September 2020 Monthly Entry
Fall is almost upon us though it is getting colder at night. The rest of summer was actually pretty hot at times but not enough to make me sweat in my bedroom or keep me up at night. Maybe I've gotten used to it. But summer this year was very nice and bearable. The wildfires down on the west coast US has brought smoke up here for well over a week. I pray they can extinguish those fires before the end of the month and get some rain in the region too.
Labour Day weekend I would have returned to Spokane, WA for Knights Gathering after a six year absence, but thanks to Covid... so we instead did the Interchapter meeting via Skype at 3pm on Sept.6. Next year, my chapter will be hosting Gathering, but it will be dependent on where we are with Covid and if travel restrictions are lifted.
The kids have come back to school in full swing since Monday. The teachers were slow in preparing their classrooms beforehand - they literally had just shy two weeks to work on them! Moving desks and setting up ways for kids to do lots of hand washing were the biggest priorities. It pissed off us custodians when there was lots of furniture moving and then thinking we were done, some teachers would make last-minute requests and/or the ones that finally came in to work on their rooms before the two weeks were up, now wanting their furniture moved. Rosser didn't have this problem as much but Montecito had us move a lot of furniture into one of the rooms downstairs that I clean. For both schools, we had to lug and stack ALL carpet rugs. Montecito was the worst as Jay and I had to carry all 8 rugs from upstairs to downstairs. Besides now storing all those tables, chairs, filing cabinets, large rugs, etc. that room is now the new "isolation room" for the year. In June, they used the music room. The isolation room is for kids that staff may suspect be infected with Covid so they are put into that room while they wait for that kid's parents to pick them up. If it's used, they let me know and I give it an extra disinfecting. All I know is that one day, all that furniture and rugs will have to be put back in their respective classrooms all around the school. Not looking forward to that torture on my muscles.
I finally got to meet Jay when I returned from my time off on Sept.2. I recognized him immediately as the one who cleaned around the 2nd floor of Burnaby Mountain. We get along and work well together. After Labour Day weekend, I found that they once again screwed with his schedule, like they did before. He was again forced to work 6:30am-3pm even though his actual shift should be 10am-6:30pm. David, my sub-foreman at Rosser, suggested he call our shop steward and get the union involved. So I wrote a message in our book with the shop steward's phone number to see if he could help. I also added a little tidbit: at Rosser, we have an 8-hour casual day custodian now, similar to what happened in June. So Rosser is getting a combined 18 hours of custodial service among 3 of us, while Montecito only gets 14 hours and 2 of us - and Montecito is the bigger school! So it makes no sense. The principal knew about this and soon after, our custodial manager came to our school last Thursday to discuss the issue with both Jay and the principal. Surprisingly, our manager agreed with Jay and said he could have the shift that was advertised to him. They then had to put in a request with the Board to budget having a 4-hour casual custodian come in the morning. This surprised me, while it is 2 total hours more than Rosser, I find it a little excessive. But I guess they are willing to pay for it and no longer need someone to open up the school in the morning. Jay began his real shift on Monday so it was nice to see him in the afternoon. It'll be good for us both as we can do things together when needed - like move heavy furniture instead of being forced to do it on our own. But it is also good that some of the casual custodians are being called back to work given how limited they were utilized in the spring and summer.
The windows that were smashed at Montecito in July have been replaced a couple weeks ago. I'm glad no one took advantage of causing more mischief this entire time after we immediately cardboarded those windows up! Also, the new daycare centre right next door to us has opened last month, and only now have we got a custodian to come in to clean it. I'm glad it doesn't much involve Jay and I! I found out that this 4-hour (5-9pm) shift starts at Seaforth before coming and cleaning the daycare here. It's kind of a strange arrangement, I must say.
