Well, I had my first item stolen in Calgary.
I was just outside with my cup of coffee having a morning smoke. OK, I know, I need to quit. It is bad for my health, that’s for sure. It is also bad for the pocketbook. Cigarettes are about $2.50 more per pack in Alberta than they were in Ontario. A good reason there, on top of them being bad…
Anyway, I went to dispose of my butt in a jar that I had sitting beside my step and the jar was gone. I presume that someone coming through (a bum most likely) decided to take it to smoke the used buts, even though a lot of them would be wet as there was water in the jar from rain (and snow this past weekend).
Not the theft of the week I am sure, but I was surprised. Maybe this is another sign that I should quit. I am feeling that it is the time to quit anyway – seeing as I quit cold-turkey, I need to have that correct feeling otherwise the quitting will be too hard. I get cranky (crankier than usual) when I quit, but the benefits outweigh anything else. So, it will either be at the end of this pack (tomorrow I would guess) or perhaps one more pack.
On the baseball front, I received an email from the Supervisor of Umpires for Little League in Calgary – he passed my name along to the Scheduler for Southern Alberta. About 1 minute after the email comes to me, I get a phone call.
I am sent a bunch of stuff with information, etc., and I fill in the required information and send it back. He asks about my equipment which I sold before I left. Well, I didn’t actually sell it, I left it with AD and he will try to sell it for me. I need to follow-up with him to see what’s become of it. Anyway, he offers to lend me a sent of gear, very nice of him.
I called Baseball Alberta to get some information on getting certified since all of their clinics have already taken place. I need to contact the Supervisor of Umpires for Alberta and see if he will allow me to get certified without going to a clinic. I emailed the Supervisor in Ontario to see if he will email me a letter outlining my experience so that I can pass it along.
The gentleman that I spoke with at Baseball Alberta also passed me onto a contact for a baseball organization just outside of Calgary to see if they need any experienced coaches. All in all, very helpful. I have found everyone that I have spoken with here to be very friendly and welcoming – it is quite nice.
So, I am waiting to hear back – the town is called Strathmore and it is about 1/2 hour east of Calgary. No worse than when I coached in Hamilton with the Thunderbirds for sure.
It looks like I will either be umpiring or coaching – likely not both though. If I coach, I doubt that I will want to umpire much at the same time. My passion is still coaching, I do enjoy being an umpire as well though and the extra money always comes in handy. Since I will need to replace my equipment and uniforms, the money that I make this season will likely go towards paying for that stuff anyway so it will work itself out.
Either way, I plan on taking Zeus and Blondie out with me. They enjoy it and typically are pretty good at ball parks.