Long weekend scuttled: Forty Words for Sorrow

It turns out that I'm not getting a long weekend this time, either.
I work Sunday night into Monday--which I had thought was a stat holiday. I called Head Office on this, in the guise of caring about unnecessary labour dollars spent (why pay people time and a half when you don't have to?) and was cheerily informed that no, as far as they're concerned, if the shift *starts* on Monday it means time and a half. If it *starts* on Sunday and goes into Monday, nope, that's regular rate.
I still think they're full of shit on this point. Every collective agreement I found on the Web yesterday took my side. (Never thought I'd say this, but I regret not being at one of the unionized stores right now.)
When I worked at 7-Eleven (and believe you me, I worked a lot of stat holidays), their policy was a shift starting at 11:00 p.m. the day before the holiday and going into the holiday itself was paid at time and a half.
But I won't argue it any further: I'd lose.

So I'm working Sunday night and off Monday night. Which bites, not just because hey, no long weekend! but because it means I work one night and am off for one. Why is that bad? Because I pretty much have to keep the same schedule on my one day off: sleep during the day and stay up all night. I'll "flip" for two consecutive days--and was really looking forward to three--but a single day off isn't worth the effort. I'd probably get sick.

I guess I shouldn't bitch overmuch. After all, I don't generally work weekends, which is all but unheard of in retail. Even getting two consecutive days off at any time is an extreme rarity: you office types have no idea how lucky you actually are.

So our condensed weekend involves plenty of relaxation. We haven't had a weekend alone at home together with no obligations for what seems like a year or so.

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Went to Value Village yesterday. I used to be more than a little leery of even going into stores like that. Somehow I'd gotten it into my head that all those clothes belonged to the recently deceased. Even when that misconception was corrected, I still had a case of the yuckies at the thought of wearing clothes that somebody else had worn.
Stupid of me. You go into any clothing store at all, even an upscale one, and chances are good to excellent anything you try on has been tried on before. Possibly by somebody with serious hygiene issues. You never know, right? What's more, none of it's been washed since.
Really, you can find some amazing deals. I got a suit once, an almost perfect fit, for $25; it probably originally retailed for at least ten times that.
Then there's the books. You never know what you're going to find. I just finished an excellent Canadian crime novel called Blackfly Season--easily one of the best police procedurals I've ever read. Unfortunately, I discovered after I started reading it that it was the third in a series. I've made that mistake before, picking up Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic on the strength of stellar reviews, only to find out it was the third in a series. (Eva's since collected the whole set).
Anyway, Blackfly Season stands alone quite well, but hints at character development in the other books. Blunt's writing is phenomenal, and I like to reward Canadian writers when I can. We were actually planning a Chapters run today. Lo and behold, sitting on the shelf in Value Village was the first novel in the series, Forty Words for Sorrow. My hand shot out like lightning and grabbed it...the cashier couldn't find the price, so I ended up getting a $10.99 novel, one for which I was more than willing to pay full price...for 99 cents. My inner miser was doing a happy dance for the rest of the day.
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The fall election campaign in Ontario is cycling up and unless something comes out in the next few weeks that blows my socks off, I'm probably not voting Tory for the first time in my life. The more I look at the Green Party platform, the more I like it. They're really not just a one-trick pony. I don't like everything in it: they're in for a rude awakening if they think they can rely on solar and wind to meet our energy needs, for instance--but I'll never like everything in any party's platform unless I create the platform myself.
The only thing still tethering me to the Tories (well, two things, really): our MPP, Elizabeth Witmer, who really has done an excellent job. Also, the Conservatives have the best chance of defeating Dalton "Pinocchio" McGuinty and I really don't like the thought of four more years of broken promises and outright lies.
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Macleans this week has a great article about mediocre students and how they tend to do better later in life than the academic dynamos. Teachers, it says, are "former A students teaching mostly B students how to work for C students". I recognized myself several times along the course of that article. I was an Ontario Scholar, which just means I got an A average in my final year of high school. I used to brag about that, but long ago realized it meant diddly-squat. I had, and still have, a drive to learn things. I've never had much of an urge to do anything with the stuff I've learned. According to this article, that's pretty common amongst A students. The C students (and even the dropouts) have a different skill set, one that's often more in tune with getting ahead in the world. For instance, C students are often social climbers, which translates into people skills that reward them in their careers. Also, many of them simply find school boring and irrelevant. Their grades have little or nothing to do with their intelligence. Once they find something that interests them, they can attack it with determination and diligence. (That's Eva, right there...her high school record was no great shakes, but she's gone on to get diplomas and designations galore, and has been a raving success in everything she's tried. You look at her marks in high school and you might make the mistake of thinking she's dumb. My wife is smarter than I am.
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Seven in the morning. Time to go back to bed. That's another pitfall of working nights...even if you stay up most of the day trying to flip your inner clock, as I did yesterday, and go to bed utterly whipped, odds are you'll pop fully awake sometime in the wee hours. Ah, well, all together now, weekends are for napping.