It's Been a Long Time Coming

To quote Gord Downie.

I've been nearly ignoring this blog for the past couple of weeks. Instead, I've been working Job I for some fifty-plus hours per week, Job II for anything between five and ten, and in my spare time either being supportive or sleeping.

Job I is, as regular readers might recall, driving. I schlep about the city in a five-tonne truck, collecting used oil filters and other dross of the mechanical trades.

Job II is the dream job that doesn't quite let me quit the other one. Basically I'm in charge of a commercial blog for a company I like and respect, and whose product I find useful and valuable.

Just recently, I turned down Job III, with a seriously heavy heart. The contract was to produce the manuals and associated material for a company which is building hybrid diesel electric vehicles for delivery companies. Unfortunately, the company wanted four manuals in five weeks, which is a severe challenge, even for such a seasoned creator of text as my noble self. Five weeks' pay, even at my "rush job" rate (my contractor rate plus a "well, you wanted it right away" charge of 10% or so) wouldn't hold up the mortgage on the SO's apartment (where I am graciously permitted to camp in a corner), even if we ate the cats.

Which nonetheless remains an intriguing idea. HP sauce, please.

But I wanted that job so badly! To be part of a project that's inching along the path to the future, albeit slowly. Here's a guy who's racing for the future event horizon with a whoosh. But I'm already considering how to build my own electric vehicle--watch this space (for about the next decade--I'm still rebuilding my '61 Metropolitan).

The other thing occupying my time lately is, as I mentioned, being supportive of the SO. It works this way. SO lately became lead production co-ordinator for the Better World Handbook Festival. To sum up the state in which she found preparations when she joined the production, one week prior to festivities: The organizers and production team had yet to settle on a design for t-shirts.

The SO settled that question first, then turned loose on the rest of the fest'. It all came off without a hitch (apart from pot-smoking musical guests, whiny prima donnas and breakdowns on the part of the staff), all due to the effort of the SO, and those efforts alone. This did not go unnoticed. At the conclusion of the three mad days of greeness, the SO was contacted by a local Green Party candidate to manage her campaign.

This is truly a grass-roots campaign, pun intended. The GP is in transition, moving form its traditional root constituancy, whom I refer to as the Green Grannies, to a new, younger, hipper generation of people who intend to be environmental, practical, and (what separates them most from the GG's) winners.

No disrespect intended, the party wouldn't be where it is today without them, but the some of the GG's on the campaign don't even use e-mail. How can one run a campaign today without it?

More on the late-breaking federal whoring, the politics of the upcoming provincial election and the likely-to-fail referendum in the next posting.

This is gonna be fun!

Oh--and I'm gonna burble on about the new Doctor Who, but you knew that was coming sometime, right?