I8A 4RE

20 March - Woke up feeling very refreshed after a mostly early sleep but still rather bruised with a multitude of little sprains from the previous day's activities. One of the drawbacks of this upcoming operation is that i'm not allowed to use any antinflammatry potions like my drug of choice ibuprofen - so my wounds will have to stay inflamed. Spectacular weather like on Sunday. Had a call from the WCB, a very nice woman who's taken over my case who was desperate to reassure me that everythingwas covered for my upcoming operation and layoff. Had a brief chat with Cheryl, my new boss (of sorts) and we discussed my future with Novex for a while, not sure what's going to happen just yet. The intelligent fools at the office had turned off my blackberry because it was supposed to be replaced which meant I had to courier 80s style with radio and paper until midday. Shortly after I was online I met my latest trainee - Reno (as in 'I'll see you in hell before i'll see you in Reno'). He's a personal trainer and is obivously very fit and he seems bright enough. The dispatcher seemed to forget that I was training someone for a while and we were completely rushed for a few hours - I was breathlessly explaining to Reno in between picks and drops the reasoning behind my routing 'we're going to go up to lawson, pick up the postal run, drop down the alley to kpmg, down the wind tunnel at dunsmuir, get the return at bental two, run over to bental four - drop that, drop and pick at ten block georgia, get rid of the super at hastings then go to computershare ... No, pick at eight block pender then go to computer share at 510 burrard but we'll use the hornby street entrance, it'll be a couple of minutes late, but it will prevent backtracking and Amera is not a big client, then we get back to Howe and go up there to get rid of the postal return by which stage we should have more trips dumped on us' -I think he got most of it. One of the things I love about this job is is zipping past all of the cars stuck in downtown traffic - after all, it's not often that one can outpace a Ferrari, like I did today. When it comes to moving around a city core there really is no faster way than using a bicycle - always faster than walking, can park anywhere (either bike racks, street signs or parking metres - sometimes freelockng outside or inside when in a pinch), go anywhere (not always legally), this subculture will be around for a little while longer I suspect.