this winter I broke up with a service I’ve been using for all of my adult life: my bank.

I traded in my dull, expensive TD accounts with little to no interest for an ING account that gives me money. A lot of money.

In addition to paying me interest on my chequing account (yes!) as well as my savings accounts (double yes!), they give me money when people I know sign up (like my boyfriend, or my sister, or strangers I give my ING orange key to – and they give all these people money too), and when I do things like switch my payroll ($100!).

And they charge no fees. That’s right.

No fees to have a checking account (I used to pay TD $13.95 a month and ING is free. Insane!).

No fees to have a savings account (I don’t even want to talk about how TD wanted me to pay them to save my money. Thanks! I’ll keep it under my mattress in that case.) Note to people who visit my house: I don’t keep my money under the mattress.

No fees to take money out of a bank machine in their Exchange network.

No fees to go talk to someone in person when I need assistance or need to replace my card.

I could go on.

But perhaps more importantly, I feel GOOD about banking with ING. If you go to their office in downtown montreal, they’ll make you a coffee and let you hang out at their in-office coffee bar to check your email or read the paper. They are friendly, and talkative, and helpful. Their emails are funny and witty and interesting. They are trying awfully hard to give me a mortgage (those emails ARE compelling), and they offer financial investment advice and bonus %’s of interest on occasion when you do use them for investments. Did you hear that? A bank that gives you EXTRA MONEY for just doing the things you already needed to do.

If you open an account with my orange key, they’ll give you extra money too. Sound awesome? It is.

My only regret is that I didn’t switch sooner.

this isn’t an ad, nor did ING ask me to write this post. I just really like my bank right now. you should like your bank too.

apparently, my leanings towards cat-lady-dom began at an early age.

happy birthday, me!

first of all, it’s my dad’s birthday today. happy birthday dad! he *hates* fuss so here is where I’m not going to tell some sort of sappy story about how much I love my dad lest he get the idea that people are reading it. on. the. internet. That is serious business.

The other exciting thing I managed to squeeze in tonight was a good long look at the new (and premiere) issue of craft: (from the lovely people who make “Make”) – it’s great! I haven’t given it a thorough read yet, more of a skim punctuated by a few “ooh!”‘s, but hopefully there’ll be more time for heavy craft reading this weekend.

After birthday celebrations it was time for work – I have some serious crafting to do. I’ve been procrastinating for weeks! First up is a quilt I have been working on for-ever that is way overdue.

It’s the first quilt I’ve been slightly freaked about in a long time, in part, because it’s my own design (and I have no idea what it’ll look like when it’s actually laid out in real life instead of an illustration on my computer), and in part because it’s applique, and mostly because it’s for someone who I *really* want to like it.

Tonight was cut out all of the applique pieces night. That was tedious. But interesting. I’m used to working with predictable shapes – squares, rectangles, triangles – but this required me to work with odd stuff – birds, flowers, and branches – that I’m just not sure about yet. We shall see….