New Uses for Old Things

Fall makes me want to Martha Stewart my room and make pie.  In my search for new ways to revamp my room, I came across a nifty slideshow entitled “50 All-Time Favorite New Uses for Old Things.”  Most of the ideas are somewhat clever, but some are your usual design magazine suggestions (e.g. this-is-theoretically-cool-but-would-look-wack-in-someone’s-real-house).  There were a couple ideas that made me go “ooh!!” so I thought I’d share them.

Favorite tip #1: “No more worries of camisoles and sundresses slipping off hangers when you wrap the ends with rubber bands.”

Genius.  Usually I just flail helplessly at my shirts and hope they climb back onto the hanger, but this seems promising.

Favorite tip #2: “Make no-mess pancakes with the help of a ketchup bottle: Pour in batter, then squeeze out precise portions.”

This is such a cool idea but it totally weirds me out.  I don’t know why pancake batter in a ketchup bottle seems gross to me.

Favorite tip #3: “Bridge the gap between too-short stems and too-deep vase by sliding on trimmed clear plastic straws.”

I give you… magic flowers that float in thin air!  TA-DAH!!

Favorite tip #4: “Liberally apply cooking spray to both sides of a plastic or metal shovel before clearing away snow, and ice will slide right off instead of building up.”

This is especially handy for those times I shovel snow and then eat it.

Favorite tip #5: “Attach a magnet to the inside of a metal medicine cabinet, and you can promptly pluck tweezers (or nail clippers) when needed.”

This is not a good tip if you have metal hands.

And finally… my least favorite tip: “A Twister game mat makes a spot-on tablecloth for a child’s birthday party: Sticky spills and icing wash right off.”

That’s great and all but… what about all the feet that have been there?  Eeeew.

And the runner-up for least favorite tip: “Rubber bands give little fingers a better grip on a chilly or slippery glass.”

Because slippery glasses kill 4.8 people a year.  True story.

Nerds

Recently I have acquired a new shirt that I lub.

I was wearing it while helping my brother look for sunglasses at one of those overly fancy sunglasses stores (let’s call it Goggle Yurt).  A Goggle Yurt salesman approached, looked at my shirt, and asked, “Is that true?”  I awkwardly laughed. Socially-challenged Goggle Yurt salesman continued to stare at me without smiling and wait for an answer.  Eventually I just looked at Drew, who happened to be trying on giant purple aviators, and just answered, “Yup.”

Drew says he should have just said, “Are you hitting on my girlfriend?  Because I’ll fry you with my photon ray.”

The Little Cats

I’ve been engaging in some spring-cleaning-on-steroids, by which I mean taking everything in my room out, moving around the furniture, and keeping only what’s useful.  Or fluffy.  Or awesome.  I haven’t done this since we moved here (19 years ago), so as you can imagine it’s been quite an endeavor (I’m currently on Day 4 of cleaning).

Anyhoo, here’s one of the gems I came across while cleaning – it’s a story my little brother and I wrote.  Judging by the complicated mathematical computations on the pages preceding it (e.g. 50 + 50 = 100), I’d guess that we were about 5 and 6 years-old respectively.  I’ll reproduce the piece in its full entirety (with the omission of the lovely accompanying illustrations).  You can attribute all the bad spelling and stupid parts to my little brother and all the brilliant and funny parts to me.

The Little Cats

There once was two cats named Pancakes and Candycane.  They loved to go hunting for pancakes, candy canes, and pizzas.  One day they went into a forest and bumped into a hunter that loved cat skin for decoration.  He thought how beautiful thair white and brown fur would look.  Well the cats started to scratch him.  Well lets see if they survive?

They did!  They survived the hunter got so many bruses!  Pancakes and Candycane wanted to go farther in the forest.  They came to a puddle and drank some water but they ran into a bear and got hurt but they were smart and they ran for thair lives.  They felt good when they saw their house.  They ran into their house but it was wierd nobody was home and it looked different oh no!   They are in the hunters house they quickly got out and ran.  did you remember when they got hurt well their ok but the thing is they were hungery very hungery they saw birds flying over them how beautiful it was.  But they had to get home.  It was scary since it was dark and it was getting spooky.  But never worry they kept on lookiing.  They found shelter to sleep in they were covered with leaves and other stuff in the forest.

The next day they met a baby bear named Cupcake he knew a lot of things in the forest.  He knew where food was and where the river was.  They turned into good friends and always had fun.  But the bear that hurted Pancake and Candycane was Big Bear he was mean and cruel.  Then a rabbit named Chocolate came and they all became good friends.

The end

Bad English

Reid: true
Reid: i have trouble reading english
Reid: cuz my native language is 6 year old english

Sophia: hahaha
Sophia: well my mom says if you eat a lot of seaweed it’ll make your hare blacker
Sophia: which is like being asian
Sophia: did i just write hare
Sophia: hahaha
Sophia: *hair
Sophia: okay nevermind

Reid: hahaha

Sophia: english fail

Prunes

(Just for background reference, I caught a cold from my boyfriend who caught it from the country of Singapore.)

