Anger Management Fund Annual Report

Have you been wondering how my Anger Management Fund is doing? You should be; it's been over a year since I last mentioned it! Since the purchases I make with the Anger Management Fund are pretty much always clothing and accessories, I've been wanting to wait until I've actually used them and gotten a photo before blogging about them. But (I guess because they're generally also frivolous purchases of non-essential items with limited use), most of them are still sitting around unused. And since the list is getting pretty long and I'd like to pare it down, I might as well share its status.

Two and a half years after establishment, it's still doing its intended job. Not all the time—sometimes you just need to have a major conniption (like when you just drove 4 hours home from a weekend trip and all you want to do is relax, but instead you've found out that your robotic vacuum cleaner somehow shut itself down a mere foot from its base, apparently because it ran over its own power strip and turned it off, and thus utterly failed to make it into your bedroom, which is consequently still covered with dog fur and crumbs, which just reminds you of how the dog got into your food while you were at a rest stop and chewed up a nasty pastrami sandwich all over your coat, which is also, incidentally, covered with dog fur and now crumbs, and you still have to pull the laundry from the basement because you didn't have time to finish it before you left, and the kitchen, which was never tidy to begin with, now looks like a war zone because your boyfriend has decided that, instead of putting the recyclables in the recycle bin, which you just went through a lot of effort to empty after also cleaning your rabbit's cage, because heaven forbid that something could actually be clean and ready to use when you get home, he will scatter the recyclables all over the kitchen to supposedly recycle at some undisclosed point in the future!)

But for other, littler things, getting a few bucks as a consolation prize does help me calm down. I've been keeping a tally of what these little things are, and they are mostly minor annoyances that belong, essentially, to just 2 categories: Forgetting/losing things, and Minor accidents to my person/possessions.

Observe: From the summer of 2013 to the summer of 2014, I accumulated 5-dollar credits for each of the following annoying events (I also had a few odd bucks left over from my last Fund expenditures):

• For just missing the train and having to wait 10 minutes for the next one and being about 30 minutes late to my destination.
• For having to drive all the way home from halfway to the store to get a gift card I thought I'd left behind, only to find it stuck to the back of the cell phone I had taken with me.
• For walking into walls all day.
• For putting my phone on the charger all night before a trip only to find that the charger hadn't been plugged in.
• For leaving my bike basket and my cabbage in New Jersey.
• For forgetting to pick up bunny food from the grocery store.
• For the air bag light going on again a week after I took the car to the shop, after having gone off right before taking the car to the shop.
• For having to stop for traffic 6 times on my ride to work when usually it's only once.
• For wearing only high heels to walk to the bus (when usually I wear sneakers) on the one day the bus was early (thus missing the bus because I couldn't move fast enough).
• For spilling my cookies all over the floor and then finding my potted plant had spilled all over my bag and then spilling the dirt all over the floor while trying to clean it up.
• For one dress ruining itself and another dress in the washer thanks to dye transfer, when I'd never even gotten to wear the other dress, since I had spilled oil on it within 15 minutes of putting it on for the first time, and had spent the last three days patiently removing the oil stain.

And for all these tribulations, I bought myself:

This wild-looking swimsuit for $19.39. I have worn it, but only for a 30-minute jaunt in a hot tub. http://www.dresslily.com/solid-color-bikini-swimming-suit-product358218.html
 

A pair of fun fun fun thigh-high socks with rainbow on the top, for 5 dollars. Unfortunately, rainbow thigh-highs have proved the most unwearable accessory I've ever owned, since you can't wear thigh-highs to a rave (they'll fall down with all the dancing) but they're too crazy to wear anywhere else!
 

A hilarious crop top with cat and galaxy print for $12.05. It's pretty much the embodiment of tackiness, and I do have every intention of wearing this one to a rave. http://www.romwe.com/ROMWE-Galaxy-Cat-Print-Sleeveless-Black-T-shirt-p-79889-cat-669.html
 

This rainbow-colored, ultra-embellished, cat-covered (of course) hippie shoulder bag from a store in Pittsburgh, for 18 dollars. Fortunately, I don't have any trepidations about carrying crazy purses, so this one will probably be gracing my shoulder for the entire month of April!

As of today, the fund is still up 75 dollars and I'm feeling pretty happy. You hear that, fate? No more sending trouble my way, because I've had enough in the past to last me at least a few more purchases!

Sassy ginger molasses sandwich cookie

Sassy indeed.

