Rancid-Tea

On A Lighter Note…

Recently my friend Wren got married, but she did it in the far away land of Venezuela, and her friends up here (including me) thought we ought to throw a celebration for her, without her knowing it. We decided that it would be really fun to have a girls weekend out, and that my parents’ very rustic cabin would be the perfect place for it.

Four of us went up on Friday and a fifth friend joined us late Friday night after she got off of work. We went swimming and played card games until late and the next day Wren’s mom, sister, aunt and … possible future sister-in-law … came up. There was wop drinking, grilling, penis cookie eating, and other random fun. I had a super fun weekend (even if I didn’t get enough sleep) and I’m pretty sure Wren enjoyed herself too.

On Monday Steph spent the night over at my apartment, and we ate chili and talked about life and philosophy and everything in between. I hadn’t seen her for several weeks and it was fun to catch up.

I do feel sort of socialized out now though, and really just want to sleep. I guess that happens from time to time.

Maxed Out

Last night Ethan and I watched a documentary on credit/debt called Maxed Out (it’s available on Netflix ‘Instant Watch’). Like a lot of the scare tactic documentaries they used a lot of extreme cases, for instance two mothers who were fighting credit card companies because both of their children had signed up for cards on campus, racked up thousands of dollars in debt and then killed themselves. They did get their point across though, mainly that credit card companies target people with just enough income that they might not file bankruptcy and give them higher credit lines than they could realistically afford. They actually hope (I always thought this, but in a cynical way) that people will pay late and default, because then they can actually TRIPLE the amount you owe.

They also mentioned something I had not heard before: payday loan chains and check cashing companies are mostly owned by major banks. The same people that pay you less than 1% interest on your savings is charging people over 20% on small loans every day.

I have two credit cards so that a) we earn some rewards, b) they’re easy to use, and c) in case of emergency, one of them has a pretty high credit limit. With very few exceptions, we always pay the balances in full every month (one exception was when we had just moved, paid our deposits, and I wasn’t yet working), and so pay little to nothing in interest and fees.

Unfortunately, I did not realize that my credit cards were being financed by those who are too poor to afford them, and are paying double my interest rate. Now I’m considering setting up a spending account and not using the credit cards anymore except in case of emergency. All we would need is a second checking account that has a fixed amount of money in it say 3500 (way more than we spend every month), we would use that to make all of our day to day purchases such as gas, groceries and miscellaneous expenses and then every month, we would make a deposit to bring it back to 3500 from our regular checking account. That way we are never paying interest and fees, and in fact are EARNING interest. I know not everyone could do this, but for us, it’s not so unrealistic, and we just may have to, because now the thought of funding credit cards is making me feel a bit dirty.

Relief

I was a little on edge when I wrote that last post. After calling about half a dozen places, all of which were closed, I turned to the yellow pages and I found a place that was still open. It was a little too hip for me (all of the stylists had no fewer than two hair colors) but I was desperate. My particular stylist was kind of vacuous (I asked what was in a product she was using in my hair and she handed me the bottle, when I pointed out it was mostly silicone she just gave me a blank stare), but I think she did a pretty good job. My hair is a few inches shorter, but no longer has crunchy gross ends. Also, the silicone stuff she used does make my hair less frizzy, so I decided to get some. Now I just need to henna it, and I won’t feel so slovenly.

Hair

I desperately need a haircut. For the better part of college my hair was not more than a half an inch long. I decided that I would grow it out during my last semester so that I would have hair for my wedding (photos last forever) and it’s better, as a woman, to have hair during a job search. Strangely, employers don’t like women who shave their heads. Judgmental bastards.

My hair has always been very fine, fragile and slow-growing. Part of the reason I shaved it off was that no matter how much time I was willing to spend to make my hair look nice, it was always flat, except for the hundreds of little broken off hairs that stuck up everywhere. The more I do to my hair to make it stay in place, the more damaged and awful it becomes.

I knew if I was going to grow it out, I would have to take certain measures. First, I don’t like my natural color (light blond), but most hair dye is very hard on hair, and when your hair is fragile to begin with, making it porous only makes things worse. Thankfully, there’s henna. Henna makes my hair a nice rich red color and also coats my hair so it is stronger (a little) and less likely to break. Also I take biotin every day. Because of this, my fingernails sometimes get over an eighth of an inch long (weak nails come with having weak hair). I now have hair that drapes over my shoulders a little.

Unfortunately, having hair can be annoying. It’s hot sometimes, it gets in my face a lot and it needs to be cut. Mother of god it needs to be cut. It’s been since December. The state of my hair is so bad that I try not to think about it, which means I keep forgetting to make a fucking appointment to get it cut. It’s a vicious cycle. It doesn’t help that a lot of hair places are closed when I’m home, except on weekends and then they are booked. I don’t feel like waiting a whole week to get it cut, but that mentality has caused three weeks to go by since I was determined to go in and get a trim. If anyone knows how to help me, please, please let me know.

Produce

After a little snafu with our produce share communications (most likely due to our wonderful USPS) we almost didn’t receive our first produce share of the year. Thankfully the peeps at Easy Bean Farm replied to my email on Friday, and that happened to be the day that our share arrived. We probably didn’t even pick it up much later than if we had known in advance what day it should arrive.

