I've been wanting a new camera for a really, really long time.  At least once a week I look at reviews and am very tempted to buy one.  I usually looked at fairly inexpensive ones, less than $200 or so.  I never actually bought one though, because I really didn't want to make a rash decision (which wouldn't make much sense, considering I had been looking at them for more than a year).  But then I decided that I wanted something better, and last week I decided on the Canon G10.  It's as high as you can go without going into an SLR.  I would have actually got an SLR instead, but I want to take good concert pictures and they'd never let you bring an SLR into a venue.  I had to get financing for it, but I'm going to pay it off pretty quickly.  Ooh, I'm so excited!  I'm not really a hardcore photographer or anything, but that's cause I was always so frustrated by crappy cameras.  Yay!  Woo!  Other words that embody excitement and necessitate an exclamation point at the end!

Got back from my election thing a short while ago.  I never, ever want to do that again - working 8 hours is bad enough, but 14+ hours with no breaks?  That's ridiculous.  And though it's my own fault, I was running on 5 hours of sleep and I had a stomach ache that lasted the entire day.  Why don't they have shifts or something?  Oh well, I guess.  I hope I paid relatively quickly.

Well, now I get to go to bed and get up early again tomorrow!  For the next six days, at that.  I think that this time next week, I'm going to sleep for like, 12 hours straight.

edit: and my party didn't even win. :(

Well, as soon as I pay my taxes, my hours went way, way down.  I really hope I'm able to save up for my trip.  I still have to pay my credit card, which I should be able to do within 1 1/2 months, but it's going to be difficult.  I'm already something like $100 over my limit.  For some strange reason, though, I'm not getting charged any interest.  I hope it stays that way.

I'm just so frustrated, though.  I really wish I could go out and be independent and all that, but my income is just too unstable.  One week I'll be working 40 hours, and the next, it'll be 20.  On bad months I get somewhere around $1000, which is nowhere near what I can live on (if I was on my own).  I have to bite the bullet and get the school thing worked out, though.  I don't even know what I want to do...  I feel so useless sometimes.  I have a job and I don't go to school, and yet I'm still living at home.  If I was still going to school, at least I'd have an excuse.  And all of my college-bound friends are half over already.  I'm really getting mad at myself for doing that BCIT thing.  Taking the focus away from my real studies, and for what?  So I can answer old people's questions about routers all day?  Goddammit!

Oh well, enough feeling sorry for myself.  I've really been getting back into guitar lately.  I've been playing 1/2-1 hour per day for the last little while.  Most of it has just been experimenting with chords and transitioning from one to the other.  Yesterday my sister and I started playing together.  It's kinda lame, but Rock Band has a freestyle drum mode.  She drums on that while I play guitar and sing.  It doesn't quite work as well as if it was a real kit, but it's an okay substitute.  I really want to write my own songs.  I'm always coming up with awesome ideas for melodies and hooks and riffs and solos and lyrics but I don't quite have the skills yet to put my ideas into action.  I don't even want to think of all the wasted seeds that could have grown into awesome songs.

I guess that's about it.  I guess.

Edit: Ugh, just reading back on this makes me realise how much I need to go back to school.  Look at how short and simple my sentences are!  I get so angry at myself sometimes.  How could I let myself do this?!

So, my taxes will finally be paid off on Friday.  Then I can start paying off my credit card...

It's going to be weird seeing so much money in my bank account.  Right now, I get my sister to hide cash money in her room, because I know that if I see it in my account I'll spend it.  So I have to go deposit it all in order to give it to the government.

Sigh.  Oh well, I guess.

Oh, I've been using Twitter quite a bit lately.  I'm brenky over there, if anybody wants to know what's going through my mind at 2:30 am on a regular basis.

I got a call earlier this week from the elections people (we're having a provincial election next month) saying that they'd got an application from me online and to come down for an interview.  I was unprepared for this, so I threw together a resume, got all fancied up, then went there today.  I was kind of nervous about the interview, but I wasn't freaking out because my life doesn't depend on the job.

Anyway, I had the interview about an hour ago.  It consisted of one thing: asking me which polling place I'd like to work.  And that's it!  You could be an idiot or akin to Hitler and still get this job.  It's only a four-day stint, but they're putting a lot of trust in you, what with the confidential voting information and all.  Plus, I get something like $225 a day.

iTunes is weird sometimes.  I was listening to Octopus's' Garden from the Love album, which plays a bit of "Sun King" at the end.  Next song?  Sun King.  It has like 6000 songs to choose from and it chooses that, haha.

And earlier today, my sister was making an Elliott Smith character for Rock Band.  When you go to create a character, it assigns you a random name.  She got "Eliot".

OOooOoooooOOooOoOOOOOooooOOoOoOoooooOOooOOooh.

Heh, um, yeah.

I'm in the process of transcribing Flavour of Night because I really want to play it on piano but there are so many oddball chords and I can't figure them out and I've been working on it for three hours already and ugggghhhhhh

Ahh, April Fools' Day.

Today was the one day of the week that my boss came in late, so me and a couple co-workers played a few tricks on him.  What I did was write a letter from a customer who was very unhappy with our service.  I'll post the entire thing later, but this is the gist of it:

1) Long-time customer, spent more than $25000 in total at the store
2) Was recommended a MacBook for his granddaughter's graduation because of its "good graphics"
3) Took MacBook home, she can't install Office, Norton or The Sims (all for windows).  System doesn't come with a "My Computer" or "Paint" program even though every other computer he had previously included them.  Interface is ALL WRONG.
4) Took computer back, got a replacement
5) Software still didn't load.  Called and was told to call back when the technician was in
6) Called back, the tech had "just left"
7) Called back the next day, tech had "just left" again.  Left his name and number for the tech to call back
8) Tech doesn't return call after 5 days.
9) Customer gets fed up and goes to return the laptop.  Was denied the return because it was over the 15-day return policy
10) WANTS TO BE CONTACTED IMMEDIATELY

I wasn't there when he actually read it because I would have started cracking up, but he (boss) was supposedly getting ticked off, saying "I'm having SUCH A BAD DAY", etc. etc.  It was pretty epic, as they say.  As soon as I came into the back room, I cracked right up.  IT WAS AWESOME.

Haha, as an April Fools joke, I'm sending my sister a letter from UBC saying she has been chosen for a full scholarship there. It looks pretty fancy, I'm going to do up an envelope and everything for it.  Muahahaha...