So the Change Challenge is officially over in 50 minutes from now, and unless Melanie e-mails me in the next while, I win! Haha. We managed to crack the $1 plateau though, and I was soooo close to breaking the barrier all by my lonesome, but to no avail. It was interesting to see how much we could find, and I must say I’m quite surprised that we weren’t able to find a lot. My Phillies friend over at Change is Good seems to find a ton of change on the ground all the time, and it’s not just because he’s got his little one scouting out the areas in front of him. Who knows why…are we Canadians more aware of our change because we’ve got Loonies & Toonies to keep track of too? Do Americans only spend bills? Who knows. All I can tell you is that I have been keeping my eyes to the ground these days, and I rarely find any change around. Even at the cash register at my local Second Cup, or my local grocery store, it’s hard to find any change lying around. I actually saw a woman walk down the street with a quarter in her hand, and then every time she passed a public phone, she would deposit the quarter and then hit the change return button, hoping to trick the machine in giving her more money. I think that might’ve worked in the old days, but not anymore with those new-fangled public phones. Seriously though, I’m not sure why we had so much trouble finding any loose change on the ground, but it’s been fun to see how much we could find. I’ll probably keep up the search, just to see if I can crack a certain amount by the end of the year. Shall I set a goal for that one? Might be fun.

Tonight I had confirmation that Mr. Murphy of the infamous Murphy’s Law was a trivia buff. I accompanied my friend Melanie to her trivia night tonight, and during the soccer villains category (one I probably would have done well at on paper, as I am a huge sports nut), Melanie decided she was too tired to continue, so I subbed in for her. The rules of the game stated that substitutions could only occur before the latest round’s category was revealed. After the soccer villains I stepped in for her…and wouldn’t you know it, the next category was Lord of the Rings!! Melanie is a HUGE LOTR fan, and I mean HUGE. She has a tattoo of a symbol from the book on her back for pete’s sake! Surprisingly even though I have read a boat-load of books, the LOTR series is one I haven’t been able to digest. I’ve tried several times, but just haven’t been able to get thru them. So Melanie was absolutely in agony watching from the sidelines while the round’s questions went by. Absolutely high-larious.

I’m sure most of you didn’t notice, but I haven’t been posting much lately. I’d like to say it was because I was too busy at work, or that I was too busy visiting friends or something wholesome like that, but alas, that’s not true. Nope, I was absent because I only had dial-up internet here at home for almost two weeks. Yes, I had to go back to the stone age for a bit while I waited for my new ISP to come back online. You see, my inner frugal self thought it would be good to switch home phone & internet access a while back, but I found that was a huge mistake. HUGE! Not only did I NOT have DSL access with the new ISP, but I started having problems with my phone too. Ugh. So the internet is back to normal today, and I anticipate the phone to be back to normal shortly. Sheesh.

Add to that the insult of getting laid off from my newly purchased company along with 80 other people, and I have not had a great week. BUT, the newly purchased company gave me a killer package, so that I don’t have to work all summer! Very nice. A paid vacation, how often does that happen? So I’m taking about 4-5 weeks off right now, and then will start the job hunt in August. What’s even better about this whole situation is that:

1. It’s mid-June, so I have the whole summer to relax.
2. The IT market is quite good right now in Toronto, so I’m not worried about finding a new job. In fact, I had a contract job offer the day AFTER I got laid off. Not bad at all.
3. I’m getting paid to be a lazy bum!

Needless to say I’m not upset in the least, other than the fact was that I would’ve appreciated knowing this several weeks/months ago, so that I could’ve postponed my trip to Italy and go now for a nice month-long vacation! Sheesh. But that’s okay, because now I’ve got several road trips planned here in Ontario, which will be good. I’ll be taking some extended long weekend trips around, and not being rushed to do anything. I may try to squeeze a trip to Vancouver too, as it’s been almost 10 years since I’ve been, put it’ll have to be for a super-cheap air fare, as I don’t want to spend all my moolah on that. The upside of going to Vancouver would be that I could also do a little job hunting while there too, which would be good. Being on-site is definitely better.

In the meantime I’ve finished off my knitted squares for the blanket, and will be starting off my first pair of socks shortly. I’ll be posting pictures of the squares tomorrow, so stay tuned. So until tomorrow kiddies….

Well, Melanie read my post about giving some of my found change to the homeless dude in my last post, and she’s graciously going to allow me to count it towards my total. Very nice. Thanks Melanie!

No, I didn’t win the lottery or anything, relax. But I did find one of each type of coin we have on the ground on Saturday night. That’s right, a quarter, dime, nickel and penny. Okay, not one of EACH type, as there was no loonie or toonie, but I don’t really count those as coins, considering they’re worth more than a dollar. But still, I was quite excited.

I will only be counting the quarter towards my total though, because as karma would have it, I found the change directly in front of a homeless dude who was sitting there with his hat out, so I dumped all but the quarter in. I know, I could’ve just kept on walking, but I felt karma dictated I give him something. I don’t normally give change to those who beg for it, as I know there are tons of service available to them to help them out of their predicament, but oh well. Sometimes karma wins out.

I felt the blog’s title was appropriate given that I was walking back from the theatre where I’d seen Ocean’s Thirteen. All in all a pretty good flick. I laughed quite a bit, and enjoyed the silliness of the boys. If you’re up for some silliness, I’d recommend it, and you don’t even need to have seen the previous two, although it helps. You’ll get more of the jokes if you have.