Last weekend it became evident that the women I know are all hyper-critical of themselves. We all love each other and think the other is beautiful. But when we see ourselves in a picture, it's all "wow my nose looks big" or "Look at my back fat" or "I always get that double chin". So today I'd like to challenge the women I know to find 9 things they like about themselves physically. I've already done the personality thing (see birthday post), but I think that it doesn't hurt to do that as well.Here are my 9:- I like my lips.
- And following that, I like my smile.
- I like my back dimples.
- And right underneath that, I like my ass.
- I like my chest.
- I like my eyes.
- I like my hands & fingers.
- I love my haircut.
- I really like being short.
Ok. I had a hard time there deciding if I should give more detail on each list item. I thought maybe that was a bit too much. For my birthday, I got the green book. So every now and again I'm going to squeeze a tip into my post. Here's your beauty tip for the day:Use bar soap instead of liquid wash. Liquid lasts longer, but it is more expensive per use when you calculate it out. If every US Household replaced a bottle of body wash with a bar of soap, roughly 2.5 million pounds of plastic containers could be diverted from the waste stream.
Ok...looks like while I have classes I am only capable of bullet point posts...- Yesterday while walking to work I saw a girl walking what I can only hope was the walk of shame. She was wearing a vest. And a beaded bra. And some pants and shoes. It was the vest with the bra completely showing that threw me. And the bra was seriously bedazzled. It was hideous.
- How is it almost 90 out in October? Horrible.
- I hate movers. I understand that sometimes it is necessary to block an alley. Fine (although in my case, said "alley" is actually a street with a parking lot on the end. With enough room to squeeze a truck to one side...but I digress). Fine, block the alley. But when a car owner who pays to park in the alley needs to leave, don't be a gigantic ASS HOLE about moving the truck. I know you're just "doing your job", but you don't have to make me sit and wait while you move a couch from the truck to the apartment and then back (presumably because it didn't fit in the door). Put the couch down and move the truck.
- My new canvas grocery bags kick ass. The bonuses of these bags enumerated
- Long straps for fit over the shoulder ease
- Large insides to fit lots of groceries, therefore limiting the number of actual bags you need to wrangle. This also leads to the illusion that your groceries are somehow lighter
- Saving the environment!
I advise all of you to purchase some. These are the bags I own.
- I plan to vacuum at some point this weekend and I can't wait. Isn't that lame?
A plane slowly banking right directly over the expressway. Very low. Taking off to Possibly Maybe by Bjork. A good moment (but one that I will admit was immediately followed by "What if that plane crashed" crazy Katie thoughts...).My picture Saturday is kind of lame, but I'm super excited about my new green cleaning products (thanks Dad!):
And, they even came with a handy dandy organizer caddy thing (that's all of the stuff below unpacked from the box - Mom, may this picture be proof that I do indeed have parquet flooring):
I was a little apprehensive about some stuff (for example: I admit to having a love for cleaning wipes and figured - no way are green products going to include cleaning wipes - but they did! And there are even two different kinds!). But I can't wait to try it all out. And by buying this all instead of normal cleaning products my Dad kept 108 pounds of waste out of landfills and eliminated 248 pounds of greenhouse gas. Ah green-ness...I might do picture Sunday too....
Wow. Wow.I work in a bunker. My office has no windows at all, and all the walls are cinder blocks. While this is nice when the Chicagoland area is under a tornado watch, it also sort of sucks when the area is under a tornado watch. We had NO idea that the weather was so bad until one of my coworkers received a phone call...from Spokane Washington. How does that work? The Spokane caller was watching the Cubs game, it got delayed due to severe weather and then immediately the power/broadcast cut out all together. He was worried about my coworker.At that point we all left our office and went to a window to look outside (our office has no windows, but our building has a lot). The wind and rain were so out of control that a lake of water was actually forced under the door...a second-floor doorway. It was intense.Walking home after work, right outside my building looked like someone had hacked apart the trees. The sidewalk was covered with branches. Big branches. As I walked towards home it got better and better, less branches, just small ones...at some points, none. Until I got about a block from home. And then I saw the COOLEST storm damage ever. I wish I had had a camera.A tree, completed uprooted from the ground. Pulled out of the ground. It's roots were perpendicular to the ground. It was a HUGE tree, an old tree. It had, luckily, fallen away from the house on its left side and into the parking lot on its right side. How lucky was that house?? But..there was a car...a car under the tree that was crunched, crunched right down the middle vertically. Perfectly crunched, perfectly centered crunch. Amazingly flattened. SO COOL. I know that if it was my car I probably wouldn't feel that way...but honestly, I have to admire the damage that huge tree was capable of inflicting. The tree had completely filled the parking lot too... I didn't enter the lot, so I don't know how many other cars had been damaged. Just the very obvious one...