I realized this morning on the shuttle that being sick is slowly turning me into an old man.  I find myself doing a bunch of old man stuff: I do an achy shuffle when I walk, I find loud noises and bright lights over-stimulating, I only want to eat bland food, and I find myself unequivocably attracted to prunes.  Okay maybe not the last part about prunes, but all the other stuff is true.  Real old man stuff.  Gimme a couple more days and I’ll start wearing sweater cardigans and newsboy caps (hey wait, that kind of sounds like somebody at work…)

India is Changing Reid

Sophia: oh yeah?? you wanna fight!!

Sophia: oh too scared to come back to california!! yeah you stay in hyderabad!!

Reid: hahahahaha

Reid: i kind of like it here

Reid: the team is SO much better than MTV

Reid: and better loooking

It Runs in the Family

(Talking to my little brother Mikey this morning on gtalk)

Sophia: hellos

Mikey: top of the mornin’ to ya!

Sophia: haha you’re chipper!

Mikey: i thought that would be an appropriate greeting

since you are a leprechaun

the beard is what gave it away

and the conspicuous jingle of your gold-stuffed pockets

Sophia: haha! i am actually a gnome

this beard is fake

and that conspicuous jingle is my penny collection!!

Mikey: lawn gnomes have beards

your logic is flawed!

One-armed Chair

(Sitting in a meeting room – my chair is mysteriously missing an arm rest)

Me: Why does my chair only have one arm?

Jason: They only give you the number you deserve.

Nelson’s Last Words before Hyderbad

Nelson (about his shirt): Yeah, it makes my guns look big.

Minnesota!

I was suffering from vacation withdrawal, so I took a trip a weekend or so ago to visit my boyfriend Drew in Minnesota.  Now, prior to dating Drew I was convinced Minnesota was filled with bears, Garrison Keillor,  and people who look like Garrison Keillor.  Unfortunately I was wrong, but Minnesota is still a lovely place – snowy in the Winter, lush in the Summer, and filled with midwest generosity.

Some highlights of the trip:

The first night I was there, Drew’s older sister Emi took us out to play bingo at the West St. Paul Bingo Palace.  The whole experience was relatively cheap – $10 for a pack of bingo cards and $2 for a dauber (a circular self-inking stamp that makes it easier to mark numbers that have been called).  The mean age of the participants was approximately 125.  But don’t be misled by the age group or the perceived simplicity of the game -  Bingo is a serious sport.  Bingo halls regularly ask their patrons to turn off cellular phones before entering the game room and talking is discouraged, lest you tempt the wrath of 1,278 old ladies.  That being said, the experience was a lot of fun – stamping away at numbers with the dauber made me feel industrious and the looming possibility of easy money was a plus.  (A woman near us won $1000 – we contemplated mugging her but decided punching an old lady was mean; we’d need at least $1000 more to do that).

The following night we went to The Shout! House, a bar whose most prominent feature is dueling pianos.  Basically two guys take requests from the audience for songs and play at their respective pianos, sometimes accompanied by a bass guitar and drums.  The most remarkable part about the bar was that everyone who worked there was musically-gifted – even waitresses would get up on stage and sing impressively good covers of Rihanna or Lauryn Hill (both of whom aren’t easy to mimic).  Here’s a clip of The Shout! House I found on Youtube to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.  This is probably one of my favorite bars that I’ve ever been to – I’d definitely recommend people check one out if they can.

The next day we went inner tubing on a river which I now forget the name of but was located about a 40-minute drive away from St. Paul.  Basically all you do is drive up to this wooden shack-looking structure, give a guy $9 for an inner-tube, and hop on a crazy old school bus which drives you up the road at which point you throw your inner-tube into the river and float back down to the wooden shack house.  Pretty cool and apparently super popular with Minnesota teenagers – we saw at least 5 different groups of kids who’d tethered their inner tubes around a cooler on its own inner tube.  Some 15 year-old girl was drinking beer on an inner tube with her grandma.  Good times.

Last but not least, Drew and I went to the Science Museum of Minnesota.  As many of you know, I was a Biology major in college and am also particularly fond of museums.  But this is not why Drew and I went to the Science Museum.  No, you see, Drew has a handful of loves in his life: peanut butter, old men, the Minnesota Twins, and Star Wars (which was conveniently being exhibited at the museum).  So off we went!  The exhibit was better than I expected – they had the actual props used to film the original movies (Yoda puppet included) as well as behind-the-scenes videos at each station.  One of the best stations had this robot that they’d somehow rigged to detect faces – he’d say hello and talk to you.  I tried to outsmart it by hiding my face with my hands, but that resulted in it gleefully yelling “PEEK-A-BOO!!” and “WHY ARE YOU HIDING!!”  Really, really cute but kind of also really, really scary.

Tangential aside: I forgot that the Minnesotan population is about 87% White and 3% Asian.  This is a marked departure from the 25% Asian I’m used to in the Bay Area.  On one hand, they still had pearl milk tea out there – there’s a popular chain called the Tea Garden which has a pretty glorious array of flavors.  They also make their menu more foreign-friendly by calling milk teas “tea lattes.”  On the other hand I appeared more ethnically ambiguous than usual – at The Shout! House a waiter asked me if I was Laotion (as in from Laos).  I couldn’t hear him (it was loud) and consequently thought he was asking me if I was “the ocean”.  I was a little disappointed when I found out that wasn’t his question.

So that was about it for my Minnesota trip!  The only other thing you might need to know is that the state muffin for Minnesota is the blueberry muffin.  OKAY BYES!