I need a new hobby

I truly do. Never mind that I've temporarily lost my noggin, and ordered this - from the Shopping Channel, no less.

What? It's for a gift I'm making. My sister even joined me at an Intro to Scrapbooking class at a local store. It was fun.

I feel a certain degree of shame, like Scrapbooking makes me a suburban housewife, without the husband or the suburbs. Or worse, a more creative version of the crazy cat lady. My boyfriend has threatened to leave me if I make a scrapbook about Scooter, my dog.

I think he's kidding.

Just in case, I'll have to keep a hidden book for Bing Bong.

I think I'm kidding.

But none of this explains my need for a new hobby.
It seems that my hobby, of late, has been to "fight the man" in various consumer transactions. The scooter, the Brick and most recently? Premiere Fitness. After my year long contract expired, I decided that the gym sucked and I wanted to go elsewhere. I wrote them a cancellation letter, and directed by the receptionist at the gym, faxed in my 30 day notice.

We're four days past 30, and they've just charged my bank account again.

Oh, it's on now.

I've heard many stories about these douches continuing to charge people's credit cards and bank accounts long after they'd cancelled their memberships, but I was hoping that it was an urban myth.

The litany of doucherism goes on.

I am not too busy to plug my friend's book, however

Buy it!

RSP season

Work at financial institution.

Living under a rock right now.

A very busy rock.

The Mother Corporation

Listen to CBC Radio One tomorrow morning at 10am. Kerry Griffin, Lisa Merchant and I will be doing some Make-em-ups on Go with Brent Bambury.

Listen. It will be crazy. The rehearsal scared me, but in a good way. They're really fucking with us, again, in a good way.

Turn off the Olympics for a while. You won't miss any Canadian medal wins while we're on. I promise. How can I promise that? Because we're going to be at the CBC, and they control those things.

I'm in trouble

Dude. Of the 16 items I put up for auction, 12 sold. I made over a hundred bucks - U$.

That being said, I've already spent the profits on Jurlique products on ebay, but the important thing to remember is that I would have bought these products for full price, (and have) and I've gotten them for a fraction of what they normally cost.

Or at least that's the spin I'm putting on it.

A few more items up for sale now. Weird stuff. A Millenium Falcon game (my sister's), some shoes, a couple of dresses, a chrome Vespa fender... not much interest so far.

I just found this really cool site where you sign up and you get an automated call three minutes from the end of your watched auctions. It feeds you real time reports and tells you if you're still the high bidder, and then allows you to bid from your phone. It's awesome, and I'm in love with it. And also scared of it. Used to be when I was away from my computer, that was it, the auction was in the hands of the ebay gods. Not so much anymore. Best part is, it's free. And the first time you use it to win an auction, they paypal you $10. How can you lose!?
You want the info? Email me and I'll send you a referral.

I like my Sitemeter

Don't get all paranoid, but I have a little sitemeter down at the bottom of the page. It doesn't tell me who you are, or your exact IP address, but it tells me what domain you're visiting from and where on earth you are. Check it out, it's cool.

I have no idea who would be visiting my blog from, Burnaby BC, for example. But that's what makes the whole thing so neat.

I also happened to notice a little visit from NewAd Media yesterday - directed to my blog via a vanity google on technorati. Those of you who followed my exploits last summer may remember NewAd Media as being the final, indirect hurdle in the year plus long struggle to get my replacement scooter from the shop that somehow always had more important things to do than fix the lemon they sold me.

When I tried to re-register the scooter in my name, finally, I discovered that technically the shop didn't own the scooter. NewAd Media did - because they rented the scooters from the shop for a CityFido promotion, and no one bothered to do the paperwork to revert the ownership back to the scooter shop.

So when I saw that NewAd Media had visited my blog, I had a flashback to that afternoon in the shop, when the owner of the shop brought me in to chastise me for keeping a blog chronicalling my journey in an "almost libelous" way. (Still trying to figure out how something can be "almost" libelous. Best I can figure is that it something that makes someone look really bad, and they don't like it, but it happens to be true. If it weren't for that little "true" thing, it'd be libel, I suppose. Creative interpretation.)

Anyway, I have no beef with NewAd Media, despite having suggested that the dude the shop owner was dealing with was acting like a "douche". I have a feeling that things didn't end well between NewAd and the shop, and while I didn't appreciate being caught in the middle, I wasn't really surprised. NewAd and I were both in the same boat. Fed up.

So, while I felt that flashback of panic, it almost instantly turned into a shrug. I don't think they'll take the douchery as far as the shop did, and passive-agressively get me to agree to take down the post.

If so? Well, then I've got more material for the remount of my show, "The Scooter Diaries - or - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog". I should really put that up again.

Ebay Auction Thrills

Tonight will be an interesting night.
In a few hours, my final two ebay auctions will end, and I'll have a final tally.

It's a little sad how excited I've been about my auctions. I think my sister is going to put a lock on her door so I don't break in and start taking things to sell.

I actually went out and bought a postal scale. I'm that far gone.

So tonight's task is to package a couple of oddly shaped items, find shoe boxes for all the random pairs of shoes I've sold, wrap them in brown paper and print up mailing labels - you can pay your postal rates through paypal and print your labels and customs forms at home. So neat!

I'm such a nerd.

Now, what else can I sell?

Rage... gone...

Well slap my ass and call me Curly.

An email from The Brick today.

Tabitha,

I did call and leave a message regarding your letter earlier this month. I would like the opportunity to speak with you about your concerns.

I apologize for the attititude of the drivers and that your sales consultant did not communicate our mattress pick up procedures with you before your delivery. He should have given you mattress bags at the time of purchase so that you would have been able to prepare for the pickup.
Also, I would like to apologize for the phone call from Voxcom. We do take our customer's privacy seriously and again have procedures for ensuring that this is done. Unfortunately Vivian failed to ensure that your request not to be contacted was honored.

I have spoken with Vivian and our fleet department to ensure that a situation such as this will not be repeated.
I have reversed your delivery charge ( $50.00 plus tax, plus an additional $42.50 for a total credit of $100.00)
This credit will be applied to your Brick card account today.

Sincerely,
Kim ***
Store Manager
The Brick-Mississauga South

Hooray, Brick. You just may be getting more business from me, after all.

Rage... lessening...

I've lost my touch. I got a call from the Brick a while back from a manager, who apologized for my bad service. She left her number so I could call her back, and I never did.

Somehow, I got distracted. Can't imagine why. (Parents are both home now, and doing well. Thanks.)

The message is no longer on my phone, so I don't have her name and number anymore (was it "Kim"?).

Meh.