BNJMN

Such Bulk, Much Barn I've been to three different Bulk Barn locations a total of four times in the last two to three weeks. They newer store design with Black walls and bold images of naked products is much nicer than the differently bold red and yellow look. It's actually so much fun seeing just all the different products they stock and that you can get, especially beyond the many section, which let's face it, is where I spent most of my time historically. I love that they are pushing the bring-your-own-container philosophy. It makes shopping much more fun and stocking the pantry much easier. Or, in this picture, stocking my snack station on my work desk. Hopefully it lasts me a bit. No promises. I was inspired recently by Food YouTube to, when baking cookies, use chocolate wafers instead of chocolate chips. This made a huge difference in the cookie batches that I've made more recently. At Bulk Barn, the chocolate wafers (item 1809) were pretty good, but the...

So my last blog entry had me trying to convince myself not to buy a new computer. I needed strong convincing. Then I thought about it. By waiting, sure I could set aside the money… Sure I could get by with my poor, falling-apart Dell. By waiting, however, I’m inching closer to a newer shiner iMac (expected anytime between tomorrow and never). I’m suffering for no real reason. Why not get an iMac now, start transferring over my life. Start all the projects I’l get to “when I get a new computer”? In short, I bought my Mac. It’s like a 15-year dream finally come true. iMac on the bus Who says iMacs aren't portable? Let me tell you, few things are as joyous as the moment when I plugged it in and that screen lit up. It was magic, enhanced by all 27 inches of screen. I’ve lugged all kinds of stuff on a bus before. Faux Christmas trees, giant pencils. Mannequins. Other computers. Bringing a new iMac box on the bus turns heads. It starts conversations. It could seat two, if t...

Last weekend, the Ottawa edition Metro had a cover wrap ad that said, "get your free glasses!" at ClearlyContacts.ca . My initial reaction to shopping for glasses online was wondering how it would even work. Glasses, I would expect, are something that you really need to try before buying. They're like jeans, strawberries, and puppies - something that requires some form of interaction before making a purchase. But free? How can you argue with free? I went to the site and chose one of the first frames I saw, not because they were amazing, but because I wasn't too keen on scrolling through pages upon pages of glasses. The ones I chose seemed to be for average male heads, though I could have checked the dimensions against mine. Again, too much work at that particular moment. I put in the prescription that I got back on January, but hadn't yet filled (my optometrist did give me the option of getting it filled), and clicked "next." Pupil distance required. Pup...

A strange event occurred recently. The 24-hour sign at the local Metro was suddenly replaced with an hours of operation sign. 7AM to Midnight? That's much more like 17-hours a day than it is 24, a practice the grocer started a whopping 6 years ago, back in it's days when it was known as Loeb (see a photo taken some 4.5 years ago, when two friends and I had a sudden desire to make Banana Pancakes). I'd often wander in there at outrageous times during the night, forced to walk through the exit door with "DO NOT ENTER" stickers. Grocery shopping at 2:30 in the morning was probably the best time to do so. The strawberry yogurt bowls from the day before were marked down, leftover bits of baked goods offered together for next to nothing, and aisles were impossible to walk down as graveshift personnel blocked them with palettes of food, ready to be stocked. You rarely had to worry about any in-a-hurry soccer moms narrowly avoiding ramming into you with a cart filled with...

Yesterday, I was at the mall when I was greeted by Mickey Mouse! I thought it was nice that Mickey was around the mall, especially since the store that replaced Disney had opened the day before. And that escalator that would take me there! It has been broken for a long time now. Just like The Bay with its broken door that doesn't open, Bayshore is kinda slow at fixing things. And then I eventually made it up and saw the new, open-for-business Ricki's. Walking in, I felt like it was familiar, but not. The pillars, now plain white, the ceiling, now way low, the wall bays now squarely recessed into space-maximizing walls... and a huge company logo where the projected screen once displayed Hannah Montana music videos and The Little mermaid singalongs. I'll have to go in and tell them to enjoy the scent of Subway bread and horrible fat vat smell when KFC cleans out their reserves. Oh, and that the place is haunted. And pictured above is a guy who was rapping beside me.

On the first night, we checked out Downtown Disney, but only really went into a place to eat. Today, our first down day, we decided to take to the shops and, in a nutshell, spend a ridiculous amount of money. The stores here are crazy awesome! The World of Disney Store, the biggest character store in the world, is easily 20x the size of my store at home. If not more. And despite the heavy traffic, it was still very organized and neat looking. Imagine how many hours they get! And the stitch outside likes to spit on people. Not surprising... Also, our store has been starting to get products made of recycled materials, reusable bags, organic cotton shirts, and the like. The same lines of product are here too. With cooler designs! The candy store is amazing as well. I couldn't decide what to get because I wanted it all. Disney gummies are seriously the best ones I've had ever. If there are any pockets of space in my luggage (ha!), then I'm filling it with candy. Another amazing...

I love Maple Music . For the uninitiated, is a little online music retailer - one that specializes, or at the very least exclusively distributes Canadian music. Arrogant Worms, Billy Talent, Jill Barber, Sarah Slean I also love how my spell check doesn't know the words Slean, merch, nor hoodies. Anyway, I've made two orders with them so far, and they're just awesome! The prices are what I'd call reasonable, at least prices that would sway me to buy stuff if I were at HMV or something like that. I bought Simon Wilcox's newest, The Charm and the Strange and Kinnie Starr's Anything. A few years back, I bought Simon Wilcox's second cd, Smart Function, in part because the listening station had it and I was impressed (and in part because it'd give me something to see at Tulipfest). So a follow-up cd was a no brainer for me. Smart Function is a work of art. A slightly dark, highly-energized, low energy (if that makes sense) work of art. Kinnie Starr, I had hear...