Want to Join the "Will It Last?" Laptop Pool?

My laptop crashed four times today.

It's a Compaq Presario M2000 series. Runs XP. The hard drive was completely replaced last year because... well, the guys said, "It's crashed so many times that your hard drive is completely worn out. Oh, and it's full of viruses."

I invested in some better anti-virus software (the university gives us all some free stuff, but clearly free wasn't doing the job), and haven't had a problem with viruses since.

However, my computer is crashing again. Repeatedly and annoyingly. Not to mention that since the beginning of the year, there's been some kinda problem with the monitor in which all of the parts of the screen that are supposed to be white show up pink, and all the parts that are supposed to be black show up green.

I've been telling myself "it only has to last for eight more weeks" (eight being the number of weeks until graduation), and have started backing up assiduously. In truth, it probably has to last for a little longer than eight weeks, since I probably won't be able to replace it until I get some money, and I won't be able to get some money until I get a job, etc. etc. etc.

But lord-a-mercy this is annoying. It took me twenty minutes this morning to print a paper for class.

If I have some time during my DC tour, I'm going to hit up an Apple Store. (And I've got to figure out if this "make a reservation for a Personal Shopping Assistant" deal is free.) Obviously I'm not going to buy anything; I've got $271.21 in my bank account and it's got to last through April. But I... want to fantasize about buying something.* Actually, I want to begin to look at my options. There must be an Apple employee ready and willing to talk about reasonably-priced laptops for the newly graduated.

'Cause it's going to be a Mac this time, people. Seriously.



* I also want to play with the iPhones. Did you know that in those Apple stores, they just let you... play with all the stuff, for as long as you want? ^__^

Audiences, References, and the Benefits of "Over The Head" Learning

I haven't done an education post in a while, but a recent conversation brought this to mind.

To wit: we were having a discussion in our theatre class about whether or not you can present an audience with material that they might not understand right away. Specifically: if a play uses a reference that an audience might not get, do you cut the reference? If an entire scene might be too "over their heads" for university undergrads, do you cut the scene?

I've had this argument in other classes as well. Once I took a "writing for teenagers" class where the professor insisted I remove almost all cultural references from my story since "most teenagers haven't read the books you've read or listen to the music you listen to." (This was years before Family Guy and Juno and our current trend of inserting as many references into a creative work as possible.)

Her argument was that teenagers would read my work and become alienated/bored because they didn't know why a particular composer was important to the story's characters. My argument was that including unfamiliar references in a creative work -- whether literary, theatrical, or otherwise -- actually inspired learning; it forced the reader to interact with the material because it was no longer a matter of simple understanding. Whether the reader created his/her own meaning via context clues, or whether the reader hauled out the dictionary to look up the meaning, the reader was actively working with the text and actively learning from it.

(In the class, of course, I cut the references from my stories. Profs give the grades, after all. But I still believe in my argument.)

I wanted to share this clip with you because it was from my favorite childhood television program, Square One TV. I started watching this show when I was six years old and continued watching until it went off the air when I was thirteen.

(I've been trying to get the video to embed for about an hour now. YouTube doesn't wanna let me embed it. Until I can get the vid up, watch it here.)

Note the references packed into just the first few minutes of this clip:

Missing person? No, missing avis.

Hollywood Boulevard.

Angelenos.

Roscoe "Fatty" Tissue.

Taxidermy.

And that's even before you get to the math. None of them are references a six-year-old would understand; few of them are references a thirteen-year-old would understand. But the words enter our heads, and years later if we read a reference to Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle we know, without having to look it up, that he was an entertainer and comedian whose career ended in scandal.

Long story short: leave the references in. A reader/audience member shouldn't have to understand everything about a piece right away. If they're the eager type, they'll go home and Wikipedia Soupy Sales or the Texas Two-Step; if they're not interested at the moment, the references will still provide them with a cultural background which will return to their memories at surprising moments.

It's worth noting, unfortunately, that PBS no longer shows children's programming more complex than Postcards from Buster, and even the highly meta Sesame Street has devolved into the over-obvious Elmo's World. (Early episodes of Sesame Street are sold on DVD with the note that they are no longer determined educationally appropriate for children. Wow.)

More Budget Fun: Wesabe!

For a long time, I budgeted on spreadsheets. I'd have to enter everything manually (sigh), sort it manually (sigh), and set up all the formulas myself (okay, I think spreadsheet formulas are really cool, so I didn't mind that too much).

Yet I continually thought "oh, if only there was a program that could take the transactions directly from my bank statement and staple-sort them itself!"

