Delayed Reaction

I ordered some books online about 2 weeks ago and I picked them up from the post office on Saturday and I'm almost done reading them. Today I checked by bank account information and my credit card was just finally charged today.

About 3 weeks ago I ordered new cheques from the bank. I haven't recieved them yet but they're Ottawa Senators cheques. Of course I had to pay extra for the specialized cheques but I figured I'm making money now so can afford to buy extra special stuff once in a while. Again my bank account was only debited yesterday.

I'm usually pretty careful with my spending, I look to see how much I have and do a quick mental estimate of my outstanding bills, but because theses things didn't show up until yesterday I'm looking at my bank account going, "oh crap I might not be able to make my rent payment". It's a good thing tommorow is pay day but I don't have nearly as much extra money coming in as I thought.

Starbucks is the Devil

So they've opened a Starbucks in Winnipeg Square, which is about a 5 minute walk from where I work. This is good for my taste buds but BAD for my wallet. In fact, I'm convinced that Starbucks has added tiny amounts of cocaine to thier vanilla syrup. Either that or I just have zero will power.

Anyway I'm up to 2 cups a day. I try to go one Grande and one Tall but lately it's been more like one Grande and one Venti. So I'm basically spending like 8 dollars a day. But I love the black tea latte.

I think I will blame Laura for introducing me to the joys of Starbucks, because until this year I always viewed Starbucks as an evil American empire that was trying to over throw Tim Horton's (which has already over thrown Robin's Donuts). But Tim's is too far away (aka the other side of Winnipeg Square).

I am slightly disturbed

So last night I had a dream about a co-worker and while it's not the first time I've dreamed about a co-worker it is the first time I've been truly disturbed by it, well except the time I had a dream about my boss but that was a different time and place.

Nothing actually happened in the dream (thank god). It was weird he took me to meet his family but we weren't actually seeing each other and then at some point I took him into an empty room to ask him what was going on and then I kissed him and his grandma walked in. It was a little weird.

The sad thing is that the entire dream spanned only 30 minutes but my analysis of it will last all day and probably into part of the weekend. I know that it only lasted 30 minutes because that was the time between when I woke up to go to the bathroom and when my alarm clock went off.

I suppose dreaming about co-workers will replace dreaming about rezzies now that I don't live there anymore.

A strong Canadian Dollar: Good for me, bad for farmers

So this morning I had to go to a meeting where they explained why sales projections were so low for 2007-08. The main reason is the strong Canadian dollar. But that's what happens when you export everything. This also has a negative affect on farmers as they have to export their goods as well, so farm prices are going to drop and farmers aren't going to be happy.

On a positive note, I am quite happy with the high Canadian dollar because I'm trying to save money for Grad school in the states and when the Canadian dollar is high everything is less expensive. If the Canadian dollar increases 1 cent I need $4,000 less for grad school. If it were par I'd need about $43,000. So I'm considering opening a U.S. dollar bank account so that I can take advantage of the high dollar. For example if I put in $100 Canadian right now I would get $92.43 U.S. if the Canadian dollar drops to 90 cents then I've still got $92.43 U.S. but if I invested $100 CDN @ 90cents I only get $90 American. Of course this backfires if the Canadian dollar strengthens. And 2 dollars may not seem like a whole hell of a lot but it's $20 if you're talking in thousands and $200 if you're talking in tens of thousands so you see how the FX changes could be really important to me.

I feel so dirty...

So after hours of deliberation I decided to cast my provincial election ballot in favor of the NDP. I'd first and foremost like to apologize to Harley. But under no circumstances could I vote for a party that promised to bring back the Jets. Up until that point I was all over the PC platform, but you just can't put that into your "Big 5" and expect people to take you seriously. I also wasn't particularly thrilled by our PC candidate.

Not that my vote counted. The NDP won our riding by 2,000 votes. We've got another NDP majority government, but I suspect 4 years from now McFayden will have figured out what he did wrong and we'll be looking at a PC government.

Holy Crap, I forgot the election!

It's provincial election day and I forgot to blog about it. In short my feeling on elections is this: I don't care who you vote for, as long as you go out and do it. Of course I have my political leanings but in Canada that doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot. Also I'm more inclined to get involved in Federal politics because well I just don't really care very much about provincial politics.

Oddly enough I still haven't decided who I'm going to vote for. I've been looking at websites and pulling up platforms for the last couple of weeks. I've also been talking to some people who are deeply moved by provincial politics. It's weird because I just moved so I don't really know what the issues are in my area, so I have to rely on my own issues and given that I'm really starting a new chapter in my life I don't even know what those are. So I'm going to go with Homer Simpson on this one and list one good thing and one bad thing from each party's platform (or at least the 3 major ones), these are not necessarily the major issues by any means but they are campaign promises. In no particular order:

Liberal

• Good: Improved community Mental Health funding. As someone who has spent a lot of time on health care waiting lists I can only see this as helpful to mental health patients.
• Bad: Extending "aging out" of children under the Child welfare system from 18 to 21. Uh-huh so we're going to have to pay for cigarettes and booze for these kids for another 3 years. GREAT!

Progressive Conservative

• Good: 1% PST reduction. I like buying stuff and I don't like taxes. Enough said.
• Bad: Promise to bring back the Jets. Don't get me wrong I'd love to have an NHL team in Winnipeg, but this is just ridiculous. Seriously if you're going to make campaign promises at least try to make ones you could pretend to keep.

New Democratic Party

• Good: 60% tuition rebate for new grads. As a new grad I think this is pretty smart. At the same time we don't pay that much in tuition as it is and it's not after graduation when we need the money (unless you've got an Arts degree) it's when you're in school.
• Bad: Dedicated MRI for children. While a nice thought the wait times for MRI's in Manitoba are huge right now. Why not just promise new MRI's, period? It seems silly to limit it to one group of the population. You could always just have children's MRI's as a priority. Just a thought.

So in conclusion politicians are dumb and I'm still no closer to determining who to vote for.

My Long weekend

So I went out to the farm for the long weekend, but I didn't do a whole lot of farm-y stuff. I went out to look at the first calf heifers, my calf looks really good. We also vaccinated calves yesterday, big fun there.

Other than that I watched alot of T.V. there was a hockey game to watch. The Senators won and all was well. I also watched a little bit of tennis, but Rafael Nadal wasn't playing very well and I couldn't watch the whole thing. You can read about it here .

Anyway that was basically the extent of my long weekend. Well except fighting with my brother and fighting with my mom, but that's just what happens when I go home.

Pretending to look busy...

Another day at work another day doing a heck of alot of nothing. Apparently it's been a pretty slow year in our department so far. So I thought I'd make a list of all of the things I've done so far today:

1. Looked to see if Chapter's had a book I wanted. They do so I'll be heading out to St. Vital to get it after work. I also have to pick up a microwave for my mom.
2. Looked at iPod accessories. I don't know if you've seen but right now my current iPod case is being held together by a piece of Minnesota Wild sock tape, so I thought it was time to pick up a new one.
3. Read several sports related blogs
4. Tracked Tennis scores from Hamburg
5. Blogged my own blog
6. Helped clean-up some database files from another department.

Yeah that's about it. Pretty sad eh? I almost hope it picks up around here.

Finally A Real Blog

I've been saying for months that I would start a real blog once I finished school. I've now been done for nearly 3 weeks so I figured it was time I start it up. For everything in my life up to and including yesterday please see my old windowslivespace. I've also started a sports blog so that those of you interested in my random babbling about sports can get it over there. Chances are the sports blog will be used much more often than this one.

I also have a hard time separating my sports from the rest of my life so look out for sports references that will likely seep into my everyday stuff.