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Dear Diary

I have been remiss in my blogging as of late, and so I apologize to the 3 of you who still read this thing.

In an effort to blog more regularly, I’m going to start a lot more personal writing. Not necessarily, “Here are my dirty secrets,” or, “I had sex in public today,” type of stuff. Just day-to-day diary entry type stuff.

Since many of the people who read this blog know me personally and read this as a way of keeping in touch with me, I don’t think that switching to a more personal approach will be a bad thing. It’ll get me to write more often and it’ll give you more info about what’s happening in my life.

Posted in Personal.


Your Daily Dose of Creepy: Photos from the Real Doll Factory

The image above is creepy, but tame. The photoset on the other side of the link below is definitely not safe for work. It is, however, equal parts fascinating and creepy.

Photos from the Real Doll factory (NSFW), via Love machine!!!! « .one too many..

Posted in Uncategorized.


I cancelled my newspaper subscription

The Death of the Newspaper

I am officially a part of the problem—the problem of declining newspaper sales, that is.

I cancelled my Edmonton Journal subscription today, after being a loyal reader for as long as I can remember. The main reason that I cancelled was that I just never seemed to find the time to read the paper. And when I did find the time, I was usually reading it online, rather than out of the physical paper.

A secondary reason was that the paper was massively cluttering up my house. Newspapers generate a huge amount of paper waste. And, because I recycle the paper, it tends to build up and take up a huge amount of space in between trips to the recycling depot.

I feel kind of bad about cancelling my subscription, because I am a part of the problem. But, mostly, I feel liberated. No more paper cluttering up my apartment. No more waste, since I’m not reading it anyway.

There’s also the issue of cost. I was originally going to switch to weekend-only service, since I usually do have time to read the paper on the weekend, but the difference in cost between 7-day service and weekend-only service is only about $4. I understand that this is done to encourage people to go for the full 7-day service but, for people in my situation, it’s essentially a deterrent. If I can save $26 a month versus only saving $4 per month, I’m going to opt for the greater savings.

How Will I Get My News Now?

When I want to read the paper—and when I have the time—I will do so online. And I’ll continue to get my news from other sources: television, radio, various online outlets, and Maclean’s (yes, I subscribe to the actual print edition and don’t plan to cancel it anytime soon).

Sorry Edmonton Journal. It’s nothing personal. I still like you, and I think you’ve got some incredible journalists writing for you, but the physical newspaper just doesn’t fit into my lifestyle anymore.

Posted in Personal, Simple Living.


Decluttering for a Simpler Life

My apartment is in a state of horrible, embarrassing disarray right now. I’m not sure if I’ve just been lazy, or if I’ve been mildly depressed, but whatever the case, the place is a shit-hole at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong. My apartment is a pretty nice place. I like the neighbourhood. I like the building (more or less). And I liked the resident manager. (There’s a new manager now, so hopefully he’ll be good or better than the old one.)

The apartment itself isn’t really a shit-hole. It’s just that I haven’t been maintaining it and taking care of it.

It’s a giant mess and that makes me depressed.

Living in a state of horrible clutter is depressing. Depression causes me to give up and not make an effort to fix the situation. It’s a pretty vicious cycle. But

I’m getting out of the funk. I’m getting out of depressed mode. And I’m going to massively tidy, clean, and declutter the place. I’ll be getting rid of a lot of stuff. I’ll be getting rid of some furniture. I’ll be getting rid of some clothes. I’ll be getting rid of some books.

I might even be getting rid of some CDs and DVDs.

While it will likely take a while to go through everything and decide what to get rid of—somethings will be very easy to part with, others very difficult—it will be totally worth it. My living space will be less cluttered and easier to take care of, which will translate into a simpler life overall.

And, with less stuff sitting around just sort of being there, I’ll be better able to enjoy the remaining stuff—the stuff that actually adds value to my life.

Starting Monday, the Big Clean™ begins. Starting Monday, my life gets back on track.

Posted in Simple Living.


Random Thought on Public Spaces

It looks like summer has finally arrived.

It’s finally warm here in Edmonton—hot even. And I’m loving it.

I’m walking a lot. Especially since I now work downtown, I walk everywhere. I walk on my lunch break. I walk on my coffee breaks (when I take coffee breaks). I walk to check the office mail at the PO box down the block.

In all of my walking, I’ve started to realize that the city is a nice place to be. At least, parts of it are.

I used to view the city more or less as an obstacle course to be crossed as I went between Point A and Point B. Now, the city is a place. It’s a place to spend time and to enjoy. I walk for fun. I sit and enjoy public spaces.

I don’t have much to say about it at this point. I haven’t given it any sort of philosophical thought at this point. I’ve just noticed it and figured I’d post about it.

Posted in Edmonton.


