I am not the same guy that started writing this. I am letting people who have issues with me, have their issues. No skin off my back.
This all came about in the last election, Small Town politics. The Fire Department guys were in support of a lady who has Rose coloured glasses, she arranged for a Civic Consultant, from Kelowna to come in and create a new land use bylaw. My town is a farm town and there are oil rigs supply companies. Kelowna has neither of these. This lady and her consultant roped in some councillors and the Town Manager went along, cause they were The Shit. She decided to run for mayor, so did two other councillors.
This left the door open for a BIG change in town government. So the guys on the Fire Department who worked for the town tried to ensue that all the firefighters supported the rose coloured glasses lady. Oh there was one other thing, the Town Manager wanted a new building for the town offices, a building on the outskirts of town was vacated, right across the street from Wal Mart. The town offices were downtown, along with a lot of empty building (WalMart did a good job of closing down mainstreet). This building would have been perfect though, it was offices and it had a garage. The whole town could be there. They bought the building, the previous tenant had an issue with the sprinklers, it was a good thing they had moved all their stuff out.
It turns out the sprinklers ran for three days in the building, before someone noticed. There was no alarm to the Fire Department. Anyway, this did a lot of damage to the building, the town was trying to keep it quiet as it was election time and they wanted the council that voted for the building elected.
I am a member of Kinsmen as well as the Fire Department, these guys are all businessmen and they had issues with the town's new land use bylaw.
Basically I learned a lot, about the issues ion the town. I got to vote for 6 councillors and mayor, as did everyone else. I had one wrong. The net result was a pissed off town manager, pissed off officers in the FD and a whole pile of glaring at me. I did not campaign openly, but when you try to hide crap you have to be prepared that it might get out. I learned quickly to brush it off, besides, I am thinking they may need me when the new council is running the town.
So what did I learn? It doesn't matter what you do on the FD, you are needed. The guys that are always racing to hall to get to be on nozzle need the guys that supply the water, or else they wouldn't be on the nozzle. The spreaders and cutters need a safe working environment, that means firefighter have to direct traffic. If there is no-one there to direct, they will have to wait till there is.
Anyway, so I get the silly smirk on my face to show they are not under my skin. The same smirk they have. But now I know that some part of them is just as insecure as I may be somewhere deep inside.
The Kinsmen helped with this too, I went on a field trip with them to Hight River. It was a 6 hour tour in a motorhome. Lots of drinking, for those lucky enough to be in the back. We got to High River and did more drinking with people from all over Alberta, including some really hot guys from Brooks.
The my being gay thing came out on the motorhome portion, a guy that is forever bugging me asked me if I was gay, and I admitted it. These were not the most liberal guys. Anyway, I wound up with a room to myself and - the guy I was slated to be with had issues.
Later on the Friday night, well actually around 3 Saturday morning, we were all gathered in a room in the hotel. The guy that was bugging me in the motorhome was in tshirts and boxer briefs and wrestling with another guy on a bed. One of the other Kinsmen put ice in his shorts. This guy immediately jumped up, took a look at me and wham wham - elbow punches to the head.
This topped the party, he was drunker than drunk. I could have hit him. kneed him or whatever. But what is the use, He won't feel it and if he falls the wrong way......
The next day we had a chat, I told him we don't have to be friends and I asked him to come to me if he is pissed of at me for some reason. I kept it in house, my guys kind of left me alone for the rest of the trip, but the Brooks guys were great - i think one of them plays for the same team.
So where the hell did I just take you? That was always a fear of mine, getting beat up because of who I am. When it finally occurred it was like a great weight lifter off my back. Granted it could happen again, but I won't be around people that drunk again, unless they can handle it and my sexuality.
So enough of that crap. I ditched Cable TV. I had to do something about monthly bills. Shaw seemed to think that people are getting 5% raises every 1/2 year, so they keep raising the cost of cable TV. I learned about Apple TV when I was thinking about getting rid of something. I then decided to cut the cable, I upped my internet service to the next tier so that I would not blow out my usage. My cable bill has gone from $155 a month to $60. I still can watch Sons of Anarchy (SOA) as I bought the season on iTunes, for $35. In order to get SOA on regular cable you have to buy a package which costs $20 a month. The SOA season runs 4 months, so I saved $45. There are apps on the ipad and iphone which allow you to watch shows on those devices.....AppleTV then allows you to broadcast it to your TV.
Ii am now thinking about Amazon Prime...the US version. Apparently you can set up your computer or AppleTV to get it. If I owned stock in Shaw cable, I'd be seriously looking at unloading it. The government said it was going to change the requirement to buy 137 channels to get 20 you want. When I called to end my cable, the guy on the other end of the line was a retention specialist. His only argument that he came back to many times was....Don't you come home from work and turn on the TV, just to have it on. I answered No. He re-worded this especially for the channels I never ever watch, it was like he was reading a script. It may work at the used car lot or at the carpet store in Teheran....I recognized the accent, but it wasn't working on me.
The cable took awhile to go off, I think the tech was too busy to put on the filter. It finally died on Tuesday and I was cut off. But then I discovered Breaking Bad, the whole series and Damages on Netflix. I cut the cord at the best time, start of the TV seasons.
the bike was parked yesterday, a good thing as the snow is falling today...not sticking, but still coming down.
I blew up 2 pictures from the bike trip to Moraine Lake and had them mounted. I was then stuck with a conundrum, which one to keep as I didn't have room for both on the walls. A guy at the Druid offered me $200 for one, the one I eventually donated to the United Way campaign at work.
The first one I kept:
The one I donated, it made $150
I bought Lightroom as I am using my Fisheye lens a lot. Why?? It's 2.8 and fast!!!!
Here is a picture from Lake Louise, first is uncorrected, the second is after Lightroom, I got a little carried away, but i will re-fix it this Winter and maybe blow it up too.
And after playing around on Lightroom
It fixed the fence as soon as I identified the lens.
