Kevin's Ramblings…

A week ago now, I discovered that I had not been paid for statutory holidays in 2025. I am not sure why I didn’t notice during the year that my cheque never really changed, guess I wasn’t really checking carefully at all.

So, I submitted a ticket with HR and we worked with payroll to submit the time that I had missed. In our investigation, with our new payroll system, we discovered that I was also overpaid OT in January, February and March of 2025. I work 12 hour shifts, and for everything over 8 hours, I was paid time and a half and shouldn’t have been.

So, IBM owes me stat holiday pay, and in turn, I owe them for the additional paid time. They have a policy that when there needs to be a clawback in salary that it’s taken over time so it’s not disruptive and employees can continue to pay bills and what not.

Late Tuesday, I checked my lay statement and was shocked to discover that ALL of the 2024 clawback had been applied to my cheque that will be issued on Friday and that my net pay was $0.  Not good.

Anyway, after quite a bit of back and forth, I think I’ll get my normal pay on Monday including, I hope, all of the missed time and then we can start a schedule to slowly repay the overpayment.  This is all theoretical, of course and I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them, so, we’ll see anyway.

I should get an additional almost $4000 less taxes, the keyword being “should”. I await Monday to see what I actually get and if I need to get a hold of HR and payroll again. For the most part, HR has been very helpful, payroll, not so much.

Wish me some luck.

Well, it’s been absolute ages since I’ve posted, a ton has gone on, that’s for sure.

Let’s just say that 2025 was not the greatest of years.

2026 is starting off on a pretty high note.

I purchased a new vehicle, new to me anyway. I am now driving a 2019 Mitsubishi Outlander. My monthly payment went from $1190 on my Dodge Ram 1500 to $430 per month for the Outlander.

I’m moving February 20, exactly one year to the day that I moved into this current place. My landlord isn’t renewing my lease, he says he’s selling, well, good luck selling in this market, but whatever. I’m moving into a brand new luxury apartment complex in Calgary’s North West. I’m really looking forward to it, not the actual move of course, just the new place. I’ve hired movers so my job will be packing and unpacking.

I’ve gotten myself a new dog, Apollo.  He’s a mixed breed, I think I’ll get a DNA kit to see what he is exactly.

He’s fitting in well, getting along with his older sister Twix. I unfortunately lost Hera at the end of October, she passed in her sleep.

I also purchased a new cell phone, it’s a Google Pixel 10 XL Pro. I’m liking it, as I have with previous Pixel phones. I have a case on order, it should be here this week, I hope.

So, 2026 is shaping up well and good riddance to 2025.

I’ve been bad at keeping up with blogging. I’ve been keeping quite busy and have lots to write about, from a boring point of view, but finding time to actually write a post has eluded me.

The last week has zoomed by and it’s already Tuesday on a 4-day workweek for me. Last week I had a 4-day weekend and it went by quickly.

I umpired just 2 baseball games but they were both great baseball games. I’m umpiring back in the Cal Ripken league in Calgary which is the 12u team that goes down to the Cal Ripken World Series where I had the honour of umpiring in back in 2017. The ball is really good quality, I’m surprised at how good those 12 year olds are. It comes down to how the program is run and my friend who organizes it is a great coach and has put together an amazing program. I umpire every Friday evening for Cal Ripken and am mentoring a great young umpire who’s my partner every week.

On the Babe Ruth side of things, they had a LOT of umpires sign up this year, a problem area taken care of, finally. There are over 80 umpires in total which has allowed me to cut down the number of games I’m doing, which is good and bad. I’m only doing 1-2 games per week for Babe Ruth and that’s fine with me. I’ve been able to be very picky about what games I take and what ball diamonds I umpire at. The AAA league has been great and I have a few AA and A games scheduled as well.

In late July, I’m off work for a few days and will be umpiring the regional 14u tournament so that’ll be fun.

Work has been steady but very, very slow. My client has rock solid infrastructure which leads to very few tickets for issues, so, basically we are in stand by in case something goes wrong and this far, not much has. If I were younger, I’d find it too boring and would likely move on, but at the twilight of my career, I’m ok with a slow pace.

All in all, life is good. I hope it is with you as well.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks… I’m settled into a 4 on 3 off, 3 on 4 off schedule at work. I love the 3 and 4 day weekends, that’s excellent, and working 12-hour shifts is easy.

Umpiring season, aka baseball season has started and I’ve been busy with that as well. I’m not taking too many games, a few on the weekends and one or two during the week.

JT and I are going to the Y and that’s awesome. The steam room and hot tub are very relaxing, a great end to the day for sure. I try to make it daily, some days just get away from you is all. I wish they were open earlier and stayed open later, they may be on summer hours now, unsure, hopefully they’ll expand in the fall when more people are going.

So, time is just flying by, and, in general I’m keeping out of trouble, so that’s a good thing.

In sad news, my favourite relative, my Aunt Bernie passed away yesterday afternoon. It wasn’t unexpected, she was 95 after all. There will be some sort of service in the next bit so I’ll be making a trip back to Ontario. I must admit, I’m not a huge fan of Ontario any more. I grew up there, but it’s not a great province. Alberta is definitely home and has been for some time.

