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I didn’t sleep very well last night because I kept having nightmares. It was the weirdest thing. I woke up 3 or 4 times all sweaty and kinda freaked out. Each nightmare was almost the same as the last, and they all involved something or someone trying to kill me.

In each dream, there was some invisible force or something that was keeping me held down in my bed. It was one of those weird cases where I woke up in my dream, but I was really still sleeping in real life. I thought I was awake, but I was paralyzed and couldn’t untangle myself from my sheets or get up out of bed. The whole time, there was this feeling of impending doom and a sense that I was facing my death.

My very last nightmare of the night started out the same way, but this time I was able to sit up, only to see the Grim Reaper sitting at the foot of my bed, with his long, bony finger pointing at me. I recall trying to punch him and yell, but I was paralyzed, just looking at this dark figure pointing at me and not saying a word.

When I awoke, I was freaked out, but I had a sense of relief that I wasn’t dead. I’m counting on it just being my imagination going crazy while I slept, but is there a hidden meaning? Was I visited by Death himself?

My piece of shit car was deemed too unsafe to even be tested for the Ontario Drive Clean emissions test, so I couldn’t get my plates renewed. The car’s not worth fixing, so I’m looking for a newer car at the moment. But that’s not what this post is about.

One of my coworkers lives near me, and offered to drive me to and from work until I get a car, which was really nice of her. I had to adjust my schedule, since she starts at 7:30am and I used to start at 8. Today was the first day and it was a bit rough getting up earlier, but that’s not what this post is about either.

So anyway… on our way to work, we stopped by Tim Horton’s to get morning coffee and tea. When we got to the drive through window, the cashier informed us the lady in the car ahead of us paid for our order! That was a pleasant surprise and brought a smile to our faces. My driver (the nice coworker, not a real chauffeur), in turn, paid for the order of whoever was in the car behind us. Hopefully it sparked some sort of chain reaction that continued all day, but I’ll never know how far the giving went.

I have heard of this sort of thing happening before, but never seen it firsthand. I hope the nice lady in front of us had a great day.

The other day I was at the mall just wandering around when I got really thirsty. I happened to be in Zellers at the time, and the only refrigerated bottled water available was Dasani Lemon. It cost $1.37 or something ridiculous for the bottle, and it tasted gross. It is artificially flavoured, and tastes like chemicals, leaving an odd sticky aftertaste. I would not recommend it.

I joined Facebook rather late compared to most people I know. I always thought that if I wanted to contact people online, I’d just use email or instant messaging. If I wanted to share photos, I could email them or put them up on my website or on one of many sites dedicated to that purpose. I didn’t think it was necessary to join some “social network” in order to stay connected to friends.

That all changed in February 2007, when I finally cracked and joined Facebook. I remember the first month being pretty exciting as far as online events go. I would get emails every day telling me someone added me as a friend or someone added new pictures. This quickly died down once I was linked up with just about everyone I know. It was kinda cool to reconnect with some old friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, and to see what people were up to. I found it easy to get sucked in, and I know a lot of people who were obsessed with Facebook for a while.

A year later, Facebook is not nearly as exciting or relevant, at least among my group of friends. I remember back in the day there would be so much activity on my news page every single day. Now I can go several days without checking Facebook and find that very little has changed.

Another reason I think Facebook “jumped the shark” is allowing third-party applications to be installed. I was never emo enough to have a MySpace page, and I liked the clean layout of Facebook, which is part of the appeal that led me to join. While there are some interesting apps out there, most of them are ridiculous and annoying. Oftentimes, if I want to leave a message on someone’s wall, I’ll have to scroll through their zombies, vampires, pirates, ninjas, funwall, superwall, daily babe, top friends list, booze mail and stripper name just to find it. All this clutter is reminiscent of the many hideous MySpace pages out there, and ruins the sleek, original design that I liked about Facebook so much.

The way I see it, Facebook has become a marketing machine, with little relevance to my life anymore. I’m disgusted that it’s been valued at 15 billion dollars. Facebook is no longer cool, but I’m still hanging on, and I won’t be deleting my profile anytime soon.

Continuing where I left off last week, I recently sent off a letter to David Kong, the president and CEO of Best Western International. In this letter, I explained the situation we experienced while we stayed at the Best Western in Nashville, and asked for his help resolving the matter. Most people told me not to expect much to come from it, but I definitely hoped for some sort of positive outcome.

During the first week of February, I received a letter from Best Western International. It wasn’t from the president directly, but from Greg Trotter, who is manager of Customer Care. According to the letter I received, Mr. Kong was made aware of our situation and the issues we faced while in Nashville. In the reply, I received an apology for the poor service, as well as some comments about how Best Western strives to provide excellent service and value for all of its customers.

Mr. Trotter went on to explain that he’s aware travelers have a lot of options available when selecting accomodations, and he hopes we will consider staying at a Best Western again in the future. To make things right, he is sending me a check for $80 (Canadian) to cover the cleaning fee and is also sending me a Best Western travel card worth $25.

Best Western locations are all independently owned and operated, so I can see why, despite their best efforts, the level of service provided is not always up to par. It sucks that I had to write a letter to the president to get any sort of help, but I am happy with the way they handled the situation and the end result. My faith in Best Western International has been restored, but I don’t think I’ll stay at their Nashville location again.