The Mouse Walrus

And now for something completely different.

Being a Very Forgetful Person, I have devised many methods over the years to remind myself of things. My To-Do lists in Evernote (which include the "Ongoing To Do List" for miscellaneous tasks, as well as at least three for specific projects such as fixing the house) are a good start, but sometimes I forget to look at Evernote!

When there is one small thing that I need to remember to do in a short time frame, I'll often just use an odd object, placed somewhere prominent, to catch my attention and jog my mind into thinking about whatever the thing is. A Forgetful Person could potentially have some problems remembering which task has been mentally assigned to the object, so it helps to use an object that is somehow related to that which needs to be done.

Consider my mouse at the office. A few years ago, I started using a wireless mouse. I resisted going from wired to wireless for a long time, because I have a strong aversion to relying on tools that rely on batteries, because batteries require so much maintenance! However, a change in the configuration of my desk rendered my mouse cord too short, so I reluctantly adopted the wireless mouse as my new pointing device. The problem with this wireless mouse is that it uses a rechargeable battery, and that battery dies after about a week and a half off the charger.

After a few annoying instances of having to stop everything and charge my mouse for an hour, I decided to put my mouse on the charger every Friday after work, so that I could return to the office on Monday with a refreshed battery waiting for me. Charging one's mouse every Friday sounds like a simple habit to get into, but Forgetful Personhood knows no bounds! Almost every single Friday, I was so eager to be going home for the weekend that stopping to drop my mouse on a charger just never happened.

And so, I resorted to my old trick of using a Reminder Object. On my desk, I keep an inbox tray. Since inbox trays are relics of a past era that I fortunately don't live in, I do not need to keep paper in my tray. Instead, I load it with an assortment of toys that I've accumulated over years of going to conferences and receiving goody bags. My inbox tray presently  looks something like this.

And what's that front and center in my inbox tray? Why, it's a walrus. In my search for an object to remind me to charge my mouse, the walrus stood out. A toy mouse would obviously have been better, but I figured a small rendition of any mammal was a pretty close second. So now whenever I think "Today is Friday! Oh, I need to charge the mouse!" (Or, more often, "Shoot! I forgot to charge the mouse on Friday! I must do it when I leave today!") I immediately pull the walrus out of the tray and stick it into the top of my backpack, so when I start packing up for my trip home, I'll see the walrus and remember to move the mouse.

It works, and I've been making good use of the Mouse Walrus for something like 2 and a half years now. And in those 2 and a half years, it never occurred to me to wonder a very important question: "Why does the walrus not have tusks?"

Until last Wednesday. As I was putting the walrus out for a mid-week reminder, I finally noticed the tusklessness that should have been obvious to me long ago. Was my Mouse Walrus actually not a walrus at all?

Frantic internet searches ensued. Yes, both male and female walruses definitively have tusks. No, seals all seem to have pointy noses, not the broad snout of my little toy. Was this one really a juvenile walrus? Although I never came up with a satisfactory answer, I ended up thinking about it all day long. 

On the plus side, this absolutely ensured that I also ended up thinking about my mouse for most of the day as well. My question still remains unanswered, but at least my mouse made it onto the charger!

From Greenie to Snowflake

Last month, I bought a new bike.

This might not sound like a life-altering purchase, right up there along with buying a house or even a new car, but I've actually been in the market for a new bike since before I even started shopping for a new house (that was in early 2015), and in many ways, it has been an even tougher decision! I wanted to make sure that when I bought a bike, everything about it would be perfect. Which meant, of course, that I simply never bought a bike at all.

What finally spurred me to move from bike shopping to bike buying? Plain old-fashioned desperation. My old bike, Greenie, had been around the block a few (hundred) times, and he was really starting to show his age. At some point a few years ago, I tried to replace the front shifter cable, failed at that, and finally removed the front derailer entirely. Ever since then, my chain has been prone to falling off when I go over bumps. Pretty much everything else on the bike was equally out of tune. My problem downshifting into fifth gear hadn't improved in the 4 years since I first noticed it; the brake pads were on their last legs; and, the last straw in a cavalcade of minor annoyances, the pedal makes a scraping noise whenever it turns. It had progressed beyond my ability to fix it (make it worse) myself, but it didn't seem worthwhile to take it into a shop to be goaded into some temporary semblance of repair.

It was time for an upgrade! For real this time! A little before Christmas, I took the plunge and ordered myself a bike on Amazon. My boyfriend's Christmas present to me was professional assembly by our local bike shop. A few days after Christmas, we picked it up at the shop to discover...it was the wrong size! I had ordered a small and somehow ended up with a fully assembled (at the cost of almost as much as the bike itself) extra large!

With disappointment, a bit of shame (why had I not checked the box to verify I'd received the right size!?), and a certain amount of trepidation (would they accept my extremely costly-to-ship return in the not-original packaging?), I sent the bike back (they refunded me) and spent a few months wallowing in uncertainty. By this time, the fantastic deal I'd received on the first bike was unavailable, and I was beginning to have my doubts about whether I'd have liked that bike even if it had been the correct size.

Returning to the drawing board, I revised my expectations a little. I knew it wasn't very likely that I would find the bike of my dreams on the first try, especially since I was switching to a completely different breed of cycle—a road-leaning hybrid style after a lifetime of riding a mountain bike! So on my second round of serious bike shopping, my top priority was price. I would make some compromises, get a bike that would under no circumstances cost more than 400 dollars, I would find out what I liked and disliked about it, and then the next time I was in the market for a bike, I would know better what to look for.

Since I hadn't been so keen on the first bike I'd ordered online, I decided to give a local bike shop a chance to sway me. I tried a couple of mid-range hybrid bikes, at a significantly higher price than the ones I'd been looking at online. Both of them rode so much more smoothly than Old Greenie, I was almost convinced I could love them...except they were black. I hate to say that the single strongest factor deterring me from the purchase of these otherwise good bikes was their uninspiring color. But I I hop on my bike at least 12 times a week and spend 3+ hours weekly riding it. If I couldn't feel even the tiniest spark of enthusiasm when I look at it, I just couldn't commit to buying it!

A few days later, I finally found the perfect "starter bike" on the Performance Bicycles website. It wasn't black. It wasn't a beautiful shade of aqua like my second-choice model either, but it was also cheaper by almost a hundred dollars, so I decided that white was a good, affordable compromise. I was sold when I learned that it would come with free assembly and lifetime adjustments by Performance!

So finally I found myself in possession of my new bike! As I always do when I receive a new shiny thing, I waited a few weeks to give it a name, to see what really suited it. The name that kept coming back to me was Snowflake.

No, it may not be the most creative name out there, but I think it embodies the spirit of freedom and ease that I'm trying to achieve with my newer, faster, lighter wheels. My old bike (Greenie) had been named after its color, so it seemed it appropriate to keep the tradition alive. I'll probably never ride this bike in the snow, so its name adds just a touch of subtle irony as well.

I wanted to introduce you, my loyal readers, to this bike now, because, with the change in my lifestyle that comes from changing my bike-style, I'm sure I'll have a lot of stories in the future about how I'm adjusting to my new ride.

