A look into my cur­rent tastes, updat­ed for 2007. This list is some­what short­er than last years because the ones I haven’t checked off still apply, and I’ve been guilty of some spend­ing this month; The first two sea­sons of Robson Arms on DVD (which I des­per­ate­ly wait­ed two years for), sea­son six of Trailer Park Boys, my mit­tens, a RAZR 2 (the cell phone I’ve had for five years died), an elec­tric tooth­brush, and var­i­ous gifts.

Photography

• Bogen / Manfrotto Background Support System 314 ($280) — To quick­ly set up dif­fer­ent coloured back­grounds in my pho­tog­ra­phy room.

  Bought it on sale, which was still $260.

• Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead ($475) — My cur­rent tri­pod isn’t strong enough to hold most of my lens­es in place, and the lock­ing mech­a­nism is extreme­ly chintzy. Very frus­trat­ing when work­ing with dark shots. A ball­head would give me tremen­dous flex­i­bil­i­ty.
• Gitzo GT3530LSV Mountaineer 6x Carbon Fiber Tripod Legs ($625) — Carbon fiber tub­ing makes for an extreme­ly light and portable set of tri­pod legs. Packed with all the impor­tant lit­tle fea­tures like an anti-leg rota­tion sys­tem, the Gitzo leg lock­ing sys­tem, and remov­able rub­ber feet.

Furniture

• Rubix Cube Ottoman ($129) — A black, two-toned square ottoman to go with my leather couch.

Housewares

• Bodum Assam 2‑Cup Tea Press ($25) — I have one of these at home, but it would be great to have one at work too, so I can make more than one cup of tea at a time.

  Julie bought me a Stokes gourmet Formosa tea infuser for Christmas 2008. A lit­tle cham­ber for loose leaves dan­gles from the top, as opposed to a press, which can cre­ate bit­ter­ness in tea.

• Braun Impression WK 600 Kettle ($90) — A large ket­tle for my tea. Right now, I have to boil water in two cup inter­vals, which takes a while when guests are over.

  Andrew and Alex bought me a sim­i­lar mod­el for my birth­day, and it’s SWEET.

• Tingler Head Massager ($15) — On Jason’s rec­om­men­da­tion on my recent post about man­u­al stim­u­la­tion. The reviews say that it helps put you to sleep, and that can nev­er be a bad thing.

  Found a cheep one at Zone for five dol­lars! Doesn’t vibrate or any­thing but still pret­ty good. Next is find­ing some­one to use it on me.

Games

• Orange Box ($50) — A nos­tal­gic trip back to the days of my favourite game ever: Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. I hear the game­play has changed a lot, but I don’t care. We’ll prob­a­bly be play­ing this at the next LAN.
• Odin Sphere ($40) — A side-scrolling fan­ta­sy RPG for the PS2 that I don’t want to miss.

Movies/Shows

• JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA ($52) — My favourite ani­me of all time: a com­bi­na­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing uni­verse, and very intel­li­gent action. I cur­rent­ly have a copy in Japanese with French sub­ti­tles. While this helps me learn more French, I also don’t under­stand much the phras­es.

  Found a copy of this for down­load.

• Reno 911 sea­sons 2–5 ($90) — An hilar­i­ous, orig­i­nal look at law enforce­ment. Trailer Park Boys from the oth­er side of the law. I have the first sea­son (thank you Music World for going out of busi­ness and giv­ing me 20% off), but I’d love to get the rest, along with the movie.

  Bought all of these on a lark. Did not regret the deci­sion.