This ginger cookie was one of the sandwich cookies I bought when I discovered the new brand at my local organic grocery store, and like its chocolate sibling, the force was strong with this one. And by "the force," I mean the taste of ginger.

If you've ever eaten a mouthful of powdered ginger before, well, that's kind of how it felt eating this cookie. Not very sweet, but very strong. And even a little salty. At least it was not too spicy in the painful way. After a few bites, I got used to the flavor, especially because the lemon filling was delicious. Although it didn't taste much like lemon, it was still the high point of this cookie, being rich, creamy, and satisfyingly solid around the edges.

The texture of the treat as a whole, however, was another story. It was annoyingly crumbly, falling apart all over its package before I even opened it. The softness of the filling filling kind of made up for the excessive dryness of the baked part—if only this cookie had been all filling, I would have loved it! But it was not. It was too messy to eat in the normal way; after a few bites, I put it on a plate and finished it with a fork. That, however, made even the icing crumble! Perhaps I'll give it another chance later, since I ate it 2 days after its sell-by date.

The Bottom Line

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The Llama Immortal

Today I'm going to share a little DIY project I did a few weeks ago. I don't often share DIY's here, but I do lots of them over on my fashion blog, since most of the finished products end up being wearable. But occasionally, instead remaking clothes into other clothes, I make clothes into something else entirely.

Case in point: The llama sweatshirt!

It was an oversized monstrosity with two-toned sleeves that I got way back when bulky sweatshirts were cool, and I wore it until they weren't any more. Last fall, my honorary aunt posted a throwback pic on Facebook of me wearing said monstrosity, so now you can see it in all its original glory.

I have a vague recollection of the sleeves being pilled and ugly and the fit being embarrassing before I finally decided to retire it. But I couldn't bear to retire the llama graphic as well, so I cut it out and kept it in my sewing table.

Then earlier this year, facing an ugly unused picture hook in my wall and an aversion to paying for art, I decided to get crafty.

A pair of jeans I had already mutilated in a failed refashion made the backdrop, the old cut-out llama was glued onto the center, a dowel salvaged from an old clothes-drying rack formed the support rods, and some string cut from too-long curtain cords held it all together. Tada! From unwanted sweatshirt to the perfect-sized wall hanging!

Triple Chocolate Nirvana vegan sandwich cookie

Still hungry for Giant Cookie reviews? Here's a cookie I tried before I even went to Iceland.

While shopping at Mom's Organic Market, we found a large collection of vegan sandwich cookies which I'd never seen before, and best of all, they were giant! I couldn't decide among all the flavors, but my boyfriend wanted this one, so I did. Just like last time, he went straight for the chocolate cookie, which wouldn't have been my first choice, and, even more so than last time, there was too much chocolate for me.

It almost had the feel of raw cacao. The flavor was kind of bitter—very similar, actually, to the ABC double chocolate cookie.

As for the texture, I liked that better. It was crunchy around the edges, soft and chewy everywhere else, the filling even softer, and had chocolate chips to enliven the mouth feel.

For a small-batch vegan cookie, the price wasn't half-bad at only $3.99 for the entire 215-gram sandwich, adding up to 1.86¢ a gram.

The Bottom Line

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Iceland

I've talked about the cookies—now let's talk about the vacation! Actually, let's talk first about what the vacation failed at!
My boyfriend called me into his office one day a few months ago to ask if I wanted to go on a trip. This is not an unusual thing, but this time the location really captured my imagination. Iceland, land of fire and, well, ice. You might be wondering why a reptilian soul like myself would ever consider traveling to a place like Iceland – ever, let alone in March – but I do love me some rocks, and Iceland is well known for its spectacular geological features. Also, there was the promise of seeing the northern lights and even puffins! Prolific hot springs offered a counterpoint to the cold weather, and also, the airfare was impressively low. So yes, even though I expected it to be a less than enjoyable climate, I was excited about the trip.

I had also recently purchased a Lytro first generation camera and was looking forward to the opportunity to try out a new type of photography (and go on a vacation without a monster wannabe SLR dragging me down). I had grand plans of taking fabulous after-focus photos, processing them into works of art, and then writing a compelling narrative that would be told through the captions of the pictures.

Sadly, my hopes were dashed in a number of ways. First, though I had been expecting cold weather, I had not known at all about the biting wind or the added chill of near-constant rain. Even bundled up in my puffiest coat, I spent most of the trip, even when indoors, runny-nosed and chilled to the bone. Consequently, I was frequently too cold to dedicate much effort to the cause of photography. Most of the photos I did take turned out grainy and blurry (and some were obliterated entirely by what I can only believe was a software error). The next blow was when I found out the captions on Lytro.com are limited to 140 characters each—hardly enough for a compelling narrative.

