That New-Do that You-Do February 27, 2009

My roots were about two inches long, and I wasn’t feeling very special anymore.

Sooo… I’m red again.  I truly dig henna.  I got mine from Henna for Hair.  I bought their recommended amount for my hair length and ended up with at LEAST four times what I really needed.  I froze what was left over from last time, and am happy to report the results were A-OK!  I still have at least two more uses out of it.

If you want to go red, I’d say henna is the way to go.  With shipping I believe I spent $23.  Conventional red dyes fade extremely quickly.  My hair still had a red tint after 4 months with the henna, which was evidenced by how drastically different my roots were from everything else.  With conventional dyes, after the red faded, my hair would start to pick up the color from what I was wearing.  If I wore something darkish or blue/green, my hair would turn green and I would look terrible.  A particularly bad shopping experience made me go home in tears, dye my hair brown, and swear off dying for years.

Until henna.  Once I find out how many more uses I’ll get, I’ll know for sure how far my money has gone.  If it stays at four uses, I’m at least on par with conventional hair dyes in terms of costs.  Results, however, there is no comparison.

Sunny? February 26, 2009

Is that you?

The Sheerer the Better February 26, 2009

I feel it’s been long enough, and I haven’t heard anything on the news, so I can talk about this.

A phone call a few Saturdays ago at work…

Guy on the other end of the line: Do you have a good selection of chiffons?

DK: Yeah, we have a pretty good selection of chiffon.  What are you looking for? (fishing for a color, maybe I should have been more specific)

GOTOEOTL: Well, you have to promise not to laugh.

DK: *skeptical* Okay…. I promise…

GOTOEOTL: Our father is out of town, and we need to blackmail our mother.  She used to be a Vegas dancer, so we’re going to make her go around to construction sites and deliver coffee…. Wearing chiffon.

DK: Okay… well… What color did you have in mind?

GOTOEOTL: It doesn’t really matter.  The sheerer the better.  Say, is it busy there right now?

DK: Yeah, it’s pretty busy.

GOTOEOTL: Do you think it will calm down later this evening?

DK: Yeah, it usually gets quieter when the sun goes down.

GOTOEOTL: Good, because my mom is really nervous.  Say, if I put her on the line, would you tell her to do it?

DK: Uhhh… okay.

Terrible Adult Son’s Mother: Hello?  Do you really think I should do it?

DK: Well, you only live once, right?

TASM: I’m so nervous, but I’m kind of excited!  Do you think I should do it?

DK: Sure, it’ll be fun, right?  You’ll be doing it for everyone out there.

TASM: Do you really think I can do it?  I’m so nervous.

DK: I’m sure you can do it.  You’ll be fine.

TASM: Oh I’m so nervous, my son is going to video tape it!  Would you do it?

DK:  Uhhhhh……

TASM: Okay, if you think I can do it, I will!  Thank you!

DK: No problem!  Have fun! *hangs up*

Coworker who was standing next to me the whole time: What…?

DK: I’ll tell you later! *runs off to find fellow managers and laugh uncontrolably in the office*

Keep in mind, the whole time my coworker heard me say things like, “Yeah, we have a pretty good selection of chiffon” and then, “You only live once,” “You’ll be doing it for every woman out there,” and “I’m sure you can do it.  You’ll be fine”

I wish I knew if she really did it.  No one that worked that night said they cut a bunch of chiffon.  And if they told me what was up–more or less unprompted–they would have told whomever cut for them.  And we would have heard about it.  I can promise that!

The post in which I make him look dumb. February 24, 2009

My boyfriend is, hands down, the smartest person I know.  Insufferably so.  He can fix just about any problem that’s presented to him.  He does calculus in his head.  He can outsmart anyone in a debate.  He baffles the mind.  He’s not human.  There are times, however, when I can get the better of him.  Especially when it comes to words.  It’s not that he’s bad with words–he’s amazing, actually, and thoroughly enjoys etymology almost as much as I do.  He just sometimes has a hard time grasping the word he’s supposed to use.

Por ejemplo:

The Hippy (while talking about something highly political that I have long since forgotten… probably wasn’t even listening): Blah blah blah Manga Carta.

DK: *blank stare*

TH:Well, am I wrong?

DK: Probaby not, but your point would probably be stronger if you didn’t call it the Manga Carta.

Because The Hippy is so damned smart, I often feel like an idiot.  It feels really, really good to come up with the snippy comment or have a great idea, even if it happens once in a blue moon.  I know he feels a little proud when I show some smarts, but he also hates it when I come up with something he didn’t come up with first.  I think that happened yesterday when we were making grilled cheese and turkey sandwiches…

DK: I left the knife on top of the pile in case you wanted to use it again.

TH: Oh, so you just thought I’d want another sandwich, huh?  That’s awfully pretentious of you.

DK: I think you mean presumptuous.  *Pause*  That was pretentious.

TH: Yeah, thanks for giving me that example…

At which point I promptly went back to my role of being the village idiot.  It’s a role I’ve been in my entire life; it’s where I’m most comfortable.

She knows when and where to strike February 19, 2009

The Hippy and I bought a Wii over the weekend.  This is a very bad thing for a number of reasons…

Finally, a game system made for someone like me.  Yes, I am a full-body gamer.  I can’t even play Tetris without putting my whole body into it.  So now I can play sports in the comfort of my living room.  And my arms are telling me to cut it out.  Or do it more.  Either way, they hurt!  Especially from the boxing!  Oof!

Also, I’m not getting a damn thing done.  I’m lucky I even made dinner for myself last night……  Mmm, cheese sauce…

Anyway, my goal is to somehow balance using the Wii to exercise and have fun AND still get everything done.  And do real exercises.  I might be going to Florida in the nearish future, and I want to be able to wear my bathing suit without wanting to kill myself.

