I was at the Lougheed Town Centre Wal-Mart this evening to get some things for my apartment. As I entered the store, I spotted giant walls of Halloween candy that been already put into place. I usually don't buy Halloween candy, but the neat rows and clear delineation between brands appealed to the order-seeking part of my brain.

I'm a big fan of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups so I looked for those. There were bags of them packaged in a single-serving size. In each bag, there was 510 g of peanut butter and chocolate goodness for $3.92. Curious, I wanted to see what the standard three-pack cost. I sauntered over to the check-out lines and found the candy display. There, I saw the normal package, weighing in at 51 g cost $0.72. Keep in mind that everything at Wal-Mart is usually cheaper than anywhere else. It's probably at least $1 at Safeway.

I did the math, which was easy, even for me. If I had to buy 510 g of PB cups in the three-pack size, it'd cost me $7.20. Compare that to the $3.92 for the large bag. Incredible. Buying candy and chocolate in small quantities is an incredible rip-off. If you buy confectionaries at even irregular intervals, you're better off buying the Halloween-sized bags.

And I learned something today...

In completely different news, the 2004 Disney Channel Kids Awards Show was held in London just a few days ago. Disney, known for its family entertainment, put on quite a display. I believe this year's theme was, "And Now, Something for Dad".

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As you all know, everytime I run into Greg Williams, I write about it on my blog. I saw Greg and his lady friend Erin at Futureshop several weeks ago. He had some fascinating story about returning a digital camera, but I could not muster the effort to get all the fascinating details.

So, if Greg wants to tell the story here, he can. Erin, if you're reading this, you can tell the story as well, just leave it in the comments. Otherwise, I'll just make up something.

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My 12+ hour day of school is over. I did it. I have one more day of commuting left and I'll be done. Tomorrow will be an easy day. I get to sit in on one class, then have dinner with an old friend. I then can go home. Or, I could go drinking at Koerner's with the rest of SJC. Regardless, it will be a shorter day than today.

I actually had two positive developments today. One, I saw some of my former students in the CEME building. I hadn't seen them since last December when I gave them their last tutorial. I asked them what disciplines they finally got into. It appears everyone got their first choice. Good. They all seemed happy to see me. In particular, the last thing one student said to me in December was, "you should teach". The last thing she said to me today was, "you should teach". I appreciated the comment, maybe I should get her to talk to my department.

On TA front, still no news on what is happening. I'll try to get ahold of the union tomorrow.

The other positive development has to do with my night class. This is the first night class I've ever taken in my life. We didn't have a class last week and this week was an introductory lecture that had nothing to do with any of the course material. The instructor seems really laid back. He told us that even though UBC has scheduled the class for three hours each week, he would be done in two hours usually. Sweet. He also admitted that his class was pretty easy, but that you'd still learn a lot. Sweet. Another thing, I can almost see my new apartment from the classroom.

Alright, time to set out my clothes for tomorrow.

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I got home from school at 10pm today. I have to leave for school again at 9am tomorrow morning. This commuting bullshit ain't getting any better. I've been to school only two days this week and I've already spent six damn hours on the bus.

Here's a picture of what I found in a bag of Cheetos this weekend. Every additional minute I spend in transit, I hate commuting even more.

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Those of you with eagle eyes might have noticed a new search box to the right. You may now search the contents of this blog. Unfortunately, the search is very shallow since I am using Feedster to power it. Feedster only started tracking my blog about three months ago, so that's as far back as the search will go. Google itself has crawled my blog archives, but I have found their results to be incomplete.

So, try it out! Type in your name. Type in other people's names. Try using swear words. Unlimited fun awaits!

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I can't remember the last time I sat through 4.5 hours straight of lectures, but I just did it today. I'm sitting in one of the labs in Civil/Mechanical building typing this out. I actually thought it would be way worse, though I wouldn't want to do it again.

The bad thing, unfortunately, is that I still don't have a clue which of these three classes I want to take. I will need to go home and think about it.

Hey, free food in the grad lounge!

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So, we approach the start of another week, the last and most difficult week of commuting for me. Did you know I spent 12 hours on the bus last week? That's just for four days of school. For every day of school, I spend an eighth of it on the bus. Nice.

Anyways, com sci grad classes kick in this week and because I'm not sure which ones I want to take, I'll be attending several of them to get a taste. And oh, the fun starts on Monday, where I'll be sitting in on three straight classes. Starting at 11am, I'll be going until 3:30pm, with at most, a ten minute break in between.

I'm tempted to say screw it and just pick a class from the course description. That way, I just need to go for an hour and a half and get the hell out of there. That would be the easy way, but not the "mature" thing to do. I hate being responsible.

Tuesday and Thursday won't be too bad, so if I can just get through my night class on Wednesday, I'll be in the clear! No more of me bitching about commuting. You and me both will be glad about that.

Alright, time to bite the freaking bullet and get this damn week over with.

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