Enjoy the rest of the week, the weekend will be here before you know it.

I woke up this morning to a dusting of snow. It’s April 22, so we are a month into spring, but, this is Alberta. We’ve had some nice warm weather, then it’s followed up by cold weather and snow. The snow won’t stick, it’s going to be about 10C today, but for now, it looks festive – if it was Christmas Day.

We had a decent enough weekend. I umpired a double header for Babe Ruth Calgary. Two excellent games. We had a 15 minute hail delay in game two. What excitement.

I didn’t go into work on Monday, I wasn’t feeling well and had absolutely no sleep from the night before. I’m feeling much better this morning and actually slept last night.

Back to the regular routine. Work, dinner, walk the dogs and head to the YMCA. I’m hardly watching any TV any longer, but that’s OK. The evenings zoom by and we often don’t have enough time to get everything done. I’m liking it.

JT and I are heading down to Crowsnest Pass on Friday. I’m going to retrieve my parents antique dresser from a friend who’s been looking after it since I left CNP almost 2 years ago now. We are then heading for dinner at the Indian restaurant and then heading home in the early evening. Should be a good day for a road trip. We’ll bring the dogs as well and will go for a walk before dinner.

This weekend is the Babe Ruth Calgary umpiring clinic. I’m helping out. It’ll be good to mentor the younger umpires. The Supervisor is going to use me to evaluate and train some of the younger recruits this summer, that’ll keep me out of trouble, maybe.

JTs birthday is May 5, we are heading to Banff May 4 and spending the night, should be an awesome trip. We are planning on taking the gondola to the top of the mountain and doing some hiking. I’m toying with the idea of bringing Hera up there with us, we’ll see I guess. The dogs are staying in a boarding/spa facility overnight. They probably won’t like it a ton, but it won’t kill em.

I guess it’ll be a bit busy over the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to the adventures.

Some of you may not know that I have a Doctorate in Procrastination. Actually, I’m well on my way to a second Doctorate in Procrastination.

JT has a Master’s degree in Procrastination. He’s working towards his Doctorate as well.

This doesn’t make for a good combination and we’ve realized that. We’ve acknowledged this, yet, nothing has changed. We’ve realized that we are not going to get done a lot of what we want and need to get done, at least not right away.

Yesterday, for instance, we had a lot planned for the day. We got some of the items completed, but not everything. We had planned on taking the dogs for a walk first thing in the morning. That ended up being later in the afternoon. We planned on going to the YMCA on Friday as I have some guest passes. We didn’t go Friday and although we made plans for Saturday, we didn’t go then, either.

The sad part is that I don’t even know what we did instead. The days zoomed by, so we were busy doing something. What, I’m not sure.

We did hit up a couple of different farmers markets, so that is something. We need to change our Procrastinating ways, for sure. We’ll get on that, first thing tomorrow.

JT is all moved in and all setup. I’ve unpacked three boxes of kitchen stuff and the dishwasher is running to clean it up. He’s got some stuff that I don’t have, so it’ll be added to the various drawers and cupboards and used.

He’s got some very cool wine glasses, have blown, a set of 6. I like em.

Yesterday was a busy day. My cleaning lady came around Noon and then JT and I started our gallivanting. Lowe’s was first on the list, the back gate needed a new latch. Bruce was able to push the gate open and escape, now he’s trapped in the yard as he should be.

We then hit up two different farmer markets, one that I hadn’t been to before. We made a stop at my doctor office so JT could have an infection in his finger checked out. While he was being looked at, I explored the plaza and found a candy store. They had Good and Plenty, my favorite candy, it’s candy coated black licorice. It’s either a love it or hate it relationship with Good and Plenty.

We bought a French baguette at the first farmers market and we were so hungry we ate the entire thing before arriving at the doctors office. It was amazing.

The afternoon was quiet. I had a quick nap, the dogs suffered as well missed our walk yesterday. We are heading to an off-leash park as soon as JT wakes up.

Tonight we’re heading to St. Louis Bar and Grill with a former coworker, so that’ll be good. We are both back to work tomorrow, another week begins.

We got another few inches of snow overnight. Although we didn’t really have a bad winter, I’m tired of cold and snow. It’s supposed to be spring now. Mother Nature is quite the bitch.

The high today is around -3 I think and it’ll be 18 on Monday. Hopefully that’ll be it for winter, but, knowing Alberta weather, we’ll get more.

Nothing much planned for my days off. JT is working today but off on Friday and Saturday. We’re planning on taking the dogs for a hike and I’ll try Bruce off leash for the first time. I mean he’s been off leash already, but that was in a dog park without other dogs around. He’s definitely dog friendly, a little energetic is all.

I’m thinking we’ll go to Edworthy Park, I haven’t been there with the dogs since before Blondie passed. It’s a large park with excellent trails, should be fun.

I do want to clean the truck this weekend. The dog hair is a bit insane. I’m need to get the seat cover back in as well. That’ll keep me out of trouble for an hour.

Enjoy the weekend when it arrives.