For the mentioned task, I prefer to hold control, double click on "item" on lines 1 and 3, press right, and type " odd". Then pressing up, left and type " even".
For more complex tasks like data format conversion, It's probably easier to write some small script and refine a couple of times to resolve possible conversion errors.
I rarely use global find and replace nowadays (just for complex regex replaces). I hold Ctrl-D until all occurrences are selected and type the replacement string (assuming occurrences are low in quantity, which they usually are in most cases).
The most awesome feature of SublimeText for me is multiple-cursor editing (Ctrl-D on a word). It only bothers me when I can't skip next occurrences easily (It's possible, but it's hard)
It surprises me how users of other major editors don't use multiple cursors in their day to day editing tasks. It'd be awesome if subvim included the best solution vim community has to offer in this regard.
I think inventing typesetting languages that compile to TeX might partially solve the problem and make the whole typesetting experience more pleasant, since TeX is already a capable typesetting system, and has a rich ecosystem, and TeX engines are already capable of producing high-quality documents, but the hard part is writing TeX documents.
So what haml is to HTML, or say CoffeScript to javascript, a new language could be to TeX.
so inventing new, easier to use typesetting languages that use TeX as an underlying system might be a good solution..