Soft

There was a time in my life when a 12 hour workday wasn’t all that out of the question. A couple times, in fact.

When I worked at venus envy, we were a brand new store here, and had the same start up trials and tribulations that any new independent store has. We had few staff because we could afford few staff. So I worked. A lot. Though there were days that I felt dragged out – and those days did increase as the years wore on - I didn’t really mind it. I was getting to do something pretty amazing and I was getting to do it with people I really enjoyed. Especially Shelley. Working with Shelley was not like working at all.

But I’ve gotten soft in the years since I left venus envy. I’ve been at my current job now almost three years, and because it’s officey, there’s rarely anything that can’t wait till tomorrow.

But now I'm in conference world, and everything needs to be done either now or 5 minutes ago. I started work this morning at 7 am. Not bad, considering that most of my co-workers were at the conference centre at 6. Now it’s almost 7 pm, and I’m waiting for people to show up: the bus leaves for the West Edmonton Mall in 15 minutes and I don’t think anyone is going to show up.

Edmonton seems like a nice city. Not that I’ve seen much of it. The Shaw Convention Centre is nice for a convention centre. From the registration desk, where I will spend at least 6 hours of my day tomorrow, I get to look out over the North Saskatchewan river.

On the way in from the airport, I saw the Edmontonian version of the Byward Market. It was three degrees outside, and there were lots of girls wearing hot pants. It's on the other side of the river from my part of town. I’m staying right downtown, and even then all I’m getting to see of it is the 8 blocks between my hotel, the City Centre Mall (where I get my elastics), and the convention centre.

Okay, that’s a lie. The first day, I walked out of the convention centre and took a right instead of a left, and ended up on the seedy block. Those are my souvenirs. I'm too fucking tired to deal with them right now. Later, later.