How many :(:(:(:(:('s ? LOTS.

I haven't posted in a while due to general lethargy and/or Puzzle Pirates addiction. Seriously, I think playing as a Playmobil character pretending to be a pirate is awesome, among a bunch of SA goons, to boot.

Anyway, I wanted to report on our most recent outings. Yesterday we went to the Daily Grill, a casual diner style restaurant that would probably more than satiate any person hungry for a plate bigger than their heads. We made the mistake of ordering too much; for some reason, wings as appetizers are a whole meal in itself and comes with fries and this odd cheese dipping sauce... why would you need a super thick dipping sauce for wings already drenched in the most powerful vinegary barbecue sauce ever? Jorghnassen managed to finish off the veal schnitzel, while I barely made a dent in the souvlaki meal. And then I had a hard time getting up.

Last Tuesday, I ordered Gordon Ramsay's new book, Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food, from Chapters/Indigo online. He was also going to be in Burlington today for a book signing from 3 pm to 5 pm, and then Toronto tomorrow at 7pm. Unfortunately, I didn't have the book by Friday, so we bought the book from the local Chapters as well. So I have two receipts of two exact copies of the book.

Being one who takes advantage of any travelling experience, I dragged Jorghnassen out to Burlington today at 1pm, taking a lot of scenic turns (thanks to our misguided GPS).

Scenic route through the outskirts of Hamilton (yes, Hamilton, the city we said we'd never visit again).

We pulled up next to the Indigo, and I let out a "OMFG!" A whole pile of people were wrapped around the building, lining up on the sidewalk.

The store said they had run out of bracelets about an hour after opening at 11 am. They also said we could wait in the outside line because there were three indoor lines already.

So we waited.

Waited.

Waited.

Waited.

Wai- WHAT it's 4:45 p.m. and he's GONE!?

:(

Tomorrow I'm returning both copies of the book I bought. (Yeah, that'll show him!)

Other Freebies!

The cereal box (General Mills brand) offers free books too, through their "Bite Into Books" program. My mum likes to buy cereal in general (on sale, once again), so there are often four to five boxes of them sitting on the shelf. Last month, two boxes had that "specially marked" special code inside that could be redeemed for free books on their site. Wow!

At first, I thought their offerings were only targetted towards kids, but there is a set aimed for the adults who bought the cereal in the first place. I picked two books, written by John Lithgow: a children's book called Micawber, and Lithgowpalooza (no longer listed there for a soon-to-be uncovered reason).

Although I almost forgot about the book offer, I still remember which books I picked and I was slightly dismayed when I received the mail a few days ago with a rather light envelope that only contained one book. Then I opened the envelope and was even more dismayed to be holding the absolute last choice, Little Red Book. The accompanying letter mocked me further by lauding my choice of book(s?) and invited me to redeem further wonderful books such as this one.

Yes, Lithgowpalooza is all gone now. :(

P.S. Haha London Ontario

FREE E-BOOKS - Rock on!

Project Gutenberg collects books that are out of copyright and free for the public and makes these books available for download bliss. Of course, it takes a lot of effort and crazy reading to get something like this put together, so they rely on volunteers to digitize, proofread, format, and put together these thousands and thousands of books. This volunteer project is called Digitized Proofreaders.

So while I'm waiting for... uh, just waiting... well, I'm proofreading pages that have been spat out by a scanner and OCR program. Today is the 5th day since I joined, and I'm up to the 60th page. I am currently most involved in a textbook on algebra for high school, and it's probably the most annoying proofreading project there (other than the smudgefest-sideways-tables-scanned-with-a-flashlight books and the ancient-languages-with-weird-markings-and-charaters texts). I've hit upon the pages no one is eager to proofread because they're pages of nothing but fractions, and the OCR garbles every single character from these scans.

But on the plus side, I'm rank #2259, tied with only 20 people. YES!

RUN FOR THE CURE 2006 Some People Screw Up at the Bank and Elsewhere

I went to the CIBC today to drop off donations, but somehow the tellers don't know what the printed page of online donations looks like. Maybe it's the English that threw them off. They made me register *again* for some reason, but now it's out of my hands. For now.

If I reach $300 by the end of October, I'll get a puffy one-shoulder bag. Let's keep raising the funds! :)

After the bank, I went around the corner to the Running Room (Coin des Coureurs, in QC) and picked up my participant's kit. I only discovered the t-shirt they gave me was dirty on the collar, like someone had dropped cola on it. :(

Just waiting for the rain to stop... *sigh*

On the plus side, I'm runner #1448. AWWIGHT!