Don't It Yourself

I once said that every guy I ever dated, no matter how briefly, came into my life for a reason.

One guy, who I only ever met online (but with whom I had a short and very fiery online relationship full of drama), said on his dating profile that his talent was "Fixing things, rigging things to make them work."

Was it that throwaway line on okCupid that set me on my current trajectory – instilled in me my  philosophy of DIY-til-you-die? (Or was it the plethora of "life hacks" I keep stumbling upon on the internet?) I can no longer remember, but I can be certain that it had an impact on me. Before that, it had never occurred to me that being able to cobble something together was something to take pride in. But now, it's part of my unshakable M.O.

I have more love for my home improvement projects that end up like a Frankenstein's Mashup of glue, scavenged parts, and a smattering of mismatched screws, than I ever would for a beautiful brand-new, store-bought version of the same thing.

But there comes a time when every do-it-yourselfer must draw the line. And for me, that time came when I needed to install a handrail for my basement stairs.

The basement staircase was one of the many "special" qualities of my house when I moved in—it had no handrail whatsoever. That was not a problem for me, young and nimble and indescribably graceful at all times, but it became an issue when I wanted to begin renting out the basement bedroom. Suddenly the primary user of the basement staircase wouldn't be me with a load of laundry in my agile and capable hands, but a paying guest. Who would no doubt be happy to sue me for any slip or fall. I don't have much of a defense in a lawsuit when my staircase lacks a basic safety feature such as a railing.

But I wasn't worried! As an avid DIY-er, I was ready to take on the challenge. Fortunately, the stairs had come with a railing...it just wasn't installed. I found it in the storage cubby under the stairs! All I needed was a few screws, and my staircase would be ready for business!

Cut to 5 months later. The railing has still not been installed. Turns out the hardware that came with the railing was bent and needed replacement, and it took me this long to get motivated and find suitable parts (I got them from Community Forklift for 99¢ each, of course!)

Cut to 4 months after that. The railing has still not been installed. Turns out my basement drywall is just as "special" as the rest of the house, and has no studs upon which to anchor a handrail. But that hasn't stopped me from trying. Now my drywall is pocked with screw holes of varying sizes, and a couple of places where whole chunks are missing, thanks to my inability to master the art of drywall anchors.

I had literally been failing to install my handrail for 9 months, before I finally reached the line of Don't-It-Yourself. I brought in the professional contracting big guns (which was of course a struggle in itself, between the lack of call-backs, the no-shows, and the refusals to provide an estimate). But once they arrived, my handrail was up and stable in less than 30 minutes. And in the two hours that they were there, they also replaced my non-functioning gas oven with a new one (one which I'd picked up for free from a Craigslister, of course!), and installed a new bathroom fan in my basement.

Those tasks would have taken me, on my own, days, weeks, or even months, which would have undoubtedly been filled with many frustrated tears, and possibly a blown-up house!

So no, I'm not ashamed that this time I decided to let the pros handle it. In fact, I just might be changing my tune. Next time I'm faced with a home improvement, no matter how DIY-able it might seem, I may just treat myself to a professional job.

All washed up: The never-ending search for hygienic hair

Warning! This is a long post...but if you read all the way to the end of it, you might hear an encouraging message and get some takeaway tips for managing your hair!

I'm no stranger to experimentation with my hair—short, long, blond, streaked, blue, black, self-cut, every kind of curler—I've tried it all, and you've seen it all. Well, almost all.

What you don't see are the continual behind-the-scenes experiments that I've been running for years, regarding the less glamorous aspects of hair care—mostly, how to keep it clean.

Up until around 2013, I'd had a pretty simple hair routine: I washed my hair every day with whatever 3-dollar bottle of Suave I'd most recently bought at Target. I didn't even use conditioner.

I'd long ago come to the conclusion that if I didn't wash my hair every day, it would become streaked with oil, stiff, and stringy looking, within a few hours of that magical nightly cutoff point. They say that blond hair, straight hair, and fine hair are all more predisposed to be oily, so I got the triple whammy.

I was fine with my daily washing schedule, until I read something telling me that shampoo is bad. Well, not unequivocally bad, but definitely not your hair's best friend. Shampooing, you see, dries out your scalp, causing it to freak out (in scientific terms) and produce more oil in a desperate attempt to balance out the dryness. Unsurprisingly, the result is even more oily-looking hair than before! A vicious cycle!

The solution, I read in some natural beauty blog, was the "No-'poo" method. It was a silly name, but it promised to return your hair to its perfectly balanced, healthy, pre-shampoo state, by basically not washing it. If necessary, you were supposed to "gently" clean your tresses with "natural" baking soda—and no harsh surfactants! 

I followed the dictates of the No-'Pooers for several months, leaving my hair unwashed and only using a baking-soda-water mixture to get it clean. The baking soda was not enough to really get rid of the grease, so I still had to shampoo every several days (they said that was an OK compromise for the initial stages when your hair was getting used to its new routine). But it never really did get used to its new routine. During this time, my photos all reveal me in a seemingly permanent style of overly long, limp, grease-soaked bangs. 

Bangs plastered to my forehead, as per my Summer 2014 usual.

I eventually gave up on no-'poo; I can no longer remember whether it was before or after I read that baking soda is just as drying as shampoo, not to mention it wreaks havoc on your scalp's natural pH balance....in any case, learning that was enough to dispel any sense of guilt I had at my shampoo-a-day habit.

Well, maybe not completely any sense of guilt. Everywhere I turned, I was still reading articles telling me to cut down on my shampooing.

From these articles, I gleaned that it's a measure of success among stylish women, how long one can go without washing one's hair. Once a week seems to be the golden standard to which we all must aspire, while oil fountains like me, who start to look like wet dogs in under 24 hours, are doing something wrong. (Women's media: promoting unattainable standards since the 1600's!)

From this new crop of self-hatred beauty resources, I learned about dry shampoo. At first, I thought it sounded fake—how can you really wash your hair without liquids? As it turns out, dry shampoo doesn't really "wash" your hair—it just absorbs the oil so it looks cleaner. It's basically like a spray-on version of the baby powder I'd long been using for emergency bangs-refreshing, but easier to use and less static-causing.

So my new routine became thus: Wash my hair every two days; then spruce it up on the second day with a hearty misting of dry shampoo, thereby saving my locks from a daily encounter with the dreaded real shampoo.

It was a system that was working for me—making me feel virtuously balanced between cleanliness and earthiness—until some other publication had to go and ruin it by reminding me that caking my hair in a desiccating powder every two days wasn't really doing it any favors. As I read it, I had to concede that, just as diatomaceous earth kills insects by absorbing all their moisture, dry shampoo is probably killing my hair, little by little, by stripping it of moisture in the same way shampoo does.

So at this point (it's only taken me 4 years to reach this conclusion), I realized I was in a catch-22. The same catch-22 I was in 4 years earlier, but with fewer options left to try. Either wash my hair every day, making it look nice and clean and shiny, or don't—replacing the shampoo with some other product which is probably worse for my hair in the long run.

