Tis the season of Sample Sales, or so it seems when the mailers start
arriving announcing this 40% off (but it's in downtown LA) or that 80%
off, but not until two weeks from now when I’ve completely forgotten
about it and f*#k it anyway, where’s the instant grat? I subscribe to
Daily Candy and Top Button, the latter being exclusively an online
sample sale site. There is also a mother at my younger daughter’s
school whose clothing line I happen to love that has her sample sale
around this time too.
It’s taken me a long time to become a savvy shopper when it came to
these 'deals’. I was the sucker that clipped the coupon for something
at the market I would normally never eat. I would be under the illusion
my family might try the yogurt covered zucchini chips for 50% off.
Invariably it would linger past its expiration date and get thrown out.
This always jettisoned me into the ‘I’m gonna be homeless someday, why
oh why did I waste my money like that??” fear fantasy. I would vow
never to make that mistake again and I finally learned that the only
coupons worth clipping for me are batteries and toothbrushes. Do I
really need that 35¢ off the second four pack of Charmin? Hell no!
High Tech, Low Tech, and On-line Afflictions
Technology
A Pedicab?
Yes, a pedicab. That was my ride home last night. Crammed in the back
seat with two friends, and leaving a party far away from downtown, the pedicab,
peddled vigorously by a bearded mountain man named Declan, was our only chance
of getting back to home base (by the way, I’m now convinced that pedicabs
are the most expensive mode of transportation on earth).
We were a few miles away from downtown at a party given by MySpace which featured Nelly as the headlining performer. The crowd at all convention events always seems to be a mixed bag of ages and enthusiasm, which can make it hard to select a performer who resonates with everyone. I forgot, though, that every Nelly song has been in some sort of commercial and that as a result, even your grandmother knows at least one Nelly song (seriously, try it).
Shake and Bake with I-Phone
I can’t imagine being separated from my iPhone for even a day. Its intuitive features have become essential to my life. But, now, with the application “Big Oven” I feel like my favorite room in the house, a kitchen, has been added to my screen. This is the BEST app that iTunes has to offer. Of course, that is only my opinion.
Big Oven is a FREE app for iPhone users only, don’t ask me why it’s free but it is.
How about a little tour? Big Oven says they have 160,000 recipes and in another place on the site there are 170,000, who knows? We all know how recipes collect and reproduce. (Unlike Al Gore, you’ll never get to the end!) My favorite feature is a random recipe that comes up and if it doesn’t interest you, you shake your iPhone and another one loads. Heck, I could do that all day and probably for years and never see the same recipe twice. Random recipes like Green Goodess Dressing. Shake it again and up pops a recipe for Almond-stuffed pork chops and then a quick shake and now a recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies. How very cool!
Snowflakes in Southern California
Jeff and I go to the gym early every morning. Since it’s still dark out when we leave, it’s been pretty chilly lately. This morning when I turned the key in the ignition, the dashboard starting flashing. It also began to beep—a subtle bing, like the musical “fasten your seatbelt” bing that you hear on airplanes. “Great,” I sighed, “something else is broken.”
Jeff, never one to presume the worst, leaned over, looked intently at the dashboard, and said matter-of-factly, “Nothing’s broken.” “It’s not?” “No. It’s just a snowflake,” he said. “What’s just a snowflake?” I asked. “On the dashboard. Look at the temperature,” he said. It read 39 degrees. And there it was—a cute little snowflake.
Apparently Volkswagen was thoughtful enough to alert its drivers when it’s cold outside. Having driven the car only in Southern California, we had never seen it before. If this keeps up, I’m gonna have to ask my mom to let me borrow some of those gloves and scarves I gave to her when we moved here.
I want my KX-T (GA650B) !!
When was it ok to just blithely accept that products are now
engineered for obsolescence? Case in point: our stinkin’ Panasonic
cordless phones!!!
We were perfectly happy with our KX-TGA650B Panasonic cordless phone when one day we found one of the handsets sprawled on the living room floor, like eviscerated lion prey. The antennae had been mangled by our dearly departed dog Satchmo. Here’s the evil part; not only had that model become obsolete, but once you’ve lost the use of one handset, you have to replace the whole effing system!
Now we have the Panasonic KX-TGA939T. We have 4 around the house and I hate it! The handset in my office, where I do all my work, is haunted. At first it was just an irritating quirk it had where if my ear was close enough to the receiver, my mouth wasn’t close enough for people to hear me and vice versa. So, my husband suggested I put all my calls on speaker. Personally, I think putting people on speaker makes everyone an automatic douche bag but what was I gonna do? And, it was no solution. The quality of the sound began to erode that way too!
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