Paul Alton MBA

Up early for the airport shuttle to the airport for my flight from Vancouver to Regina. I pick up a bag lunch that the hotel has cheaped out with on the excuse of Covid to cut the cost of their former almost adequate continental breakfast. I look inside. There is not one thing that is not primarily carbs. Not saying I’m that pure. I will lapse into cheat-o from keto but nothing in that bag is a quarter way tempting. That’s a phrase I’ll never understand: “as ugly as sin”. If sin weren’t attractive what would the attraction be?

I gave the bag back and handed out a few curved illusion tracts to other shuttle passengers.

At the airport I check in and follow the signs to the security for my gate. Closed for renovations. Get in the forever line for security for the other side of the airport. Once actually at security the actual process is somewhat efficient. Just dealing with considerably more passengers than it is designed for. It shows flight information for the side of the airport it is on not the side my flight will leave from.

Through security and a long walk back across the airport to my gate I learn the flight is delayed. There was some challenge boarding a disabled passenger and the plane was late leaving Yellowknife. I find a lounge that is free access for holders of various credit cards. None that I have, but they offer a special deal of $22 an hour. Seems steep on the face of it. However I know the Starbucks I can see in the distance the Starbucks which priced a sandwich at $12 seven years ago and five bucks for coffee. I took the lounge’s deal of one hour and had a relaxing time drinking a couple of double espressos, making two passes through the buffet line for scrambled eggs and sausages while my phone was plugged in to their charging station.

I got ensconced at the gate in time to hand out a couple of curved illusion tracts and be there when the incoming flight deboarded most of their passengers. Save one. Not to be critical here (an outright lie), but wouldn’t you think that if a plane was delayed loading a special need at one end of a leg that would be a flag to those wonderful people at Aeroflot Canada that preparations might be necessary to unload at the other end of the flight? But that’s not what makes Aeroflot Canada what it is today. All the passengers got off. A jet ramp person shuffled up to the passenger and informed the gate agents. “Hey, we need hep getting off this passenger off the plane and we need a special wheel chair.” That started the process of looking for a wheel chair and things unfolded from there at the pace you might expect. When they did get the guy off he looked locked-in. A co-worker had that fate befall him from a “routine” surgical procedure. Your mind works but nothing else. Sucks bigly. Not the passenger’s fault the plane was held up at both ends. Pure inefficiency of dealing with the situation by Aeroflot Canada.

The plane eventually arrived in Regina. Juanita picked me up. It was too late for a lunch buffet. Not a big fan of leftovers on steam tables for long periods of time. Have had them result in close encounters with porcelain bowls. Had a quiet rest of the day and got rested up for another six day stint of ten-hour days.

The turnaround lasted most of the month with me working 6-10’s.

Juanita went back to Meadow Lake to help celebrate Sasha’s birthday one weekend. I went to check out a Spanish church service the Saturday she was gone. There was no service that night. They were having a Mother’s Day Dinner. They graciously invited me to stay but I bowed out. I did get to attend two more Spanish services before the month up. Good messages. I had to really concentrate on the words of the message on a sentence-by-sentence basis. I would need a lot more exposure to be able to think about the concepts and still be able to follow the words.

On May 30 I worked my last shift of the turnaround. We spent our last night in the basement suite provided by our very accommodating landlords, Dan and Shauna.

On May 31 we drove back to Meadow Lake. Juanita in the car. Me in the truck.

Retired again!

So much to do! Where to start?

We disassembled one of the garden hoop shelters the snow collapsed and we started to build a new frame for it. I carried on while Juanita went to town.

While she was gone I rescued the brush mower from the sea can and stowed the snowblower in the sea can. A vigorous hour of jogging behind the mower on the strip next to the grid road knocked down the taller grass and a bunch of the dandelions.

After lunch Juanita helped me re-cover the first shelter and I started on the frame of the second shelter which we covered with poly.

The next day I was paralyzed. Jogging behind the mower in third gear and humping it around corners was more exercise than my body was prepared for. You are in shape for whatever you were doing three weeks ago. Three weeks ago I was mostly sitting in the sea can between the odd climb to the top of a unit to hook something up. Some days there was a lot of climbing but it was paced.

When I recovered from that we puttered at backlogged stuff, cutting up some windfalls across the paths and doing a bit more mowing. In second gear this time.

Saturday, I bid on a turnaround job near Edmonton. It’s in a chemical plant where I worked in 2007, 2019 and last year.

Nope no surprise.

Here I am months later catching up. 

Previous times on that work site I had carpooled with my son-in-law and then with people I met through him. He is off working in Sarnia, Ontario for much better wages and bonuses than are around Alberta right now. I hooked up with some people we had carpooled briefly but parted ways because they like to cut the arrival time a little closer than we are comfortable with. Monday by the time we wandered all over Millwoods picking up people arrival was definitely too close for the circumstances of a highway bridge that is being repaired between Edmonton and the plant. I almost got fired in the tail gate meeting on the first day. Profuse apologies, the repeated promise to dump my carpool buddies and the vouching of a foreman that I was “a good guy” gave me one more chance. No problem after that. I found carpool buddies on my crew that have a strong sense of leaving in  enough time that the slightest glitch doesn’t upset the apple cart.

The job only lasted a few weeks (shorter than billed) and I only spent one day of that in the sulphuric acid plant and not in a zoot suit. The other location was a bit grim but not especially nasty or hazardous. Pretty straight forward basic instrumentation maintenance work. We attended some ball games and an evening at the zoo, but not all the time with the kids we had planned. We plan to come back to spent the Canada Day weekend with Becky and the kids.

Before we left for home, I bought a door to install in the bedroom wall where there is currently a window. A door should be much easy to use to access the deck we built last year.