Bug-eyed February 18, 2009

A woman today told me she wished we still had the baby fabric with the nipples.

Sadly… I knew what she was talking about even before she corrected herself and said bottles…

(I’m not tagging this because my blogs already get enough searches for porn related stuff……….)

Oh my life is so boring… February 12, 2009

I wanted to blog the other night.  I’m pretty sure I had something incredibly important to say, but I might have wanted to extoll the virtues of Cheese Sauce.  Alas, I was without internet, and therefore unable to post.  Granted, I was without internet partially by choice.  I neglected to tell The Hippy it wasn’t working, and I also neglected to poke around on our network computer to see if the password was saved.  I still don’t know, to be honest, because sometimes I really need a reason to keep the computer turned off.

So instead I sewed a little (will blog about that later) and decided I would take up yoga.  I’ve had a beginners yoga video for years that I got at a thrift store.  I’m pretty sure I saw the screen that told me I would need props and said “screw this.”  But I decided there was no time like the present, props be damned.  As it turned out, I could have used the props, but I just improvised.  I may or may not look into a block, but it may also be that I scrounge around the house until I find something block-like.

Proud Warrior--harder than it looks...

I thoroughly enjoyed yoga.  Way more than I ever thought I would.  I would truly like to keep it up, simply because I have longed to be flexible my entire life.  I like to think it will also help my posture.  And it can’t hurt my bowling.  I’m blogging right now when I should be doing yoga and ball exercises–I only have so much time before The Hippy comes home and laughs at me for exercising.  But the house was too cold, and I was getting too hungry.  I will.  I promise.

But first, I still need to extoll the virtues of cheese sauce.  I made my very first cheese sauce last week.  I’ve never been one to shy away from a gastronimical challenge, so I certainly wasn’t going to allow myself to be daunted by a cheese sauce.  And I’m so glad I didn’t!  I followed this recipe and used brown rice instead of pasta.  I also used frozen peas and broccoli.  And I ate the whole damn thing myself.  Over the course of a few days, natch.  The Hippy doesn’t know what he missed.  He wasn’t home for dinner, and he has an irrational fear of leftovers.  Which works well for me.  I don’t have to make lunches anymore!

Mmmm… Cheese sauce.  (Seriously, given my love of nacho cheese, why are we surprised I loved this recipe?  Hmm, now I want a cheesy double beef burrito……..)

My jeans want me to stop baking February 8, 2009

But I kind of love my kitchen.  It’s not terribly exciting, and it’s kind of small, but it’s my kitchen.  And I have dishes that I dig.  I received a ton of old Pyrex bakeware for my birthday, even when I said, “No presents!!”  For Christmas, I bought myself a mixing set from my work that I thought would be “okay” but I really love it.  It came with a giant measuring-cup-slash-mixing-bowl that I’ve used so many times that I feel it already paid for itself.

It’s not the greatest cookie making bowl, and paired with not having an electric mixer, this was a fun experience.  But I figured people have been making cookies for billions of years without electric mixers, so can I.  But if anyone would like to get me a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer, I wouldn’t complain.

I wanted to try new cookies, specifically cookies with wheat flour, so I followed this recipe to so-so results.  They are a little dry, and that made them extra hard to mix.  I think I would just go for a full cup of butter and be done with it.  Otherwise, I think the biggest problem I had was taking them out of the oven soon enough.  I’m a soft cookie gal, and some of these turned out way too hard.  Others were perfect.  Go figure.  I finally got to use the cookie scoop I bought myself last Christmas.  This is not to say I haven’t made cookies since then… I just have never been able to find the scoop when I wanted to use it.

The result was little mound shaped cookies that were a little nutty like people say wheat flour usually is.  But they’re incredibly addicting.  And since some of them are crazy crunchy, it’s also a little like playing Russian Roulette.  Only the end result is always delicious…

Side note: That Pyrex bowl so precariously close to the edge of the counter in the first picture actually took a tumble.  It survived, cementing Pyrex in my heart for all eternity.  The fork was my dough tasting fork.  It got a thorough workout that afternoon.

Six more weeks… February 2, 2009

I love warm, sunny winter days when everything starts melting and Minnesotans think they can go outside without coats.  It’s a funny phenomenon: when the temp hits 40 at the beginning of winter, people start bunding up; when it hits 40 after a cold spell, people start peeling clothes off like it’s a summer blackout.

I do, however, hate the nights that follow.  The nights, invariably, are never above freezing, and therefore anywhere melted snow pooled becomes a death trap.  As my knee quickly found out on Saturday night.

I had to stop to pick something up, and as I rounded my truck, I met ice and came down ridiculously hard and fast.  I was at the end of my parents’ driveway, so I called my dad and asked him to come out and help me.  Once inside, I rolled up my pants to find a rather bloodied knee.  Also, there were two holes in my brand new work pants.  Awesome.

8 hours later

I woke up at 3:30 and couldn’t sleep, so I got up and interneted until 6.  That’s what my knee looked like at around 5.  I was thinking I was off the hook from a badly bruised knee thanks to my quick icing….

24 hours later

Nice!  The biggest problem with this was that I needed to crawl around on the floor for a good chunk of Sunday.  That is, after all, where I cut out large pieces of fabric.  Not only was my knee all bruised up, but I must have either worn out my left arm at work, or jarred it when I fell, because I could hardly move myself around while working on the floor.  I was a whiny mess.

(I like that first picture better because I don’t look nearly as pale….  But really, it’s just lamplight instead of sunlight….)