Pixel Imperfect

Today, I'm facing my first real challenge of my 90 Day No Buy. Sid Meyer's Pirates is on sale for the iPhone for $0.99. I don't know how long it will be on sale, but I'm betting it won't last until August. It's one of my favorite game ever. Infinite replay value. I could have it with me wherever I go! And I can't have it. This is dumb.

Do you want to watch a play together sometime? Sure! I like Tom Stoppard plays. Tomato soap is awesome especially with grilled cheese sandwiches. Yummy. I don't like tomato soap, but I love tomato soup!

You guys, I totally went running this morning. Well, jogging and walking. Close enough. My fake running will henceforth be referred to as "running" despite how very far from the truth this may be. Turns out there are four greenways in this county! I went to the Riverside Greenway, which a 1.2 mile loop. I walked and jogged and walked and jogged and I think in the end I did about half and half, which is pretty cool. The trail is pretty okay. It's all paved, which was important to me. There are a flock of Canadian geese living there right now. They were meandering around the parking lot and I had to maneuver around those stubborn birds while they glared at this intruder. They didn't bother me at all, though. I stuck my key into my sports bra and headed off. There's a decent amount of geese shit, but it's easy to avoid. I think it took me about 20 minutes. It's a great starter location while I build up my distance. On days that I want to go further, it...

"This freaking thing keeps messing up..." I mutter, toying with my phone. My sister is driving and my mother is in the backseat. If there two other adults in the car, she always relegates herself to the back seat. "Mom! Mary said the F-word," my sister calls, trying in vain to get a rise out of our mother. Mom makes a non-committal grunt. "I said freaking . Don't be dumb." I actually make quite the effort not to curse around my family. "Curse words" spill out of my mouth constantly when I'm at home or around friends, but around my family I try not to curse. A little. I try really really hard not to say God Dammit. "Your face is dumb," she retorts. Our most beloved comeback, made doubly funny by our near-identical faces. I return my attention to my phone. It has trouble picking up wi-fi signals in certain areas. It currently shows a wi-fi connection, three bars! But I am unable to connect to FourSquare. "Freaking pho...

I might have to make a page of these. Everytime I read a new Dinosaur Comic I find something that I want to copy down. Ghosts feeding on our energy would feel pretty exhausting, but ghosts only come out at night! So if this is true, we'd be TOTALLY FINE during the day but then we'd all get really sleepy each ni- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!* *The "Aaaah" part is not an exact quote. I have no idea how many As and Hs are used.

I had the most marvelous idea today. It's a lovely day. About 75-80 degrees out, slightly over cast with a lovely breeze. At my current job location, I can easily walk downtown without having to cross any major roads. Downtown is quite small, and there are several boutiques and restaurants, a coffee shop, a library, and other various businesses and services. It's basically the perfect downtown. Today, I brought a pair of comfortable flats to work. On my lunch hour I walked downtown. I was smiling so much while walking. It was beautiful and breezy. I waved to the older gentleman blowing grass clippings off of his lawn. He smiled and nodded, pointing his leaf blower away from me as I walked past. I admired all the lovely houses on Main Street and thought, how lovely it would be to live here. I could so easily walk to work! I went to the library and picked up a book. I sat in the park and ate a sandwich. I began to read my book. I breathed in the lovely air and I walked chee...

The only thing I regret about deleting my Facebook is that I had this list of really awesome Dinosaur Comics quotes on my wall and now they're gone. I mean, the quotes are still in the comics, but I don't remember which ones I had. So, here are a couple good ones from the latest comics: "Banks are often robbed for the small amount of cash in the till, and often these tiny heists in which nobody is injured don't make the news and are left unsolved! Crime doesn't pay? APPARENTLY CRIME PAYS A REASONABLE AMOUNT SOMETIMES ??" "People of all genders an orientations can say "I'd hit that" to mean "I would have sex with that", and it's so weird that we all equate sex to violence, that a pleasant sexy experience gets boiled down to "synonym for punch." And it's not just hit! You can get demolished in bed too! I UNDERSTAND IT'S PRETTY FUN, ACTUALLY ." Those are pretty good quotes. I love Ryan North and h...

The baking soda and vinegar is going well. Today is three days after washing my hair. My hair looks mostly, but my bangs and roots get a little greasy. I used a little corn starch for "dry shampoo." This is pretty much par for the course. This is exactly how my hair acts with regular shampoo. The third day my bangs and roots are a little greasy. I touch up with dry shampoo and maybe I do an up-do. In addition to removing myself from all social networks, I've stopped playing social games as well. I mean the games on your iPhone where you can visit your neighbor and you have to respond in a certain amount of time or else your birds/fish/crops/zombies whatever will die. I've also stopped playing Words With Friends and Draw Something. The only games I still have are puzzle games, mostly picross/nonogram type games. I play them while listening to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I'm currently on Queen of the Damned, and while it's interesting to hear about al...

