See my October 4th entry for this entry’s subject reference.
Anyway, it’s been eleven days since I posted something new! Like, seriously, I could have posted a whole wack of mini entries dedicated to some of the things I’ve been up to, but no. Because, knowing me, it takes time for me to post an entry. Sure, the typing takes time, and I know I’m long-winded, but I also proofread, spell check, and grammar check my content. Oh, and if there’s XHTML in there, I make sure that it’s compliant.
Anyway, plenty of things happened. I got as many editions of the Transformers DVD as I could afford – the 2-Disc Special Edition, the HD-DVD, the Wal-Mart exclusive, and the FutureShop Autobot exclusive (Esmond picked up the FutureShop Decepticon exclusive, and Eugene got the Best Buy exclusive – but is also fishing on eBay for the Target exclusive). With as little free time I had since I bought it, I’ve managed to watch the movie three times. However, I’m not a kid anymore and I can’t watch something too much or I’ll get sick of it. Seriously. Disney’s Aladdin VHS tape met the VCR over 20 times. I will probably never watch that movie ever again, now that I think about it.
Okay, maybe one more time. 🙂
So, big news. My budget plan has now officially entered the war zone. I paid off my RRSP loan two days ago. That’s an extra $400 I won’t see coming out of my bank account for the next few months. Since that happened, I sat down yesterday between tasks at work and churned out a spreadsheet table of all my transactions, both posted and projected. It gave me a bird’s eye view of what to expect over the next two years. As it turns out, many of my other debts may be paid off sooner than I originally thought, now that I have some real world figures. 2008 will be a very lucky year for me, because I’ll have three pay periods in a month… three times. Amazing, isn’t it? I have this thing with the numbers 8 and 3. The number 8 is just an all-around lucky number for oriental people, but 3 is my favorite number. I always try to keep both numbers hand-in-hand when I do things, and I consider it very lucky when both numbers turn up in situations just like I mentioned above. If you don’t follow, 2008 is the eighth year of the century (and any number ending in 8 is generally considered lucky). I have a feeling that 2008 will be a very auspicious year for oriental people all over the world.
Wal-Mart has hired some of the most laziest workers in the electronics department, or they are seriously understaffed (which doesn’t seem to be the case, as they have a swarm of workers there). I was expecting to have a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics – The War of the Lions in my hands by now, but no. They got two copies in last week and I hesitated because I wanted to keep my spending to a minimum since I only get so much money from the restaurant, so I missed out, but I knew that they would get more in eventually. Well, eventually sure is correct, because that implies an undetermined amount of time, at which point may be later than sooner. When I showed up yesterday at lunch for their games shipment (every Wednesday), they had a huge pile of shipment sitting on a trolley in front of the till in electronics, still unpacked, and with nobody seeming to care if it got done or not. I thought to myself, ‘Okay, that’s fine. There IS quite a lot of shipment there, so they’ll probably get it done by the time I get off work.’ When I came back from work, the pile hadn’t even changed! Today, at lunch, I went back and they only had half of it unpacked, and most of that was sitting in piles all over the counter! UNACCEPTABLE!! Jennie, if you’re reading this, it’s not just your old store that has problems.
I found Tales Of The World – Radiant Mythology at Blockbuster for $29.99, which is a steal. Not even used copies are going for that low (except on eBay, but once you add the shipping, you might as well have paid the full retail price of $44.99). I’ve been hesitating, but I picked it up today after work. Also, nobody in town seems to have gotten in Gyakuten Saiban 3 yet. How odd.
After my little addiction to Feist, I decided to find other similar-sounding artists like her. Unfortunately, nobody even comes close to her (though I’ve been listening to Steve Jablonsky’s Transformers movie score and Katharine McPhee – what an eclectic mix), but after trying to find the song for the new Joe Fresh Style commercial, I did manage to find an interesting indie artist. As it turns out, both Joe songs (Mixed Up and Dream Tonight – download for free here) were [not written but] sung by Toronto-born Rhonda Stakich, and while the songs are very Feist-sounding, her own music leans more towards folk pop. Through her, I also discovered fellow indie artist, Ana Miura (who might be part-Japanese due to the surname). I’ve never really considered myself a fan of folk music, although Lee‘s stuff was pretty good when we were mellowing out at a social gathering of friends, but I guess YUI started out with a folk rock style (I don’t like her second album as much as the first one), and she’s one of my top favorite artists. That’s what convinced me to buy Ana Miura’s album – the first MP3 album I’ve ever bought online. And why not? Indie artists seem to have a certain flair in their music that many professionally produced artists on major labels don’t. Plus, I’m going the way of the iPod these days, and I don’t need another CD cluttering my shelf (unless it’s a special limited edition or something). However, I don’t like DRM, so I bought Ana Miura’s album off a site called PayPlay.FM. It’s a very nicely designed site as well, and it works similar to Sony’s Playstation Store on PS3 and PSP with their wallet system. In fact, I wish more stores would use that model to reflect changes in our currency exchange rates (are you listening, Microsoft and Nintendo, with your proprietary and expensive point systems?). I hate the fact that many retail items here in Canada are still $10 or $20 more expensive than in the US. Anyway, I digress. Ana Miura’s album certainly won’t be the last MP3 album I purchase online, that’s for sure. I’ve found added more and more artists to my PayPlay.FM favorites, most of them folk artists, like Brooke Ramel, Megan Slankard, Ingrid Michaelson, Amy Steinberg, Kirsten Melrose, and Deb Talan. Can’t forget about rock artists too, like Top Of The Orange, Morgan, Emilie Autumn, the7method, and Ariel S. Lee. I even found both indie favorites from my FYDE days, Red Delicious and Marc Pattison.
Wow, you actually read up to the end of this massive entry? Congratulations.
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