I do feel a little sadness about the loss of such an old, lovely, alive tree...but stormy weather...so neat.
I have never felt so hopeless (weirdly, my fingers just automatically typed hopeful - I guess I type hopeful a lot more than hopeless) than I do watching the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?". Hydrogen cars? Cost: $1mil dollar PER CAR in 2006, uber-expensive fuel., no infrastructure for the fuel, car won't work well in the cold (um, yeah, that makes it impossible), cars aren't reliable and get really small mpg. So why the hell is the government throwing all its eggs in that basket? It seems to me that it's because that means there is still some industry that provides fuel - it would be hydrogen, but it's still fuel.So why did all the car companies retract their electric cars? Some of you may think that an electric car is a pipe dream....but you may not realize that Honda, Toyota and GM all had completely electric cars out there in the 90's. They were all pulled off the market (literally ripped from the hands of their owners) and CRUSHED. Compacted. Destroyed. Some of them not even recycled. Why could those cars not stay on the road? I just don't get it - I don't get how a technology that was available in the 1990's hasn't been brought back and improved upon. Yes, we have hybrids...but that means we're still dependent on fuel. 300 miles on one charge , 0 -60 in something that sounded really small, these are not useless cars. I don't get it.How is it that industry grips us to that extent? We can't even give the automobile industry more money (and the electric industry) because there are no cars to buy....The power of our government and big industry is staggering. And terrifying.
I was in Salt Lake City for the first time this weekend...and here for your enjoyment is a list of things I learned throughout the weekend (note: I was attending a family wedding.....No. They are not mormons. List presented in no logical order) - No matter how drunk I get at Katy's wedding, I will NOT kick off my shoes. Near head injury.
- No matter how drunk I get I will NOT jump up and down in my dress. Um. Yeah. Insert mental picture of a strapless dress, a girl with large breasts line dancing. Not. Good.
- Sitting next to your Grandpa while listening to My Humps is awkward. Very, very awkward.
- Utah is probably much more interesting in the winter.
- However, seeing the Olympic ski jumps and luge/bobsled track was pretty interesting.
- I am thinking about learning to ski this winter. Anyone interested in a quick trip to the nearest bunny hill?
- Not to offend any mormons out there, but "Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" sounds like a swear. Say it like you're angry or like you just hurt yourself. Works, doesn't it?
- My ability to do homework while on vacation is...low. Very low.
- My grandparents are very mortal...what I mean is, they seem to be aging heavily, by the second...
- Buying a skirt right now is easy for a short person - for the first time ever, shopping for clothes is easy for me! Because the trend is short...skirts fit me like they are a normal length!
Inspired by Utah but not directly related:
- I bought the cutest shoes...although they do have some gold on them which is very unusual for me.
Totally unrelated:
- My quest to be eco-friendly now includes laundry detergent. It smells delightful and I notice no difference in its cleaning power. It is a huge, heavy container though (compared to my All Small & Mighty) and that's no fun.
- I have added a bunch of the stuff from my Amazon wishlist to my kaboodle wishlist - I may just add everything there and sort of shut down the amazon wishlist. It sort of sucks for you all to have to go to 2 different places. I know the bonus of the Amazon list is that you don't have to know my address or whatever. But how many people actually would buy me a present who don't know my address? And...it's probably better if you don't ship it to me anyway...the package thief may still strike.
- That midterm that I bitched about and hated so much (I still feel a bit angry when thinking about it)? Well, I aced that thing with flying colors. I do believe that the professor has stopped grading in an evil, unkind way. Maybe everyone was doing so poorly that he became a softy?