So, somewhat less impressively than I'd hoped, I'll just be sharing the photos (with their non-narrative but still informative captions) at Lytro.com. The cool thing about the "living pictures" is that you can change the focus on them at your whim, and even watch little animations if you so desire.

And then, as time and my interest level permits over the next few days, I might top off the whole production with a few more photos taken with other cameras.


Blurry though it may be, here is one of my favorite photos from Iceland. You can see more in my Lytro album!

2 Icelandic packaged cookies

Súkkulaðibitakaka

Fittingly for a Giant Cookie, the name of this one is quite a mouthful (true of many things in Iceland), but my Google Translate skills reveal its meaning to be something along the lines of "Chocolate bit cake". I am beginning to think Icelandic does not have a word for cookie.

This was actually the fourth and final Giant Cookie I purchased in Iceland. I would have been content with the three others (two of which I have already reviewed), but my boyfriend wanted to get rid of some of his coins, so he passed this cookie into my hands at a gas station and told me to pay for it wisely. I usually don't go for all-chocolate cookies (I prefer a variety of flavors) but I'm glad he picked this one, because it was yummy!

The middle was really soft and rich, almost like brownie batter. The outside was just a tad more crunchy than I prefer, but I got over that quickly, because it still tasted awesome.

This cookie weighed 90 g and cost 249 kr. (or 1.83$), so it cost 2.03¢ per gram.

The Bottom Line

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Nammiklatti

This chocolate candy cookie was the first cookie I bought in Iceland and the last one I ate. I saved it because it looked the most delicious. Sadly, I was mistaken.

Unlike the other cookies, which pretty much uniformly tasted incredible (I like to think that's because they were made with Icelandic butter, which was so rich it almost reminded me of cheese), this one was only "okay," and reminded me of nothing so much as your standard gas-station packaged cookie.

It did not perform well on the crumble test, spattering bits of itself everywhere when I broke it, and being, overall, a bit too dry. Towards the center it was softer and chewier, but still didn't hold together well.

It had the familiar rich taste of the other Icelandic cookies, but it finished with a slightly dusty aftertaste, which was quite a disappointment.

In case you were wondering, I wasn't so successful at translating the name of this one. "Nammi" apparently means candy, but "Klatti" was not recognized by Google. Maybe there is an Icelandic word for cookie after all, and it just hasn't made it into the dictionary yet!

In any case...

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Glassúrterta

Kolaportið (where I purchased the last cookie I reviewed) is the largest flea market in Iceland. So it's only fitting that that's where I found the largest Giant Cookie I've ever reviewed.

The label on this head-sized confection says "Glassúrterta," which Google Translate tells me means something like "frosted cake," but it looks like a cookie, and, upon eating it, I can confirm that it tastes like a cookie. At a whopping 510 grams, for the 600 króna (converting to about $4.42) I paid for it, it also is the best-value Giant Cookie I've ever reviewed, at only .86¢ per gram!

See my hand for a point of comparison.

Since this cookie was not one that I could consume in one sitting, no matter how much I dislike leaving things unfinished, I cut myself a nice wedge of it as though it were a pie. Crumbs fell everywhere. As I was breaking off my signature bite-sized pieces, more crumbs fell. So failing the Crumble Test is the first shortcoming of this confection.

If you are to examine this cookie from the side, you'd see that it is actually 3 layers of cookie with some kind of red filling between them and a crystallized thin layer of frosting on top. My first bite revealed the delicious taste of strawberry and the crunch of seeds, so it must be jam in between the layers.

I liked the way the extremely sweet jam countered the less-sweet taste of the bread. But if I had to find fault, I would say that even with this clever balancing act going on, the cookie might have been just a tad too sweet.

Although the cookie was chewy, it was a tiny bit too airy. I would have been happy with a smaller, more solid cookie. However, if you can get past that and the failing of the Crumble Test, the mix of other textures within it was very satisfying. The chewiness of the bread, the slight crunch of the frosting, the delightful novelty of mystery seeds—after eating a few of them, I realized they were far too chewy and large to have come from strawberry, so I have no idea what kind of jam this cookie was actually made of....If it had only held together a little better, it would have earned 5 stars.

The Bottom Line

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