I worked my annual shift for Operation Red Nose Saturday night.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself.
After the senses shattering events of Post 1834, we walked around the downtown for a while. We went to the CBC Great CD Sell Off. They are digitizing all the music they care to keep; I don't know what percentage of their total musical assets that represents. But, they sold off 1000's of their cd's on Friday and Saturday, and we decided to check it out. At 25 cents apiece, it's hard to go wrong.
In theory.
CBC's music selection tend toward the obscure. I'm being diplomatic. As we pawed through the boxes and boxes of cd (they also had vinyl), we remarked to another man how we had heard of none of these artists. The guy agreed, saying everything was obscure to say the least. He was at the point where, if it had an interesting cover, he would put it in his "buy" pile. I adopted the same approach. I did pick up a Cynthia Dale cd, where she sings standards. She's best known for her role as Olivia on "Street Legal" year ago, and for being married to Peter Mansbridge today.
The guy also said that the cost of one cd was cheaper than the cost of downloading one song. True, dat. But once I finish ripping these cd's, I won't really need them any more, will I?
Anyway, we wandered back to my car to drop off the purchased cd's. We walked to Queen Street to Back Pages used books. We went over to Spring Garden Road and into HMV. Thence to Just US, where we got some holiday blend coffee. To the car and to Chapters in Bayer's Lake. Dollarama. Home.
It was 3:45, and I would be Red Nosing until late, so I napped for a couple of hours. Got up. Showered and got ready for my shift.
ORN is no longer on the Dartmouth side, for which I'm grateful. My IQ drops 10 points every time I go over there, and I don't have much to spare. They moved to Bayers Lake, 10 minutes from here. Got there around 8.
It was a long night. I was working dispatch, taking calls from clients requiring a ride home in their car. But the phones were set up in such a way that the first phone would ring, then the second, and so on. I was at the 4th phone at first, meaning that the 3 folks ahead of me would all have to be dealing with a client before my phone would ring. They re-jigged the seating arrangement to the point where I was in the first position, which ticked off the woman who ended up in 4th.
I took my zombie book to read. I snacked. I drank 2 Red Bull. The 4 of us took 52 calls, often having to take the phones off the hook for the others to arrange for the drivers to pick up teams.
I have my reasons for volunteering for Red Nose every year. I don't understand why some others do. When the Insurance Bureau of Canada was the primary sponsor, it was understood that local insurance companies would field volunteers, every night. It was obvious that there were people there who didn't want to be there. Folks were "voluntold", and it showed. There were a few of those type of people last night as well, even though IBC is no longer involved. Every night, there are some volunteers who don't want to be there and would rather be somewhere else, anywhere else. Folks, if you don't want to be there, stay home. Don't give us your attitude about having to go to certain parts of the city. Don't rag on us because we joked with you to try to make you and us feel better. Just stay the frig home. We don't want you or need you. Thank you.
We stopped talking calls around 2:15 this morning and waited for the teams to return to home base. We began to clean up. I got out of there just past 3, and arrived home around 3:20.
Newbie and Cindy came downstair, wanting to be fed. I gave them a snack, went upstairs and went to bed. It was around 3:30.
I got up around 11:30 and spent time today, lots of it, on the kind of work that wouldn't tax my brain very much. Laundry and rearranging some furniture and more laundry and ripping cd's and more laundry.
It's now past 10 pm and I'm watching Family Guy. Newbie is on the bed next to me, wanting to turn in, which I will do, shortly.
I work but 3 days this week. Come late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, I will be in the Valley for a few days. I have plenty of business down there later, on this week.
You guys have a good evening.
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
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