speaking of saving money

Ok, so, even though I'm making more money this summer and spending less than I originally budgeted I'm still all about a good coupon.

I introduce: GROUPONS!

I got $50 dollars worth of GAP clothing for TWENTY-FIVE bucks, yo.

The deals range from Zoo memberships to cheap-as-heck haircuts. Just recently a top-salon featured a haircut and styling for on 30 bucks. They have everything from restaurants to bars to mani-pedi packages.

It's sweet, really. I hear-by recommend.

Rent the Runway, juice cleanses . . . wait, what??

Two things that are absolutely girly of me:

1)I'm starting a Juice Cleanse similar to the BluePrint Cleanse lauded by all celebrities except that I'll be making and/or buying all my own juices rather than having a company ship me my menu. I've already started by eliminating caffeine, albeit slowly, avoiding meat and eating more veggies. I'm only going to do it for 3 days, days during which I won't be working because I'm little worried that the all liquid diet will leave me a little weak-kneed.
I'm excited because I've been filling up on crap - working at a sausage restaurant will do that for you - and I've been feeling sick for awhile. Hopefully, I can stick with it.

2)OMG! I'm in LOVE with Rent the Runway. For serious, it's about the coolest thing I've ever heard of. Girls, you can get thousand dollar dresses for a simple rental fee of 100 dollars. You get the dress for 4 days, you can spill wine; stick the zipper; lose a jewel from the fabric - no harm, no foul! It's perfect for those weddings, high school reunions or meeting-the-parents situations where you want to look on-of-a-kind snazzy but don't or, these days, can't drop the cash. WELL worth signing up, even just to window shop all the gorgeous designs.

Check it out!




It's strange for me to find this inner-girl, but refreshing too. My inner mean-steak has been peaking a lot lately so I'm hoping the cleanse plus this opportunity to save money are going to help me calm down, and get nice again. Not that I was very nice to begin with, but you know. If wishes were kisses...

pick-me-up

So. Yo. I had a bad day. BUT then MTV lovingly provided me with a rerun of Real World: New Orleans.

The scene: A street in front of their house, late evening.

RW Boy 1: Did you put my toothbrush in the toilet?

RW Boy 2: Oh, yeah, I totally did that. (And, I'm not kidding. He actually KNOWINGLY used the other guys toothbrush to clean the toilet - like that's not psychopathic.)

(Fighting obviously ensues. Let it be known that this fighting was pretty lame by MTV standards.)

RW girl: Guys, this is embarrassing.

Boys continue fighting.

RW girl cont.: There are people filming from that balcony. Do you want this caught on camera?

She strikes a chord. Boys suddenly stop fighting.
Obviously, they don't want this on YouTube. HD ONLY, bitches.



I mean. Does anyone else find it hilarious that a reality star (DURING the taping of THEIR reality show) is worried about being "caught" on camera???? Seriously.

Children's Books

I was having one of those tangent conversations the other day - you know the kind where you start in one alley and then all of a sudden you're on 5th avenue and then your back at the alley but not before you make fifteen stops along the way. Does this make sense? I mean, we just kept talking and it was very meander-y.

Somehow, a memory of a mouse who was a dentist and who helped a fox and didn't he remember? I mean, he had to remember? Except, he didn't and I'm talking about Dr. De Soto!

The conversation took a sharp left from there and we started talking about our favorite children's stories and I remembered the one about the donkey and the rock and then he turns into a rock and I'm talking about Sylvester and the Magic Pebble! Which, he also didn't remember.

Then, you must remember the one about the monsters and their ugly, ugly island and the pretty, pretty flower? Well, he didn't. And, I was so indignant! So, I googled the last one (whose title I couldn't remember) and then, and then, and then: Rotten Island!!!

A few more right turns later and I realized all those books which meant so much to me as a child - so much, that I was happy to snap and snarl at my friend for never having read them - all those books? Were written by the same man.

William Steig.

He also created Shrek.

I mean, seriously.

hipster-shmipster

I'm suffering through an insufferable HGTV obsession which inevitably leads me to online design websites such as: design*sponge or apartment therapy and this last one lead me on a tangent to nameberry. And all this combined got me thinking about all the things that hipsters have ruined for me.