Framed like that, it seems pretty obvious that I should just give up on the "alternative" beauty methods and stick with the shampoo that has been working for me all my life.

But the problem is, I don't know when to quit.

So I decided to try an extreme measure. The next time I was on vacation and didn't need to go to work for a few days, I would completely stop washing my hair. Free from the constraints of looking office-appropriate, I could cover it with a hat or scarf if it then started to look hideous. That time came just a few weeks ago, when I was on spring break and had 5 straight days off work. I washed my hair on a Friday evening, and then didn't wash it again until Wednesday afternoon.

By the second day, it was looking its usual oily self, but I persisted. Surprisingly, as the days went on, it didn't look appreciably worse (I guess a certain degree of greasiness is indistinguishable from any other). It never got so bad that I needed to cover it with a hat or scarf...and I actually got to experience the surprise benefit of increased stylability! That is, if I brushed my bangs to the side, they would stay there instead of immediately flopping right back into my eyes. I was beginning to see the upside of having greasy hair.

Since being unwashed didn't look nearly as bad as I'd been expecting, I've continued the experiment, going as long as I possibly can without washing my hair. Since March 17, I've washed my hair exactly 4 times (4 times in 18 days! That's 1.5 times a week! I'm basically a glamour girl now!). I've made some concessions, putting baby powder in it when I needed to look presentable for a photo or an important night out, but basically I'm rocking the hippie hair like I was born for it!

When I do wash it, I try to only wash my strands and avoid rubbing shampoo into my scalp. I figure if oil overproduction is really caused by distressing my scalp, then the solution is to just make sure my scalp is happy—I can do whatever I want to my hair and my scalp won't know about it! Eventually I might reach a point where my scalp thinks it never gets washed, and then maybe I will finally be the beautiful, fluffy-haired princess I always wanted to be!

Maybe. As with any good experiment, more research is needed. Consider this post my preliminary findings, with more data to be released at the end of April.

This is my head, 4 full days after a my last hair-wash, plus a baby-powder
bangs-refresh two days ago. Pretty, right?

Dog Life

I never approved; I tried to resist; but somehow, despite all my efforts, I ended up living in a house full of dogs. By "full," I mean there are two of them, but that's plenty when they generate enough unwanted byproducts (fur, pee, poop, noise) to belong to a whole canine army.

Though I task my boyfriend with the responsibility of keeping said byproducts under some semblance of control, it's not enough. Not too long ago, it suddenly occurred to me the extent to which I've had to rearrange my entire existence around these two stupid dogs.

The moment I realized I was living the dog life was when I walked out of the thrift store carrying two coats I had selected specifically for their ability to disguise the pale hairs of my two sheddy (Neologism by Valerie! Meaning: characterized by shedding a lot of hair) pets. When you buy your clothes to match your dogs, that's when you know you're committed.

One coat was a yellow and white houndstooth, which, while a very apropos pattern, I probably would have bought even if I didn't have dogs, because it's not often you run across such a sunny winter coat. The other one, however, is purely for the pups. It features a small chevron pattern alternating between dark grey and light tan, for an overall effect, from the distance, of being a brindled grey.

The chevrons work a miracle, though, because the light bands disguise white and tan hairs, and the dark ones hide black hairs (on the occasions when I travel with a friend who has a black dog). I call it my "fur coat" because it's so good at hiding the fur that constantly covers it.

Compare my old dress coat (a lovely black wool) with my new one up close, and you'll see the difference a camouflage color can make.

The brindled one is just as covered with hairs as the black one (you can see one dangling off the sleeve if you look closely) but you would never know it until you take a lint roller to it. 

The coats, however, are just the tip of the iceberg. Here are a few more examples of how the dogs have totally taken over my life.

As I once complained shortly after the first unwanted dog entered my life, he likes to eat the trash. As soon as he's alone in the house, he shuns his dog food in favor of finding some juicy tidbit in the garbage can. Previously, we would put the trash up on a counter or chair so he couldn't reach them when we were not home (nothing like displaying your trash up on a pedestal for all to see), but now I've invented a better solution. 

The trash can now goes inside a microwave cart, which is just tall enough to house it, but not tall enough to allow it room to be tipped over. This doesn't protect the shorter recycling bin, however, so the search continues.

Exhibit B: the rug where Bubalou loves to poop, decorated with the ever-present bottle of vinegar spray that we use to clean up dog messes. I put the spray bottle on top of the rug to remind me that it's still wet so I don't step on it. This occurs pretty much every other day, so the vinegar bottle is basically part of the decor. Word to the wise: if you ever come to visit my house, don't lie down on this rug, no matter how tired you might be.

Speaking of spray bottles, one bottle is never enough in a house full of dogs. A similar bottle of water is always close by, ready to be deployed on any dog who has emitted one too many earsplitting yaps. My boyfriend is singularly unhelpful on this front—despite being the dog janitor, he does absolutely nothing to curb their annoying noises. His idea of discipline is to chuckle and tell them "Look, you made mommy mad" when I finally bring the spray bottle into action. Guess who's the "mean mom" in our family.

With a great number of dog supplies comes a great need for storage. Our dogs have earned a whole cabinet all to themselves, wherein we keep the leashes, the collars, the brushes, the medicines, the two kinds of food, the rags and the dog towels and all the spray bottles that are necessary for keeping two dogs happy, healthy, and well fed, while simultaneously keeping the house that they live in something resembling clean. Below, you see my large former pie safe, now dedicated to dog storage.

 

Oh, and that huge pink box next to it? That's the latest batch of diaper liners for Bubalou, which we must somehow stuff in the cabinet along with all the other detritus.

One of the nicest features of my house is the bay window. When I first got the house, I anticipated filling it up with a treasure trove of knick-knacks and a veritable jungle of houseplants. The only problem was, the dogs love it as much as I do. Every chance they get, they are leaping into the window, where they wreak all kinds of havoc, knocking over all the knick-knacks in their eagerness to demonstrate their earsplitting-yapping ability to every casual passer-by. In January, when my jungle of houseplants had all but died from the cold, I covered the window with an insulating plastic sheet, and was quite proud of my work, until the dogs decided to tear it to ribbons in their futile efforts to scratch their way into the hearts of the aforementioned passers-by.

All that remains of my once beautiful window covering.

I had to wage a border war. On a trip to Community Forklift, I chanced to find a collection of metal grates (for 5 dollars!) that happened to be the perfect size to cover the opening of the bay window. I have no idea what the grates were for originally, but now they are a fence. Yes, I have what amounts to bars on my window—not to deter burglars, just to deter my own stupid dogs.

One of the dog battles that I finally won – at great cost to myself – was the battle of the couch cushions. For some reason, the dogs could never content themselves with sitting on the seat of the couch. Oh, no, they had to scramble up to the back and sit on the back cushions until they were squished and deformed into hideous blobs with dog-sized indentations. For a while there, my entire vocabulary seemed to consist of "Jack! Get off the back of the couch!" until finally one day, I simply removed the back cushions entirely.

