I wanted to shake up my life and go sailing (or learn on the job, so-to-speak) so headed to Florida to crew on a catamaran. This is about how it went or, rather, didn't - and my life since. Hopefully it will lead to a catamaran on the clear aqua blue waters of the Caribbean Sea, watching the sunset, a coconut rum and coke in hand. You must START AT THE BEGINNING of the blog, April 2009, to get the whole story...

Sunday, March 21, 2010

NO MORE OLYMPICS - FOR NOW

I've been craving a clubhouse sandwich made with real turkey for days so I finally head out on a day off to White Spot nearby. I take my current novel and enjoy the time away to be alone and read and eat one of my favourite meals. Yum!

I am down to my last few days at work. Although I won't miss the early alarm, I will miss working and being with some great people every day. And I will miss the spectacular sunrises we have been seeing. What we miss when we sleep past the sunrise!

I made a huge apple crisp and took it into work. The guys loved it and by the end of the shift, there was just a small strip of it left in the pan for the evening shift. There's lots of ice-cream left over though. Not everyone wanted ice cream on theirs. I can't imagine why, it just tastes so much better with vanilla ice cream.

Tony has started to come into the trailer to boil some hot water to make his special Jasmine Tea. We drink so much of it that his usual thermos-full is empty pretty quick. He doesn't mind though, in fact he seems to love brewing it up in his little clay teapot and then pouring out the tiny cupfuls for each of us. I really like Tony and will miss him when this is over. I miss the Premier Pacific drivers from BCIT and the few drivers from Quebec I got to know. A few of us in blue jackets have traded email addresses and websites and will be staying in touch. I hope I get to see them again. I will have to see about organizing some reunion get-togethers in the future.

One thing I have been thinking about is working at the 2012 Olympics in London. Our manager here asked me the other day why I had not applied for a middle management position for the 2010 games back a few years ago and I had to admit, it never occurred to me. I was pretty busy with film work and honestly, even if I had not been, it just never crossed my mind. I am not sure why. But now the seed has been planted and so I have gone to the website for London and will fill out the application and submit a resume and see what happens. Having a British passport will be a big plus, I should think. Also, one of the other workers here who got a job with NBC for the main Olympics got it through a UK based personnel agency called Iluka. So I will fill out their application as well and then start applying for as many jobs that come up that fit my skill set with both that site and the official London 2012 site. I am very optimistic about my prospects.

Saturday is my last day. It was supposed to be Friday but I traded days with Shawn so that he could go to the warehouse sale VANOC is having. All the stuff they bought for the Olympics is going on sale to workers and volunteers first, and then will be auctioned off to the public. Today is the first day of the sale. There are TV's, appliances, beds, desks, chairs, couches, cell phones, computers, laptops, even towels for sale. I get a call from Shawn saying that there's already a line-up of over a thousand people waiting for the doors to open. He calls back about fifteen minutes later to say that all the electronics are gone already. Dan just left work to get over there to buy two TV's so it's too late for me to stop him from wasting his time. He didn't bring his phone to work today so I can't even call to let him know.

Just as I am winding things up to leave for the day, Doug from BCIT stops in. He is just back from downtown where he bought some gifts for family back home in Alberta, all on sale at The Bay. I am planning to take the SkyTrain into town (only one stop away from where I am) to see Christopher again at Live City and decide that I will swing by The Bay to see what they have left. And now there should be no issue getting in there. I also want to check out the zip line over Robson Square as a friend said there were no lineups at all mid-week when she went. I ask him how Squamish was, as that is where he has been posted for the Paralympics, and he says it was pretty boring. I tell him, same here. We chat for a bit and then he says perhaps we will meet up again at the London Olympics. Perhaps we will.

After having a bite to eat with Christopher (across the street from Live City at Moxies) I hop back on the SkyTrain to Granville and check out The Bay. It's still all cordoned off from the escalator to that floor, annoyingly, so I go up one floor higher and then take the elevator down right into the Olympic store part. Weird. I browse about for half an hour but don't see anything I want to buy. There are good sales though..50% off a lot of it. I totally forget about checking out the zip line. I am so hot because it's turned out to be a very sunny day but I am still dressed in my thermals under my clothes and am wearing my Thinsulated work boots. I hop onto the SkyTrain to head back to the depot and remember that I am supposed to call a friend about getting together for drinks this afternoon. The train goes through a long underground tunnel and there's no reception so I wait until we're out of it. As I look around the train I see that very friend sitting not 5 feet from where I am standing. I lean over and tap her on the knee and she looks up, startled. Then she's really startled to see it's me. "I was just about to phone you." I say. "Oh my gosh! I can't believe you're here!" she replies. It's just one of those really crazy moments that you wouldn't believe if you saw it in a movie.

We get off the train and walk over to my car. As we walk we talk about her business just expanding into London, England. She is a makeup artist in the film business but also has her own line of really high quality mineral makeup. She may be making a trip over there to do some demonstrations and I MAY be going with her. She is the same friend I wrote about back when I was on the island working on Freshman Father and she told me she would hire me to be her assistant on a show if I got kitted up. Well now, she is all for taking me with her to England to assist her there. I sure hope that works out! I tell her that we can take some time to sight see and go visit my family in the north and she is excited at the thoughts of that.
As I drive home at the end of a long day, I am really looking forward to the coming week. Tomorrow I will get all of my tax write-offs in order and on a spread sheet ready for the trustee to take care of. Then I am free to start writing my new script. Ron has been bugging me about getting an outline to him as he has garnered some interest, it would seem. I am very excited about the story and coupled with the screenwriting course I am taking, I should be able to turn out a very marketable script in pretty short order.

I might not have time to update this for a while as a result but I will try. Not that it will be very interesting. I am sure you don't want to read: I wrote 15 whole pages today and had 3 cups of tea and two scones in the process. Pretty boring stuff really.

Beautiful view driving home down 88th Ave to Fort Langley the other day.
All photographs are mine and not to be copied without express permission from me (click on them to see the large version).
Some names have been changed to protect my butt.



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