Okay, so planning to get ALL my Christmas shopping done today was probably over-ambitious. I didn’t do too badly, I’m probably about halfway there. I’d forgotten that I have about a one-hour tolerance for the Eaton Centre. After that point, my patience runs out and it’s elbows up, everyone out of my way. Next time I say I’m going to do my Christmas shopping all at once on the last Saturday afternoon’s before Christmas, someone do me a favour and douse me in gasoline and hand me a smoke. It’ll be more merciful.

It amazes me that no one has yet opened a store that carries only what I’m looking for, in one convenient location at reasonable prices. And I won’t accept the fact that I don’t know what I’m looking for as an excuse.

Does anyone know where I can get interesting mugs in this city?

It wasn’t all shopping for other people though – before I left, I laid the smack down on the Joe Pernice Big Tobacco album via eBay. Good price, too.

Had a look through the Spin year-end issue, was surprised to find that I owned 8 out of their top 40. Once upon a time this might have seemed validating to me but now it’s almost embaressing. I mean, this is a list that has a 2001 release as their best album of 2002 (the White Stripes’ Red Blood Cells – though I guess it’s less important to Spin when the album came out as when MTV decided that they were going to be stars). I’m keen to see what Magnet lists in their year-end issue, though I don’t expect that’ll be out till mid-January.

np – Yo La Tengo / Ride The Tiger

Some more site tweaks – if you look just to your left, you’ll see I’ve added some contact info, namely my IM IDs and email address. I’m hoping that putting the info in the title tags only will foil spammers, nothing clickable – just mouseover.

I’ve also edited the photo gallery so that the images don’t appear in pop-ups anymore, they’ll be displayed in the main browser window.

I’m also going to rotate mp3s in the radio section over in the sidebar, tunes I’m currently fixated on and feel like sharing with the world at large.

I’m noticing that MyMusic.ca has jacked up a lot of their prices. This, combined with this thread at the antiantenna message board points to what may be an alarming trend in the prices of indie releases in Canada. I generally had no problem for paying $18.98 or $19.98 for a new Merge or Matador release, but if the prices go up by three or four bucks across the board, well that’s just ain’t no good.

Today I need to do my Christmas shopping. Unless it’s cold in which case I will just hibernate.

np – Aimee Mann / Lost In Space

Vic came by tonight and did some voodoo on my blog-ware. My RSS feed is now totally Userland-spec compliant, which is apparently cool for those who care. He installed Amphetadesk so I can get RSS feeds from other sites and blogs and he fixed my ping to weblogs.com – now when I update, I can actually successfully be added to their changes.xml file. Very exciting for reasons I can’t articulate or understand.

Mostly he just got to work installing all sorts of wacky UNIX shells and whatnot on my Windows box so he could work in his preferred envrionment. I restrung my Telecaster.

np – The Velvet Crush / Free Expression

So the New Jersey edition of All Tomorrow’s Parties is going to be in September of 2003. That’s later than I thought – my plans to use that as an excuse for a vacation next year will need to be revised, I’m going to need to get the hell out of the 416 sooner than ten months from now! The lineup for the Los Angeles Matt Groening edition is due to be announced next week, maybe there’ll be enough compelling in that one to get me on a plane.

Nursing an understated but definite hangover today. Not the head-pounding, room-spinning sort, but the general lack of energy that accompanies a less-successful night of drinking. Good thing it’s a work day!

I am getting obsessed with big clean delayed guitar tones. I am going to have to sit down and practice playing with a delay properly. This is what happens when you listen to too much House Of Love at once.

np – Superdrag / Last Call For Vitriol

Ah the office Christmas party. My workplace is small – there’s a dozen of us – so it’s not like there’s much opportunity for embaressing hijinks at the social functions. No secretarial pool or temps in accounting or anything. Just as well, because this was not one of my finer evenings.

Something about the combination of alcohol and very heavy (though tasty) meal did a number on me… I’m hit-or-miss with drinking. Sometimes I can drink a fair amount and be fine, other times… it’s like tonight. I don’t think I’ll elaborate.

But the dinner at Urban on King St was good, and we went to a pool hall on Queen whose name eludes me at the moment afterwards, and I played my first games of pool in several years. I used to stink, and now I was worse. Huzzah.

So I sit here with a glass of water, plate of toast and the knowledge that I still have to go to work tomorrow. I think I should bring a pillow…

Oh yeah, won Longwave’s Day Sleeper EP off of eBay. $10 after exchange and shipping, reasonable I think. Now I just need to find a copy of Endsongs.