I left one cushion turned sideways for old-times' sake.
The dogs can sit on that one all they want, cause it's certainly
not comfortable that way for anyone else!

Now, the only things on the couch are slipcovers (to keep the dog fur and drool stains at bay), a blanket (to cover the one spot where the slipcovers don't reach) a couple of pillows (with pictures of the dogs on them naturally), whatever squeaky toy they saw fit to bring up there with them today, and, of course, the dogs themselves.

To get the couch actually in a state fit for human use is such an ordeal that, well, it's just  a dog couch now.
 

As if the dog couch wasn't enough, each dog gets his own personal (dogal?) bed.

 
The dog beds take up all of the floor space next to our human bed...for absolutely no reason, because when we go to sleep, this is how it looks.

Notice that's a dog butt where my body should be, and another one where my head should be. If that doesn't prove I've let dogs take over my life, I don't know what does!

Musings on Midnight Mayhem

Not too long ago, I was reading a story. A very masterfully written and gripping story, by a very talented someone who just might read this blog once in a while.

In this story, I encountered the following line: "I screamed at the top of my lungs. My neighbors' lights went on immediately afterward and I ran back inside."

It got me thinking. This is a classic scene in lots of books, movies, TV shows, and other works of fiction. Loud noise from somewhere outside a residential area, followed by lights turning on everywhere (assuming the action occurs at night). But does it happen in real life?

Let's set up the scenario. You're resting in bed in your house (if you don't live in a house, you'll have to use your imagination). It's a little after bedtime, but you're not really asleep yet. You're just settling in when you hear loud banging and yelling coming from the direction of the neighbors. What do you do?

I know what I would do. I would crawl out of my bed, creep to the window (or door or whatever portal was required to give me a line of sight into my neighbor's territory) and try to see what was going on without being observed myself. If the disturbance was coming from a place I couldn't see, I'd put my ear to the wall or floor and be quiet, hoping I could hear some information. That would be my first instinct, which I would act on without engaging in very much thought.

This is not what happens in stories, and movies, and TV shows, and pretty much any work of fiction I've ever encountered. In these kinds of made-up scenarios, the first thing that happens when someone creates a ruckus at night, is the neighbors all start turning on their lights.

Is this really what people do when their environment is disturbed? Light up giant glowing beacons and make huge targets of themselves?

I'm not saying, of course, that every neighborhood disturbance is a dangerous situation that requires stealth and self-protection strategies, but I am saying that anyone with a lick of sense would probably want to exercise a bit of discretion and not immediately reveal their position (or their nosiness) before even knowing what was going on. 

What do you think, friends and readers? Am I the odd one out here, or is this just a classic case of "Everyone in the world of fiction has to be stupid, or how else would we have horror films?"

Adventures in Cooking: Peanut Butter Bars

This recipe is ideal for when you've been craving good chocolate chip cookies for like 3 weeks straight, but whenever you go to MOM's, they are out of your favorite brand, so on your third visit, you finally settle for the other brand, which is so awful you decide to swear off reviewing Giant Cookies because you just can't take the disappointment any more, and when you try to go to Safeway to get some of their delicious chocolate chip cookies which are even better than their chocolate candy cookies, they are so overcooked you leave without buying them, so finally after days of being too busy to buy or make cookies, you are finally on your last nerve and you vow to make some cookies of your own. Yeah, this recipe is perfect for that.

Ingredients

1 ¾ c. flour
1 ¼ c. packed brown sugar
¾ c. peanut butter
½ c. butter, softened
3 Tbsp. milk
1 egg
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
¾ tsp. salt
¾ tsp. baking soda
1 c. chocolate chips

Directions

Mix ingredients together.

Wow, this recipe is so simple—let's make it a bit more complicated.

1. Start midway down the list, with the peanut butter, then work on the butter.
2. It would be wasteful to get out a whole new bowl just to soften the butter, so just cut the stick in half and microwave it in the lid of your peanut butter jar, which you have used up anyway.
   
   
   
   
   Nothing can go wrong with that!
   
   
   
   Nope, nothing went wrong with that!
3. Scrape the thoroughly melted butter into the bowl.
4. You don't have milk, so use 3 Tbsp. egg nog.
5. Move back up to the top of the list and add the flour.
6. Make sure that your brown sugar has completely solidified since the last time you used it (how did that happen?) and somehow manage to scrape the approximation of a cup and a fourth into some measuring cups.
7. Boy, this dough is sure dryer than you remember it being! Add a splash of water to make it easier to mix. Then remember you haven't added the egg yet, which would contribute the missing amount of liquid.
8. You don't have an egg, so use vegan egg substitute.
9. Don't bother measuring out the vanilla, just estimate with your eyeballs...but be sure to accidentally estimate a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon!
10. Also estimate the salt and baking soda. Baking—despite the drivel they try to sell you about chemical reactions and all that nonsense, it's not an exact science!
11. Now the dough is too soft, so balance out that added water with a light dusting of flour.
12. Toss in a few handfuls of chocolate chips.

Tada! That was easy. Hardly an Adventure in Cooking at all!

Pour batter into a greased 9x13" baking pan.

Bake at 375° for around 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. But you don't have a toothpick either, so just guess you'll need 5 more minutes, then remove the pan when the top is slightly browner than you would like it.

Let cool, then put in refrigerator. For some reason this type of cookie has a much nicer texture when kept cold. Eat it, and wish you'd taken it out of the oven after the original 20 minutes.

...But there is a great big ARRRRRRR!

"No news is good news," they say, but whoever does say that probably isn't freezing their buns off waiting to find out when their furnace is going to be fixed. I, however, am.

On Friday, when I hadn't heard anything from the warranty company regarding my claim for my pooped-out furnace, I called them. At 4:00 in the afternoon, I finally got the news: despite having had a whole day to do it, my furnace technician had not yet contacted my warranty company with a status report, and without a report, my warranty company could not move forward with authorizing the repair. This news was assuredly not good. Perhaps "no news" would have actually been better, as in that case, my ignorance could have possibly been bliss. Now I'm not feeling bliss so much as a seething rage.

At that time, I was told by the HMS representative that I might have to wait up to 48 hours for any kind of response. At 54 hours, I called again, and was given the heartening news that the report still had not been filed, and they would call me as soon as they had an update. Meanwhile the temperature outside was 32 degrees. For something that qualified as an "emergency" 3 days before, it certainly seemed to be of no importance to anyone now.

Finally, Monday morning, I was notified that my claim had gone to their "research department," to determine whether my policy would cover the replacement. When asked how long that would take, the representative guessed it would probably be about one business day.

Well, thanks, HMS! I may not have any heat, but by now, I could probably construct a cozy snowsuit out of red tape.

How does someone function under conditions like these? Well, let me tell you!

