Yet another reason to hate country music...

...as if you needed one. I plunked down on the couch with my greek yogurt & honey, granola, and a spoon, and turned on abc at the stroke of 8pm, as I was excited to catch my favorite show (the only one I keep up with right now). I see my Pushing Daisies lovelies flashed briefly, then something about "and now, the Country Music Awards" and I hear the unmistakable twang of something I cannot tolerate. So I guess my show will have to wait until next week. I don't even know why I bother with real time anyway. I usually just watch my show on abc.com and that works out just great. The one time I give the tube a chance it disappoints me.

Boo.

Gimme a break

This winter I get to go to the very ends of Latin America (and the earth) and then to the very tippy top of Latin America. I'm going to Chile with my boyfriend to spend the holidays with his family and at the beach since it'll be in the 90s at that time. Then I'm going on a school trip to Mexico to interview various people and find out how their socioeconomic situation is going with the effects of NAFTA.

I'm quite excited about it and I hope I get to speak lots of Spanish. I know for sure I'll only be speaking in Spanish in Chile, but I'm going to have to make a pact with my fellow students to ensure that we only speak Spanish to each other during our trip. Pura vida.

I thought to myself "SELF!"

Yesterday I made a friend go boot shopping with me. We went to Filene's Basement and found a pathetic and cheap-looking selection. Then my friend suggested we go back up Connecticut to another shoe spot. And my boots were in the window, in three colors. I picked the brown ones, and they were a good fit. Oh, and the shoe guy wanted to measure my foot even though I knew my size and I'm 25 years old. My feet stopped growing long ago, so you'd think I'd know my size.

So I didn't bat an eye at the pricetag, bought the boots, and when I started admiring them later that evening, I thought "Hrm. That was a lot of freakin' money I just spent there. I wonder if I could by chance google my boots and see if there's some kind of deal anywhere else." And lo and behold, the first page to come up had my boots, my color, my size. I bought them, with free shipping, for 75% off the store price. Cha-ching!

Here's hoping that the package arrives in good time and I actually get what I wanted.

The Germans call it "yogging"

When I jog, my body simulates sudden and massive organ failure. I get a shooting pain in my lower back region, my ankles feel like they're going to give out, my ears pop and I can hear my inner ear jiggle with each step, and bile starts to travel up my esophagus. I wonder if all that's something I should be worried about.

I'm glad that some people can get their jollies from jogging (like my roommates, who will go unnamed), but the truth is, I don't feel like I need it. I'm a Class-A walker. You won't hear me complain about walking because I can do it all day long, for miles and miles. And I walk faster than the average person. It's just that it's not quite a jog.

Girl with two pearl earrings

If I had the fortitude and the wherewithall to do it, I would take a series of photographs of ladies switching their shoes for an interview. The photos would feature college students and young professionals clad in their best interview suits stopping a block or two from their interview destination to change their shoes from their worn-in flip-flops or sneakers to their more appropriate, close-toed heels.

And maybe my exhibition would include close-ups of bunyons and hammer toes. Eww. But perhaps good news for anyone with a foot fetish.

We can call it the "iTote"

Someone out there needs to create some nice looking tote bags that have a protective pocket for a laptop and can fit a bunch of stuff. And the strap has to be sensible and wide so that it doesn't cut into one's shoulder.

The tote bags should come in cool prints, especially animal ones (because we all know how I love them and thus how cool they are) and cute and endearing prints and other designs. The bags should be made of soft leather and should have other adornments such as zippers, outside pockets, tassles, buttons, and other such things (probably not all at once though).

I've searched high and low for a tote bag worthy of my precious cargo (my darling laptop) and appropriate for my age and personality but it just hasn't happened. I got a lead on some Vera Bradley diaper bags, however, and although that may sound weird I think it has potential. Maybe 10 years from now I can actually use it to carry diapers. Who knows though, my bladder may give out earlier than that.

Back in U.S.S.A.

I'm in my homeland again, as of a few months ago. For some reason I haven't felt like writing lately. Grad school has sucked the creativity out of me. But now, all of a sudden, I feel the urge to create. I already created a few custom-made cat toys for my boyfriend's cat. One of them is a plastic bag ball. I recycled a bunch of sandwich bags by stuffing a bunch of them into one sandwich bag, which I tied in a knot, and now the cat has a fluffy ball to kick around.

So does this mean that I'm turning into a crazy cat lady? I sure hope not. I don't get cats. They don't respect the alpha male or female. They think they're hot stuff.