairs, cutting vegetables, putting together bagged lunches, and of course a lot of barbecuing.

Unfortunately one of our two barbeque's refused to raise it's temperature above 200 degrees, which made the cooking of 80 pieces of chicken and four ceder plank salmons quite difficult. But we managed to get get through it and over all the food was considered a success, although there was much stress involved.

One achievement that I think is particularly notable was that despite the hard work, long days, short sleeps, and a great deal of pain on my part from cuts and burns to my hands, we were quite chipper for the entire weekend. Except for one atrocity, and I am not exaggerating with my use of the word atrocity. We arrived in Sudbury at 2:30 am, Friday morning we headed out to get coffee and pick up a couple items. We parked in a TD bank parking lot, didn't use the TD bank, spent 20 min doing out thing and came back to a boot on our rental car.

Now I know Sudbury isn't having the best of times, Brazilians own their mine and they live in perpetual snow and many of it's inhabitants have a very limited education, but there is no doubt in my mind that they targeted our Quebec plates with the hopes of taking advantage of us. It cost 100 dollars to have the boot removed. Yes we parked on private property, but I don't put anyone who comes onto my property in handcuffs and force them to pay me 100 dollars to release them. We had no choice but to pay the stupid money.

There is something to be said about common decency, and the attitude of both the people who put the boot on the car and the people who answered the number posted if you wish to dispute the charge did little to help me accept the extravagant charge. They act as though we're committing some heinous crime. First of all, charge us something reasonable like 20 dollars and I would have slapped my own wrist for them, but 100 dollars and a Fuck You attitude really annoyed me. The people who booted the car were extremely unhelpful in explaining what had happened, and they insisted that it had nothing to do with the bank itself. The police, yes we involved them after the fact, told us that had we complained to the bank we may have gotten off without paying. So the booters, lied to us about the bank, probably knowing that there was a chance we could not have to pay.

I see it everyday at work. I work beside telemarketers who become angry that the people they're cold calling don't want to buy the product. They call them stupid, or ignorant, not to their face, but after they get off the phone with them. They are so gung-ho to be on board with the company that they completely disregard what the company is doing. They're part of the team so who cares if they're selling crap, they have to pretend it's not crap otherwise what do they do for a living? That's right: they sell crap. These booters are doing the same thing, they act as though they're the ones getting rich off people like me, even though they probably make minimum wage.

I've worked in environments like that before. The employees are so desperate to not be working for a immoral company that they just refuse to accept that the company they work for can do anything wrong.

Kate called the number on the 'ticket' to see if we could get our money back. The guy who answered claimed to be the General Manager. Kate asked why they charge 100 dollars, his response was they charged less than any other company in Canada (like that's easy for us to confirm). She asked again where the number comes from, he said the supreme court of Canada said they could do what they do. Not exactly an appropriate answer to the question but fine. Kate asked which case it was, he said it wasn't the supreme court, it was the court of appeals. She asked again which case, he said we should so our own homework, by now he's very agitated even though it's been about a 2 min phone call. Of course we have no intention of looking through thousands of case files for a file that may or may not exist, and the cops had already said that despite numerous complaints the company was legitimate.

Go Capatalism, if I can take money from you without stealing, it's not only my right, but my duty to do so.

So that's my rant about Sudbury, oh yeah later that day someone did a classic parking spot steal, I waited as a car pulled out and another car pushed it's way in front at the last minute. Great town that Sudbury, can't wait to visit again!

At least Kate made the General Manager of whatever the hell that 'company' was called, yell at her for essentially no reason. That almost made up for the 100 dollars. And we did not let it damper our spirits. Oh yeah, the conference was on Globalization and the Work Force or something like that. We were there to cater a conference that supports the workers of Sudbury, they very same people that screwed us six hours after arriving, and again in the Costco parking lot.

So that's the crap we had to deal with this weekend, the parking thing was crap, not the conference, that was a pretty decent experience, although next time we'll need more staff. I'm still exhausted from the work and the long drives that bookended the trip.

Cats, cats, cats.

We have way too many cats. I still like playing with them, most of them, but we have too many. The spare room has become a cat condo, and I can't go anywhere in the house without one of them at my feet, or climbing up my leg, or rubbing thier head on my face. They're lucky they're cute.

The bathroom is no safe haven. Everytime I try to close the door to lock myself in, one of the cats is quck enough to slip in behind me. Even leaving the house is difficult with two of the cats literally putting thier bodies at risk to get out into the hallway. They try to squeeze out when the door is open two inches, I thought they had whiskers to know what they can and can't fit though. So we have to delicately open the door, let the cats out, then try to round them up in an organized fashion.