Cool Baby Names
See: Hugo, Oliver, Lola, Theo, and Roman

Bicycles, leggings, FLANNEL, The Decemberists, etc., etc., etc..

Hipster, I think, has become the new WASP with all the negative connotations.

However, damn the man. Be I ever pregnant, I will happily raise my kids, Hugo and Lola, while wearing flannel and jamming to the Decemberists. I will live in my converted industrial-style loft with my hodge-podge coffee mugs and my vintage art and I will be happy, damn it.

Also, I want to live here:



(click here: Arielle's Carnevale House for a tour via apartment therapy).

Um?

I think this is totally cool and totally fucking weird.

She is having TWO babies, at once, but they're NOT twins. WTF?

Favorite "under the influence" memory . . .

Yo, okay, so I have a lot of memories from nights during which I consumed alcohol. Some good, some bad. However, this one memory popped into my head today and it is very innocent and therefore one of my favorites.

Me. Walking home from Finn MacCool's. Alone.

I remember the night - ish. I had had a tough day at work (who hasn't?) and had recently made some pretty big life changes. I was with my roommate T and after a couple G&T's we decided to continue drinking as quickly and as heavily as we could manage. Wise decision, I know. After a little Crown Royal, a free t-shirt, and a tear filled confession-esque conversation I left the bar.

This is the good part.

I popped in my headphones and cranked Kansas as loud as I could. (Loud enough that the next afternoon while crawling to work I actually yelped when the music first started blaring . . . yes, yelped.) And then? Then I started singing. Lil' ol' me. Walking down University Avenue at 1 or so A.M. singing top. of. my. lungs. To Kansas and I sang all the way home.

In retrospect I should be embarrassed but in reality I am so in love with the person who did that.

I mean, really, of all the things I could have done that night - all the directions I could have taken that last Whisky shot - I sang Carry on my Wayward Son for 10 blocks?

I'm, like, totally awesome.

Oh, so that's what they mean by too much alcohol. . .

Off to my cousin's wedding (the younger one's are getting hitched, y'all - this does not bode well) and then to Oregon for FOUR days. I have never been so silly-stupid excited for a mini-vacation. World Cup drained me and then some - ask me about it sometime; after I put my brain back in my skull I'll have some great stories. But for now, VIVA ESPAÑA.


Also, double-fisting coffee and water at 10:42 AM is a sure sign I was over-served last night. Shame on you, Big Time, shame.


(There is an overabundance of hyphens in this post, for this I apologize.)

Baskin Robbins is crazier than I am

They're getting rid of, get this, French Vanilla as a flavor. Let that sit for a minute.

They are, no seriously, they are getting. rid. of VANILLA as a FLAVOR.

Lame, Baskin Robbins, really, really lame.

Not surprisingly, French Vanilla is still America’s favorite ice cream.

Blindness

This started as a post about a book Blindness by José Saramago and now I'm not sure what it is. I think it's still a post about said book but it's also a total and complete ramble so . . . this is how my mind works these days. (It is especially how it works post-blogging craze of last summer.)

First, let me try and say something about the book. I'm almost done with it and people keep seeing me with it and asking the inevitable: How do you like it? This is almost always preceded by one of two things: 1) I heard about that book! So-and-so loved it. or (and more gruesome) 2: Oh that book, you know that guy just died.

The book, if you haven't heard about it (the author just died, you know), is about this society that's hit by an epidemic of blindness. Literally, people start going blind and well, shit gets crazy.

So, people keep asking me how I like it and I find myself saying over and over: OMG, I like, totally, like love it! And, then I add some frivolous comment about him being a good writer (which, seriously? He won the Nobel Prize for literature, obviously he can put a pen to paper) or about which line I liked best.

The thing is, I don't actually love this book and I keep trying to figure out why I say I do and why I say so, so automatically. I think this book is important; it has something important to teach us and I think that I keep telling people I love it because I want them to go out and get a copy and read it. Which got me thinking about False Advertising but that is a whole 'nother topic for a whole 'nother day.

Basically, my opinion about this book is super complicated and definitely does not fit into any one category. What I'm saying is, please read this book. It is such a cold and calculated look at our society, any society and how we act, how we would act under such strenuous circumstances. It is a rough read, and I have taken many breaks between chapters, but it is worth it. I promise.