1. Browsing watch forums
2. Browsing purse forums
It all started in the name of research. How can one guy charge $10 for his crap, while another charges $10,000? Let me learn the difference…
Thousands of dollars of “research” later…
Anyway, it’s amusing how the two rabbit holes serve completely different audiences, yet the posts are eerily similar. You could swap the pictures around and the comments would still make sense. “Great find! Wear it in good health!”
Go to hell and stop enabling me.
I ordered a couple things from Yoox.com. I have to admit I’m a little jealous of my package’s route.
I know the person this happened to won’t agree, but I can’t help but find this absolutely hilarious.
I got the LASIK done over a week ago and so far, so good. I have nothing but positive things to say about the procedure, the staff, the almost-perfect eyesight I now have… really, everything was great. If anyone needs a rec for a laser eye surgeon in NYC, I can give you the place as well as a coupon for the procedure (something like $200 or $250 off). They do both LASIK and PRK.
I’m still not fully used to it. Removing my glasses or contacts used to be one of the major cues for me in the wind down process prior to going to bed. I still have those half-second moments where I think, “Crap, I can still see, I have to take my contacts out,” before remembering that FUCK YEAH I can see without help now!
It is really one of the best things ever.
Last week was pretty shitty for a lot of people around here thanks to Sandy; some folks will continue to have many more bad weeks, unfortunately. Rich and I were lucky in that our building in lower Manhattan was relatively unscathed. The worst of it was having to go up and down 49 flights of stairs to get to and from our apartment since the power was out. We regained power late Friday night, but there are many buildings around us that have no heat, and many that are still pumping water out of their basements and are unsafe for habitation.
The power being out ended up being kind of a good thing for me. I lead a very low energy life. I move little, I eat little, I’m a lazy slug. A skinny slug, but a slug nonetheless. Being forced to strain myself going up and down the stairs jump-started healthy eating habits (I suddenly found myself craving greens as well as eating unusually large portions for me (I’m underweight)) and jump-started my energy level.
I wish I could tell you I wrote all this without any corrective lenses on, but I had to reschedule my laser eye surgery (which would have been last Friday) for obvious reasons. Not knowing when the power would be back on, I wouldn’t want to be stumbling up a billion stairs in the dark right after surgery. I’ll be getting them done on the 16th now.
I somehow smashed my glasses under the couch (at least that’s where I found them when I had light) during the worst of Sandy. They’re being held together by tape now. I really can’t wait to get my eyes zapped.
My mother shows her concern in funny ways sometimes.
A month or so ago I transferred a good chunk of change into my normally pathetic savings account, an account my mother has access to and checks daily because she works at the bank. She called me about it and I figured she’d say something like, “Hey, I noticed you put a bunch of money into your savings account. You’re finally saving something! Good for you!” Instead, she said, “Hey, I noticed you put a bunch of money into your savings account. Are you okay? Are you running low? Do you need me to send you some cash?”
I know mothers worry about their children, but who sees their kid doing better and assumes something bad happened?
Uh, yeah, what it says. Dad booked our flights to Vietnam for February (Têt celebrations). Since I’ve been wanting to get laser eye surgery for a long time and I’ve been crappy about prioritization until recently, I’m now making it my goal to have it done before the trip.
This is going to cost a lot and I have precious little time to save. Death and birthdays are the only thing I’m going out for in order to save money. I’m not budging on that… Mostly.
And in related news, NY Times had an article on the traffic in Hanoi (my co-favorite city, next to Madrid). The traffic is pretty brutal, but you get the hang of crossing the street pretty quickly. There is a method, and traffic goes kind of slow in truth. I remember being on a highway at night where policemen simply stepped in front of traffic to pull vehicles over. This was not a road in the city, but a large (for Vietnam) highway. The congestion and low speed limits allow for this kind of stuff.
I find crossing certain streets in Amsterdam more difficult. It’s a real life version of Frogger where you have to contend with the tram lane, car lane, and bike lane, each with its own pace. The bicycles are the most dangerous by far, of course.
Trying to get into more of the baroque scene, which means listening to some opera (which originated in that period). Operas in English or German… I… I can’t. I can’t do it. I’m sorry.
And now for something more accessible. This is fucking hilarious (not opera):
This one night in Edinburgh we (a group of five) were going “home” after hitting the bars. We were walking down this alley when I saw another group of people coming towards us, going the opposite way. So I did the only thing you should do when you have two groups of people running into each other in an alley: I started crouching and snapping my fingers like we were two rival gangs about to rumble.
Pretty sure I looked like a lunatic, because while I could clearly hear the music in my head, nobody else could. Rich and Colin were the only ones who understood what the hell I was even trying to do, and I’m sure the “rival gang” was suitably weirded out.
It’s one of my proudest moments.
One day last week we came home to find Roomba in the middle of the bathroom, shut down. This isn’t particularly unusual, since it tends to get stuck on things, or sometimes can’t get back to the recharger base and runs out of juice. I have it run during the day, so it’s never a sure thing where we’ll find Roomba when we get home from work.
Anyway, in this particular instance, Roomba had eaten the soft cups off Rich’s earphones and got jammed up on them. Rich went to empty out Roomba’s bin and ended up getting a face full of gods know what, which left him coughing and sputtering for the rest of the evening. The following morning he had a sore throat which slowly turned into a cold. Then he gave the cold to me.
Oh, I’m sure Roomba wanted to make it all look like an accident, as if it was our fault the earphones were on the floor and Roomba choked on them. Just like it tried to convince us no foul play was involved after we opened it up and both got sick. And then the fact that it gets “stuck” every other day, prompting me to check all its innards. Hmph… There it goes, happily beeping away as it comes back to base, triumphant after a day’s sweep. But I know it’s all a front.
It won’t be long before Rich and I are found dead on the floor with our faces having been sucked into Roomba’s evil brushes. We are hostage to the thing, though. Either we have clean floors everyday or we go back to using the big bulky upright vacuum that is such a bother to use that there’s dust bunnies the size of cats before we get around to vacuuming. I like clean floors, so death by Roomba it is.
As I’ve been going through my underwear basket the past week or so, I’ve come to realize a very important fact: Marks & Spencer has the best goddamn underwear I’ve ever worn and I can’t wait to get back to the UK/Ireland to get some more.
We sold our EZ tickets yesterday. Here’s why:
1. (By a longshot) Everything is better in Ibiza. Nothing big is worth attending here once you realize this. If you can spare the hundreds it takes for a 3-day pass to EZ, you can save up a little longer and party for real in Europe.
2. Lackluster lineup. I guess I don’t like what the kids are listening to these days. Speaking of…
3. The kids. Ugh. Hey, have I mentioned how much better things are in Europe? They’ve been doing this shit forever and have learned how to not be douchebags.
4. Cost. Kind of ties back to #1. For the amount I’m paying for tickets, plus booze and food, I’d rather wait and go to Europe.
5. Less friends attending. Who I am going to make fun of dubstep with?
I was really looking forward to EZ being a yearly tradition, but that was before Ibiza, and before EDM gained such huge traction in a bad way (i.e. genres of EDM I don’t like became popular/attracted douches). It is absolutely 100% worth it to skip the parties here in order to travel to better ones abroad. I cannot emphasize enough how Spain seriously changed the way I look at everything here.
We did three years of EZ. Three years was enough. Three years was too long. Wish I’d known sooner.
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