Della's house, I rented the basement suite while in college.
My little '91 Chev Sprint putt-putt is out front...
So this brings me to Calgary. I was starting to get "tunnel vision" living in a small town of 3,000 and wanted more from God. I felt I reached a plateau being there, and needed something else. I sough God for a year before making a move, but where? I thought of Bible School, or moving to Vancouver, or Edmonton.
Being an Edmonton Oiler hockey fan, I would *NEVER* live in the arch rival city called Calgary. It was like selling your sister for a cigarette, or eating vomit. All the panzies lived there. They didn't have a good hockey or football team, was a bunch of snobs and looked too American.
Never say never.
A couple of traitors, err I mean friends, moved down to Calgary for work. Out of the blue, they BOTH phone me and say "you should move down to Calgary".
I have to say, another reason I needed to move away from Grand Center, was i was getting burnt out doing a lot of religious and private things. Work was not going well, as the manager there was not a people orientated type. A great accountant, but lacking in people skills. This made for many a tense situation between him and the staff. In the last 2 years I was there, over 12 people quit. So I really didn't want to find another automotive parts job right away, and end up in the same situation.
In prayer more and more, I felt Calgary was where God wanted me. So i drove down there one day to visit one of my ol' buddies who phoned me (hoping no one back home knew I was going to 'that city')...
Immediately I felt this was the place to be. Being "super spiritual" (yeah right), I asked God for another confirmation! hahahah geeze, good thing He has a sense of humour. Well, my buddies place just had new concrete poured in their back yard, and the company was called "Born Again Construction". Out of all the construction companies, here was one with a Christian name.
So being super spiritual again, I asked for another "sign". Well I moved down in Jan 91 officially and that year, that winter was the warmest a lot of people can remember. It was so warm in February, they say August never got that warm. Weather people said it was because of the El Nino. Big deal, I don't think it was just happen chance I decided to move down then and had these things happen to me.
First I stayed with a 94 year old lady named Marie. (The house to the right of the one in the picture above). She was one quick minded lady, or as she put it, she had all her ducks in a row...Her mind was clear as a bell, but her body was slowly failing her. Was sad to see.
After a year (1992), she could not see very good, and she moved to a senior citizen's homecare place, and I had to find a new place to live. One of the last things Grandma Marie did was ask the neighbour to take me in. Ha, bless her heart, she didn't want to see me out on the street.
While at Marie's I couldn't find steady work. So I did odd jobs like the rent-a-cop thing (security guard) and did some selling of candies and nuts for a company. But didn't make much.
I also did the church hop, going from place to place, but never felt at home. One day someone told me to come to a monday night young adults meeting at their church. Monday night church??? Only football happens monday nights. But I went...and been going there ever since.
The church is called, First Assembly. With a God fearing pastor, and a great staff, and worship! Right on, that's what i wanted..a church that worships in Spirit and in Truth. No prepackaged songs for me, no rituals, no "cuz it's sunday we sing these songs" but spontanious combustion worship. Dy-no-mite!
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any real good jobs, and asked the Lord why again. I felt that I should upgrade my skills...after all, this was 1991, and there weren't too many OLD Olivetti type writers running around now. I went to a crash course on computers and learned Word Perfect 5.1 and some other stuff.
I sat in a computer class between two lovely ladies - Joesephine, and Linda. Coming near the end of the course, Joesephine was enrolling at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). I thought, hey that's what I need. Upgrade my schooling to College level. This was early August 1992.
Joesephine changed her mind about going to SAIT and after mentioning this, I asked if I could take her place. (Back then you were given a number and put on a list as to when you can apply. I would have been too far down the waiting list to even have the chance to apply, let alone get into a class.)
She wrote to the College and asked if I could take her place. SAIT agreed and I was in! Now where was I going to get the money for class? I didn't know about a student loan till then, and applied with only 2 weeks before the first class. The next week I got my student loan! Usually it takes 4-6 weeks!
Well I tell ya, talk about a culture shock. The last time I was in school was back in college in '78. Egad. Here were "kids" all around me, and wearing the latest clothes and stuff...and nice looking WOMEN! After being in a private all-boys school for 12 years, it was hard to concentrate on what the teachers were saying hahahahha. Well it wasn't that bad, but it was different. Women are so different, they actually even did their homework and studied!
A note here, I really take my hat of to single mom's. There were a few in my class and made 4.0 gpa's (A average)...compared to my 3.33 - sheesh. One lady I knew had 2 young kids, and would rise up at 4am to study "because it was the only quiet time I had", she told me. Then trot the kids off to day care, come to full day of class, and then trudge home with the kids, feed them and put them to bed, and finish the housework.
I'm talking college classes here, 17 hour per week minimum...works out to sometimes about 5 - 7 hours of classes per day, per week...with homework and at least one exam every week.
Anyways, while at SAIT, i opened up more to people, and broadened my vision of the world. I learned valuable stuff, and really enjoyed my time there...except exam week. One final exam week for example, due to a mix up in schedualing had me take 3 finals on the same day! Let's see, at 8am I had Accounting level #I, at 11am Cost Accounting, and at 6pm Statisitics! I was brain dead, and my head hurt so much from number crunching, I actually had a headache and was a bit "spaced out"...
Della:
Well I should talk a bit about Della, Grandma Marie's neighbour. She was a positive influence on me, and helped me a lot. More then one could ask. She's got a big heart you know. Anyways, Grandma Marie had to go to a old folks care home and sell her place. I guess Grandma Marie put a good word in about how such a good tenant I was, and from there I lived in Della's basement suite for 4 years, having just moved in Christmas '96 to the new condo, and in '98 to the house in Scenic Acres i'm presently living in.
Della is a real nice lady, great gardener, and excellent cook. Needless to say, I was spoiled there! She would invite me up to try a new receipe, and more or less I was the guinea pig (oink oink) for her new dishes.
I would try to help around the house, not much, but would do the odd chore like mow the lawn, shovel sidwalks and so on. For this she'd toss down some home made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
I was spoiled...am I complaining? NOT!
She also would proof read my term papers, and usually I'd end up retyping the whole thing over, there would be so many red marks from spelling mistakes, and grammer stuff. She's partly to blame for me getting better marks on my term papers. Oh, also, if you have pictures of squirrels, send them here, I'm going to make a nice postcard for her. She chases the littl' fellers away with those super soakers because they raid her garden!
Well not all time was spent in books. I was involved with the intermural programs at college (was gonna try out for the college basketball team, till i learned the average age of the "kids" there was 20...and me being 35 then, I uh, then went and played on the intermural side of sports). My team won the SAIT intermural flag football championships, so I got a little bragging right. To be honest, it did help my self esteem. I never won anything, always came second or third in any sporting events. But never #1 till then.
I also got influenced by some great teachers at SAIT. Mark Kolodziej, Ray Verity, and Ron Hill. Each had a unique way of inputting things in the studies. But I have to take my hat off to Mark K. He spends long hours at SAIT, and is very approachable by the students. His wife isn't feeling too good, and I'm sure that weighs on his heart, but you never hear about it. My prayers are with him. Some of the teachers there are standoffish, being sorta like "I the teacher, i got a degree, you are the student". But not with Mark. He's one intelligent person, but very open, and down to earth. Same with Ray and Ron.
Anyways, I graduated in April of 1995, with about a 2.8-2.9 average. My first term there I didn't do too good, remember that was after 15 years of not going to school eh! My highest was what i said earlier- 3.33gpa.
Now into the real world. Next page!