I went to Zellers at Mill Woods Town Centre yesterday afternoon to pick up something I had ordered online and delivered to a local store (this saves me the shipping costs).

There were two ladies working the customer service desk. I'll say, the return rate at Zellers must be pretty high. One of the ladies was tied up with a customer who wanted to return and then re-order something that he had initially purchased using HBC Rewards Points and some cash. He wanted his cash back (or something) and didn't have a receipt. The lady had him fill out pages upon pages of forms, and she had to lookup a bunch of stuff on her computer. The phone rang almost every minute, and she handled these as well.

So what was the other lady doing, during this whole time? First, I had to wait some five minutes for another customer returning a bunch of clothing. Then she left to go upstairs to get the product I had purchased (a portable radio). The only item that they keep in the vicinity is the order form. I had to wait about ten minutes for her to fetch it, and the queue grew by two more people, of course, requesting returns. Their customer service desk is severely understaffed.

In other news, Canada's olympic team isn't doing too well. So we chose the "best" athletes that have a chance of finishing 12th or better by setting tough standards, and we only have three medals to date. What could have been if we allowed those who have proven themselves in the past, but just couldn't meet the arbitrarily-set Canadian standards? Congratulations to the medallists, though.

So I decided to go on a walk from Mill Creek Ravine Park (83 St./69 Ave.) and ended up at Concordia University College (71 St./112 Ave.) some two-and-a-half hours later. This represents over 15 000 steps (which I calculated with my Special K step counter).
I saw the "pedestrian overpass" near the low level bridge, which I found was actually closed, because of vandalism and flooding. This stuff you never see unless you walk there yourself.

I'll admit, I jaywalked across 112 Ave. The #2 bus was coming, and although I pressed the crosswalk button, it seemed like an eternity to change. At least 1 minute, and no cars in the flow direction! I didn't want to wait half an hour for the next one, so I just ran. There were two women (both conspicuously adults) who tried to board the bus with a child/senior ticket (value = $1.25). Yeah right, you paid but the coin disappeared, I thought. Good thing the driver didn't fall for their lame trick, and earned the city another $2 in the farebox. Question is, what were they going to do when they got on the LRT? (I watched them get off at Stadium.) If a fare inspector caught them, that would have been a $110 fine. Teach them a good expensive lesson, I say.

On the way home, I boarded a bus where the floor in the back was flooded with black elastic bands that girls use to tie long hair together. My estimate was about 50. The bag that once held these bands was lying under one seat. The story it tells: Girl buys a pack of these and boards bus at mall. Opens the package to take one out to tie her hair. Bus brakes or hits a bump. Bands scatter everywhere. No point in picking up stuff that's touched the floor, and leaves all of them there.

The other peculiar thing was this guy who disembarked the bus (same bus) from the back door, and as if thanking the driver wasn't enough, he said something along the lines of: "You did a fantastic job today! WooO! [claps wildly] Yay for ... #8! God bless you!" Before making any conclusions, the guy was a grown man, and was not drunk. Oh, and he wears Abercrombie and Fitch.

Today there was another unscheduled fire drill in our building at 16:15. Unfortunately, I was on another floor, so when I returned upstairs to retrieve my stuff, somebody who works on my floor told me I couldn't go in. Pretty sure it was a false alarm. I didn't have the energy to wait for the all-clear which could take at least 10 minutes, and I had already walked down eighteen (thirty-six, technically) flights of stairs, so I went home with my time card, ID card, cell phone and pen in hand.

I had a fun time with a bunch of grad mates last night. We went bowling at Gateway Lanes, but I didn't play because of previous experience with bowling balls. Then it was dinner at Sicilian Pasta Kitchen in southwest Edmonton, where I ordered a linguine marinara. We then had bubble tea at some tiny restaurant near Old Strathcona. We relived many moments from high school and the early years in university. I was the only one who had to get up at 06:00 the next morning, and I got home around midnight, but didn't actually sleep until 01:00. To top it off, I had a sore throat, so I got a grand total of three hours of sleep last night. Thankfully I managed to slog through today at work and when I retuned home after the fire drill, I dozed off almost immediately.

Windows XP SP2 has gone gold. However, no matter how much you like to update your OS, you will have to wait a few days before you can download it. Be careful, though, I've heard that it will break some of your apps or hardware drivers. And if you haven't ditched IE, now is the time!

I got a new mouse yesterday. Believe it or not, it's the first optical mouse that I've owned. Until yesterday my experience with optical mice were limited to the computer labs at the university. It's a sleek, black and silver coloured Logitech MX310. I love it!

I was extremely bored at work yesterday. All of my co-workers were either on vacation or taking their earned day off (EDO). I ran out of stuff to do, and usually I would go see my supervisor and talk to him about miscellany or get his newspaper, but he wasn't there either.

My neighbours, who are really generous to let me use their fence as a shortcut on a daily basis for quite a few years now, went out with my family (all three of us) with my grandma for supper yesterday. We went to a Chinese seafood restaurant, and there was way too much food. They get along well with my grandma because they're from the same generation (i.e. old). Not much else happened this week to me. Still looking to that last week of August.