Sometimes, K-Swiss and I act a little like children. I mean, we play. It's a lot of fun. This weekend we built a fort in the living room. You know, blankets and pillows everywhere. We had a couple old shower curtain rods -- used in college to hang curtains across the doorless closets -- and I propped them up on dining room chairs, strapped them to the chair with scarves, and draped blankets from the back of the couch up to the rods. An additional blanket was used as a door when we wanted to fort closet, or to cuddle under when we watched Netflix. A sign leaned on the door when we were not in the fort: "NO KITTIES ALLOWED" The kitties did not take kindly to this and tore the fort down while we were upstairs playing Borderlands. And Lulu tried to get into the cookies. NOT COOL, LOUIS!

The crust of bread is not better for you and it does not have more nutrients. If anything, many vitamins are heat sensitive, so the dough in the center would do a better job at retaining vitamins. So, if you cut off your crusts and someone says "Eat your crusts! It's good for you," feel free to punch them in the face. For science. A gentler but messier alternative would be throwing your sandwich at this person. You'll have to make another sandwich, but it's probably totally worth it. 

Two pics for you today: First: here are the glasses I got off Coastal Contacts for free ! I don't normally get frames this wide, but I really like these glasses! Please ignore the super shiny forehead. Second: my hair is finally long enough to put in Chun Li buns ! (with the help of bobby pins of course). So cute! Some people might say I'm getting a little old for this hairstyle, but most people think I'm in still college anyway! Lastly, I am toying with the idea of dying my hair red. A dark red like the girl in this post .  Thoughts?

Hypothesis: Baking soda and vinegar are sufficient substituent for shampoo and conditioner. And loads cheaper. Method. Prepare two mixtures: a 1:4 mixture of baking soda to water and a 1:2 mixture of vinegar to water. In the shower begin by applying the baking soda mixture to scalp and massaging the mixture into the roots of your hair. Rinse well. Pour the vinegar mixture onto the ends of your hair and work in towards the roots to de-tangle. Rinse well. Towel-dry hair and wrap in turban to help dry. When hair is damp but no longer very wet, (amount of time determined by length and thickness of hair) take hair down and style without the use of additional hair products or tools beyond a brush or comb. In the case of this subject, wrap hair for 5-10 minutes, brush hair and scrunch to activate curl. Notes: I typically use a curl activating shampoo and a moisturizing conditioner. After my hair is damp and no longer dry, I use an anti-frizz styling cream and a s...

Have you heard of baking soda shampoo? What about apple cider vinegar conditioner? Reddit introduced me to this post by Simple Mom who has been using the above products to wash her hair for over two years . I'm almost out of shampoo and conditioner, so I think I'm going to try it out. I already have all the ingredients in my house. It's caused me to be curious about other home recipes for cosmetic products. I found a neat one for  deodorant , and one for  body wash , and an article about shaving with olive oil . The only thing I'd need to buy for the deodorant is coconut oil. For the body was I'd need liquid castille soap, which apparently has a million uses anyway. So, of course, due to the 90 Day No Buy , I won't be able to try those out for a while but I'll let you know how the hair care and shaving goes! If you have any other neat recipes for either personal or household products, let me know! And if you're looking for a recipe for DIY...

I have been pretty successful at rolling out of bed between 5:30 - 5:45 this week. This is a combination of a few things. 1) A loud digital alarm clock that goes off at 5:30. It's at the foot of my bed and will snooze for 7 minutes 2) My iPhone alarm, which I put on the opposite side of the room. It goes off at 5:30, 5:45 and 6:00. Three different alarm types too. Right now my 5:30 alarm sounds like a duck! :) 3) My cats saying "please feed us, please feed us" 4) My mental state in which I believe I can get up and be productive at 5:30 am. Before I go to bed, I remind myself that I'm going to get up and out of bed at 5:30 am. I am. I really am going to do it. Then, in the morning my loud annoying alarm goes off. I crawl to the end of the bed and hit snooze. I flop back down and snuggle under the covers again. Then I slowly start to realize that there is a really strange sound coming from the other side of my room. I try to ignore it and go back to sleep but ...

Starting May 1st, I went on a 90-Day No Buy. I haven't bought anything frivolous in a couple months, but now it's official. And I can't buy anything I don't actually need. For example, on April 27th, I bought a pull up bar/home gym thing ($15) and on April 29th I bought a laptop stand ($20), both of which I paid for partially with gift cards. But if it's not a necessary consumable or a bill, it's not getting my money for 90 days. No dining out, either. Except Friday lunches. Friday lunches are special and they are worth the money. This is going to suck a little. But it's a great exercise in find out how much money I spend on unnecessary crap.

I woke up at 5:45 two days in a row! Woo-hoo! This morning, I wanted to hit snooze again but I thought "just go downstairs and feed the cats. See how you feel afterwards. I fed the cats and since I was already downstairs, I unloaded the dishwasher. What was that? I UNLOADED THE DISHWAHSER I know, right? I did something productive and it was barely 6am. Wow. After cooking and eating dinner yesterday, K-Swiss and I watched Supernatural. But when I finished eating, I started to do dishes while watching Supernatural. I can multitask. K-Swiss cannot. If he tries to do the dishes while watching Supernatural, we'll end up with dirty dishes in the cupboard and clean dishes in the stove. So, I washed all the dishes in the sink except a handful of big dishes. I cleaned the sink and cleaned around the sink. It looked good, man. New habit that I'm going to try implement in our house. When you're done eating, clean off your dish and put it in the dishwasher. That...