"I need to buy this book and I'm not even through the preface yet"

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. I hope everyone had as good a day as I did today! It totally had nothing to do with Valentine's Day but I had a really good day. Today, I (drumroll, please) read a hilarious book about punctuation and grammar. Seriously. I can honestly say that it is the funniest book about grammar that I have ever read (Not a difficult feat, mind you). I may have mentioned previously that I love language and language related humour so this was pretty much the perfect book for me. I was at the library today, finished checking out all 10 books when I saw "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" by Lynne Truss on the shelf. I started flipping through it while I waited for my sister and pretty much decided on the spot that I absolutely had to get it out. It is darn funny. I was driving my sister crazy as I giggled my way through, reading the funny parts aloud for her enjoyment. I took a break at one point, and my sister stole the book and started reading it and started giggling hysterically as well. She decided that, even though she hadn't even finished the preface yet, she is going to have to buy the book. I have already finished the book and already want - no, need - to read the book again, if only to engrain the punctuation rules in my head. As I am writing this, I am thinking about all of the grammatical mistakes that I am most likely making and am really self conscious. It's definitely worth a read if you enjoy language, humour, or a combination of the two.

Pretty much the definition of an extra penny

When I was living in the US, I had a couple of accounts with Bank of America (chequing and savings). A couple of months after moving back to Canada, I finally decided to close my accounts because a) I needed the money and b)I couldn't see myself returning to the States in the near enough future for it to be useful for me. I closed my accounts over the phone. The lovely agent helped me transfer my money from savings to chequing so that my savings account would close, then I wrote myself a cheque for the balance of the chequing account so the chequing account would have a zero balance so it would close. This all would have been fine and dandy if $0.04 interest hadn't been credited to my savings account after my money was transfered out of my savings account. This meant that my savings account never closed. I continued getting Bank of America statements alternating between saying I had $0.04 in the account, I had $ -11.96 in the account (due to a $12 balance protection fee. Seriously, $12. I didn't realize that until after I thought I had closed the account or I would have closed the account sooner), and a notice that I once again had $0.04 in the account because they had cancelled the fee. This went on for a few months until I finally got my arse in gear and called them to see what was going on. They explained everything to me and, because they can't just do away with people's money, they would be sending me a cheque for the $0.04. The cheque arrived this week. I want to reiterate that I now live in Canada, so they had to mail the $0.04 cheque using international postage. I would, in fact, rather have the postage because it is worth more. But anyways, today I cashed the cheque at the ATM under US currency transactions. Due to the exchange rate, I actually got $0.05 which made me inexplicably euphoric. When I told my sister what had happened, I made the profound statement that it was "like I got an extra penny." She replied that it was pretty much the definition of an extra penny. So todays favourite thing is getting $0.05 when you think you are getting $0.04.