Snow

I did not buy it but I kinda feel like I did. I put in 8 months of shovelling to get to the point where Spring comes and I could put the shovel away ( Like a payment plan for good weather) and just when the time finally comes we get snow instead! Snow Sucks!

Turkey

Item: 1 Aunt Ella's Turkey
Price: $29.54 (Can)
Suck or not: not

I was a little nervous to buy a turkey from a company called Aunt Ellas's and even more so when I read on to learn that Aunt Ella's is a "Turkey Cooperative" whatever the hell that is. However the low price and large size were just to much for me to turn down and I brought it home. Well let me tell you this was a great turkey!!! Whatever the turkey cooperative is doing it sure make a good turkey.

Aircast

Item: Aircast, a plastic and foam cast used to imobilize the leg.

Price: 123.00

Suck or Not: Sucks ASS!!!

Details: Don't ever tear ligaments in your ankle... Or break your ankle. A month in one of these things will really cramp your style. At least in a real cast you know you can't take it off, but in one of these you can just whip it off to shower and sleep. But every damn Morning you have to strap it on and keep wearing it. I mean at least with a real cast you get some sympathy people seem to think an aircast means you aren't really that hurt and like to poke fun or kick you in the leg.

Meal At Bonnaza

Item: Full access to the reopened Bonnaza in North Edmonton.

Price: 14.75 plus tax and tip.

Suck or Not: NOT!!!!

Details: After seeing that a Bonnaza was open in Edmonton again after about 10 years I had numerous flashbacks to my childhood involving the memories of being so full I could not move and eating meals consisting entirely of soft serve icecream. After building up the hype for about a week Darren, Kevin, and I went there for dinner. It was way beyond what I was expecting. There was a huge variety of food, friendly staff who removed empty plates at warp speed and fresh made crepes for dessert were just a few of the positives. The only real downside was that aside from the three of us everyone there seemed a little on the "plump" side and it was often difficult to squeeze between tables to get to our thrid plate of food.

Note: Warren also was there for lunch and said it was great, Although he did here someone say, "Can't we get a table closer to the food?"

Easton and CCM, in Copper and Blue

Item: complete set of hockey equipment (except skates)
Price: $560
Suck or Not: Not! And if anyone says otherwise I'll drop them with a crosscheck to the skull!

Details: So when I was home in Edmonton last week, I took advantage of the mid-summer hockey sale at Sport Check to load up on sweet gear for a fraction of what I'd pay in Boston. My needs were indeed dire...I've been using the same equipment (except for gloves and skates) for the last 13 years, a feat which was made possible by my overprotective parents who bought my last set of stuff about 6 sizes too big so I'd be "protected." I guess nobody ever explained the tradeoff between armour and mobility to them. But anyway, the gear was worn out and it was time to modernize!

So I walked into the Sherwood Park Sport Check in the lovely Sherwood Park Mall, eventually found a sales guy, and secured a 10% discount because I told him I needed "uhh, everything." Modern equipment is about 50% lighter and 80% more protective than my old stuff, and I loaded up on semi-high-end gear (last year's models!) for only $560!!! Just for comparison, the current models which weren't on sale would have cost me about $700...I even got some Oilers socks and an Oilers-coloured helmet. Bring on the MIT frat boys!!!!!!

Lean, Mean, Geeking Machine

What I Bought: Dell Precision desktop for my office
Cost: $3115
Suck or Not: How could something this fine possibly suck? Not!

Details: One of the best things that your lab head can say to you as a grad student is "I want you to spend at least $3000 on your computer so we don't have to pay overhead on it." Following that statement, one of the best things that your lab's admin assitant can say to you is "make sure you use the special login for our school when you buy it so that you get the 40% discount." Yup, that's right, I got myself a wicked-ass computer for extreme geeking out! Here are the details, and I apologize if it makes you drool...

