It Started with a Journal

The insane shopping spree continues. It's not my fault! Suddenly all the stuff I've been considering for weeks if not months has become available; it's not my fault it's all happening at the same time, is it???

The first thing is that today's Woot deal is the WiFi-3G Nook (refurbished) for $99. Hello, this thing is $199 new/retail! And Barnes & Noble sells the refurbished version of this Nook on eBay for $140! You guys might remember that around January I was asking about eReaders. I've been hemming and hawing about it ever since. But with a deal like that, how can I refuse? I can't.

The second thing is all corianderstem's fault. I looooooved her Twiggy Union Jack Studded handbag and wanted it, but it's been sold out at HSN for ages. On eBay people have been listing it at nearly double what it cost retail, which I refused to pay. But then recently someone listed it at retail price, in the brown leather (which is super rare)! So I had to get it too!!

*blows smoke off credit card*

Both things are good for my Chicago trip, though! Now I can return all my library books and check them out digitally! And that means there won't ever be a 'checked out' copy that I can't get, right? So the whole library catalog is mine! Or is that not how it works? As for the handbag... it's a really big bag so I can use it to travel with! It's a good bag to take onto the plane with me.

No more spending money, I swear. Well, there's the Restaurant Week stuff I already have planned, but that's it. No more merchandise.

Am more than halfway through B4 of the MI series. It's going really quickly. I just love Jace. And Simon's growing on me. I never really liked him as much as I think CC wanted me to, in the previous 3 books, but I'm getting there. I find that I like his interactions with the male characters a whole lot more than his interactions with the female characters (maybe because, for the most part, I like the guys more than the girls in this series).

Did some more Wii Fit yesterday. It can't decide whether I'm a couch potato or a yoga trainer, lol. Some of the yoga exercises I kick ass at, and then others... we won't speak of the others. The strength exercises are mostly fine, except for the one with the push ups. SCREW THOSE.

You guys, OMG, Billy Elliot the Musical was SO AMAAAAAAAAAAAZING. Half the cast were kids and they fucking danced (and sang!) their hearts out so professionally and it was so flipping awesome and made me feel so awed over what they've accomplished in their young lives vs what I was doing when I was their age. >.> Faith Prince as Mrs. Wilkinson was wonderful. She's not Julie Walters, but despite that I loved her anyway.

It's the last week of the show but I'm considering getting the cheap $25 seats and going back to see it again. I loooooooooooooooooved it!

So yeah, the tickets K. got on Craigslist weren't a scam. <g> I wasn't really worried about that, but it was a possibility. The bigger concern was what kind of seats we had. The Paramount didn't say one way or another to the ticket winner, and they could have been bad seats. Instead, they were center orchestra, which are normally $80/ticket! So we totally scored on that. Had a great view of everything.

There are 4 different Billys, and we saw Kylend Hetherington, who of the four probably looked most like Jamie Bell (and therefore, to me, the "real" Billy). He was such an ickle woobie and soooooooooo wonderful. He's frickin 13 and has been doing this since he was 12, omg.

Now K. is all into it and is going to watch the movie, etc. Best movie EVAR!

Some of the plot points are different in the musical vs the movie, but for the most part I thought it was very true to the original. The one part of the musical that was different, but that I thought was very well done, was this one scene where Billy is dancing solo, but then an adult male ballet dancer starts to shadow him (they're dancing and spinning a chair at the same time), but the adult dancer is much more skilled/professional, and it was a wonderful way to show us "This is who Billy will become."

SO GOOD.

( I found a sizzle reel! Watch iiiiiiiiit. )

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I've got laria_gwyn and slitherhither into A Song of Ice and Fire now. They're both reading (and enjoying!) A Game of Thrones. YAY!!!!!!!!

While on this topic...

Jon Snow is losing his latest cagematch! Noooooo! Go vote to right this wrong. Or if you're so inclined, contribute further to it. <g>

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Still reading Devil in the White City. Quote from the book:

"I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages." - Rudyard Kipling

Which I shared with akscully, and she replied:

"Chicago is unique. It is the only completely corrupt city in America." - Charles Merriam

LOL. I'm so glad I'm visiting!

I caved and bought my flight at the ridiculous price they were asking. Now I'm more motivated than ever to find inexpensive hotels (on Priceline). We're aiming for the N. Michigan/Loop area.

