links for 2007-03-01

links for 2007-02-28

Life, in bullet points

  • The apartment hunt continues but the hunt for a Wii is over. The Source put me on their backorder list when they couldn’t fill my order a couple weeks ago and they finally came through with one late last week. With any luck I’ll be able to pick it up at Purolater tomorrow evening.
  • And speaking of new toys… Dan bought me an early birthday present – a Kitchenaid Mixer! I am way more excited about this than the Wii.
  • On the training front, my IT band injury has flared up again so I haven’t been able to run very much and I’ve used up almost all of my physio coverage for this school year attempting to fix it. I bowed out of both the Steveston Icebreaker 8k in January, and the First Half Marathon in February. I’m still planning to do the UBC Triathlon in a little under two weeks, which should be an interesting experience given how little training I have been doing. I need to hit the pool hard this week and make sure I can still swim 750m and have enough juice left for the bike and run. Yikes.
  • I turn 29 on Thursday. I’m going to celebrate by eating large amounts of sushi and drinking martinis, and trying not to think about the fact that next year I will be 30 (and still in grad school…)

links for 2007-02-20

  • Make Your Own UHF TV Antenna for Free HDTV
    We’ve had an HD television for a few months now and while it’s nice for movies and gaming, we don’t get any HD TV channels with our cable. However, we also don’t pay for our cable so we’re not looking to upgrade anytime soon. :) I was surprised to find
    (tags: hdtv antenna canada ctv cbc)

Wii are crazy!

I’ve been coveting the Nintendo Wii console ever since it came out before Christmas, but I didn’t have a chance to actually try it out until last weekend. We went to a party at a friend’s place and spent the evening playing various Wii games, and now I really really want one. I thought I had managed to score one on The Source by Circuit City website earlier this week, but alas their online store inventory system is stupid and allowed over 400 orders to be placed when they had only 48 consoles in stock! I was not part of the lucky 1/10 of customers who actually had their order filled.

This morning Future Shop had some Wiis in stock in local stores, but when I found out about it I was a good 30-40 minutes away from any of them by transit. So now Dan and I are planning on waking up at 5am tomorrow morning and lining up at the local Zellers, which opens at 8am and has promised to have at least three in stock. Wii-mania has made us certifiably insane.

Update:

We went over at 5am and there were already three people in line (Zellers was only going to have three available). Darn it!

links for 2007-02-16

links for 2007-02-13

Househunting

After a couple years in our current place we’re on the lookout for something bigger and better (and closer to UBC!). I’ve commuted from North Burnaby to UBC for almost two years now, and the long commute is really starting to get me down. It’s 1 hour each way on a good day, assuming I make all my connections, and that doesn’t include my 10 minute walk from the bus to my office!

I’ve been trawling craigslist for promising candidates. Every time I look at places, though, I realize there’s a reason I’ve put up with the commute for so long; We have an insanely good deal! If I want to live affordably in Vancouver I am probably going to have to give up my lovely gas stove, free cable, and free wifi. However, I have come to terms with that. I am willing to sacrifice these things for less time on the bus.

Another thing I have come to terms with is that if a place sounds too good to be true, it probably is. That incredibly affordable basement suite becomes a lot less appealing when you call to inquire and the first thing the landlord asks is, “How tall are you?” Although I have to admit I was highly amused by a recent posting that advertised:
“Hobbit Style Character Basement Suite … Note: lower ceilings suitable for 5’8″ and under, sorry.”

Hobbit style! At least they were honest. They even had the guts to call it a basement suite. Most ads refer to them as “garden suites”; I guess because you have a lovely eye-level view of the upstairs neighbour’s garden from your tiny basement windows!

Anyhow, if anyone knows of decent sub-$1000 2-bedroom apartments in the Commercial Drive, Mount Pleasant, or Kitsilano areas, feel free to drop me a line. :)

links for 2007-02-08

links for 2007-02-07

 
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