Pentium D, dual-core 3.2GHz
4 GB of DDR2 dual-channel SDRAM at 533MHz access speed
256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX PCIe video card
Dual 250GB SATA hard drives operating in a RAID-1 array
16x DVD-ROM and 16x dual-layer DVD-RW
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi audio card
Wireless keyboard and mouse
...and the best part...20" widescreen digital flat panel AND a 19" standard digital flat panel!

This computer actually makes me want to go to work in the mornings. Plus the two huge monitors almost make it feel like I've got a window office!

The sad thing is that the way I write code (ie, inefficiently), I'll still suck up all the RAM. And the video card will probably still be insufficient for the massive amounts of 3D rendering I need to do!

Lunch, a.k.a. Butter

What I Bought: Chicken chipotle sandwich from the Boston VA Hospital
Cost: $5.00 (with a 20 oz. "soda")
Suck of Not: Suck, although the "soda" was fine

Details: So yesterday I got roped into helping out some of my coworkers who are doing a clincal study at one of the hostpitals in Boston. Generally speaking, the hospitals around here are pretty swank (they actually import sick people in Massachusetts) and have correspondingly kickass cafeterias. I brought a lunch from home anyway, thinking that we'd be back on campus before lunch so I'd be able to heat up my leftover Indian chicken from the weekend (which definitely did NOT suck!). But the doctor couldn't find the hole in one guy's colon or something, blah blah blah, and we ended up being there all day. So, around 1:00, I decided to go get a sandwich from the cafeteria...

...And damn if it wasn't the worse-assed sandwich I've ever eaten! I guess being a VA hospital, the patrons at some point in their lives were all being sustained on military food, but even still, this was terrible! The sandwich was euphamistically called "chipotle chicken ciabbatta", which apparently means "boiled McNugget chicken with mayonnaise and 3 pounds of butter, covered in greasy fried onions, served on some white bread that was grilled in 3 more pounds of butter." This sandwich was the sandwich-world equivalent of calling the US President a "thoughtful and well-spoken individual with a balanced and not-hilariously-warped view of reality."

Don't eat at the VA!

But the root beer was good.

Chia Pet Disguise

The following is a guest post from BelieveITorNot8.

What I Bought: A Haircut
Cost: $8.29
Suck or Not: Suck
Details: I went to my regular mall hair cut joint. Some people pooh-pooh these places, preferring to lay down a thick wad of bills for their haute couture coiffures. Being frugal, I go to the mall. I'm happy with the cuts that my regular lady gives. But today I found out that she was in a car accident and wouldn't be back for months (more on that later). So I chose the next available stylist. Bad idea. Clearly green, she asked one of the other stylists what size clipper attachments to use on which part of my head. That should have been my cue to fake that my phone was vibrating and get the hell out of there. I decided to give her a chance; after all we've all got to start somewhere in our careers. Unfortuntately for me, I wear thick glasses and am blind as a bat without them. And all stylists have me take off my glasses. So there I was, in the chair, blissfully blurry-eyed. She, the rookie, diligently and methodically snip snipping away. After quite a while of snipping, she proclaimed she was done. I put on my glasses and woah... For pretty much my entire head, all the hairs were exactly and uniformly 1 inch long... I guess for some stylists, this would be perhaps a feat, a triumph(?), a display of scissorial mastery. For me, I felt I looked like Chia Pet. I choked out a "Thank-you it looks fine" and paid her. Even tipped her. I'm such a softie.

By the way, I was alarmed that my normal stylist was in a car accident, one that apparently was bad enough to warrant an absence from work for months. Turns out she's almost fine and is convalescing on the insurance companies dime while studying for her Nursing finals. Hmmm.

(Editorial comment: one time I got my hair cut by an obviously-pissed-off-at-the-world Vietnamese woman in Ottawa...I came out with 5mm of hair, but I felt thankful that I only asked her to cut it "kind of short" as opposed to "short". I also tipped her, but it was more out of fear than pity. Suck.)