Something that I learned from the technician's visit was that if your furnace is overheating, it might not be enough to just turn it off and back on again (the first trick that every IT professional turns to when trying to solve a problem). The rollout switch (the thing responsible for turning off the burners when it overheats) needs to be reset by hand, and can't be accessed without taking the front plate off the unit. The tech showed me the flames "rolling out" (how the switch gets its name) as well as how to reach in underneath (when the burners are no longer lit, of course!) and reset the switch. 

As he was speaking, you could see his face change as he realized, "OMG, I'm just teaching this nice lady how to set her house on fire." As he kept talking, his advice changed from, "Here's how to do it," to "You should probably only do this when you can be downstairs to keep an eye on it, " to "You really shouldn't do this at all."

But it was too late! I did it! I'm not going to let a little fire hazard stand between me and being warm!

So, since the tech's visit, I began visiting my furnace every time it crapped out, to reset the rollout switch and give my geriatric piece of HVAC equipment another chance at life. When the tech came, the furnace only would run for 10-15 minutes before overheating, so as you can imagine, it never got very warm in the house, and I was required to be constantly on the alert for cold-air-blowing (as well as, I guess, fires). It wasn't long, though, before I learned a trick to make this process more efficient.

When I began writing my last blog post and started looking online for the names of furnace parts so I could accurately describe what was going on, I ran across this tidbit of advice: "Do not close off more than 20 percent of the registers in your house. This can cause high resistance and unnecessary heat build-up in the furnace." Well, shiver me timbers! As a rule, I have always closed almost all the registers in my house (the better to keep a tropical level of heat, but only in the rooms I spend the most time in). I decided to open a couple of the vents and see if this would enable the furnace to run longer.

It seemed to work! Friday evening, the furnace ran consistently right up until its scheduled shutoff time. Saturday morning, I had less luck—I had to reset the rollout switch one time, but after that, it was smooth sailing.

That is, until the carbon monoxide detector went off. I'll keep this part brief so as not to terrify those who value my life, but suffice it to say that no one was harmed by any toxic fumes. Since the carbon monoxide incident on Friday, I've been much more creative with my thermal maintenance.

My new strategy for keeping warm involves lots of strategic window-covering and uncovering (not particularly helpful on a gloomy day like today), 2 space heaters, a heat lamp, and liberal use of the oven.

This has kept the house a nice toasty 58 degrees (its lowest temp so far was 54, which is what the thermostat read when I got up this morning), and I hope it will do the job until my replacement furnace arrives on (fingers crossed!) Thursday.

I have to give HMS credit; while it took forever and a day for the HVAC people to send in the proper forms (or whatever mysterious behind-the-scenes things they do when submitting claims to HMS), it was only a matter of hours from the time my claim went to the research department, before I received another call to let me know my claim would be covered.

That's right, I'm getting a new furnace for free! Free plus 1,567 dollars in required upgrades and modifications.

There's no "fun" in "furnace"

Sometimes, you try to pat yourself on the back, and you end up dislocating your shoulder.

I probably should not have posted the list of things I've accomplished around the house, because it must have awoken the angry housing gods. Less than 36 hours after my post, I got up to get dressed in the morning, and noticed cold air blowing out of my heat vent. With a sinking feeling, I checked the thermostat and confirmed that it was only 64 degrees in the house—definitely not warm enough for the furnace to be on its cool-down cycle already.

I stayed calm! I troubleshot my furnace like a pro, and this is what I concluded:

1. It was blowing cold air even though it was not warm enough in the house
2. The burners inside the furnace were not burning
3. It would not turn off, even when I set the thermostat to OFF.

I consulted the internet about this somewhat bizarre behavior, and I determined that there were 2 likely causes.

1. The furnace could have overheated due to a clogged filter
2. The thermostat could be sending faulty signals to the heater, which is likely in the case of low batteries

Well, the first condition was easy enough to test. I took out the filter and examined it—clean as a whistle! The second test took me a while. Since my thermostat wasn't flashing a low battery signal, I disregarded the batteries and just assumed that if anything was broken, it was the thermostat itself, seeing as it looked like it had a few years under its belt. Fortunately, I have a backup thermostat (the one I bought for the apartment), so I took all the wires and batteries out of the existing thermostat and put them in the new one. The new thermostat kept flickering and beeping and wouldn't do anything right, so finally I conceded that maybe the batteries were the problem. I installed new batteries, and the thermostat behaved normally, so I re-hooked up the old thermostat, using the new batteries this time. This resulted in no change—the furnace kept blowing cold air incessantly. After messing around with the thermostats for a while, I was reasonably certain that they were working as they should, because I was hearing the appropriate "clicks" when they were cycling on and off.

Given that the furnace is "probably as old as you are," (as a technician said to me once) and that I'd been advised to replace it by every single qualified person who ever looked at it, I was pretty sure that the furnace had finally lost its mind and was in need of professional help. I was also hoping that there was something so wrong with it that my home warranty would finally cover its replacement, which was the whole reason that I'd been given the home warranty in the first place.

Apparently the housing gods aren't completely irate with me, because they did wait until a 60+ degree day to knock my furnace out of commission, and the warranty company was able to get me an appointment to have it looked at the very same day. 

The tech who visited used a lot of words that I immediately forgot, but the gist of it was: flames are blowing out of my furnace in the wrong direction, causing parts of it to overheat, and triggering a safety switch to turn off the flames and blow cold air to cool itself down. The reason the flames are misbehaving is likely a crack or leak somewhere. 

The takeaway from this story is the following: If your heater is blowing cold air, the burners might not be working, and if your heater won't turn off, the thermostat might not be working. But if your heater is blowing cold air AND won't turn off, it's probably because it's been overheating, and there are more reasons for overheating than simple clogged filter.

What this means for me is, I can't avoid it any more; this time I really need to replace the furnace.

Sadly, though, this is not something that can be done immediately. First, the repair company needs to check with the warranty company to find out if the replacement will be covered. Then, they'll need to order the new unit and perform various feats of bureaucracy, and I probably can't expect to have a fully functioning heater for a week or more. While I'm waiting, I expect to be very cold. 

 

Rest assured this will be a story in installments. Keep your eyes open for follow-up posts, and in the meantime, keep the home fires burning! Or not, as the case may be.

My 7-month checked-list

Today, I have owned my house for 7 months. When I bought it, it didn't seem like a fixer-upper, but it turned out to be (my boyfriend and I nicknamed it the Bubalou house, because it's so cute but so needy)! So after I began discovering all the problems, I set a personal goal of doing one house project a day. Sometimes it was cleaning up the mess the previous owners left behind; sometimes it was just the necessary day-to-day cleaning. Sometimes it was a big semi-construction project; sometimes it's just making yet another shopping trip to Home Depot. For the first 4 weeks, it was mainly just trying to get my dishwasher to work. But yes, for around 3 months, I basically worked on my house in some capacity every day.

The daily goals kind of fell by the wayside when I began constructing an epic Halloween costume, but there's still plenty more to do, and I'm continuing to plug away (if at a less strenuous pace).
Being a cheapskate and priding myself on my creativity, I refuse to enlist professional help for all but the most difficult jobs (no, the dishwasher saga didn't teach me anything, and yes, I did consent to calling a technician when the air conditioner broke, and yes, of course it did.) which means I've been McGuyvering a lot of DIY solutions to things that I probably shouldn't be!