While Rosser, hasn't gotten that much difficult since the kids returned on Monday, Montecito is another matter. The set up of student desks and dealing with chairs that are still set in, has made sweeping the dusty floors more frustrating. The chairs cannot be stacked at the end of the day and this means more tighter space to try and sweep around. Wiping down all the tables and high-touch surfaces isn't too bad on me, but the worst is the garbage and recycling! Students and teachers can consume about one pack of paper towels a day! This means we will be going through our boxes of paper towels very quickly and our garbage cans have been overflowing with hundreds of towels compressed in. I've been hating this big time! While we cannot stop the excessive use of paper towels, Jay and I requested that we get another paper/cardboard recycling tote from the City of Burnaby so it can ease emptying the garbage cans and small recycle bins. I hope our request gets approved. Besides that, while it is nice to no longer vacuum in my Montecito run and a couple of rooms are getting very little use at this time, it is still a struggle each night to sweep and disinfect as much as possible. The upstairs girls washroom is easier with three stalls and one sink being locked off though replacing empty toilet paper rolls is more common now. I guess by next month's entry I'll have a better idea on how this will all go.
On my way to Toronto I watched the classic 1966 spaghetti western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly via Netflix download. I've seen some of this movie before but never the entire thing. My folks love this movie and we still even have the VHS that they bought around 30 years ago. While this film is the third in the Dollars trilogy, I've not seen the previous two. The thing that strikes me with this film is the beautiful cinematography. Lots of sweeping landscape shots and natural beauty with no colour correction. Everything is gritty and harsh, no Photoshop to make things vibrant and fake like today's films. The acting is very superb with a younger Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach who play Good, Bad, and Ugly respectively. While Cleef passed away in 1989 at 64 years of age, Wallach passed away in 2014 at 98 years of age! The film also features the hunky Italian bearish actor Mario Brega, who played Corporal Wallace. He sadly died in 1994 at age 71 in Rome, his birthplace. Outside of that, the film is slickly written and the theme song is super epic! The final act of blowing up the bridge and the three-way duel at Sad Hill Cemetery (which is actually in Spain), gives a great pay-off at the end of this film. The last thing I'll say is that my late-Daddy David watched this film in (I think) 2013 for the first time when he borrowed a copy of the DVD from the local library in Port Coquitlam. I believe he liked the film too, despite the western genre wasn't his thing.
On the way back to home from Toronto I saw Ghostbusters II via Netflix download. While the original was a better and funnier movie, this sequel wasn't terrible. I thought the premise was dumb that the Ghostbusters are punished for their saving New York in the previous film and reduced to losing their business! WTF? The "manufactured problem" plot that makes no sense, is a problem in some sequel films. While it's nice to have all the main cast back, we don't get much of all 4 Ghostbusters being together. There was at least one throwback to the first movie in having something large going through New York: instead of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, they use the Statue of Liberty instead. I'll have to say, it was kind of cool. I thought the scenes between Peter and baby Oscar was too much filler and slowed the film down. I still refuse to watch the 2016 Ghostbusters film but I'll see what next year's Afterlife will be like with fans and audiences before deciding to watch it someday.
For the Nostalgia Critic's review of Ghostbusters II go here or below:
Click to viewFor Doug and Rob's Real Thoughts on the film, go here or below:
I don't know why it took so long, but for whatever reason I've never gotten around to watching Hellboy II: The Golden Army even though it has been out for over a decade. I did like the first movie and this sequel is pretty good too. Ron Pearlman returns as Hellboy and looking as sexy as ever (nice red buff body, mutton chops, tight leather pants, and cigar...). Some of the past characters return and while the plot is fine, it sadly set up future films that ended up not coming to fruition. There was a 2019 reboot that was panned and while I may watch it in the future, it's a shame director Guillermo del Toro couldn't continue the series with his own style and good casting choices at the time.
I'll be done Lost in Shadow soon and the review will be up. Dragon Quest IX I've barely started and may not much get into it until probably after October. I've started Star Trek: Enterprise and still early in it. I've finished season 4 of Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac, the longest season of the series. Still quite a bit left but I am just over halfway through it now.
Last Movie: Avengers: Endgame (Theatrical), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Netflix)
Last Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - The Screwtape Letters
Last Game: The World Ends with You (DS)
Current Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - Miracles
Current Games: Lost in Shadow (Wii) & Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS)