i jumped into a puddle today.

today was the first time in three weeks that I haven't needed to set my alarm.



i woke up at 11:11.



it was a good day.



i finished reading The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland. and loved it, i fully recommend it. its an easy read but the characters are really interesting.

and bought Lullabies for Little Criminals at She said boom!, the most amazing second hand book and record store. got the book for 9$ and the list price on the back is 17.50, plus the spine has never been cracked. i love being the first person to read a book. its a novelty (novel? pun? oh?) that never gets old. plus i saw a couple more books that are on my mental radar for potentials.

there is a liter of fresh squeezed OJ in my fridge right now. bottled sunshine.

my mom sent me a valentines day card. i think she feels bad for me. i can live with that, she sent a 10$ shoppers gift card in it. she knows how to get to my heart, i have been controlling my addiction for a while now but now i have a free money at shoppers i am itching to go in there and spend it on useless shit like dryer sheets and body cream. (useless/random/embarassing fact: i have five tubes of toothpaste still in the package and over seven bottles of shampoo/conditioner. i told you i had an addiction. don't even get me started on shoppers optimum points.) but also i am torn because its a gift card and, well, hoarding gift cards is a secret past time of mine. theres comfort in knowing no matter how broke you get there will always be your gift cards too fall back on.
as if i would let my bank account ever get to that point.pfffff

i was reading an article in the globe and mail about starbucks and how in mega trouble they are in. (also i kind of knew this from j but that made it more interesting) i'm not going to pretend like i'm a know-it-all and tell you what i think they should do, oh wait! umm actually i am going to do exactly that.
they have some serious branding strategy to figure out. starbucks should really take a good hard look at themselves and where they started from. what made them 'cool' in the beginning was the atmosphere they provided people. fresh coffee smell when you walked in the door, comfy chairs and overall ambiance. now, the espresso is made by an automatic machine (no fresh coffee smell) and lets get real, hanging out in a starbucks is lame. unless you wear uggs with your juicy velour tracksuit.
the trouble is, now they have created this new image, they are loosing the cult following that made them cool in the first place. they are loosing market share. and fast. but can they really go back? doubt it.
but what will be awesome is seeing what they do. because they are going to do something. and if it doesn't work then they are going to loose alot of business and dollar signs.
i can't honestly say i wish them luck, because as far as my info goes, they are major sellouts.
if i had to recomend one thing to them, i would say they need to embrace who they have become and cater to this in every aspect of what they do. no more pretening to be differnet, they are just a more expensive version of williams/timothys who spends alot of money on product placement. they need to stop trying to dominate the world with starbucks on every corner and scale back on the quantity of locations. because really, the people who have to have stabucks likely have a car and go three blocks further to get it.

oh and they should loose that stupid 'skinny latte' campaign they have going now. barf.

what do you think?