Deep Thoughts: The Skinny Jeans and Tzitzit Edition

The great thing about having a smartphone is that you get to do things like blog while waiting on a ridiculously long line for the coffee you absolutely need to survive. Except that then you get your coffee, and the post ends up lost in your e-mail drafts until you have a procrastinating urge. So, updated and a few days late but here it is:

• Skinny jeans and hanging-out tzitzit: not cool.

• If you get a parking ticket while in the Coffee Bean near my apartment, you get a free coffee. (Luckily I do not know this from personal experience but from watching it happen to someone else.)

• I need to come up with an exit strategy for Shabbos meals that last 5 and a half hours. The company was nice, but that is just way too long.
  

• Why do people not read Craigslist ads before responding? No, you cannot take my spot on the lease, much to my chagrin, if you do not keep kosher and don't even know what it is.

• Read this: "The Only Thing That Can Stop This Asteroid Is Your Liberal Arts Degree." It's pretty fantastic.

• Also, as I was recently reminded by my sister, courtesy of Legally Blonde: "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands, they just don't." So, I am starting to run (which is, um, a generous term for it) in the hopes that happy people who exercise also don't kill their roommates.

• I have the most amazing friends in the world who send me homemade cookies and cards and other gifts from the better coast.
  

Update:

A gchat conversation with my sister in response to this post:

Sis: let's start running together :)

me: um sure

one problem

Sis: you cant run?

you dont have sneakers?

you already killed your roommates so you don't need to run anymore?

me: we live in different states

On Web sites and the End of an Era

So, it's 12:45 a.m., and I should be writing a paper that somehow applies organization theory to newsroom—the problem being I have no idea how to do this. So, obviously, instead, I am mourning the AP's decision to change its style from Web site to website. (The truth is, I think it was time. But I am sad because it does feel like the end of an era.) Though I do love that multiple friends sent me this information, including one who revealed in so doing that she follows the AP on Twitter. And one who sent me this video, which is old but amazing and I can't believe it took me three years to see.

Deep Thoughts: The Inhaling Cleaning Products Edition

• In about a week, I have developed a deep, deep hatred for a capella music, and I am really sad that sefira is interfering with my Glee watching.

• Overheard in the coffee shop: "My Starbucks name is Norm." (Also, free coffee at Starbucks if you bring in your own mug on April 15th!)
  

• I love how L.A. people, like people of the better coast, say, "The weather is getting nice now." Except the weather has been nice here. Perpetually. This is L.A. A temperature hike of 10 degrees is very different than a temperature hike of 60 degrees. Which brings me to my new favorite quote: "When it's 100 degrees in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. When it's 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it's still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles."

• Question of the day: Will two hours of cleaning and $20 worth of cleaning products and a borrowed air purifier get rid of a non-existent smell so I can escape this apartment?

• A gchat conversation with a friend: Me: I am pretty sure I have inhaled an unsafe amount of cleaning products. Friend: I doubt the chemicals are worse than all the junk food and Diet Coke you put into your body, so don't worry about it.

• What should I buy with the $10 Amazon gift card I got for filling out a survey for my car insurance company? I was thinking one of those back massagers that go on the back of a chair, but most of the cheap ones are designed for cars and, well, I don't really think it would be safe for me to drive and get a back massage at the same time.

• I can now get a diploma in innovation. Do you want fries with that?

It's That Time of the Semester

You know, the time when you forget why you're doing this in the first place and wonder how you are possibly going to write 60-70 pages of interesting papers in the next few weeks and whether there is enough coffee in the world to get you through. Also the time when you start procrastinating like crazy instead of getting work done. I need to turn off my Internet. And all parts of my brain except the part that spews papers. But instead I will post this comic:

Just a Note to Say I'm Still Alive

This is just a note to let you know I have not dropped off the face of the Earth. I was busy seeing friends and family and cherry blossoms (!) in The City and our nation's capital over Pesach and am now back on the lesser (and not even warmer anymore) coast, trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to fight exhaustion and get back to work, all while trying to convince the girl who was going to take over my lease so I could escape the roommates from hell that my apartment does not have a "pungent trashy smell" and while trying to avoid the siren call of all the good (non-chametz she'avar alav haPesach) stuff to be found at Target (even without being allowed to buy leavened foodstuffs, I pretty much walk in there and instantaneously lower my bank account).

Re-reading that sentence induces further exhaustion. And the need for a grammar book. Anyhow, I'll be back to regularly blogging sometime soon (read: just as soon as an intense desire to procrastinate hits) but just wanted to let you know that my two-week hiatus does not mean I am dead or anything.

PSA: My information on Target seems to have been faulty (though gotten from a legitimate source). The Star K, among others, says that you can buy chametz from Target.