At least they're funny and provide significant amusement. Unlike Concordia who simply won't accept that I lived in Montreal from August '09 to October '09. A letter from my landlord saying I lived there wasn't enough because, aside from the fact that he's probably lying, he doesn't own the house anymore. Why does that even matter?

Of course it's my fault for not insisting upon a lease for that time I suppose. We were doing him a favour. He wanted to sell, the new owner would probably want to live in the place himself, so we stayed without a lease until a new owner was found. Serves us right says Concordia.

I shouldn't complain, I've proving I've lived in Montreal for the past two years so that I can get half off the cost of my classes, which is a cool concept, but man is it frustrating to deal with the buraucracy. It was easier to get my health card, which is enough proof for Concordia, but it won't come in the mail for another three weeks. Hopefully Concordia can wait till then.

Work is going well. With Delhi screwing up the Commonweath Games so badly I have much to write about. The Als are still going strong too. Maybe I can create a sport for the cats and kill to birds with one stone. I'll call it UFC (Ultimate Fighting Cats). Just like the real UFC it would be boring, boring, boring, then bam three seconds of excitment as the cats wake up and walk to the food bowl, then boring, boring, boring. At least that's the way it was the last time I watched an Ultimate Fighting Challenge fight, granted it was in 1993, and I do not intend to watch another one if I can help it.

Oh yeah and one of the new cats insists on using the bathtub as a kitty litter if we forget to close the door. So that's the crap I've been dealing with for the last couple weeks. Litterally.

Foster Cats and Sports Coverage

The writing gig is going well. As I learn about greyhound racing and track and field meets and athletes it gets easier to write about them. The greyhound race recaps come quick, the track and field articles less so because of the fact checking and name spelling, but I know I am improving my writing. Hopefully in the coming weeks I'll be moving on to hockey too. The track and field season is over this weekend, other than the Commonwealth Games, and hockey season is just beginning.

I've also kept up my Alouettes coverage for digitaljournal.com although as the season progresses I find myself fighting for a spot on the sidelines. There are more and more photographers every game it seems, and they're reviewing my access. If I do get pulled from the sidelines I am still hoping to attend games as just a writer.

It's been fantastic practice getting shots from the sidelines. I can't wait for my sports photography class, but that won't be till next year. This year I'm taking fashion photography, wedding and portrait photography, and photoshop 2. Fashion starts next week and the other two in October. Then I'll be looking to take Camera 2 and Sports photography.

Our foster cat situation has become interesting. We briefly had a cat named Tom that somehow broke it's leg. Not only did he break his leg, but he broke it in two spots and needed serious surgery to fix it. I spent a week going from vet to vet trying to figure out the best solution, money being an issue as well. I was actually ready to adopt the cat since he's so incredibly friendly, but the woman who rescued the cat in the first place decide to adopt him instead.

While Tom was still with us we took in a kitten that had some issues from the various pounds she was in. Her fur was gone from half her back, she had mites in her ears and very smelly diarrhea. The mites are almost got, her poos are normal, but still smelly, and her fur is growing back after two weeks with us. She's also in heat and very loud, all night, every night.

We also took in a mother and her six week old kitten, the first was a few months old. This little kitten is tiny, and scared of humans. Hopefully in the next couple weeks she'll adjust and we can find her a home. I don't really want five cats in the house, but when the other option is to 'gas them' as the people we meet put it, well I guess I just have a soft spot for the creatures. Even though I've sustained multiple holes in my skin from them.

I'll try to put up some pictures of these kittens and cats on my website, www.joedeclara.com, but in the meantime you can enjoy my recent football snaps. All of my Alouettes articles are linked to there too and you can always find them on www.digitaljournal.com, but my greyhound articles are sold to other websites, and don't contain my name so it's harder to find them.

The fall will be busy but I'll try to post all the crap I get around to doing.

New Job!

So I got a new job. After being unemployed for nine months and less than a month after my EI kicked in I got a job. It pays poorly enough that I can keep collecting some of the EI though so it's not all bad. I do have to be at work for 8:30 which is pretty early but I get to leave at 2:30 which is pretty good, and the office is right beside one of my gyms, the one I like the best. So all in all I'm quite pleased with the situation.

The job itself is a sports writing job for a content agency. That in itself is pretty great, even though I was assigned greyhound racing and European Athletics (Track and Field). I actually enjoyed writing about Athletics today, although I was told there's more money in the greyhound racing so I'll have to concentrate on that moving forward. There is much to learn. The biggest problem with writing about greyhound racing is figuring out what the big races are. There is no Wikipedia entry outlining the big races, or the big players in greyhound racing. It's very wide spread and there is no central source of information. The information I do find is on betting websites and it can be difficult to piece together something that's useful and has enough information to fill my quota. I do look forward to the challenge, this morning alone I made great strides in my athletics knowledge, hopefully tomorrow I can make similar strides in my greyhound racing knowledge. I did learn a fair amount this afternoon actually but I believe there is much more to learn about greyhound racing than athletics.