- While I was away over the weekend one of my groups failed to turn in an assignment that was due. Yes. They just didn't turn it in. 3 people. No one turned it in. I emailed my professor about how much my group just SUCKS and that I haven't spoken up because up to this point I've managed to keep it all from falling apart. But I leave and it all comes crashing down. Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints I hate those people (see? It works! I wonder if I'll get mormon death threats now....)
Ok, I'm only on my 5th episode but I'm totally addicted. I took long breaks today to work without interruption and to wander outside...but I love this animal stuff. And I still feel a little like crying during every episode (usually when Sigourney blames us or climate change for impending extinction).But, I thought you should know that I have a few new favorite animals. Most notably the Pika (so cute!) and the Asiatic Wild Ass. I've had a soft spot for donkeys for a while now - I met my first when my sister and I went to meet a Pony. Didn't care much for the horses or ponies, but I did love the only donkey there. And while at Sea World, there was a donkey in a little pasture (why? I don't know...he was stabled with the Budweiser Clydsdales...yes, Sea World has a Budweiser stable) and my Mom and I sat and watched him for quite a while. And I got to pet the little guy.And, while I truly love the donkey and donkey like animals either way, how much fun is it to say something like: Oh look at the wild ass! I love a cute ass!
Dear Earth,Shit. I'm sorry. We humans suck.Today I've been working on computer crap (and while it was a lovely day, I only got outside for maybe an hour) and watching Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel. There has been a lot of hype for this series on talk-shows and what not...so I started watching mainly because there was nothing else on. And I was quite skeptical. But it is amazing. The first one I watched, Deep Ocean, didn't have much that truly interests me, but it was still breathtaking and amazing (although there was a creepy squid...I believe they referred to it as the squid from hell). In An Inconvenient Truth there was an awful cartoon that tugged the heartstrings...the little cartoon of the polar bear...having problems with the ice...dying (or maybe it was just implied that the bear was going to die/drown). Watching Planet Earth: Ice Worlds, um.....yeah, you see a real Polar Bear go through that. It doesn't drown...but it has to retreat to land which isn't natural, isn't their "hunting ground" and it basically ends up digging a hole, crawling in and dying. And if you think Al Gore is mostly full of shit - maybe the real thing can convince you. Truly awful to watch.So today I've decided to step up my efforts to "go green". I'm no longer going to use paper plates or napkins (paper towels are better because they aren't "2-ply"). Chicago really doesn't recycle, so I think I'll start saving recyclables and bringing them to my Mom's house. I may just follow in my sister's intended footsteps and buy only green cleaning products, kleenex, paper towels. Possibly toilet paper. Do what I can, while I can...Love,KatiePS - to readers, you should really do something...anything helps. And I would totally recommend Planet Earth, but keep a kleenex handy during the Ice Worlds episode (I've seen Ice Worlds, Deep Sea and Desert so far, and the other two didn't make me cry at all).
Dear Electricity consumer,I am proof for you that the Compact Fluorescent Bulb (CFL) does more than just "save the environment." I know some of you out there may be skeptical that there is even a need to save the environment (Dad). Last month I changed 12 of my 16 total light bulbs in the apartment to CFLs...yes, the bulbs are expensive. But I do believe I need to do my part to save the environment (because I watched An Inconvenient Truth and wanted to do what I could), so I bought them. Some facts for you (to hopefully convince you for the right reasons):- Changing one bulb can prevent over 450 pounds of bad, bad emission from a powerplant.
- If everyone in the US changed just one bulb (no need to go for the full change, just one) we would:
- save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year
- prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.
If that doesn't convince you to change just 1 bulb (look at your lamp next to you...just that one bulb), then maybe my energy bill will. Even with the huge rate increase, I am paying less this March than I have in the past two March's. Yes, it's true. I'm only technically saving $4 compared to last year - but that's entirely because of the rate increase. In February I paid almost two times what I had last year (due to the electricity rate increase). So if I do some fancy math, I actually saved an estimated $20....(double last March's bill subtract this year's March bill)...So change your bulbs! A four-pack of CFL's will only set you back $15. $15 to save on every electricity bill and to save the environment? Totally worth it.Heart,Katie
