I can admit it. I have a problem, but i'm not the only one. C's in the same boat. She has bought and sent just as many things from eBay to her parents house in the past week as i have. This little beauty is a 1996-1997 Todd Marchant playoff road set. This is the jersey he was wearing when he scored the game seven overtime winner against Dallas. I couldn't pass up a chance at owning a piece of one of my favourite Oilers memories. We've spent over $1000 on about a dozen things. Hey, we haven't really bought anything for ourselves in the last year, and we're making up for lost time i guess. We're using the same profile and it might look a little weird. If some were to look at the purchased items they would see the strange mix of hockey jerseys and scrapbooking crap/stationary. C has had a stationary addiction i've known about for some time. I can't understand it. She even wants to bring pens home from Korea. I'm not talking about any fancy Korean pens. They're just normal everyday pens. I think the majority of the buying is finished now. Just a few more things i'm watching...

I was reading Penny Arcade today when i saw this. They were talking about new additions to Xbox Live when i came across this which seemed to ring true:

Also: free online poker for Xbox Live Arcade, in addition to (wait for it) Uno, which as a social card game could actually be a pretty good match for the service. Games of skill and chance can bring a person's inner bastard to the fore, but I know of no other game that can turn a person into a complete fucker in the way that Uno does.

I decided to highlight my favourite text in red in case you couldn't figure it out. Last time we had people over a few stayed to play a round of Uno with us. I know of no other game or sport that can incite swearing amongst friends as quickly. It reminded me of the "game nights" we would have at home with friends in Canada. Yes, i am a loser.

In work news, the search doesn't go well. They still only have one teacher locked in so far. We have less than eight weeks to go until the end of our contract now, so we may end up staying a little longer to help out. The other day we were talking with the director and his wife and he offered us a big flat screen TV for us to stay another year. I would take him up on it, but it's not my decision alone.

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I have a new addiction, and this one's going to cost me. It started innocently enough. Hockey Canada was auctioning off game worn jerseys from the Olympics and a Ryan Smyth jersey stayed at a reasonable price until the last day of the auction. Being a die hard Oiler fan i couldn't pass up a chance at owning a piece of history. I've also saved a rather large amount of money, and i felt it was time to splurge a bit. As the auction came to a close it was a little higher than i wanted to go, but i made a last minute bid anyway. I saw my bid was beaten with 14 seconds left, but i let it go. I wasn't totally comfortable with spending at least $1500 on it. Luckily for me, the next day i saw this one for less than a third of the price and jumped at it. It's no Ryan Smyth, but i'm quite happy with it. This game worn Tommy Salo will be prized until i die just the same. I've also bought all five seasons of the Sopranos and a shirt for C. Yesterday i just got outbid on a hockey stick autographed by 16 Oilers, but i let that one go before i got out of hand. There's some cool shit i don't want to pass up. We're sending all this stuff to C's parent's in Regina so we don't have to lug it all back. They might end up a little unhappy we're using them for storage.

In other news, we're looking at Thailand and Malaysia as possible vacation destinations when we finish. Neither of us have ever been to a tropical destination and we feel now is a great time to go. Our trip to Jeju-do has been pushed back. After beautiful weather last week it snowed yesterday. Now we're shooting for sometime in April. The hunt for a new teacher isn't going well and our director mentioned something about us coming back to work for him again. We were planning on heading to Seoul this weekend, but he's having some kind of orientation for parents on Saturday. We have to show up and look pretty for a couple hours at the ungodly hour of 10. If we didn't like the director and his family so much i would have refused and said it's not in my contract. We can't go Sunday either because it will be one of the last two Dongu games we can see. There's still a lot we would like to do and see before we leave Korea and we may stay a week or two after our contract is up to check it out.
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"Please be made well-aware..."

We've been helping the head teacher search for our replacements, and so far the pickings have been surprisingly slim. C has been helping email and phone a few candidates that have questions about the positions. On the weekend she made an arrangement with a guy named Michael to talk over the phone. She got up early on Sunday to catch him in the evening, but she got no answer when she called. She later received this email verbatim:

...I shall be moving to Australia in less than two months. Safely, we would all hope....right? Now, we are actually "flying " through the molecules. Okay, so here we go..I am moving at Warp Speed; In terms of psycho/social, and intermediate levels of human endeavours/pre-occupation with Life's "little Tribunals," I would like to prove..and convince myself, that I am capable." That is all.

What the fuck? I assume this means he's no longer interested in the position. I'm glad this nutjob won't be working here. Not that i would have to work with him for long, but i'd fell bad for those we leave behind. We really do like everyone here. Just because you know big words doesn't mean you should attempt to use them all together. What the hell was this guy smoking? I hate pseudo-intellectuals. I'm sure he uses big words to make himself feeling smarter than other people. I should post the "sexy" pic he sent C. It's priceless. I really didn't think they still made short that short for straight guys. I should quit there. I still have a test to write for later today.

-insomniac out.