• "Waterproofed" the bathroom window ledge, by which I mean I glued a piece of painted wood to it and coated the edges with silicone.

  

  No water's gonna gather on that window ledge, now that there's
  an angled piece of wood and lumps of silicone all over it!

• "Improved" the ventilation around the attic, which basically involved poking the huge sheets of insulation with a stick.
• "Insulated" the hole where an attic fan should be but isn't. This involved salvaging all the insulation from the two dishwashers that I discarded during my dishwasher project, folding them up and stuffing them into the space behind the fan grate.
• Grounded all the outlets Started an outlet-grounding project with high hopes and the aid of someone who knew slightly more about wiring than me, but after a series of snafus, settled for replacing just three of the 2-prong outlets with GFCI outlets.
• Braced poorly made and poorly installed window screens so they could actually serve as screens instead of leaving gaping holes for bugs to fly through
• Delegated the task of building a shed ramp (from salvaged nails and lumber found in backyard) to a visiting helper
• Reattached all parts of shed ramp with screws after they got loose
• Repaired the holey storm door screen with a needle and thread (later cutting new pieces of screen and gluing them on in a very attractive patchwork!)

  

  Wow, take a look at that artful screen fix!

• Made a new threshold for the storm door with glue and a discarded piece of a friend's closet (it fell off after a couple months)
• Hung three towel bars (all free, thanks to Freecycle and me taking the one I bought for my old house with me when I moved)
• Tightened loose door hinges all around the house and replaced missing screws
• Cleaned up the messy paint jobs all around the house
• Cleaned (by removing years' of dust and dead cockroaches) and repaired (by straightening out the very deformed metal dampers) two heat vents

Eventually, though, I had to concede that some projects do require the purchase of brand new materials. Armed with about 300 dollars in Home Depot gift cards, I was able to accomplish the following:

• Restarted the jammed sink disposal (it's easy once you have the right size hex key!)
• Sealed the shed ramp with new wood sealant when it began to get mushy after it rained
• Made one window screen from kit
• Re-screened one window screen (using new screen and a screening tool but salvaged spline)
• Opened a permanently sealed heat vent and added a (new) closeable grate
• Re-bolted the toilet to the floor (with a new bolt kit, 2 wax rings, and lots and lots and lots of help)

  

  Nothing like a perfectly sized cap over your closet bolt, eh?

My friend tells me I'll have to take down my blog if I ever want to sell my house, because there are so many incriminating things in it! The easier solution would be to just stop writing about how horrible my house is. But I won't!

I tell every embarrassing story, because I can! And I write down every list of accomplishments, not because I imagine anyone will be interested, but just because it makes me feel better about the huge quantity of work that I have yet to do. I've made such progress, surely one day this struggle will come to an end!

Right?

Right?

OK, I guess I'm gonna go worry about my plumbing now. Laters!

13 things men can darn well wear if they want to

I was a little bit outraged when I read this article, "13 things men should stop wearing." I'm almost certain (at least I'd like to hope) it was written as a backlash against patronizing articles (some even written by a man!) describing things women shouldn't wear, which have been making the rounds among my fashion/women's publications for as long as I've been reading them.

But really!? If the overwhelming consensus (as it seems to be, according to what I've read) is "Forget the rules! Women can wear whatever we want to wear and we need to stop letting society tell us we're ugly!", then how does turning the tables on men help the cause? Haven't we had enough with the negativity?

I have a different cause—absolute fashion freedom for everyone—and a blog post to go with it. Inspired by the original snarky article, here is a slightly different list...of things I think men should try wearing as soon as they can! Please read, enjoy, and pass it on to a man in your life (along with the shiniest shirt you can get your hands on)!

1. Deep V-Neck T-Shirts
Nothing wrong with that! If women are allowed to wear shirts that look like this, I don't see why men can't either.

2. Cute Graphic T-Shirts
If the only T-shirts it's socially acceptable for a man to wear are the ones that are emblazoned with macho imagery and sarcastic messages, that leaves very little room for self-expression. Let's expand the offerings so that men can wear pretty florals and kitty cats, and then there will be no need for them to settle for fake CBGB shirts.

3. Colorful Suits
Are you bored with black, brown, charcoal, and black? I am! I was looking through some catalog images from the 1970's, and was awed by the colors on the men's suits! We should have more of that!

4. Button-Down Vests...over nothing else
One of the sexist policies that really gets me going is the one that says women are allowed to show up to a nice establishment wearing short dresses and sleeveless tops, but men have to be fully covered in pants and sleeves. Not only does this perpetuate the belief that women are objects to be looked at; it's also needlessly restrictive to men. Men are the ones with the higher baseline body temperatures; they should totally be allowed to wear comfortable. breathable clothes, and show some skin at restaurants. Maybe the way to make this point is to wear dress vests as shirts. Maybe it's not, but I still think it's a fun idea.

5. Shiny Dress Shirts
 These were also derided by the original article. Once upon a time, I too, opposed shiny dress shirts for men. Mainly because they were associated with "those guys at the club who women warn each other about in the bathroom." Then I realized, if more upstanding gentlemen were to sport this style, it wouldn't have such a douchey reputation. There's nothing inherently wrong with shiny fabric; it's just the people that have always tended to wear it. Let's buck this trend! Sirs, go ahead and shine on the outside the same way you shine on the inside!

6. Vintage Shoes
Women's shoes are designed to last a year and then have to be replaced. Men's shoes are made to last for decades. If the square-toed dress shoes you bought when you graduated high school are still working for you today, don't be ashamed they're no longer trendy, be proud that you've saved countless cheap vinyl imitations from the landfill! But also, don't be afraid to wear pointed toes or even round ones if that floats your boat.

7. Baggy, High-Water Jeans...with cargo pockets!
There was a time when "mom jeans" for women were an extreme faux pas. And then, voila! All of a sudden mom jeans became the coolest thing in women's fashion. So men, if gender equality is real, then you are completely entitled to wear baggy jeans with high hemlines. Maybe you'll start a new trend! Or you can just go back to an old one and bring back cargo pants. If your pants mean you'll stop trying to cram your entire livelihood into my purse every time we go out, I'm 100% in favor.

8. Skinny Jeans
 The very opinionated writers of the original article seem to think you're not allowed to wear baggy jeans, and you're not allowed to wear skinny jeans. What's left? You might as well just walk around naked. Men, please don't walk around naked. I think skinny jeans are a very acceptable alternative.

9. White Jeans
Oh, and you're not allowed to wear white jeans either...says the snarkicle. But I say if that's the case, you might as well just give up on life and wear your bed sheets around town...or just never get out of bed at all. Honestly! With so many rules, no wonder men's fashion is boring! I don't have a problem with white jeans. Just make sure you can't see your boxers through the fabric. I hear this is a problem.

