Today while browsing my various feeds, I stumbled across the welfare food challenge. It's a campaign run by Raise the Rates, a BC-based community organization trying to get welfare rates increased. The idea behind the challenge is to spend no more than $26 on food for one week, as this is the amount allocated for food by the BC government ( Read more... )

The latest on the job situation (as of Tuesday) is that my boss-to-be is finalizing the job description and work contract, getting final approvals from the Board, and hopefully I'll be able to start next Monday. This would be nice, given that this is my fourth week of not working and I'm starting to go stir crazy ( Read more... )

On the downside: expensive ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago, I got a cheque from the government for my GST returns. It was for around $30. Yay. Due to a number of readjustments to my returns, I got a form in the mail a few days ago informing me that now I owe them about $6. They couldn't have just given me a cheque for $24 instead, and called it even ( Read more... )

Got one of my investment statements today. There was a letter with it. "Dear Valued Customer..." Y'know, it doesn't inspire tremendous confidence to see that the people managing thousands of dollars of my money can't even be bothered to put my name on a letter that comes with my statement.

Just sayin'.

Somehow my "I've just got to pick up milk and yogurt" grocery run turned into a $45 order. I'm not entirely certain how this happened. I blame cheese. And frozen tortellini.

On the other hand, emmental on still-warm ciabatta bread? Glorious. 100% glorious.

A few "feeling sorry for myself" things from today ( Read more... )

...I finally bought a chequebook. No, I never got one when I opened the account, because the checking account was an automatic upgrade from a child account I had at the same bank ( Read more... )

1. Retro research -- for her Master's thesis, a woman lives for a whole month with only technology from 1950 or before. Reading the 10 wrap-up posts to hear her reflections was very interesting.

2. Deadline post-it stop-motion (2-minute video) -- very clever. Using post-its on the wall as a "pixellated" representation of what's going on while ( Read more... )

So how did my one-year anniversary at the company feel? Pretty much just like any other day, really. As far as the company is concerned, my one-year anniversary will be in mid-September, because that's when I started working full time. So today I just worked on files, much as I do any day. At least it was stuff that I like and one of the few shows ( Read more... )