Turns out there are a kajillion of those kind of programs. After some research, I went with Wesabe. You upload your bank statement (alternatively, you can choose to give Wesabe your bank passwords and have it do automatic uploads, but I chose the manual upload option, which keeps Wesabe out of my bank account, even though I have to re-upload every week or so to maintain accurate information), and Wesabe sorts your purchases by type and provides all kinds of graphs to illustrate your spending habits.

Now, I know that Wesabe is kindly providing this free service so it can get its grubby little paws on my spending preferences. Probably very useful for Wesabe to know whether or not its users spend more at Walmart or at Meijer, etc., and to know whether they buy gas on weekdays or weekends. However, it's a free service, and somebody's going to get that information anyway, so it might as well be someone who gives me a few really cool graphs in exchange.

With Wesabe, I found out that every month, I spend on average:

$137 on groceries
$70 on gas (this has got to stop)
$130 on utilities
$93 on car insurance
$16 on restaurant food (i.e. anything I don't cook myself)
$6 on entertainment (which is actually the three movies I saw in January totaling $18... no entertainment spending since...)

Oh, and I've spent $392.10 on the DC interview tour, which includes the plane ticket, clothing, and a new pair of shoes.

I am officially tired of being poor.

Blue's Anti-Product Placement: Secret Platinum "Vanilla Chai" Deodorant

While I was shopping for my leg wax, I also made a stop in the deodorant aisle. (Note to readers: this was not an "impulse buy;" I always shop with a list -- and who impulsively buys deodorant, anyway?)

Like I've done for the past year or so, I scanned the products -- and rescanned -- hoping to find my favorite brand, Crystal Clean. It wasn't there. It's never there. The internet says they're still selling it, but I haven't seen it in a supermarket for ages.

Then I saw something quite unexpected. To wit: deodorants "for ladies" generally come in two kinds of scents: floral and beach. Floral is self-explanatory; the beach deodorants, however, never smell like sand, or salt water, or fish, or anything like that. They smell like "Caribbean Cool," which isn't a recognizable scent at all, but at least it covers up the B.O.

Anyway. I'm getting off track. In the middle of all the "Sweet Pea" and "Ocean Breeze" and the occasional "Powder Fresh," I saw a deodorant that claimed it smelled like something fabulously different.

Chai.

Yes, Secret just launched its "Vanilla Chai" line, and to its credit was presenting the scent in glittery, girly colors as opposed to, say, the blatant cultural travesty of Caress' "Exotic Body Wash." (OMG it smells like sandalwood!)

But seriously. Chai? As an underarm scent? Do people really want to raise their arms and be reminded of a hot beverage?

Since my mission is to "test-drive corporate multiculturalism so you don't have to," I bought a stick of chai deodorant and went home. Here is my (highly scientific) report:

Secret Platinum "Vanilla Chai" Deodorant is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike chai.

It doesn't smell a thing like genuine desi chai; it smells nothing like Lipton faux-chai; it doesn't even smell like the monstrosity that is Starbucks chai.

It smells, if it smells like anything, like the goo that comes out of a gas-station cappuccino machine; a gritty combination of sugar and vanilla with a little coffee thrown in. (How can a deodorant smell "gritty," you might ask? Trust me.) It's the only deodorant I've ever put on that makes me feel like I need to brush my teeth.

The smell lasts all day, which is... what it's supposed to do... but I can't say I'm a huge fan. I guess I'm stuck with it until the stick runs out.

Anyone else try this stuff?

Blue's Product Placement: Sally Hansen Lavender Spa Body Wax Hair Removal Kit

Preemptive Editor's Note: Blue would like to preface this by stating quite firmly that she supports wholeheartedly the natural state of both the female and the male of our species: hirsute. However, she understands that many people -- e.g. employers -- do not share this sentiment. This is her response.

While I was in India, I stopped shaving my legs. The bucket bath was not conducive to a daily shaving, and I'm the kind of girl who will revert back to stubble within 24 hours.

I stopped shaving my legs, and my underarms, and didn't miss it for a moment. Of course, I was fortunate in that all of my pretty blue salwars hid the furriness. I loved that I could go from "just woken up" to "ready to face the world" in fifteen minutes.

When I returned to the US, I started shaving again. I hated it. Not the smooth legs vs. furry legs business, but the act of shaving itself. It was time-consuming, repetitive, and I nicked myself far too often. I found myself seeking out excuses not to shave my legs: well, I'm wearing jeans today, etc.

Then I found the best excuse of all: my broken toe. As I had to shower with one leg taped into a plastic garbage sack, shaving was clearly not an option.

