Monthly Archives: January 2008

XLII.  Is that forty-two?  I thought we’d already played to at least forty-five.  Maybe after they reach Super Bowl fifty, they start counting backwards. 

With most news coverage about the primaries and economic stimulus package, I only heard about this year’s Super Bowl because a radio station reported about some guy who wanted to declare Super Bowl Monday a national holiday.  Ha!  As if pro sports weren’t bad enough economically.  Here’s a paper about how cities subsidize professional sports believing they will help bolster their economy.  In fact there are detrimental effects of professional sports on their host cities.  One of their examples is about decreased work productivity, which is exactly what the radio station was talking about with the Super Bowl holiday guy.  There are other examples but essentially, pro sports makes a small group of people very wealthy and costs the city a lot of money on infrastructure, not to mention congestion, pollution and all those negative externalities.  To be fair, it does offer a common interest for people to talk about, which can help build rapport and all that warm fuzzy stuff. 

Moving on though… here’s some basic info for all the sports dummies like me.  According to the official site of the Super Bowl, the New England Patriots are playing against the New York Giants this coming Sunday, February 3rd in Phoenix Arizona.  The Patriots are the favored team, which would make the Giants the underdogs.  Which state is the Patriots from anyway?  New England?  Isn’t that a bunch of states?     

I signed up for Intelliflix starting September 2005. They weren’t great for getting the latest releases, foreign, or obscure films, and they weren’t fast about shipping movies to you (it took 4 to 5 days between mailings), but they were cheap and I didn’t mind seeing old movies so long as they were new to me. So the relationship worked out nicely. Starting sometime last October, they stopped mailing me movies. I emailed them after waiting patiently for a month!! They apologized and sent me one movie during the month of November. A month later, I emailed them again to remind them that I wasn’t getting any movies and in these past two months I’ve received four movies. My subscription ends in November of this year. I need a new online movie rental service. Intelliflix blows. I went on their site to add movies to my queue and their search feature will drive you nuts.

The other day, I went to Costco to get a set of new tires. I got there relatively early, but by the time they got to me, the wait was three and a half hours long. Whoa. I like to shop, and Costco is big, but the most I can stretch that out is an hour. That includes going through all the aisles of things I’ll never need, like portable hard drives and 20 pound bags of sugar. So, I ambled through the aisles of stuff, reading the basic hummus components, and comparing the active ingredients of lotions. I can see your eyes crossing already but I had no choice, that is, until I came across the magazine rack. Costco doesn’t exactly have a large selection of magazines, and as I’m typing this now, I realize they also have books, so I could’ve gone that route too. As it were, I grabbed Us Weekly, People, Glamour, and the like, wandered over to the office furniture section and plopped my butt down on the most comfy looking leather desk chair. Then I proceeded to fill my brain with life’s great mysteries and the study of human nature. Some Tisdale girl is this other girl, Vanessa’s BFF. They are so close they even share Uggs. Ewww, sweaty boot sharing and Uggs.  This demonstrates that you’re not really pals unless you share sweaty boots.  Transfering that theory to my past experience, this means the person who wore my skates after me is my BFF.  I just don’t know her yet.  Or maybe I’m BFF with the person who wore my skates before me.  This is all so mindboggling, so let’s move on.  Next, I see a photo of Vanessa driving an Audi handing a homeless guy a rolled up Hamilton.  Charity is nice.  However, I’m not sure that was the best way to go about that.  But is it the outcome that matters or the intent?  I dunno how you feel but I’m going to provide my favorite answer: it depends.  Ha!  That answer sucks.  Ok I’ll pick one.  Outcome.  Intent is too touchy feely and I’m a cold cold woman. 

All in all, my four hours weren’t a complete waste.  I learned an interesting little tidbit concerning teeth, which I am very concerned about:

• Eating acidic foods weakens the enamel of your teeth. (So does bruxism.)
• Once the enamel wears out, it doesn’t come back, and then you get sensitive teeth.
• When you eat acidic foods such as citruses don’t mull over it in your mouth.
• Don’t brush your teeth until an hour after eating enamel-softening foods.
• Flouride helps strengthen your enamel.

So the most useful thing I learned from all that reading material came from a page of toothpaste advertising.

Even if there’s a certain ickiness factor in sticking my feet in other-peoples-sweated-in skates, you forget all that once you lace up and throw yourself on the ice.

It was an outdoor rink. The temps were certainly cold enough. 20-30s. But you warm up pretty quickly.

My first exposure to Bollywood wasn’t even the real stuff. It was Bride & Prejudice, which is like wading in the kiddie pool, though still very good. This clip, which I first saw on Brownypoints, demonstrates why I like Bollywood.

Dancing, singing, a little random, a little cringey at the corny, mushy scenes, and yet, I can’t peel my eyes off.

