It’s that time of year again

I turned 33 today and like previous years, I thought I would live blog the day as it happens.

6:45 a.m. :: Alarms started going off all over my house reminding me that it was my birthday and I had to get up so I could go to work today.

7:00 a.m. :: Wendy, Mark, and Maggi gave me my birthday presents. Mario Kart for the Gameboy Advance from Mark with the stated intention that we need another copy so we can play head to head. Wendy gave me How (Not) to Speak About God by Pete Rollins and Maggi gave me JPod by Douglas Coupland.

7:15 a.m. :: Mark had Mario Kart open and being played in his Game Boy Advance. As I walked through the room, he was giving himself a motivational speech, “I believe in you Mark, you can beat this level.”

7:55 a.m. :: Got to work. Drank some coffee. Read over some notes to start my shift. To the right is the view from my desk taken last Saturday. It wasn’t Daylight Savings Time then and in Saskatchewan, it isn’t now.

8:00 a.m. :: Wendy came by with a couple of Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwiches.

8:10 a.m. :: Cooks arriving now. I lobby for something “that tastes good”. The cooks grunt at the implied commentary and remind me that they can poison my food.

10:45 a.m. :: Breakfast rush over. Since the cold is gone, meals have been really busy around here but most people were in a pretty happy mood. Breakfast was good and if I was poisoned, it is a slow acting one.

10:50 a.m. :: Ugh, all of the paperwork from the breakfast rush needs to be filled out.

12:00 p.m. :: Wendy stopped by with a Red Bull and a Diet Coke. The two massive cups of coffee weren’t doing it for me. Co-worker told a story to Wendy about how I accidently mistreated probably the most angelic human being on the planet. I was too guilt stricken to protest. Even worse he is so gracious, he didn’t even protest. Everyone has enjoyed harassing me about it with the accidental parts embellished just a little bit each time.

1:30 p.m. :: Just read this at work. How can Canada be one of the richest countries in the world and not have safe drinking water for northern reserves? Of course the Conservatives blame the Liberals who blame the Progressive Conservatives who blame the Liberals who blame John Diefenbaker and nothing gets done. Safe drinking water. How much more basic is that?

2:43 p.m. :: The day has been steady but nothing really bizarre. A co-worker has said that after working our job, few other jobs would keep our interest and she is probably right. A former employee said to me that I should never think I have seen it all because I won’t have. Guys were just loitering around for a bunch of reasons when it hit me that a lot of people are stranded in Saskatoon by choice or by circumstance and I think some of them don’t realize what there is to do in a city of 200,000 people. I started to jot down some notes on free stuff to do and see and hopefully it will help.

4:10 p.m. :: Lee, Wendy, and Mark picked me up and Lee gave me his gift, Star Wars Lego II for my GBA. Mark picked out where he thought we would want to go for dinner and by a strange coincidence, it was his favorite restaurant as well, Fuddruckers. Afterwards we went to Ruckers for some time at the arcade. Not that I feel old but I remember when all games were a quarter. Now they are $1 or more. No matter, Lee and I started playing pinball. Mark was winning tickets and Wendy was doling out tokens.

Got home and of course Lee started playing Lego Star Wars II as he recovered from his hamburger.

7:35 p.m. :: Wendy and I headed out to Alexanders where we met up with the Reimer clan, the Bennetch/Peters clan and the Pederson clan for some dessert, food, and beverages. I was given a copy of American Fascists by Jerry and Becky which I started reading a bit last night. When they first talked about it, I thought the book was just a liberal attack on evangelicals which in Canada is kind of the religious right but I think in the United States would be considered much more moderate as a group. (toss in the blurring of the term evangelical with fundementalist in the media and I think we need a new label up here) The book is much more about dominionism as a movement which isn’t as big of an influence here.

I was also given a gift certificate for McNally Robinson and I think I will pick up An Inconvenient Truth book and DVD.

Around 10:30 we were home and checked in on Mark who had been running a fever for the last two days. How did I know he was sick? At the arcade he said that he had enough games and was okay to go home and just hang out and he still had some tokens left.

Thanks for the birthday greetings and cards! It was an enjoyable day.