So here I was, with a month's growth of hair on my legs, dreading the idea of going back to shaving. Then I had an inspiration.

Enter Sally Hansen and her Lavender Spa Body Wax Hair Removal Kit. I figured that since I had already done the hard work of growing out the leg hair, the least I could do was see if waxing really kept it off "for 5 to 8 weeks."

My first thought was to get it done by a professional, but even the college student joints wouldn't do a wax for less than $70, and Sally was only $9.99.

So last night I stripped to my skivvies, sat on a flattened 20-gallon trash bag (to catch the spills), and waxed my legs.

It took just about 90 minutes, and I distracted myself by watching episodes of CSI on Hulu. I found it a lot easier to pull out my hair by the roots if I was trying to figure out who the killer was before Grissom did. All said and done, however, it wasn't all that painful. I mean, it was a little uncomfortable, but it didn't hurt anything like some of the stuff I've been through recently.

The wax was really messy, but it got the job done. I would definitely urge anyone considering a DIY waxing to set out some plastic or something for the mess. I was also using the internet trick of dousing my legs liberally with baby powder before applying the wax (theoretically the wax will stick to the hair, but leave the skin untouched), and so my trash bag station was soon covered with drips and powder.

And there's nothing cooler than pulling off a strip and seeing exactly what hundreds of hair bulbs look like.

I know that people consider leg waxing to be one of those horrible things women do to oppress themselves, but -- barring my switch to reusable menstrual products -- this was the 100% most liberating thing I've done as a woman in a long time. I've solved a problem and now I shouldn't have to deal with it for five-to-eight weeks. That's fantastic.

I'll let you know when it all starts to grow back.

Finally, Another Cooking Post... About A Quiche!

Since I received my lovely slow-cooker, my cooking routine has become extremely streamlined.

1. Wash dal
2. Dump dal in slow-cooker
3. Add veg
4. Add water
5. Go to sleep...

But a person can only live on dal and rice for so long. Even with a variety of vegetables.

So when I heard Jon Stewart mention quiche during the Oscars, I turned to my roommate and said "I wanna make a quiche!"

I thought it would be extremely difficult, but it was super-easy. I added fresh broccoli (since it was on super-sale at the grocery store) and a can of diced tomatoes, drained. Heated up cumin, garlic, and crushed red pepper in some oil, added the broccoli and tomatoes, got 'em all spicy, and then added them to a bowl which contained eggs, milk, and shredded cheese. Stir it all up, and pour it into ready-made pie crusts... then into the oven at 350 degrees for one hour, and I had two colorful, tasty quiches!

If I had a camera, there would be pictures... but imagine orange and green and red inside a nice brown crust.

Making quiche is a lot more expensive than making dal rice (by "a lot more" I'm talking $7 instead of $3), but it was great to get a protein source from something besides a lentil. ^__^

Happy Feet

I've had the pins out of my toe for four days now.

No more cast, though I do wrap the top half of my foot in the equivalent of an Ace bandage so the healing toe is kept close and tight with its buddies.

The first two days were extremely painful, as my foot re-adjusted to its new surroundings (and lack of pins), but yesterday I woke up without pain, and it hasn't hurt since.

I can walk quickly again, and I can walk without getting tired. This is delightful, after five-odd weeks of shuffling around and measuring "should I go to the library?" by how many steps it would take to get there and how many I had already taken that day.

The weirdest part of all of this is feeling my big toe wiggle again. The break was below the knuckle joint (and in fact the bone never completely broke through -- that's why I was able to wiggle the toe even after it was broken, and why I put off going to the doctor for a week, since the old adage is "if you can wiggle it, it ain't broke"). After being completely immobilized for over a month, bending or wiggling the toe sets off all kinds of funny alarms in my nerves.

I don't do it deliberately, because the Ace bandage doesn't encourage it, but I find my toes instinctually responding like they used to; i.e. moving like a foot, instead of a block of wood, and so every once in a while the toe curls up without my thinking about it, and then it's kind of fun to feel the nerves react.

It's great to be able to take a shower without having to wrap my leg in a plastic bag. The skin on my entire foot is still really dry and scaly, despite my use of loofah and moisturizer, and for some reason there are several hard yellow calluses on the sole of the foot.

The toenails seem not to have grown at all, strangely enough. I found this out when I went to clip my toenails this evening; the unaffected foot needed clipping badly, but the other foot didn't have nails long enough to clip. That part I don't understand.

Anyway, I'm doing really well and am so glad to be back on my feet again. ^__^