We were always taught the three R’s, “reduce, reuse, recycle,” in school. Things have changed since then. A couple of people mentioned this two r’s idea to me and I didn’t get it. I kept wondering what about recycling? What’s wrong with recycling? After hearing it for the third time, I think I understand this concept. Finally. :p

Recycling isn’t bad, it’s just that the first two r’s are better. Because in the end, recycling still uses up significant amounts of energy. So the reason why recycling has chilled out is because what you really want to do is emphasize ways to reduce the trash you generate and reuse things. Say you go to a coffee shop, bring your own coffee thermos. Don’t waste those paper cups, lids, cardboard cup holders, and cup sleeves. Grocery shopping? Bring your bags with you. Need sandwich bags for chips and crackers? Use tupperware or even some reusable containers of packaged foods instead. For instance, I like nuts, so I reuse those cans that the nuts come in with the plastic lids. I’ll usually fill em up with more nuts (that I buy in bulk or bags) or another snack food. They’re metal and sturdy as can be. If you’re the only one reading a print out, reduce the font and decrease the margins. Print on both sides of the paper. Instead of buying a pen holder for your desk, use a washed jar. Get creative. Recycle only when you’ve run out of uses. So don’t go patting yourself on the back just yet when you recycle your plastic grocery bags. You can do better than that. BYOB!

It gets easier as you do it. I used to forget my grocery bags in my car all the time. So there’s another new years resolution for me, mindfulness of R&R.

Oh, remember the waterpouch I got to eliminate purchasing bottled water? I loved it so much I got two more (.5 L and 1L sizes). Seriously, lugging around a 2 liter pouch of water is not too practical even if it does require less refilling. I keep that baby at my desk. The water tastes very clean. They’re inexpensive too. I got mine from Amazon. .5L is $6.95 and 1L is $7.95.

This bottle of Merlot almost didn’t make it into my belly because the stupid cork wouldn’t come out. I was surprised they actually used a real cork for this because 1. It came from Australia. Their new-agey new worldy wines should be coming in boxes or screw tops, or at the very least plastic corkers. But nooo, BRL Hardy had to go old school on me and stick a cork in it. Halfway through trying to jiggle this cork out, it cracked. Oh I said one didn’t I? That implies there’s a two.  (*ahem*Kaff??)  2. I haven’t had a bottle of real corked wine in a long time. I thought they were for the old traditional (often Euro) wineries. Well, wrong and wrong. Where do I get these crazy notions anyway? So after the cork cracked from my jiggle technique, I rescrewed the decorking device and pulled it out in one piece. Whew, “cork cracked” is hard to say real fast.

It tasted juicy!

Welp, Bernanke and his crew at the Federal Reserve reduced the fed funds rate to 3.50%, from 4.25%.  If they’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working.  Between yesterday and today, all I’m getting is bad financial news.  Asian stocks are tanking (so are ours), houses are devaluing by 10-20% (yikes), foreclosures increasing, unemployment is hitting the middle class.  All around suckiness!  So what is the Fed trying to accomplish?  Are they trying to stir the economy up?  Tell us that inflation is a ways away?  Screw all the countries holding the almighty dollar?

In a way, I feel fortunate that time is on my side.  This is a down swing and things will be better in time.  But some folks don’t have a lot more business cycles to go through before they want to dip out of work and into their retirement savings.  I was chatting with a guy at work about this and trying to keep things in perspective about the stocks.  The economy will always get better.  He agreed, but added that he just doesn’t have that much time to wait this out. 

So the Fed’s probably going to keep lowering rates.  And I’m just going to keep feeling uncertain and unsteady because when are they going to bottom out?  At 1%?  In Ben we trust?   

I’m still up. It’s 3:38 AM Monday morning. I get today off so I am up watching the Food Network’s Food TV online. I really ought to sleep but I kept drinking coffee all day long so even though I’m tired, I can’t rest. Anyway, I found a new (to me) chef I like, Dave Lieberman.

There’s a lot of good information on Dave’s show, Dave Does. I watched all of his online episodes in rapid succession because I’m so keen on learning and not because he’s a cutie. No sirree. Did I mention he eats with gusto? Ah, who’m I kidding, my heart is going pitter pat as I type, but I guess it could be the caffeine.

Interesting factoids I picked up tonight:

• Every state makes wine. NY is the third highest wine producing state in the country. I’m going to take a wild guess and say CA is #1 and Oregon #2 (not sure).
• You can rig your popcorn air popper into a coffee bean roaster. Hmm… there’s an idea for my as-of-now useless kitchen gadget.
• Tomatoes are called the apple of love in French.
• Avocados look like testicles when they’re growing on the tree because they hang in twos.
• Sake is made with moldy rice. The fungus is called Koji.
• Good sake is imbibed at room temp, or chilled. Bad sake is warmed. Warming a sake doesn’t make it bad.
• Induction ranges use magnetic waves to heat iron or steel cookware faster.
• Healthy school lunches help kids do better in school.

Everybody say with me now, “Fascinating!”