Good Booty, Bad Booty

This week I joined the 21^st century - at least, in a musical way. Kathy gave me my Christmas gift early and I'm now the proud owner of an Apple iPod Touch. Isn't it purty? Just like on the commercial!

Look, that's my website I'm browsing! Wait, that's THIS ARTICLE! That's like, taking a picture FORWARD IN TIME! Okay, the iPod Touch is not that good. But, um, I am.

I had delayed getting any sort of MP3 player (the Touch is more than that, of course) because I don't listen to much music. I'm "special needs" when it comes to music; I just don't spend much time with it and my taste is rather unevolved. But I decided I wanted this because, you know, maybe if I had music to listen to, it would make me more successful at working out.

So, Kathy was kind enough to give me my gift early, in the name of health and wellness and cool gadgets. But before I could take advantage of all its groovy features, I had to get used to the iPod Touch.

As it turned out, this involved a lot of swearing for the first day.  Read more »

I have never made a secret over the fact that I hate Wal-Mart. Absolutely hate it. I'm not a fan of their business practices and their stores, with that weird flickery-gray ambiance, feel like an assault on my sense of aesthetics. As a result, I stay away. Actually, I do more than stay away: I even signed a petition to stop them from building in my community. I dislike them that much.

This makes what happened all the more embarrassing. I, Alix North, hater of all things Wal-Mart, had a Wal-Mart shopping adventure. Not a shopping trip, but an adventure. Sigh.  Read more »

Imagine this: You're shopping at the dollar store when you see these glasses in the home improvement section:

Let's see...they are clear glasses with no correction or magnification on the lens. They are oversized. The logo in the upper left corner says, "Tool Bench." What do you think they are?

If you said, "Safety glasses," then I say, "Ha!"  Read more »

Warning: Extreme Feline Cuteness to Follow

Ever tried to by a play structure or bed for your cat? Then you know how hard they are to please. Oh, it's easy to thrill them with a cardboard box and a twist-tie, but when you invest your hard-earned cash on something explicitly designed to be both safe and intriguing for the feline set, you're usually setting yourself up for disappointment.

That's why I was surprised to find that Target, of all places, has been consistently hitting home runs with just about anything we buy from their cat accessories section. Target? A source of safe, compelling, and affordable cat toys? Apparently so!  Read more »

I've needed new jim-jams for a while now. The weather is colder and I need something to snuggle up in - something not ratty and stained from stuff relating to surgery. Ew.

Today, though, I realized in a panic that Spring Preview season is just around the corner, at least it is in the women's apparel mail order catalogs. If you prefer fall/winter wardrobes like I do, spring preview (which starts in December, shockingly enough!) is a horrible time. If there is something you didn't order from the fall collection, you may not be able to get it anymore. Black pants? Long-sleeved knit tops? Good LUCK. You'd think no one had a professional job where you wear that stuff year-round!  Read more »

 

Is this an awesome T-Shirt or what?

Wish I had made it myself, but...it's okay that Lisa Spodak beat me to it. It's part of her Save the Boobs! Fight Breast Cancer! shop at CafePress.com.

http://www.cafepress.com/lisaspoavonwalk
 Read more »

It turns out there are unexpected rewards for early shopping of the holiday aisles -- you find things you can use for other stuff! Target had a "greeting card" bulletin board -- you know, the kind sometimes called a "French memory board" -- in blood red velvet. Oh, wait, I should call it cranberry red, shouldn't I? Whatever. Anyway, I realized it would look PERFECT in my, uh, CRANBERRY red home office! (That's the one that my teenage nephew says looks like chocolate tastes, LOL!)  Read more »

After my computer broke, Kathy talked me out of building a new one and into having someone else build it for me. Gasp! That's heresy! I've built my own systems for twenty years, and the one time I didn't I had all sorts of trouble.  Read more »

UPS delivered an Amazon.com order that had two cool things inside.  Read more »

Our up-converting DVD player, a Toshiba, recently died. It's not very old and I can't figure out what happened to make it stop responding, so we're not getting another Toshiba.

For those who aren't familiar with up-converting DVD players, these are players that perform a conversion on the picture so that the DVDs that you watch don't look like crap on high definition televisions.  Read more »