I'm still covering the Alouettes and plan on expanding that was well to cover more than just the games. I may try to add a pregame article the day before the games and I would like to spotlight some players. As the playoff approach I'd like to come up with some other ideas as well. We'll see how busy my day job keeps me.

I'm heading off to the Alouettes game tonight against Winnipeg. I have to get up pretty early in the morning to get to work and I have to get the article out tonight before bed since I have to work all day tomorrow so I may not have the time I'd like to have after the game to interview the players but I'll do my best. Either way I probably wouldn't actually ask any questions anyway but it's still fun to hang out while other people ask questions.

Sunday we go white water rafting. I wonder who's going to win the Irish Greyhound Derby, the finals aren't till Sept 11th but the third round goes this Saturday.

Anyway that's the crap I've been up to. Be sure to check out www.joedeclara.com for the Als game pictures and links to my Alouettes articles, among other things.

Digitaljournal.com

So far I've written five articles on the Alouetttes. The latest one can be read here. It's been a lot of fun and recently I managed to get media accreditation to the games through digitaljournal.com. That means a number of things. For one I get to go to the games and stand on the sidelines with my camera. That's right now I'm one of those guys that has to dodge players that are being tackled out of bounds, it's happened once so far and on the replay I saw myself on the Montréal jumbotron. Such fun. It also means that after the game I get to wander around the field and take part in the player interviews.

So far I've been to two games. After the first one I didn't really know what to expect so being that I was pretty ecstatic that I was there in the first place, I just left. Last night I was a bit more adventurous and asked around where the players do interviews, it was on the other side of the field. The photographers generally stay on one side of the field, the other side houses the players. So I wandered out, took a few snaps of things, Chip Cox got the player of the game award so I took his picture and listened in on his interview. The Saskatchewan head coach came out of the dressing room and said some things. Then Calvillo (Montréal's all star quarterback) came out and I saw people leave the Sask head coach so I followed suit. I actually decided to film Calvillo myself with my camera, mainly so I could hear what he said later for my article, but it was loud. You can still hear him, but the background noise is louder. Now I need to buy a mic.

It's pretty funny on the sidelines. Everyone has these huge lenses, CBC, RDS, TSN, the Alouettes photographer, National Post etc..., and here I am with my semi-pro, stock telephoto lens. The other photographers have poles, (unipods?) to help them because their camera and lens weighs so much, I just use my arms, granted my left arm was quite sore by the 4th last night. I may be the only writer among the photographers so I don't mind, I use what I have to the best of my ability. You can see some of my better pics on my website www.joedeclara.com.

Hopefully after covering the Als this season I'll have some fodder to use to maybe get an actual paying job as a sports writer. In the meantime I'm plotting a way to get media accreditation for the Canadiens, I think it will be much harder than getting it for the Als but how can I not try?

In other life adventures we are slowly getting settled at home. The bedroom furniture has been organized, clothes are next. Then I've got some summer work to do on the back shed and maybe some drywalling, I'll have to question my brother-in-law about that before I begin anything.

We have a new foster cat named Tom (renamed to Huckleberry). He's the most affectionate cat I've ever seen, he's still a bit scared of us but he's always coming out of hiding to get pet and once you start petting him he won't let you stop. Brewski seems fine with him, Jedi hisses Huck just lays down when she does and she wanders off. She'll probably end up getting along with him better than she does with Brew.

I'm almost done my creative writing class. I have a final assignment due Thursday which is about half done. I've only gotten one mark back so far but it was an A-.

So that's about it. I made business cards so once I hand some out I'll be updating www.joedeclara.com more often. I'll also be putting up pics from all the Als games after every home game, and maybe a Toronto game.

