The surprises keep coming

I knew that I would have a tough time getting vacation time this summer, but now I know it's impossible. For a good chunk of the summer, I had the hope to go to Banff with my wife and some of my in-laws. That was cut down to a weekend, and now there is no hope whatsoever. First, the managers conference will take the manager at Londonderry to Barrie for a few days. During said time, the Assistant Manager will be gone to Grand Prairie to manage the store in absence of the manager, who will be in Barrie as well. That leaves me as the most experienced staff member to take care of the store. I'm not going to Banff during that time. Also, one of my co-workers needs the same weekend that I was hoping to use to go to Banff. That discouraged me, but what put the nail in the coffin was when I was refreshed on holiday policy. Minimum two-weeks notice for any vacation time. Schedule is already made, and I'm bound to it. Crumbs.

On the plus side, I am learning more store responsabilities, such as processing shipment, and doing Store Transfers. Cool stuff, plus I get to train new staff that we'll be hiring on. Oh boy.

Another great thing about the store, there is a microwave. And it works! Lunch is going to be so much easier now. Speaking of which I need to get that together. I still don't know how long it will take me to get to Londonderry, but I'm estimating 30 minutes. It took me 20 minutes to ride home from Belvadere station yesterday, which is about 10 minutes from Londonderry Mall. Again, approximations. Some stuff doesn't require preparation, such as the chocolate coated sesame snaps that I found at Save-On Foods the other day. So so so so so good!

When I went to the U of A yesterday for my bi-polar clinic, I arrived over an hour early. I decided to take a look in the bookstore to see if there were any books for my courses in yet, and there were. My Comparative Literature (or C LIT) 342 had most, if not all of the books there. Eight novels and a compelation of short stories comprise the list. Uh oh. I bought five of them, since four were used (and thereby cheaper than new), and the compelation was a course pack, and hence a moderate, but fixed, price. The other four, or three, novels that I left weren't that expensive. One of them was Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer. Another was Solaris, the novel that served as the basis for the George Clooney flick. I might just watch the movie. I know I should read the book, and I started reading one of the books I bought, with the goal to read them all before classes start, but we'll see.