moral: cheap stuff is awesome.
I keep forgetting to write on here -- I wrote a bit about the comics festival in Toronto that I was at, uh, two weeks ago now, and I still have to finish that and post it.
Have been attempting to continue my war against personal usage of the computer in favor of filling out job applications and handing out resumes. I'm not sure how many I've done by now... mostly I've handed out resumes and have a bunch of applications at home that I either need to finish or get out and hand in.
Yesterday I went to the edge of the city, possibly technically to Waterloo? I'm not quite sure, for my monthly allergy shots. After that, ate bagels at City Cafe, looked for a Mission of Burma album at the record store downtown (they had zilch. The owner figured I was the first person who had asked for one of their albums in ages), and visited the youth employment centre. I think it was actually the first productive visit I've had to the employment centre -- in the past I've always found it peculiarly useless -- they had some job postings up that were things I could probably do, and I scrolled through the job banks and the lot for while and found some stuff. I also talked to a lady at the desk about the infamous "What is a time in a job where you displayed exemplary customer service?" portion of interviews, and she gave a booklet with some typical interview questions and advice.
After that, I went to the comic shop (I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but apparently it's the oldest comic shop in the world? Pre-dating the Direct Market and all that, even). The comic shop is going through hard times and has been having a sale which basically amounts to 50-70% off of everything, and since I am cheap, I've gladly bought as much off of them as I can. I picked up a few issues of Solo I didn't have, bought the first, second, and fourth volumes of Ed Brubaker's brilliant Catwoman run (one of my favorite comics ever), Alec: The King Canute Crowd, Cathedral Child (which you can apparently read for free by following a link from there), The Annotated Mantooth, a few other random comics, all for fifty bucks, which is a killing, I tell you. Technically, it was fifty-three, but they don't take debit anymore and I had to walk to the bank to get money, so he made it fifty for me (which more or less explains why I like this store a lot, I think). He said the sale's ending in September, after which he plans to go underground for a bit and figure out where he wants to re-open it, so I'll probably make one last sweep of the store when I have some money next month and then eagerly anticipate its re-opening. (There is another comics store right around the block from it, but their selection is so narrow and resolutely superhero-y that I pretty much refuse to shop there unless it's absolutely necessary.)
I also went by a pawn shop and picked up some CDs: Tubthumper, Leisure, Franz Ferdinand (S/T), Nevermind (one of the copies with the extra song at the end, which makes me happy). The FF and Nirvana albums were like, ninety-nine cents for intact-looking discs with terrible cases where the cover plastic is missing the nibs that hold it onto the case, but I've ripped them to my computer and can keep them in my cd case so it doesn't really matter, cosmetically!
I also bought Deus Ex, and following my computer's refusal to install it, torrented and installed it. A bit early to judge how good it is -- I don't feel I've really encountered the things that make it so acclaimed quite yet.
That's all!