Nelson, British Columbia

So we're in Nelson BC, one major reason I've not been posting as much as I used to. Another reason is that I'm taking a creative writing class which requires much writing and I'm covering the Montreal Alouettes for an online media outlet called digitaljournal.com. So I have been writing just not here. We're just lazing away our Wednesday afternoon in the mountains and Kate managed to get us an Internet connection through her iPhone so I figured I'd read up on the Maple Leafs and post a blog entry.
Another house issue has come up, during a big storm I left the windows open to try and cool the condo down. The place certainly cooled down from 34 degrees to about 25 but also about two cups of water came in the house before I could get some towels down. The water quickly found a tiny crack in the wood, something that probably should have been repaired years ago, and eventually came out the ceiling above our dining room table one drop at a time. The damage is minimal: the paint is ruined, the table is totally fine, and the drywall is slightly soft. I also noticed previous damage though while trying to reduce the damage my leak was causing. So I'm going to pull the drywall down and see what's going on in the ceiling. Hopefully there will be nothing significant wrong, I can quickly replace the damaged drywall, repaint and put some wood filler in the cracks under the window upstairs and re-stain. Easier said than done I'm sure.
Our westerly vacation has been fun so far. We flew into Calgary, skipped the stampede and drove to Red Deer where we stayed for one night. Drove to Edmonton the next day for a quick lunch with Kate's sister and moved on to Jasper. Jasper is a great little town but we only stayed for a day and made the nine hour drive to Nelson on Friday.
The cabin we're in is old but nice, the water is freaking cold but the town is great and we've been having a lot of fun just hanging out with a tonne of mountains around us and lots of wildlife. We've seen: what I think are Ospreys, catch a few fish from the lake, an otter or something like an otter, a family of ducks, an elk and a dog. Tomorrow we go hiking in the Kootenays and while we're supposed to take bear spray I'm going to take my new machete instead. Just kidding I could never kill a bear, I'll just wrestle with it until it gives up and flees.
Somehow Kate us a pretty nice car. We were supposed to have a Ford Focus but instead we got a Nissan Altima. I don't know much about cars being the money sucking demon machines that they are but this thing is nice inside and it's got a fake manual gear shifter in it. I guess it's for people who don't know how to drive standard but like to pretend they do. I don't really use the feature but it looks pretty cool.
I've had a chance to do some work on the cabin. I burned some excess crap that was laying around, dug out part of the back of the cabin, bought a machete and cleared a path on the property to make a compost and I raked the beach. Then I skipped about a hundred stones.
Well I better go get some more crap done the beach is sunny and and I've got to find some worms to go fishing tonight.

Home Ownership Continues to Test

I would like to start by complaining about this heat but I should start this entry with things that occurred before this heat wave, but holy crap it's hot. The animals lay on the floor all day long and even chocolate can't stir them.

So we definitely are enjoying our new place, it's fun, I've enjoyed the work I've done on it and we're getting close to being settled in, just need a new desk and someplace to put our numerous garbage bags full of clothes.

We have hit a few money holes along the way though. The fridge has extremely poor light and it wobbled quite a bit. The previous owner had wedged a piece of paper under one corner of the fridge to righten it but I got rid of that and just extended the rarely used, in perfect condition leg instead. So now the fridge is straight but it still provides crappy light inside it and it generates a fair amount of heat, the edge of the door is more than warm so I assume this thing is crappy and an energy guzzler. It's also small. The dishwasher sucks too but I think all dishwashers may suck to some degree.

The doors were our biggest problem so far. Keeping in tune with the idea that jamming something like folder up cardboard or a stick into things that don't work the way you want them to, the previous owner liked jamming blocks of wood into the door frame to keep the doors open. We of course didn't know better ourselves and continued the ritual until one of the doors fell off the hinge. I should say broke off the hinge. These doors are European, whatever that means, and they open in two ways, like a door, and just the top can pop open for air flow. They're also supposed to be maintained every few years. Since 1988 they've been maintained, or adjusted, once, by us, two days ago.

So one door broke off, it's now fixed and properly adjusted. Another door needs the same work, we'll get that done later, and the third door has also now been properly adjusted. The third door had a broken seal and the windows was dirty and had water between the panes of glass so while doing the adjustment one of the panes shattered. The glass went everywhere. We managed to get most of the glass cleaned up and Kate has been picking up the tiny pieces we missed with her feet. She usually manages to find one a day and then we use the tweezers to get it out and in the garbage. We'll get new glass instaled probably before the winter.

Then the heat came, I actually like it, I feel comfortable and I can wear fewer clothes around the house, it's great. My concern is the animals, specifically the rats, they do not like this heat and I saw Brewski pant for the first time ever yesterday. So last night we turned on the A/C. We already had two fans blowing the air around the condo, now we have three. I've had the A/C on since 6:00 last night and the temperature in here right now is 28. I guess it's doing something but the animals are still lethargic and I'm sweating while sitting still. The unit is blowing cool air, sortof, it's probably just too small for this condo.

In other news school is going well, I got an A- in Camera 1 and I'm half way through Photoshop 1. I got a great student deal on Creative Suite 5 so now I have Photoshop at home and I do enjoy playing with it. I'm also taking a creative writing class which I'm enjoying and will surly enjoy more once we finish poetry and move on to the short story.

So that's the crap I've been up to this month.