Anybody who knows me well knows that this is pretty much my jam.



I sing it at home, at work, in the car, in the bar. In the rain, on a train, in a house, with a mouse.

Needless to say, I was more than a little agitated upon hearing this tragic mutilation on the radio recently:



I hate this. This is just bad. George Lamond is pulling some pretty punk-ass shenanigans messing with such a classic. Techno beats? Really? I'm sure the members of Journey would be rolling in their graves if they were dead. Since they're alive, I don't know what their reactions have been. But they can't be very impressed.

This assclownery that is George Lamond remaking Journey has got to end. In fact, I think somebody should put their foot down on remakes, period. They are never a good idea. How many times has Big Yellow Taxi been remade, each version worse than the last?

The musical awesomeness that is Don't Stop Believin' may be imitated, but never duplicated. Nice try, George. Moral of the Story: Karl Wolf is not a good role model.

In April, I attended an advertising workshop in Toronto with some marketing people. One of the girls in my group made a really interesting observation that's all too true. Her dad is South American and upon relocating to Canada, one of the first things he noticed in the workplace and in life in general is that nobody ever wants to admit when they've done something wrong.

Canadians do NOT want to take the blame for ANYTHING. I think he's 100% right. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, or a pacifist thing, but one thing is for sure: we don't want to admit when we've screwed up or made a mistake, even though we all do it, many of us effin' things up on a daily basis. Why??

"To err is human", but you wouldn't think so. In my area of work, there's a pretty high degree of being on the ball required. You are dealing with clients' budgets, brand, and reputation 24/7. That being said, even the most on-the-ball, organized, perfectionist can easily make an error: the wrong deadline gets passed along, the wrong specs are provided, the wrong logo is sent through, WHATEVER.

We all do it. Today I realized I had sent the wrong version of an ad to my client for feedback. Not a terribly earth-shattering deal--we had the correct ad on file, and it was just a matter of sending it along when the mistake was pointed out--but I felt horrible about it for about half the day. I worried that I looked like an incompetent idiot and I scolded myself for hours for making such a dumb error. And I found myself trying to rationalize why I'd sent the wrong PDF. "It's because it was end of day and I was trying to get it out the door before 5:00." "I didn't get the right version from creative." "The file name wasn't changed."

Then I had to give my head a shake.

It was a mistake, plain and simple. Whose fault was it? Mine. I didn't check the file before I sent the email. I was in a rush. Live and learn. At the end of the day the client was happy with the final product and the proper version got delivered to the publication. And now, I have a mental note to always double-check my attachments before hitting send. A simple "I'm sorry. I sent you the wrong PDF. Please have a look at this version instead" is all that was required to diffuse the situation. This is advertising, not brain surgery. No one is going to die because the wrong file gets sent through. Was it worth agonizing over all morning? No way! Why is it so hard to be OK with making a mistake and move on?

This sort of thing happens with projects all the time and people's first reaction is always to identify who screwed up, where something went wrong. Why do we gravitate toward who or what caused the mixup rather than focusing on how to remedy the issue first? Why doesn't anyone take ownership for the mistake?

Nobody wants to be known as the klutz or the scatterbrain or the person who doesn't have their shit together, but I think that acknowledging your mess-ups can go a long way in people's perceptions of you. If you can take ownership and work quickly to fix the problem, that shows initiative and trustworthiness, honesty that is valued and not necessarily in abundance these days, it seems. What's more important: providing solutions or pointing fingers?

Today I made a pleasant discovery: Little Miss Fortune's blog on Glamour.com today--my eye was caught by her most recent post asking readers which store is their danger zone. The black hole of spending, as she puts it. Hoo doggies, I can relate!

I think everybody has a retail weak spot. That one store that you can't go into without spending oodles more money than you'd planned. The one place where everything looks like a must-have item, a fantastic deal. For Little Miss Fortune, that store is Target. For me, it's all about Shoppers Drug Mart.



My feelings for this store could be described as borderline sexual. As soon as I pull into the parking lot, I start tingling in anticipation of all the goodies that await me inside. I go in with a very basic list of must-get items--tampons, dental floss and laundry detergent--and no matter what I cannot leave that store without spending a minimum of $50.00.

There are many reasons for this. Number one is good old-fashioned marketing and product placement. In the new stores, the pretty makeup displays are located as soon as you walk through the doors, all attractively lit and arranged so nicely on the shelves. Benefit, Clinique, Dior, they're all there begging to be sampled. Admittedly, I don't spend a ton of money in this section--I am a frugalista after all. But if time is money I've spent a fortune. I usually play with the makeup and spray on a test fragrance and hem and haw about whether $25 for a tube of mascara is worth it, and then console myself in the cheapie makeup section, where I proceed to spend waaay more than $25 making myself feel better about my cheapskate ways. A new powder brush? My 50th pink lipstick in the same colour family? Oh, Sally Hansen, you and your Insta-Dri nail polishes with the professional flat brush. Gotta grab a couple of them--cheaper than going for a manicure!

I usually get distracted by the ends of the aisles where the sale items are stowed. You can get some seriously good deals there--John Frieda shampoo for $4.50 instead of $8.99, body lotions that I wouldn't otherwise buy that seem like a total steal with their bright orange stickers. Is it still a deal if you wouldn't have considered buying it if it weren't on sale? Shut up, conscience. Around here is where I also decide I need to do some major appearance overhaul, whitening my teeth or self-tanning or colour-enhancing shampoo. Another item into the basket. Vitamins? Shit, can't have too many of those! Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching! Grab a magazine off the rack on the way out, along with a Thinsations bar, and lo and behold, my tampons cost me $80.00.

My love affair with Shoppers started when I moved to Charlottetown when I was 18. My first day on the Island, I shuffled up University Avenue after unpacking my boxes and setting up my room, feeling like a fish out of water ("Toto, I don't think we're at Rainbow Valley anymore!"*) and rethinking my whole decision to go to college in another town, when I saw it looming in the distance like a lighthouse guiding a ship to shore. The Shoppers Drug Mart sign. I picked up the pace. I remember that day buying a ton of crap I didn't need: translucent powder and a big fluffy brush and a stack of magazines and junk food. I remember it was more than $50. "Would you like an Optimum Card?" asked the cashier. That was the beginning of the end. From there, I became a whore for Optimum Points. Right now I have something like 150,000 points on my card--$150 worth of free stuff any time I want it. What now?

Everywhere I've gone, there is a Shoppers Drug Mart. The same thing happened when I moved to Halifax. I was pumped to live in Clayton Park, not only because it was near a grocery store and a drive-thru Starbucks, but mainly because of the humungous-ass Shoppers just up the block.

To this day, Shoppers is my black hole of spending. I've learned to curb it a little, but I cannot walk into that store without getting at least one item I don't really need. It just seems so practical at the time. It's a DRUGstore, after all. What's a girl to do, go sans feminine hygiene products or deodorant? I don't think that's doing anyone any favours.

*I decided to go to school in Charlottetown based partly on the fact that I could study journalism there and partly on the memories I had from visiting in the summer as a kid, particularly to Rainbow Valley fun park. Visiting PEI in the summer on vacation as a child and living in Charlottetown in the winter as an adult? Two very different things. One is less fun than the other. I'm going to leave it up to you to figure out.