Not To Be Trusted With Knives

I’m starting to think that the universe does not want me to have a bluetooth headset.

First, there was the bluetooth headset I bought that I proceeded to leave in the pocket of my skirt when I did laundry.  Second, there was a bluetooth head that I bought but returned because it sucked¹.  Third, there was the one I got for free at BlogHer, which then disappeared from my purse the day I got it.  And fourth, there was the one that Raul gave to me that he got at the opening of a Future Shop where they invited a bunch of bloggers and gave them a bunch of swag.  Which I had for a while until it too, disappeared from my purse².

Now that it’s illegal in BC to talk on a cell phone while driving without some sort of a hands-free, and since my speaker phone doesn’t work all that well when I’m in the car³, I decided it’s high time I got another one.  And I even had a Best Buy gift certificate from Christmastime.  So I bought this BlackBerry one:

Unfortunately, I’ve just discovered that it only comes with a car charger.  The instructions tell you how to charge it either with the car charger or a USB-charger… but it doesn’t come with a USB-charger.  So, you can only charge it in your car.  That seems rather stupid to me. I didn’t even think to look at that when I bought it – I mean, why would they ever sell a headset that you can only charge in a car.  I mean, what if you don’t have a car??

So it looks like I’ll have to trek back to Best Buy tomorrow to return it and get a different one. Take 6.

1. which I didn’t even remember until I just Googled “bluetooth” on my blog to find the blog postings where I referred to the ones I do remember having [↩]
2. come to think of it, it may be just that my purse is *eating* them [↩]
3. I have a mount for the phone, but I think it results in the phone being too far from me, so the person I’m talking to can’t hear me very well and I can’t hear them either [↩]

Tags: bluetooth headset, Geekery, rampant consumerism

So, I go into Save On Foods¹ and they have this little kiosk thing that says that if you swipe your “Save On More” card² they will print out your very own “personalized” coupons based on your shopping habits.  Being the curious type that I am, I had to swipe.  Now, mind you, I haven’t done much shopping at Save On, as there weren’t any Save Ons close to my place in Vancouver.  I’ve really only shopped at the Save On near my office to buy food for lunch on days when I’ve forgotten my lunch at home/not had time to prepare a lunch³. So basically the only things I’ve ever bought at Save On are carrots, avocadoes, apples, hummus and these delicious flax seed buns you can get at their bakery.  Oh yeah, and diet Pepsi.  So, it shouldn’t be hard to tell what I’d like based on my “shopping habits.”  Here’s what my “personalized” coupons were:

Wieners? All beef OR chicken?  Wow!  I can’t think of anything this vegetarian-of-more-than-a-decade would want more! I have never, ever bought a wiener anywhere in this *entire province*. EVER!

As you can see at the bottom of that photo, the second coupon is for hot dog buns. To go with the wieners that I will never, ever buy.

The next coupon – Purdy’s Ice Cream – is the only thing I might even possibly buy, but I have absolutely never bought ice cream at Save On, so this definitely wasn’t based on my shopping habits.  And then there’s Nestle Chocolate Bars.  Sure, I’m a total chocolate snob who won’t even look at chocolate if it’s doesn’t have at least 70% cocoa and who believes that “milk” and “chocolate” have no business being anywhere near each other.  But yeah, give me that coupon for cheap crappy milk chocolate candy bars.

Tod assures me that they never had any intent to *actually* give me coupons based on the stuff I actually buy⁴, but rather they are just trying to sell me things I wasn’t going to buy, but I say “bollocks!”⁵  If they just want to give away coupons, why not have a bunch of coupons on the wall, a la Superstore, so you can just grab the ones you *actually* want instead of printing out a bunch o’ crap that I don’t want!

