— Add 2 to 3 inches today!!			The 29th My office smells like Valerian root pills. I used to take them to help me sleep but the things stunk like hell. Just opening the bottle allowed a horrible odour—not unlike concentrated sweaty sock juice—to escape and assault one's nostrils. The reason my office stinks so is because I hung a few plakmounted posters up yesterday. Plakmounts smell like Valerian root. Odd. I've noticed this annoying phenomenon that happens everyday at Shoppers Drug Mart downtown. I pass by and can see it happening inside and remember what it was like to be in the middle of it all. It's around the time the Journal-Pioneer is supposed to show up at the store. For some reason, they sell it for 25¢ as opposed to the regular 75¢ which just invites a flood of people to show up to buy the cheapest local newspaper in town. It's mostly old, cranky people who show up about an hour too early everyday. They hang around the store with other old people looking out the window for the driver to drop off the papers. They complain intermittently that the paper is late or inquire incessantly as to when it's going to show up. As there is no specific time, just the general "sometime this afternoon" time, it's always the same explanation over and over (even to the same people on the same day within the span of 5 minutes) that we don't know when the paper will show up, or why the driver is "late." Then they bitch and complain like it's the staff's fault the paper hasn't arrived and ask us to call the newspaper's office to see where the driver is even though they don't have a clue to his whereabouts either. And the guy isn't even late to begin with. And I pity anyone working when the driver IS late. It's enough to make you want to shake and slap the wrinkles off of them. The sad thing is that the office is only two blocks away from Shoppers and it leaves me to wonder. Is it really worth the stress (and inducing stress), the undetermined wait, and spending your afternoon in line for a local newspaper all for a mere 50 cents? That sure must be some fixed income you got there. But really, if you're on a fixed income, should the sports scores, hog reports, and Garfield really be your primary concern? In the end, I would suffer through it all by imagining throwing quarters at the lot of them and telling them to fuck off and to go buy the paper down the street. If we didn't have our unnecessarily harsh fantasies then what would we be left with? The 23rd I bought a bike today to replace the one that was stolen from me back in October. As I biked home with it, I caught that first delicious scent that heralds a new season—barbecue. Ah, sweet barbecue. It won't be long before there are burgers, kabobs and other delicacies grilled to perfection over an outdoor flame. Now I'm hungry. So I swapped out my G4's DVD-RAM drive and replaced it with a SuperDrive over the weekend and already I have problems. After I insert a CD the whole system slows down and makes doing anything on the computer nearly impossible. Thankfully, my old DVD-RAM drive is now sitting cozily in a FireWire enclosure and can play CDs without a hitch. Long weekends are the best. Last week was a 4-day work week, followed by a 4-day weekend and now I have another 4-day work week. No complaints here. Got some yard work done, spent some money, slept, watched Cube 2 with Kira (pretty cool movie), went to Michelle's birthday party and had some of Nick's Pizza™, gathered at Luke's to see the 3rd season opener of Trailer Park Boys, and otherwise was lazy and ate a whole bunch. I wish every weekend was like that. Or at least every second weekend, then the novelty wouldn't wear off and they wouldn't be taken for granted. The 8th I really wonder sometimes why I even bother selling stuff on eBay. By the time I go through the process of submitting the auction, replying to emails, getting shipping prices, wrapping and packaging the item, and spending time in the line at the post office, is the $15 I'm getting really worth the time I devote to it? I mean, even with no wait in lines, simple packaging, taking my bike to get to the post office, and with no problematic buyer emails or buyers themselves, I spend at least an hour of my time preparing for these things—if not more. That's not always how it goes though. Toss in some idiot kid who wants to pay a $200 money order with pocketfuls of change. Stick a few old ladies ahead of me in line. Insert snow and ice and wind. Send me a U.S, only money order as payment. Make sure every box I have in the house is either too big or too small for the item I'm selling. All of this stuff eats up my time so I can make a few lousy bucks. Unless I'm selling my shit for $50 or more, I really have to stop going through this and just toss everything into a bag and leave in front of the Sal. The 3rd Benefits of living in Summerside: 1) Cheap rent 2) Everything is within walking distance 3) Quiet (relatively) 4) Good, clean water Oh, wait. Scratch number 4 right off of that list! The town I live in that has always had the greatest drinking water in the world now has water like any other city—full of chlorine. Mind you it doesn't seem nearly as bad as other places but it's more than enough to notice. I wasn't made aware of that fact until tonight but upon thinking back I disntinctly remember the telltale chemical smell in the shower the other day. A few good sniffs of a glass of water tonight confirmed it. I couldn't taste it so much as I could just smell it fresh from the faucet. Now I feel terrble thinking about drinking that putrid stuff. So what am I going to do? Get a water cooler? Buy bottled water? I'm going to have to do something because everything I make now is going to be full of chlorine and taste like a swimming pool.