The Power of Nightmares

I rarely remember my dreams. When I was a teenager, I actually thought that I didn’t dream, because for a period of several years I didn’t remember a single dream.

It turns out that everyone dreams all of the time. Even if you never remember a single dream, you still dream at night. That’s just the way that the human body works.

Last night, or early this morning, I had a dream that I remember very vividly. It was long and story-like. And it was horrible.

Picture of a woman crying

In the dream, my girlfriend was pregnant. (Insert joke about that being horrible here.)

Things were going along well, and I was able to gather that, in this dream world, the pregnancy was a good thing and that we were very excited to have our first child.

Then it got bad.

I don’t remember a lot of the details at this point. Mostly it was just visceral, horrible emotion.

There was a miscarriage. There was crying. There was sadness. And there was some of the most intense emotional pain I have suffered, especially considering that it was a dream and none of it really happened.

When I woke up, I was seriously messed up. I was in a daze of depression and devastation for a couple of hours this morning before I left for work.

Shortly after waking up, I looked up miscarriage dreams online to try and see if I could figure out the meaning. Perhaps not surprisingly, everything about this type of dream had to do with women having them. Why would a man dream about his girlfriend or wife having a miscarriage, after all?

So, I pretty much have no idea how to interpret this dream, other than that it was the worst dream I have ever dreamt and that I’m still pretty damn shaken up about it.

I have rarely felt an emotional pain this raw and visceral, and never as the result of a dream.

Posted in Personal.


An Open Letter to the Gap

Dear Gap,

I like you. I do. I may be 10-20 years later to the  party than the rest of North America, but I’ve come to realize that you sell great casual clothes for a (usually) reasonable price. I’m not so much for the $50 shirts, but when you send me a 30% off coupon, like you did over the weekend, I’ll definitely buy some.

However, when the “4 days only!” during which said coupon is valid expire you immediately send out an email telling me that those same things I bought for 30% off are now 40% off, I’m apt to get a little annoyed.

Not cool Gap. Not cool.

Regards,

Adam Snider

Posted in Personal.


Starting From Scratch

Sometimes, I think it would be the best thing for me to just give away everything I owned, except for my bed, a few sets of clothing, and some dishes.

I could start from scratch, uncluttered and unencumbered by stuff.

Occasionally, I wish that my apartment would just burn to the ground. Not because I actually want that to happen. But because it would give me a clean slate.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Posted in Simple Living.


A Greener Moleskine

ecosystem notebook

When it comes to books, I am a bit of a fetishist. I really appreciate books as physical objects. This appreciation is quite separate from any appreciation of the ideas that may be contained within a book.

This appreciation carries over to notebooks, too.

For a while now, I have been scribbling down my poetry, blog ideas, business plans, and shopping lists in Moleskine notebooks. I appreciate the quality of construction that goes into a Moleskine, and there is something about the creaminess of the paper that makes writing in a Moleskine a very pleasant sensation.

The one thing that I don’t like about Moleskines is that they’re very expensive, as notebooks go. Depending on where you’re shopping, a large standard-sized Mokeskine can cost as much as $25 CAD. That’s very pricey, but I’ve been willing to pay the cost because I like the notebooks so much.

Recently, while shopping at Notables, I found an alternative to the Moleskine: Ecosystem Notebooks.

The Ecosystem is almost identical to the Moleskine, but comes with a number of advantages:

  • it’s less expensive (by about 30-40%)
  • it is environmentally-friendly (most materials are 100% recycled),
  • you can register your notebook to help track it down if you lose it.

Registration also allows you to find out additional information about the carbon footprint of your book, where it was made, and even how many people were employed in the production of your Ecosystem notebook.

The one possible disadvantage is that the pages are perforated for easy removal. While this is occasionally a convenient feature, more often it just makes me worried that pages will be accidentally torn out.

Having said that, I haven’t had any problem with pages coming out of the book when I didn’t intended them to, so perhaps this will prove a non-issue.

As long as the perforated pages don’t cause problems, I think Ecosystem notebooks will become my new staple. Sorry Moleskine, but it looks like someone has created a better—and a greener—notebook than you.

Posted in Personal.


Coffee For a Cause

I have a tendency to be a bit of a coffee snob. While I’ll drink the thickest, blackest, nastiest tar around if it’s the only coffee available, I generally try to go for fresh, high quality beans. Organic and fair trade is even better, as far as I’m concerned.

Better still is buying coffee from a local roaster like Catfish, St City, or Transcend.

But, from now until May 30, 10% of the money from each pound of coffee that Second Cup sells in Alberta will be donated to the MS Society – Alberta Division. Simply by buying something you were probably going to buy anyway, you can help a good cause.

Of course, you can always buy some other type of coffee and just make a donation of your own to the MS Society (or any other charity of your choice, really).

Posted in Edmonton.