No way I should mention this, it is probably a corporate secret, but it looks like Bendigo Bank is going to close. I was told yesterday, and have heard the same thing a few times, that they are closing most of the branches and the main office where I am now is closed. You can't get into the building and it is a 14 story building. All the doors are closed and there are signs up about it being available for lease. There is a coffee shop on the bottom floor and that is open as it has a window out onto the street, but the sitting area is closed. Not sure what is going on, but I have heard that they are closing 2/3 of the branches and shutting most of the offices. It was already a ghost town in the offices I go to and I have been responsible for closing some of the branches, packing up all the equipment, so that part is definitely true. The rumor I heard yesterday was they were cutting most of the staff and then were going to sell the name. But it is all rumor at this point and I am sure I am not allowed to talk about it. Since no one actually reads this, I will probably not get into trouble but then again, make it will make me famous for being the first to report it publicly.
Now that I have wasted five minutes of me time allotted, I should probably just end this and get ready to go. I am at the branch office which is next door to the building that is closed. I brought the family along so we can go look around in the city. I am in the city in case I had not mentioned that. They are waiting a few blocks away. But since Maeghan keeps texting me asking when I am going to finish, I don't get to type in here, so it is kind of a wasted effort. And now she just told me they went to the market, one of the main reasons I brought them into town, so we could go to the market together. Now I have to make them all go again because I have wanted a sausage from there for over a year but am never in town while it is on.
30 seconds left, so I am going.
Well, I'm back. On the normal day, Friday at work. I never made it back to this. I almost started again yesterday but then decided not to. I was at the computer early in the morning and I could have started but it was early and I wanted breakfast so I never did. Thought about it though, so I get some credit. Not half but maybe 14% credit. I will tally it up and see where it falls on the meter.
I finished up the computer I was working on, packed it up and sent it on its way. I was going to meet everyone at the downtown market but when I asked where the others were, they said they had already been to the market. Kind of thought that was the main reason we came into town was to go to the market together but there it was. They were in the crappy mall that substitutes for a shopping center in town. By the way, that sentence had five miss spellings in it, crappy, substitutes, shopping, center and town. I can tell this is going to be a crappy day. And by crappy, I mean bad, not fishy as some of you probably thought I meant to say. I just can't type at the moment and I might just give up and come back to it. I got here early and then had to sit through a Covid test, as I always do, and I could not get it to work so had to do it twice. By that time, the boss found me and asked what I was up to today. I told him I did not know yet so he said to drop by. I am typing this instead of going over there so I should stop, admit I can no longer type correctly, and find out what he wants.
Or I could just sit here and hope it gets better. I think it might be as I warm into it but we will see. I used to be able to type 120 words a minute while I was in school, and that was on an old IBM selectric or whatever they were called. 120 words a minute and for the test, you had to do it with less than 2 mistakes. I remember being able to type while people talked to me, making a lot of mistakes, but the fact that I could keep up was amazing in itself. Now, I cannot even remember what I was going to type when I start a sentence and then get to the end. It is always an adventure trying to remain coherent. And I could have sworn I miss spelled that word, I even reached for the mouse to fix it, but it turns out it was correct the first time, so things are looking up.
Let's get back to the day in town. They had already eaten. They had already done most everything. My plan was to go to the market, walk down by the river, go to East street pier and then walk back to the train station. They had already gone to the market, the river walk is still closed and the East street pier is under rehab from the floods. So it left very little for us to do. We walked down a fancy shopping street, actually just a walkway in the middle of a building that pretends to be a street but is actually just a walkway with expensive shops in it. We had coffee and a pineapple upside down cake. Maeghan and I figured out it was not really pineapple upside down cake as it was just a regular cake with pineapple on top but it was ok. William wandered off so we sat and waited for him for a while. He had money and could not wait to spend it, like his mother, so he was anxious to find a place to spend it. I think he got some candy or something.
After that, we went back towards the shopping center again. Did I mention I do not like that place. It is the Myers center and has a few floors of shops in the middle of George street. There used to be amusement rides in the top of it but that is long gone and now there is just an arcade and movie theater up there. I did not go back in. I said I was going to go to the market and meet them back there.
I went to the market but the line for sausages was a 30 minute wait. They said it was really long when they stood in it but I did not want to wait that long, so I made on lap of the market and headed back. It is a very small market, comprised almost exclusively of food trucks. I think there are only three places that are not food related, so it is not much of a mall. I have always wanted a sausage from the sausage place as there always seems to be a line there, but I am sure it is just the normal array of sausages at all sausage carts so it might not have been that special. I have wanted to go there for a couple of years but something always stops me. This was no exception and I once again did not get a sausage.
By the time I got back, they were still in the mall so I waited out on the benches and watched all the people go by. They eventually came out and sat with me. Juanita said she enjoyed sitting there. William was hungry again so I ordered some food remotely and had him go pick it up. He took a while and I was just about to go try to find him when we saw him headed back. They ate the food and then we decided to just head home.
On the way back, we went by Wintergarden shops so we went inside to see if it had changed any. It had not. Juanita bought a bag to carry stuff in. Maeghan and I went up to the third floor where the bowling alley is. Never been inside there but they have bowling and laser tag and a bar. I decided we didn't need to go in as it was too expensive to bowl and no one wanted to play laser tag, except William who is always ready to play but he would probably been playing by himself at that time of day and that is certainly no fun. So we left.
We were headed back to the train but I decided we wanted a beer from the Pig-N-Whistle. There are a few of these along the walk, one at each end and one over by another building. The one we stopped at is one where a guy had once bought me a beer. Long story but he was a drunk crazy guy and I had stopped to get something to eat and he heard me talking and recognized my American accent and decided to by me a beer and talk non-sense to me. It was a few years ago and not much else to tell about it but we stopped there before we went to the train.
I had a small Guiness, Juanita had a green tea, and William had a giant Pepsi. Maeghan had been looking for some stickers or something so she went to another store to see if they had them. I am not sure what stickers she needed but the store she went to did not have them either.
Once she was back, we left. Went to the train, went home. Nothing else to tell.
I am going to stop this entry right here. It is relatively short, so that is good. I will probably start another one this afternoon but right now, I am going to get coffee, or go find out what the boss wants. I just heard him make an announcement over the speakers that someone needs to go move their car because they are cleaning the walls beside where it is parked and it will get sprayed if they do not. Not sure why they are cleaning the walls but I am sure they need it for some reason. This place just had their accreditation renewed so I am sure it is part of that.
So until next time,
Later