In the box this week: spinach, mustard greens, salad mix lettuce, bok choi, radishes, and green onions (that are purple). We made a big tossed salad with a few added ingredients and we’re planning to make a cabbage salad with the bok choi. I’m determined this year to not let any go to waste because we’re lazy or not inventive. This may mean that we have to blanch and freeze some stuff, but that I can handle.

Gadgets are Fun!

Last week, I decided to check the prices of SanDisk MP3 players for the trillionth time, and finally I felt like the price was in line with what I’d be willing to spend, especially since my car only plays tapes and my commute is around 45 minutes each way. Also, I hate commercials, and my car stereo has problems where it can only remember two radio stations. I was becoming convinced that sometimes they were synchronizing their commercials… it was bad.

So, finding the price to my liking, I ordered the SanDisk Sansa e260 4GB player. I also got a device that charges my player in the car while broadcasting it’s tunes over FM, so I can play it through my car stereo. I can also listen to it at work with the headphones that came with it.

It arrived Monday and I’ve listened to it in the car on the way to and from work every day since then, and at work about half of the time I’m here. The battery should last around 20 hours per charge, and it charges pretty quickly in the car or plugged into the computer. All in all, I think it was a very worthy purchase.

Eventually, I want to get a silicone cover for it so it’s grippy and colorful. Also, they make a charging base for it that has output for a regular stereo, so I can hook it up and play MP3 files on my stereo. That will be a little while in the future though. Really, it might make more sense to just find a way to plug my computer into the stereo… We’ll see.

Chickens are smarter than you think

I had plans to hang out with two friends this weekend but both plans fell through, and I ended up doing very little aside from a short visit to my parents’ house yesterday. It was pretty hot (90 F) and very humid, but we were outside almost the entire time I was there. My parents’ chickens are now very large, about the size of a basketball I would guess.

Chickens are not the brightest animals. If you corner one and simply put your hand on its back, it will give up any chance of escape and just sit there making little clucking sounds while you pet it or (if you were a dog or something) eat it. Knowing this, I was very surprised when I realized that they can recognize people! I was watching the chickens for awhile and my mom came over. They immediately got very excited and all crowded around her, waiting for fresh food. They even followed her over 10 feet away from the coop in a big bunch. This doesn’t sound very far, but left unattended, the chickens don’t get more than 2 – 3 feet from the coop. My dad said that when they’re hungry, they’ll chase him around too. They did not make any attempt to chase me for food and made sure to keep a safe distance from me.

Now I don’t condone eating animals in general, but anyone who makes the argument that chickens are really stupid, and therefore are fair game for eating should consider the fact that they can learn to distinguish between people and probably learn a number of other things as well.

Things to remember when making banana bread

It’s way easier to peel over ripe bananas when they’re frozen. I just sliced them into thirds, cut off the ends (not the stem end, the weird nubbin end you don’t eat) and then cut each chunk in half lengthwise and they practically fell right out of the peel. Any remaining fibers were easy to scrape off with a knife.

If you freeze your bananas, let them come to room temperature before you continue. They still mash pretty easily when frozen, but when you mix in melted butter, it sort of unmelts. Boo.

It’s easy to add other fruits/nuts when you make it. Last time, I added about half a cup of frozen blueberries at the very end. Today I pitted and chopped a few fresh cherries and and tossed them in with the bananas for mashing. I’m going to add some sliced almonds at the end and have (yum) cherry almond banana bread.

Update in Progress

I have slowly but steadily been working on some new features for the site, and now they’re nearly complete. I have a couple of skins in the works that just need finishing touches, which should be available soon. I also created an account settings area where you will be able to choose your skin, change your password, your email address, and a couple of other things. I’m hoping these will be out by the end of June.

Incorporating fictional characters into your social circle

A few weeks ago, Ethan and I saw a rerun of House MD and were both amused when it was mentioned that House watched The New Yankee Workshop (which I have enjoyed since I was in the single digits). We were even talking about how it was neat that he liked watching Norm construct various pieces of furniture, and then it dawned on us both – House isn’t real, so who cares what he likes?

I just now found myself feeling the same way about V. A few months ago her website catchphrase was from a Barenaked Ladies song, and I thought ‘oh, she likes BNL’ and filed it away under useless information. She has another of their song lyrics as her catchphrase now which implies to me that she more than likes, them, she probably enjoys their music quite a bit and probably owns some or all of their albums. I myself own 7 or 8 BNL albums, so my immediate thought is ‘something we have in common!’ and then I remember that this is a woman I will probably never meet, and if I did, we would probably never speak, and pretty certainly never be friends (though I have to admit, that after reading about her life for several months now, I think if I did know V, I would probably be friends with her). Why then, should I care if we listen to all of the same bands, and use the same toothpaste and have the same snack habits?

I think it all comes down to the psychology and physiology of the human brain. We did not evolve knowing a great deal about individuals that we didn’t meet. If you knew a lot about someone else, chances are, you lived very closely with them. They were a very important part of your everyday life. Now, in our modern world, I could find daily updates about most celebrities, and never be within 100 miles of them in my entire life. Unfortunately, my primitive brain can’t sort that out, and when I start to know details about a person, my brain tries to figure out if this is someone I should try to get along with, or that I should try to avoid.

I find this kind of concerning because I recently read that humans can only handle a social sphere of approximately 150 people (I haven’t verified this information yet, but it sounds about right to me) and if I’m going to start including Gregory House and V in my social circle, then that means 2 real people I could actually interact with would not fit. I wonder if this is something adding to the decay of our society…