David Lebovitz is in Chicago right now and reporting on the great food places he's going to. It is so nice of him to be my little treasure hunter like this.

ropo, we need to go to Edzo's Burger Shop, Floriole Bakery, Xoco Hot Chocolate (for me, not you <g>), Kuma's (another burger joint), and perhaps most importantly, one of Rick Bayless's Mexican restaurants.

From other sources, I also have these on my list: Girl & the Goat, Publican, and Alinea (if we want to crazily splurge -- but even then, we might be too late as they fill up 2 months in advance -.-).

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I had the nuttiest experience with my phone yesterday. I was working from home because I knew I was going to see Billy. I dialed into a conference call at 9, which ended at 10. When it was over, they hung up, and since my screen wasn't on the 'phone' screen but on my menu page, I just assumed the call had ended.

BUT APPARENTLY NOT. Three hours later, I got in my car and my Bluetooth kicked in and informed me that my music wasn't on because I WAS ON THE PHONE. !!!!!!!!!! What!!!!! Apparently I hadn't hung up the phone and that meant that I had been "on the phone" with dead air for the last three hours!!

My monthly minute allotment isn't that high, particularly given that I am sharing those minutes with my parents (whose phones I am now paying for -- long story), so basically that ate up ALL the "any time minutes" that I had, and it's still not the end of my billing cycle. >< I called AT&T to explain, and they were fairly understanding, and gave me a one-time 1,500 minute rollover bonus to cover any overages. AT&T customer service >>>>>>>>>>> T-Mobile customer service. Not sure if I have ever talked about my horrendous experience with T-Mobile, but it was some of the WORST customer service I have ever experienced. Now that AT&T has announced they're buying T-Mobile (for $39B O.o), maybe they can clean up their act (in more ways than one, since T-Mobile also has a poor corporate reputation for their anti-gay policies).

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I've purchased another TV. It's a Panasonic TC-P42C2 plasma. It's not as big as the TV in my room, it's 42" instead of 50", and it's only 720p instead of 1080p, but at that size and at the distance I'll be watching, 720p is all that's needed. I'm paying a bit more because it's a Panasonic, but I love Panasonic products so it's worth it to me. I don't plan to wall mount it but will keep it on a TV stand. I did a TON of research about this (plasma vs LCD, size, resolution, etc.), so if anyone is thinking about getting a new TV for the moment I am a font of knowledge. In about a month, I'm sure I will have forgotten everything. <g>

Purpose of this TV: to use my Wii Fit. I've had the Wii Fit for like 2 years but have never used it, because with my current TV set up I didn't have enough space to actually do the exercises comfortably. Well I am sick of my excuses for why I don't exercise -- this will take care of that. The TV will go in the living room area, which has plenty of space, and I will have no more excuses as to why I'm not exercising.

This might also mean that I need to get myself a Kinect for Xbox 360. :D

The one thing I am kind of trepidatious about is that I bought it on eBay. Since it's a second TV I really wanted to be frugal. The thing with eBay is that it's almost always fine, but I seem to have bad luck with buying electronics there specifically. So hopefully there won't be any issues. >

Okay, I've purchased a treadmill -- link to it here in case anyone else goes through the same hemming and hawing. Basically what I did was use the basics from this article to determine the basic stats of a machine that would work best for me (given my weight/predicted usage) and went to NordicTrack to find one in my price range with those stats. I tried a couple of other brands the article mentions, but their Web sites/offerings didn't seem very impressive and at least I've heard of NordicTrack (reputable company important when parting with a significant chunk of change). Probably a true exercise guru would know the actual best brands, but as a noob this worked for me.

This helped me determine that their lowest end model would work for me, but before just buying it off the NT site I decided to look for it on eBay (the article makes a sensible point that you can get good exercise equipment used, as people often buy on impulse and don't end up using them). Well, eBay didn't have the model I wanted, but I did find a higher-end model, that has a TV (O.o), iPod dock, and other niceties on top of being better functionally (in terms of motor type, weight capacity, etc.), at less than half what it retails for on the NT site -- and not much more than what I would have paid for the lower-end model. It's also brand new, from a seller who has over 270 feedback and a 99.3% positive rating, so I feel pretty good about it. The only thing I'm a bit leery about is the manufacturer's warranty -- I called NT, and according to them it's still good regardless of who I purchase the equipment from, but I can't purchase extra warranty as I've seen some suggest. Plus, it's still a bit of a risk because I'm going through eBay and all, so NT may not consider it legitimate or whatever. And of course, it's being shipped so I haven't actually seen or used it yet, so hopefully everything will be OK when I get it.

Now I just have to find a place to put it, and contemplate how difficult it's going to be to put it together!