</rant>

1. a grocery store we have here in BC [↩]
2. it’s their discount card they use so they can Big Brother your shopping [↩]
3. so much cheaper and healthier than buying take out! [↩]
4. as I may or may not have been ranting about this to him [↩]
5. that “bollocks,” by the way, is in honour of Sir Kalev, who became a British citizen today! [↩]

Tags: fail, rampant consumerism, rants, Save On Foods

When I was a kid, we had the Calgary ‘88 Olympics glasses from Petro-Canada. I’d be willing to bet that most Canadians remember these glasses – everyone I’ve mentioned them to recently has said, “The ones with the gold that flaked off?”  Yup, those would be the ones.  They looked like this¹:

In the process of moving, it struck me that I only have three glasses².  I had an unholy number of mugs – in fact, I donated about half of them to the thrift store – but not so much on the glasses front.  So, I decided that buying the Vancouver 2010 Olympics glasses from Petro-Canada would solve both my lack-of-glasses problem and my desire-for-keepsakes problem³.  Plus, proceeds from the glasses help support our wonderful Canadian athletes!

I tried to take some photos of my lovely new glasses, but my stupid camera thinks that my memory card is full, despite the fact that I deleted all sorts of photos of them, and it’s stubbornly refusing to take any photos.  I took some photos with my iPhone, but the ones of the glasses on their own didn’t turn out very well. So instead, I’ll share these photos of the glasses in their boxes instead:

The glasses each have the inukshuk⁴, that’s an important characteristic in a glass.  Also, they don’t have any gold on them, so, unlike the Calgary ones, they won’t be remembered as “those glasses where the gold flaked off.”

Image Credits: Photo of Calgary Olympics glass posted by vivianh on Flickr. The rest of the photos are mine!

1. FSM bless the magic of Flickr and generosity of those who post with Creative Commons licenses for that photo! [↩]
2. two of which have Canucks logos on them, for the record [↩]
3. yes, I realize these are not actually problems, but leave me to my rationalizations, k? [↩]
4. interestingly, the Firefox spell checker knows “Inuktitut” (the name of some Inuit languages), but not “inukshuk”) logo on one side, but they each have a different design on the other side.  Which isn’t shown on the boxes and won’t show up in the subpar photos produced by my iPhone’s camera.  Perhaps when my regular camera stops being such a bee-yotch, I’ll get some photos that do the glasses justice.

   On a more practical note, the glasses are pretty sturdy – one of the people at the Petro-Can where I bought them said, “Oh yeah, I’ve dropped mine a couple of times and it hasn’t broken yet.”  And given that I’m a DOATV ((Dropper of All Things Valuable [↩]

Tags: nostalgia, Olympics, Petro-Canada glasses, Vancouver 2010, Vancouver Olympics, Winter Olympics

I was in a thrift store today and saw this mug:

There were four of these mugs in fact.  They caught my eye because I had *just* been thinking how I used to have this awesome sugar bowl that looked exactly like that – it was from a set that my parents had when I was little and I got it when I’d moved out. It got broken at some point and I remember my sister being pissed off at me because she really liked that sugar bowl too.  Anyway, I’m currently in need of a sugar bowl and so was thinking about that sugar bowl and then out of nowhere I see the mugs from the same set.  From probably 30 years ago.  What are the odds?

Tags: mugs, nostalgia, sugar bowls, thrift store

Very happy to have just bought a step stool for my new kitchen. So I can actually reach the top shelves!

My apologies for the terrible pun!

Tags: being short, moving

While seeing so many people all clad in red walking to watch the Olympic torchbearer run by yesterday, I had an epiphany.  I decided that I needed to do this:

Happy Olympics!

Tags: awesomeness, hair colour, Olympics, red, Vancouver 2010, Vancouver Olympics, Winter Olympics

I spent most of today and a good chunk of yesterday packing.  I now have the kitchen¹, the bathroom and the bedroom completely packed².  And I did all my laundry, including all the blankets and sheets³, and I took books back to both the Vancouver Public Library and UBC Library. The things I have left to do before moving day⁴:

• pack up my printer, scanner and the various things in my geek drawer
• pack all the food from my cupboards⁵
• make sure everything is saved off old desktop and laptop
• take old desktop to Kalev’s storage
• take various computer thingys to Free Geek
• take books to used bookstore and other crap to thrift store:

In other packing-related news, I was talking to Betty, my former landlady (who used to own the house until they sold it a few months ago, but is renting the upstairs until the end of this month) who said that I can have any of the furniture in my place (as I’ve been renting a furnished place⁶).  Which means I don’t have to buy a kitchen table and chairs! Yay!  I’m also taking this furniture, which I’ve been using in my kitchen these past three years:

And Betty let me in on a little secret: that’s baby furniture!  The thing I’ve been using as a microwave stand, is in actuality a baby change table!  As soon as she told me that, I could totally see it, but until that point it had never occurred to me that it was anything but kitchen furniture!

