I am having lunch tomorrow at the KFC/Taco Bell combo location near Coquitlam Centre. I have not been there in several months. I am so excited!

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I am in my third day of my holidays and I have already put myself on an odd sleep schedule. I tend to go to bed at 5am or 6am in the morning and wake up around 2pm or 3pm in the afternoon. It certainly is refreshing sleep and for those days where I don't have anything planned, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

For all the OT I've done, it feels so rewarding to finally just sleep until I'm ready to wake up. It does, however, feel somewhat weird that in time I've been sleeping, most of the city will have woken up, gone to work, worked at their jobs, and are about ready to go home when I finally stir from my bed. Ok, it's almost bed time for me.

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Tonight, I was driving by the Real Canadian Superstore off Lougheed by the movie theatre when I noticed it was now open 24 hours a day because of the holidays. My intention was to go to the Wendy's drive through but it was closed. Instead, I decided to pop into the Superstore to get some eats.

It turns out the Superstore is a great place to shop when there is no one there. It's absolutely cavernous in there and you could go minutes at a time without seeing a single person. I picked up some canned soup, deli meats, and some potato chips before heading off to the check out. It's here where the visit got a little disappointing. There was only a single line open. To make matters worse, a young lady two spots in front of me had trouble paying her $30 bill. She didn't look homeless or destitute, her bank account just didn't have the funds. Shouldn't she have first checked how much money she had? Nonetheless, she had to keep removing items from her stuff to get it down to a reasonable amount.

I wonder what else is open 24 hours now?

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Fair warning before this post goes any further, I'm going to get whiny in this one. So, this past Friday, Black Box had their holiday party which I was quite pleased to attend. It was a great evening, a themed evening no less, as we were transported back to old time Hollywood. The facilities crew did a great job of organizing things and really made the Commodore Ballroom look and feel like the 1930s and 1940s. I had an awesome time.

Having said that, there were prize draws and I entered my name in. You always hope to win something. Here's just a partial list of prizes: Canucks tickets (several pairs were given away, different games too), gift certificates for good restaurants (Sutton Place hotel and Italian Kitchen), gift certificates for Future Shop, gift certificates for spas, lift tickets at Whistler, ipods, tickets to Franz Ferdinand, and tickets to Katy Perry. Pretty good eh?

My name came up in the draw. I won something. You know what I won? An orchid plant. Me and two other dudes won an orchid. We won flowers. I should be grateful that I won anything but I won a flower. I happened to be downtown this evening, so I swung by the studio to pick up my prize. Yep, there it was waiting for me. A single orchid in a planter. I didn't drive so there was no way I could take that thing home on the bus. So I took it to my desk and just put it there. I'll have drop by on the weekend or something when I can drive and pick it up then. A flower.

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Since the beginning of the month, select Wal-Mart stores in Canada have been open 24 hours a day for the holiday shopping season. This must make sense for Wal-Mart financially as I can't see them doing this just for the hell of it.

I went to Wal-Mart tonight because I needed to stock up on essentials. With all the OT I'd been doing, I hadn't been there in while. I easily could have gone earlier but it's always a madhouse at Wal-Mart, so the prospect of shopping in relative peace led to my 1am trip.

Pulling into the parking lot, I was surprised to see as many cars as I did. I was prepared to be the only one shopping but there were easily 15 fifteen cars in the lot. Granted, many of those could have been employee cars. When I walked into the store, I was greeted by a security guard which made sense since Wal-Mart probably didn't want any 5am shenanigans going on.

At 1am, it was clear that there was a lot of re-stocking of shelves going on. Many aisles had open pallets in them, as workers were busy putting product back on the shelves. In this sense, I had to shop around this process. It wasn't too inconvenient and I realize when a store is open around the clock, re-stocking and maintenance has to happen some time.

I quite enjoyed the rather peaceful nature of shopping in a nearly deserted Wal-Mart. Usually, this location is jammed full of riff-raff during day and that leads to massive lines at the checkout. In contrast, I was free to flitter from aisle to aisle, without the need to dodge carts and undesirables at every turn. I found myself in one particular peaceful moment as I perused the dark chocolate selection while the soothing vocals of Aaron Neville bid me a "Silent Night" over the PA system. It was then I knew Wal-Mart was onto something.

The store wasn't exactly deserted but there sure wasn't a whole lot of people. There was one person who I couldn't tell if it was a man or woman. There were a few couples here and there, mostly older folks. There was one group of twenty-something dudes, they looked like they were mostly bored. There was easily more staff than shoppers on hand.

With two checkout lines, I paid for my stuff in less than a minute, which has to be a record for me at Wal-Mart. This was the most pleasant shopping experience I've had there. If you hate the crowds at Wal-Mart, I suggest you try shopping at the Lougheed Town Centre location well after 1am.

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