How much sushi can you make at home for $6?
Answers:
Homemade tuna sushi
That's not me - that's the girl.
I’ve never liked my hair. And I think it knows it – it’s not receding, it’s trying to get away.
My earliest memory about my hair specifically was in grade 7. There was a girl in my class, and I thought she was great – she was the prettiest girl in the whole school.
And I thought “Wow, I wish I could hang out with her – We’d, um, go somewhere, um, not sure where, and then we’d um, do something, um, not quite sure what, and er, um… um.”
But before I had a chance to make my move, we had a new student transfer in – he was Italian and he had hair like out of a shampoo ad.
And of course, she fell for him.
And I was convinced it was because he had straight hair, and because I had curly, unmanageable hair. It had to be the hair. It couldn’t be that I was shy and could barely talk to a girl, whereas he was confident and had that whole “foreign-person” vibe going. No, it was because of the hair.
Also not me - my hair isn't that red.
Fast forward to the future. My hair, what’s left of it, is even more unmanageable. If I let it grow longer than about two inches, it starts bunching up at the side of my head like clown hair; I know this because one of my girlfriends once said to me “I think it’s time for a haircut, Binky the Clown.”
And, what with going to Japan for a month-long vacation, I didn’t want to have to deal with trying to control my uncontrollable hair when I didn’t have 40 lbs of glue to try and make it stick down.
The way I solved this problem before I went to Europe for a two-month trip was to shave it all off. But I wasn’t really in the mood for that. So it was time for the internet…
And I didn’t really find anything useful, other than lots of information about flattening irons (wouldn’t work well on my 2.5 inch hair,) thousand-dollar spa treatments to straighten hair (a bit out of my budget), and, of course, lots of pr0n. Nothing for me here. Yep, ignored the pr0n… yep.
Later, I went to the drug store to pick up some things for the trip, and I took a wrong turn down the haircare aisle and found myself in the “Ethnic Hair Products” section. I didn’t really know such a thing existed, but I was quite pleased it does, because there were tons and tons (metric tons) of hair straightening products.
So, it was me, a Saturday afternoon, and a full-blown chemical warfare assault on my hair …
It’s been a week now, and I’m quite pleased with how my hair behaves. Out of the shower, it just lies there or spikes up. It brushes with no trouble. It needs no product. The only downside is that anytime it gets wet, it smells like sulfur. Apparently I needed to harness the forces of darkness to make my hair straight.
So, grade 7 fantasy crush girl, where are you now?
Before (left) and After (right)
I usually avoid posting commentary on news stories, but I can’t figure this one out…
117 year old school to close due to only 9 students enrolled
The article states that the annual budget for running the school and the enclosing school district (which contains only this school) is $450,000, and that $50,000 per student is not feasible.
My question: Where exactly does that $450,000 go? What are the costs that aren’t obvious?
Total so far: $173,550
California average per-pupil spending: $7,081 [1] (which technically already includes the salaries above, but I’ll be generous – figure this is the cost only of texts, labs, supplies, small capital, &c.)
Times nine students = $63,729
Total so far: $237, 279
Where did the other $212,721 go?
Source for [1]: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080413/news_1n13pupil.html
With exactly two weeks to go until I leave, I’m starting to actually do some planning ;)
I just got home from REI, buying some super-fabric travel clothes that weigh nothing and dry instantly. My goal is to make the whole trip with only one bag. And it looks like I’ll be able to achieve it – I put everything I was taking into the backpack, and it all fit, albeit just barely.
On the plus side, this was a test of packing everything – I’ll pretty much always be wearing some of the clothes I jammed in, unless I decide to become “the naked tourist,” which isn’t too likely.
Here’s my planning map, with embedded Sakura forecast. I still have Sendai marked as “on the itinerary,” but given how far north it is compared to everything else, I think there’s about a 50/50 chance that I’ll give it a pass.
Just some links…
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