No, not computer (software) bugs, but real ones. The type the crawl around and make a nuisance of themselves.

One of the things that made me happy when I moved into my current apartment was the fact I have a huge window in my living room and can therefore have lots of plants. After living in basements for over a year this was a welcome change. After moving in I quickly assembled a decent array of plants.

A week or so ago I noticed something that looked a bit like a dust web with some things caught in it covering the leaves of one of the plants. I wiped it away and though nothing more of it...until it came back, very quickly. I looked closely at the plant but could not see anything really unusual so I wiped it away again. This continued for a couple of days and then spread to another plant. I was getting a bit concerned but simply continued to wipe it away as best I could.

Today after wiping one of the plants I had another close up look at the under side of some of the leaves and the stems. This time I saw them! Whatever them are they were instantly my mortal enemy. Little crawling things on my plants.

After some more wiping and some Googling I think that they are a type of mite. Off to the mall to find some indoor bug spray and a quick application of said spray and here is hoping I started treatment in time. I will be keeping a close watch on the plants the next week or so to ensure I've got the little buggers.

The last week of October I had a canvasser come to my door and offer me a great deal on the Ottawa Citizen, a trial period of 13 weeks for $15. That is a huge reduction over what the normal price is, of course the hope is that you will continue to pay (a higher price) for the paper after the trial is over. I figured why not, I had been looking at getting a paper anyways and the price was too good to pass up.

After receiving the paper for a month I got a call from the Citizen saying that my subscription was up. Needless to say I was really confused. After 2 calls to the Citizen what I found out was that the price was really $15 per month for 3 months. I was rather unhappy with this and decided not to continue to pay as that was not what I had been promised.

I decided to follow up by filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. About a week later I received another call from the Citizen following up with my complaint. They informed me that through my complaint and other sources they had become aware that some of the third party canvassers (they outsourced some or all of the canvasser positions) had either not been totally truthful with potential customers or may have even lied. They were aware of the problem and said they had dealt with it, either through firing the offending people or through other means.

The thing that impressed me about the whole situation was the speed with which the Citizen followed up with me regarding my complaint with Better Business Bureau, even thought I had indicated that no follow-up action was required. While I have not renewed my subscription I am will to consider doing so at some in the future which I was not ready to do before the follow-up. For now I will stick with online sources and the community newspapers.

Well, it took almost a year but I finally finished Narnia. I don't mean The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I mean the whole thing. Ok, it did not really take a year of reading, I would get really into it for a bit then put it down for a month at a time. Reading books like that makes them go a lot slower.

In any event, I finished it. I quite enjoyed almost the entire book, I thought it was all good except for the final story. The ending did not wrap things up for me at all, I found it kind of a cope out in a way. However, in all other respects I found the stories to be very entertaining. The prequel to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe set things up nicely and the follow up stories take you an a far reaching ride showing off much more then just Narnia. You get to learn about other lands in that world and the people who inhabit them.

It reminds me in a way to The Wizard of Oz. I think that many people only know the story of Dorothy, the tornado, and how she followed the yellow brick road. In fact there are a number of other 'follow-up' books in the series.

Looking forward to what I may read next, I think I would like to tackle Catch-22. It is a book I have been interested in reading for a while but have never gotten to. I think one of my plans for the new year is to read more, and more consistently. During university I only ever read for pleasure during the summer, there were too many other things happening during the year. I have not been much better since I finished school and that is something I want to change.