10. Jean Shorts
And why the heck not? ... The crickets are saying, "That's what I thought."

11. Purses
So cargo shorts aren't your style? I strongly suggest you give handbags a try. If you think purses are "too feminine," stuff the largest one you can find with things like samurai swords and electronic gadgets, and you can show off your strength by hefting your "manbag" around town. You'll be a purse convert before you know it!

12. Sandals that aren't flip flops
I can't remember any time when men were encouraged to wear any kind of sandal at all other than shower shoes. Go ahead and live a little! Let your feet air out, and flaunt those Berkenstocks!

13. Fitted Jerseys
 Sure, there are definitely better things you can wear than a sports jersey. More flattering. Less polyester. Less likely to get you beat up in the wrong city. Less...related to sports. My catty counterpart would have you believe that sports jerseys are unacceptable garb. But my realistic self recognizes that nothing can stand between a male and his wholehearted expression of his irrational love for his team. However, if you must wear a sports jersey, you can at least make an effort to look good in it. They make "girly" sports jerseys with a tailored fit for female fans, maybe it's time to start making similarly well fitting jerseys for male fans. Then you could flaunt your team spirit without sacrificing those good looks that I know are hiding just underneath!

Ginger Molasses Cookie from Amaretti Desserts

Over Thanksgiving, I took a trip to Jacksonville, Florida, and promptly developed a cold (of course!) I waited until my congestion cleared (temporarily, by virtue of lots of drugs, no thanks to my sluggish immune system) to try this cookie, and it was worth the wait.

I could taste the ginger! It was so gingery! The flavor, plus the sweetness, mixed in with no scanty amount of salt, made for a taste explosion!

The cookie was maybe just a tad too chewy, but I'll take that over crunchy any day. Bonus sugar crystals on top rounded out the texture.

I'm not certain of the price, as I bought several things from amaretti desserts, and the receipt I received was not itemized, but the three items I bought (a bar, a whoopie pie, and this Giant Cookie) totaled 10$. Since a cookie is usually cheaper than the other items, I'll round its price down to 3$. Not a perfect price for 115g, but quite a bit above average. I guess we can't win 'em all.

The Bottom Line

Taste:
Texture:
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Valerie's Adventures in Cooking: Zucchini Quiche

When faced with a lot of vegetables and nothing to do with them, some sort of baked concoction with lots of cheese is usually my answer. I may not like cooking, but I do like my quiche! My last Adventure in Quiching turned out solidly on the awful side, so let's see if I've learned any lessons.

For this recipe, you will need:

• 1 zucchini, aged to perfection
• 1 package of Pillsbury croissant dough
• 1 package of refrigerated egg whites
• 1 bag of shredded mozzarella.
• 1 boyfriend

The boyfriend is necessary because he is the reason you have a whole zucchini, despite your not liking zucchini. He is also the reason you have a giant bag of mozzarella cheese that you still haven't used up almost 2 years after you bought it at Costco, 3 packages of Pillsbury croissant dough that have been sitting around for almost a year after you strongly advised him not to buy so much croissant dough at Costco, and the six cartons of refrigerated egg whites that he just recently bought at Costco.

But why, you are asking, is he the reason you have a single lonesome zucchini, which is surely not the kind of thing you pick up at Costco? The answer for that is his new Vitamix blender, with which he decided to make pureed soup. The original soup recipe called for zucchini, and you dutifully bought him a zucchini before he changed his mind and decided to go with a zucchini-free recipe. He said he'd find a use for the zucchini, but 3 weeks later, it is still relaxing in the fridge, so it is time for action!

Cut the zucchini into slices. Discard any parts that are too "relaxed."

Dump some mozzarella cheese into a bowl. The mozzarella should be frozen mostly solid, because naturally when you keep it around for years on end, you can't keep it in the refrigerator or it will go bad. Remove the mozzarella cheese from the bowl and hack at it with a knife until it has broken up into manageable clumps. Return the manageable clumps to the bowl.

Find the one container of egg whites that is already opened, and dump it over the cheese. This will hopefully be enough egg whites to make a quiche, because it seems wasteful to open a second carton. Mix until the clumps of cheese have mostly separated and are distributed uniformly.

Now it's time for putting the quiche into a crust! A serious cook would make a crust from scratch. A lazy cook would use a pre-made pie crust. But an adventurous cook would try to get rid of another thing that's been sitting in the fridge too long, and make her crust out of refrigerated croissant dough!

Open the package of croissant dough and separate it into its pre-formed little triangles. Arrange the triangles in the bottom of an 8-inch pie pan. They will not cover the pan neatly, so rip them to pieces as necessary until the pan is covered.

Then lay about half of the slices of zucchini in a layer on top of the crust.

Top the zucchini with half the cheese/egg mixture.

Lay the remaining zucchini slices in another layer, and top with the remaining cheese/eggs.

Bake at 350° for 30 minutes.

At the end of 30 minutes, realize your crust is browning to a crisp, but the middle of the quiche doesn't look quite solid yet. No worries! You have aluminum pie crust protectors! Too bad you didn't think to use them at the beginning of the baking, but then again, they don't really fit over the handles on your ergonomic pie tin, so they probably wouldn't do much protecting in this precarious position anyway. Still no worries! Ornamental pie crust protectors are better than no pie crust protectors, and at least they will have the satisfaction of being used for the first time as they hover over the edges of your quiche for the last 10 minutes of baking!

(Bake for 10 minutes, or until the center looks solid and the edges are strikingly overdone.)

The verdict: Zucchini is not quite so unpalatable when buried in lots of browned cheese, but neither does croissant dough make an excellent crust. It got a little soggy, especially near that tricky middle. In any case, it's edible, but there sure is a lot of it! It's a good thing I have a little leftover boyfriend to help me finish it.

It's Whine O'clock!

When I last posted about my likes and dislikes in June, all I had was a list of likes. This time I'll turn the tables and round things out with some more dislikes.

1. Biking into a cloud of gnats

This item is at the top of my list right now, because, 'tis the season for clouds of bugs...apparently. Every year when it starts to turn cool out, I suddenly find my commute home beset by inordinately large numbers of fruit flies. Where's the fruit? I don't know, but its absence doesn't seem to be stopping them any! I don't begrudge these creatures their right to congregate, but if they could do it somewhere out of the path of my lungs, I'd be much obliged.

2. Foldover waistbands

It seems simple enough...almost irrelevant...among the many things fashion gives us, but I have several pairs of pants with a foldover waist (yoga pants are an especially common culprit, but a foldover waist has also "graced" my bikini bottoms) and every time I wear them, all they bring me is grief. Just try to keep the folded part folded in the right spot! It will invariably unfold itself and bulk up your midsection, or merely start to bunch up in an annoyingly asymmetrical way. The aesthetic benefit of having a band of fabric wrapped around your butt is surely outweighed by the annoyance of having to adjust it every two minutes.

