Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I am, by and large, a creature of habit. I don't like being daring. I am hesitant to try new foods. I like finding a routine that works for me and sticking with it. This is true for hygiene/beauty products as well. I've pretty much stuck with 2 lotion scents for the past 5 or 6 years. Unless I have a strong desire for burgundy, blue, or black nails, I general paint my toenails silver.

The drugstores, however, seem to be conspiring against me. It started with the body wash. I have tried many over the years, but some time in college I settled on Caress's Berry Indulging. Then I couldn't find it anywhere. So I switched to something else. Next time I ran out, I couldn't find that one, either. Last time I got St. Ives Vanilla; I ran out recently and haven't been able to find any, so I've gone back to an Oil of Olay body wash I've used before. It's annoying, because I can have some trouble finding a scent that I like, but it's not the end of the world.

The real catastrophe? The apparent disappearance of my favorite shampoo. I occasionally use anti-dandruff or clarifying shampoos, but the bottle that has always been there for me is good old Suave Strawberry Shampoo. More recently it's been Suave Fresh Mountain Strawberry, but it's basically the same. I spent lunch today attempting to track down a bottle. I visited 3 different drugstores with absolutely no luck. They have Suave Green Apple and VO5 Strawberries & Cream, but no Suave Strawberry. This is a problem. I cannot bring myself to buy a different shampoo. The scent is part of my shower experience, and I refuse to part with it.

Thankfully, I don't think the scent has been discontinued; a quick Google shopping search yields plenty of results. Of course, I'd feel a bit absurd buying cheap shampoo online, so I'm going to try to see if I can find any while I'm visiting my parents. But if that fails, I'm probably going to cave. I need that sweet strawberry smell, and buythecase.net is selling a case of 6 bottles for $15.42.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Information you will hopefully never verify for yourself: If you drink a large glass of apple juice and end up throwing up soon afterwards, the vomit will in fact taste/smell vaguely of apples. This does not make the experience any more pleasant.

Related: Does anyone know if preserves (standard store-bought strawberry preserves) go bad? The jar was refrigerated, it wasn't that old (certainly wasn't past the expiration date), but it may be responsible for my unhappy stomach.

Friday, July 11, 2008

I'm redoing the layout and look of this site, and it'll probably be changing a lot until I find something I'm happy with. I'm also thinking I'll switch from my current commenting system to the built-in Blogger comments (which didn't exist when I started this site in 2003!), so old comments will disappear, unfortunately. But the archives will reappear, so if you have a craving for high school and college angst, you'll be able to get your fill. Yay?

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

There's been a bit of a kerfluffle over at Jezebel, a site that has been very near and dear to me this past year. In many ways it's a complicated bit of internet politics and grudges, but this Salon article sums up many aspects of the recent shit-storm pretty well.

A lot of the "old guard" commenters have been leaving (or getting banned), and the quality of the comments has been changing for the past few months. I used to read all the comments on certain posts, but lately I can't get through many unless the subject is very important to me. (I did skim all 1000+ comments of a recent post discussing Moe and Tracie's appearance on Thinking and Drinking, but this is because a) I'm insane and b) I was working the evening shift and didn't have much to do.)

Jezebel got me through some rough periods this year - feeling lonely and friendless in NYC, a heart-wrenching breakup, bouts of renewed depression. And for that, I am grateful to it and for it. I met some great people because of it, and I'm hoping I'll stay friends with many of them. Some of them have their own wonderful blogs, and I'm turning to them to feel the procrastination void.

I'm not going to abandon Jezebel completely - there's still some great posts on it. I strongly recommend reading things posted by Megan C and Dodai, and some of the other contributers are good too. The "Fine Lines" feature on Fridays is great. But I'm going to pare down my 'friends' list, maybe use it to track great commenters so I can read their stuff without having to wade through the rest. I'm going to try not to get emotionally invested. It's draining and time-consuming, and the costs aren't worth the benefits anymore.

In some ways, I guess I'm just fickle. I'll get devoted to or obsessed with something - a band, a website, a comic strip - and then I'll get burned out and just stop. The best of the bunch manage to renew my interest; these are the things I stick with. We'll see if Jezebel manages to make the cut.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

More informative tidbits about life in New York:

1. The times you desperately want to sit on the subway because you're dead on your feet are inevitably the times that you can't find a seat. Sometimes the world will taunt you with half a seat, someplace where you could rest if only that guy would close his legs and that woman would put her purse on her lap.

2. New York is a big place, but once you've settled into a routine, it doesn't feel that way. At some point, the coffee guy will start to make your coffee (just the way you like it) even before you've finished saying good morning.