This morning I caught up with some Canadian TV, watching Jaeda get kicked off ANTM, finally! Then, as requested, I took Venuppi the Puppy for a walk the length of the Rick Steeves podcast on London and Bermuda. We went just about half way to Shibuya, and then walked back, winding our way through the area near Yoyogi Uehara and in the back streets between the station and the overpass that's under construction (like 15-20 minutes down the road)... We found lots of yummy smelling little restaurants and some cute looking shops tucked away in the back corners, along with a couple of nice looking cafes. Of course, with the venuppi puppy I didn't stop - I don't think she was too into the idea of being tied up while I went shopping!

I came back and dropped off the dog, exchanging her for the bike and set off to the area that Pete and I went to a couple of weeks ago with Venus - Sasazuka. I love being able to take a bike places - ride on the sidewalk and not get a ticket for it, etc! I have to start figuring out some other places which are a good bike from here - so far Omotesando/Shibuya, Sazasuka, and Yoyogi Uehara have all been good - Shimo Kitazawa is definitely close, but it's way too crowded for good biking! I'm sure there are tons of places I could get to within 45minutes or an hour, but I'm just not sure which random/windy road to go on - need to get that Tokyo Atlas out again!

I vaguely remembered there being some kind of shoe store in the mall/department store/still can't figure out exactly what it is since there are no walls between the different 'stores' in the area. Since I've been needing some shoes I headed over and had four pairs worth of success... I still kind of want a good pair of boots, but in much better shape after today. Oh and Andee - I took this picture for you of a purse they had (she just got a dachshund puppy who is very cute!)
Then I went across the street to the Excelsior Cafe and started reading 'The Wealthy Barber' by David Chilton. Pete gave it too me with a random stack of books he pulled off his shelves (I need to find a library or something!), but anyway, I'd heard tons about it so I decided to give it a go. It's actually a great book - I love how it is Canadian, so they don't mention like Roth IRA and 401(k) and all that stuff, but concentrates on RRSPs and Canadian tax law, and oh my God I sound like the biggest geek on the planet right now!

Anyway, in chapter one, he talks about the 10% rule, where you direct deposit/debit 10% of your income into a mutual fund and behold the magic of compound interest. Using an example from the book, if you start investing 30$/month at age 18, at a rate of 15% average annually, you will have 2, 000, 000 at age 65. Given, I can't imagine it's that easy to find a mutual fund with those returns, and, starting at basically 20, I'm gonna have to wait till I'm 67 to cash out my 2 mil, but still, it seems like a good idea.

I jumped online and started doing some mutual fund research, but I haven't got too far - if anyone has some good comments, I'm all ears - leave a comment on here for me! Obviously I barely know less than nothing about this stuff, but it's a good example of what having some time on your hands and an Internet connection will drive you to research! So far I've been finding funds which have an 8-10% return over 10 years, and some which have pretty high initial buy in costs, but anyway, I've aged myself about 40 years in this post, so moving on...

Peter came home and made me stop planning my financial future in favour of old episodes of 'Police Squad' which arrived for him from Amazon.com today. I fell asleep during the second episode, but the first episode did have a few vaguely entertaining sight gags - Pete was overly entertained by this 1982 'gem' of a comedy... I think if you're in the right mood it's probably pretty funny in an 'oh dear god who let them put that in there? kind of way'... Maybe my housewiferishness for today just didn't set me up well to enjoy them tonight...

Ummmmm that's about it - I'm thinking about signing up for a course at Athabasca University soon, but I'm not sure which one I would take. I should probably also call someone at SFU and find out how that might affect my application, which speaking of which, I should probably do at some point.

I think I'm teaching again tomorrow (the same guy as before), and then hopefully, hopefully, RENT on Wednesday! La Vie Boheme!

Sorry for the lame day/post - it's hard to do something exciting everyday! I'll try and pick it up tomorrow though....

D