3. Slideshow websites

The web developer in me must needs gripe about something website-related, and this time, it's those sites in which all their information is presented in the form of a slideshow. If you ever click on sponsored posts on Facebook (I've fallen victim to this trick more times than I can count!), you know what I'm talking about. Unfortunately (actually, probably fortunately), I can't find a specific example right now, but I can describe it for you. You view the first slide, and it has something informative about the subject you came to read about. If you're lucky, it has a whole sentence, but sometimes, the answer inexplicably drags out...





...Click the "Next" Button...






...to the next slide!

As if having to click 2 or three times to complete every sentence isn't bad enough, now imagine that every portion of the sentence you want to read contains a large image (usually only vaguely related to the topic) and is supported by approximately 3,026 ads. The agonizing slowness with which these fragments of information load is enough to make anyone go crazy.

4. People buying limited-edition things for the sole purpose of reselling them at a profit

This is one of those unfortunate and pretty-much-inevitable downsides to a free market economy. Anyone who can afford to buy something at any price is allowed to...and equally allowed to sell it at any price, even if that price is hundreds of times the actual value. But just because you can do something, that doesn't mean you should! This is a classic case of the haves (those with the resources and position to acquire something extremely rare) profiting from the have nots (the ones who only have the means to buy something on the overinflated secondary market. Perhaps I'm naive (and perhaps I'm still bitter about the house-flippers who made getting a new home at an affordable price way more difficult than it should have been), but I believe in kindness and sharing and making an honest living.

5. Weighted doors

After that "weighty" subject, let's go on to something weighty in a different way—doors that shut themselves. I'm not a fan. This kind of door has afflicted me too many times, mostly resulting in me getting locked out of a place because I stepped out briefly without a key and found it had swung shut behind me. That's the worst-case scenario, but weighted doors also give meaning to the saying, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" When you're trying to pass an overzealous door with an armful of stuff and don't have the momentum or the foresight to swing it wide open before you pass through, the door hitting you on the way out is exactly what will happen.

6. Cleaning up other people's hair

Whether you live with roommates, significant others, or random strangers who pay to stay in your home for a few days, you can be sure of one thing: at some point, you will be forced to clean up their hair. People seem to love to shed their hair everywhere, but especially in the bathroom. They shave and leave the cuttings all over the sink. They shower and deposit what seems like the entire contents of their head in the drain. Cleaning up these messes is disgusting beyond measure, and frequently, not even necessary. For those of you who don't know it, I'm going to share a little trick: Brush your hair before you shower. That way all the loose hairs will end up in your brush, not snaking down into the drain for someone else to pick up. Oh, and also, when you shave, it's not acceptable to leave your cuttings where they fell. I don't understand why it's still necessary to explain this to people, but apparently I'm one of only a few people in the world who doesn't enjoy all their surfaces studded with hair.

7. Tipping

Last gripe, and again it's a financial one: I hate being obligated to tip all the people who perform a service. I spent several years of my life working for 2 dollars an hour as a tipped employee, so I understand that not tipping is an unacceptable behavior in our current system, but I am angry that tipping ever got ingrained in the system in the first place. The vast majority of people who work for tips are paid by their employers. They shouldn't also be paid by their customers who are also paying their employers. For any industry, forcing your employees to live off the kindness of strangers is a scoundrelly practice, and forcing your customers to have to choose what's an appropriate payment for your employees is scoundrelly as well. Life would be so much simpler (and there would be so much less ill will between restaurant servers and customers, just as an example) if the cash only flowed one way.

Schmackary's Cookies: Red Velvet

In my second review of Schmackary's cookies, I admit I got a little lazy. (In my third review, I didn't actually bother to review them at all!) Because, to be honest, it was, as I wrote in my notes while chowing down, "nothing special."

That's not to say I didn't enjoy it or I didn't eat all of it, but I didn't detect any notes of anything beyond the usual.

The cookie was a bit too dry around the edges, crumbling a bit too much for my taste, but the middle was soft as I like it.

The best part was the cream cheese icing, because, of course, cream cheese makes everything better!

And the white chocolate chunks imparted a fun texture that – maybe, just maybe, took it beyond the usual after all.

The Bottom Line

Taste:
Texture:
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Schmackary's Cookies: Classic Chocolate Chip and Candied Yam

While on a brief one-day trip to New York City, I was encouraged to visit a cookie shop called Schmackary's. As a Giant Cookie reviewer, I couldn't say no, and, though I intended to only try one or two of its wares, my boyfriend and I ended up bringing home 5 varieties of Giant Cookie, plus two bags of macaroons. Schmackary's was selling all its cookies for the price of $2.75 each or 2 for 5$; they also had a box of day-old cookies that were advertised at a dollar each. From this box, I picked up a plastic-wrapped bundle of two "candied yam" cookies and a 2-pack of "red velvet" cookies. From the main case, I asked for the obligatory plain chocolate chip cookie, and my boyfriend rounded off the purchase with two more flavors.

The first one I tried, the day after I returned home, was the candied yam cookie.

Since there will be several reviews about Schmackary's I'll try to be brief, but I have a lot to say about the candied yam cookies! 

Schmackary's Candied Yam Cookies 

As soon as I began peeling away the plastic wrap, I realized that these were almost certainly the messiest cookies I ever opened. They were topped by marshmallow fluff, which adhered to everything around it like glue. But the mess was worth it, because I really enjoyed eating the cookies! I did it with a fork, and would not recommend anyone try these cookies without a proper utensil at the ready.

The marshmallow cream added a layer of flavor to what was already a quite tasty cookie. The sweet potato essence was strange for a cookie, but strange in a good way! I definitely wouldn't mind eating more cookies that taste like sweet potatoes.

As for the texture, well, it was gluten free. If you're not familiar with gluten-free baked goods, a lot of them tend to have a sort of powdery texture, and this one was no exception. The signature gluten-free-feel might not be for everyone, but I actually enjoy it. Beyond the powderiness, the overall consistency of the cookie was satisfyingly chewy. There were crumbs of nuts dispersed throughout to add a little crunch, and also bits of what I assume were the yams themselves. Of all the aspects of this cookie, I liked the yams the least, being just a bit too tough to really enjoy.

I'll be rating all of Schmackary's cookies on the 2-for-five price, which puts a single cookie (102 grams, based on the ones I weighed) at 2.45¢ per gram. It's a fairly high price, but what else do you expect for greatness?

The Bottom Line

Taste:
Texture:
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Schmackary's chocolate chip cookie

I can visit no cookie shop without trying a basic chocolate chip cookie, but Schmackary's did theirs just a little differently (I can see that being different is a big part of their business model).

The first bite was pretty unremarkable, but it was followed immediately by a blast of salt. I'm guessing that they must have used coarse sea salt granules, judging from its sporadic, but powerful, appearance.

The chocolate chunks were everything you could expect from chocolate chunks, flavorful and firm.

I wasn't crazy about the flavor of the batter, but the chocolate chunks and the salt mostly made up for its lackluster cookie base

When I subjected the cookie to my crumble test, it snapped rather than bent (meaning it may be just a tad too hard for my liking), but held together and didn't drop a lot of crumbs, so overall it gets a positive vote, especially towards the center, which was thick and chewy.

The Bottom Line

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