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The Countdown
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 1454
Every night, before the shift begin there's the countdown. Franco wants to know how many days there are until vacation.
I tell him. "There are X weeks and Y days".
We argue, he's sure I've got it wrong, there have to be less, and he goes to the calendar and double checks. I'm right. I'm not too bad at remedial math.
I tell him, a heads up, a warning, that I have no intent of returning after the vacation. The vacation is the end. I don't know what I'll do, I only know the job is killing me, that I can't be here day and night any more, that the vacation is the vacation and it's also the end, sometimes he agrees, he hates it too and thinks the same, other times he tells me that I'll never leave, that I'm one of them now, that I'll change my mind after the vacation and I think about another winter here, the 13 and 14 hour days without break or day off over Christmas, think about the cultural void of another missed theater season, think about not seeing the children, and it scares the hell out of me...
Hard Times
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 1627
He wants to get a job but he's been too busy and I know what that's like.
We're out for coffee again, we see each other now maybe only once a month, time off, it's hard to come by.
He's broke and so I spot him breakfast, a couple hundred bucks, he's helped me through the same, and we catch up.
Nothing really new, he's been following the oil spill in the Gulf, it was a plan apparently on behalf of BP to kill off all the people in Mexico and the Southern States. Apparently they were attempting to explode a volcano or something, he's not too sure of the details.
And his outlook is greatly improved, Deeprak Chopra has done wonders for his spiritual advancement, he could spend his life studying his teachings...
But there's rent and final notices and other trifles to be dealt with, he needs a job. These are hard times.
Wednesday, June 30 - 2010
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2249
Gaps in child care, my day off, I borrow a car and the daughter decides she wants to go to Drumheller to look for dinosaur bones. This is fine, I try somewhat to talk her out of it, suggest maybe quartz crystals or trilobites up at Lake Louise, but she's decided.
It's going to be a hot day. First stop Drumheller, we check out the Salvation Army (I have this persistent vision of great treasures lying unrecognized in rural thrift shops), nothing, then a quick sandwich and we're off.
Horseshoe Canyon, we've a route we take through the badlands, the flat tops and hoodoos, and when we get far enough back we begin looking.
No great finds, a few pieces of bone, some sticking out and weathered into a thousand pieces, if we were professionals we might dig and look further, but it's not legal in Alberta. We find a number of small amber beads, brilliant gemmy yellow with the weathered white crust, a (relatively) large piece at almost a full centimeter in length, the amber here, like the bone, is poorly fossilized, crumbles easily, it's pretty and curious but you couldn't make jewelry from it.
Then home, we vary the route to bypass construction, through small towns where kids play in the bleak, hot afternoon prairie sun, it reminds me of my childhood, the dead hours between noon and 6 or 7 PM when nothing could be done for the heat, the trees cast no shadows, the children would pace bored upon the street, looking for something, anything to do, in the evening, that's a different story, it's cool, there might be thundershowers or great buildups of dark cumulus clouds, an aerial landscape to compensate for the boredom of the prairie landscape, there would be gangs of neighborhood kids gathered for great games of "Kick the Can" or "hide and Seek", but the afternoon, the tortuous long afternoons of summer, they were death.
The Lost Lemon Mine
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Lost
- Hits: 2315
Highly doubtful, but it's a great story. And if you're living in Calgary it might make an interesting day trip or two to the mountains to explore.
Link: http://www.wardcameron.com/Writing/Article_01-LostMine.htm
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