But even as the Flying Spaghetti Monster giveth, the Flying Spaghetti Monster taketh away. As I mentioned the other day, I’m making a concerted effort to get rid of things that I really don’t need.  For the most part, it’s been easy to toss things⁷ – like stuff that doesn’t fit/I don’t like anymore/is expired.  But there were two things that I needed to toss that gave me pause.  One was my old McMaster jacket.  It’s about 15 years old, and pretty wrecked up.  I know that I’ll never wear it again, but it was still tough to throw it away.  I took these photos to remember it by:

And the other thing I had to toss was my beloved eBay shoes!  You remember them, right?  Oh, the times we had!  I didn’t take a photo of them because they were pretty wrecked up and I want to remember them in better times.  I have photos like these to remember them by:

You will be missed, Mac jacket and beloved eBay shoes.

1. except the food [↩]
2. I’m staying at Tod’s this week so that I could just pack up everything at my place and not worry about needing to leave some stuff unpacked to use for the next week [↩]
3. have to take advantage of the in-home laundry while I still have it [↩]
4. Feb 15 [↩]
5. stuff from the fridge and freezer will get packed the day of, for obvious reasons [↩]
6. I have some of my own stuff, but a fair bit of it is theirs. But they are downsizing to a retirement condo so they can’t even keep all of the furniture upstairs, let alone the stuff in the basement [↩]
7. or put them into the “to donate” pile [↩]

Tags: eBay shoes, furniture, moving, packing

I’m thinking of doing a 30-day hot yoga challenge. It involves doing a hot yoga class every day for 30 days, starting on Feb 6. It would basically mean putting all social activities on hold for a month, as I’d be doing a yoga class every night after work, plus a Saturday morning and a Sunday class that I’d pick depending on what time my hockey game is. On the plus side, it would be a great way to kick start being more active, which I’ve been lousy at lately. So, what do you think – good idea or crazy?

Tags: yoga

Ever since I got back from the Dominican, my skin has been unholy dry.  Like, half my face is flaking off.  I put moisturizer on 6 or 7 times yesterday, but it’s still crazy dry.  (The picture really doesn’t do it justice, but you can sort of see how flaky my skin is. And that’s *after* I moisturized!). Even the skin under my eyes is dry (despite using eye cream), which makes me look like I’m ten thousand years old.

So, yeah, can anyone recommend a good moisturizer?

But not Oil of Olay because Oil of Olay products are cursed.

Tags: moisturizer, rampant consumerism, rampant narcissism

So here I am, chemicals on my head, with my head is being toasted to ensure that said chemicals rid my hair of the atrocious two inch long roots that I’ve let get way out of hand!

[I wanted to put the*awesome* photo of me under the dryer right here, but I'm writing this on my iPhone and evidentally you can only put photos at the bottom of the post using the WordPress app. So you have to just imagine that the photo at the bottom of this posting is here.]

Oh now the toasting is done, but I’m still waiting for chemicals to cook my hair to the delightful reddish-blodishy colour that we all know & love.

As I have mentioned previously¹, my former hairstylist, the lovely Amie, has left the world of dressing hair for the world of drawing blood, so I’m trying out her replacement, Halina. I was a bit nervous, because Amie was an amazing stylist and I always got sooo many compliments my hair since I started seeing her. Plus she’s super fun to chat with – the two hours in the chair would just fly by as we shared stories about life and boys².

Now, I’ve only talked to Halina for about 10 mins while she was painting chemicals on my hair (and the occasional minute or so here and there while she checks the progress of my colour), but we’ve already covered our mutual love of cheap clothing stores, our aversion to paying big money for designer purses and how much better Vancouver is than Toronto. I think we’ll get along just fine.

Fingers crossed that the cut and colour turns out as well!

1. not even going to try linking that to my old post here on yee ole WP iPhone app [↩]
2. mostly boys [↩]

Tags: hair, salon, stylist