Pulling my weight

I live in a certain situation that I am very fortunate to be in...in which I do not pay rent but I have a couch with my unofficial name on it. "How generous!" you say..you are correct. So, to pull my own weight around here I have taken on the housekeeping duties of a french maid. Dishes, bed making, dusting (feather duster not included), tidying up, laundry, watering, and most recently---MAINTENANCE. 

The toilet's broken....the handle's fell off and there's no connection to the actual flushy thingy.

NOTE: Not actual diagram, way more complex and no rubber ball at bottom. 

Today was the day to right this wrong! I proceded to Staples where I knew I could find some cheap superglue and possibly some tiestraps. I needed 2 tiestraps...one for the toilet and the other for.....that's not important right now. Bottom line, it was $10 for 100 tie straps so I did what an self-respecting woman would do: Stole 2 yellow ones and stuffed them in my boardshorts. 

For those of you who are staunchly oppposed to theft, I will offer this one "that's karma bitch!" tale.....I ended up supergluing my thumb and index together with a sheet of toilet paper between the two. 

It won't come off...and that's what she said...it actually is because I said it and I am a "she". 

Oh and superglue doesn't work on metal...which is what the handle is made of. KARMA. 

Click here for a very relevant treat!

Oh Canada!

Our rental car in Canada is a hybrid. Nuf said. 

If everybody lived like me..

According to this awesome site, http://www.ecofoot.org/, if everybody lived like me we'd need more than 5 planets to sustain our lives. After you take their quiz, it will generate a picture of your life followed by statistics of how much land, food, water, etc you consume. Click on mine to see how selfish I am...but seriously it has action items and ways to reduce your carbon footprint, more than anything it is a resource rich website and a good kick in the pants (are only guys supposed to use that?).

Ultimate Geek Girl Blogger Contest

 Win AGAIN with the ultimate geek girl!

Ultimate Geek Girl blog is an interesting compliation of internet fun facts, life hacks, and more. I found the commuting to work blog entry to be especially helpful considering my new lust for the free-wheeling life choice of mine. Another entry regarding fun sites to visit before starting up school was great as well. Rondee.com is a site using Skype-like VOIP but with conference call function and no video. There was also a link to a free sms site in case you forget to bring your phone to class and still want to text out of boredom. On the whole, I enjoyed this blog and even more on the whole I am only writing this review of the blog in order to be eligible to win Ultimate Geek Girl’s blog contest. So in many ways this isn’t the most interesting blog entry of mine, but if I win the contest….well then things could get VERY interesting….In conclusion (and you can tell by now that the restrictions are a minimum of 150 words)…thank you for your time and warnomore! That’s 180 words!

New Blog: Off The Beaten Path

I've grown weary of this nonsense blog and therefore I have created another one which I will update quite frequently with oftentimes cheap, possibly free, and always fun things to do in LA such as 

1) Hikes in the Ballona Wetlands (Anja!)

2) Free Metro Passes & Guided Art Walking Tour

3) Roller-skate Dance Clubs in Venice

4) Free Popcorn at Bars

5) A band that let's you step in for any of their members & play

6) Ethiopian Soul Food Jazz Club

7) $6 Burger, Fries, & 2 Pints Mondays

8) 39 cent Martinis Downtown

9) Beach Boardwalk Sunset Bike Rides

10) ...and more.

Those are just the off-the-cuff ones, it only gets better from here. 

Anyways, here's the link.  

Social Commentary

One quick question...perhaps this is more "parental commentary", but why did my parents sign me up for California Driving School (pictured above). It's a yellow taxi that I had to drive up and down past my high school peers and they laughingly looked on. Move over leather belt, this is child abuse at it's finest. I saw this car on the freeway this morning and it really brought all those feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing to the forefront again. 

While I love coca-cola, and there's no finer way to sip it than through a bottle like so...I truly believe they might control more of the world than we think. For example, when I lived in Brazil, there was a 2 liter of Coke on the table at every meal. I ended up suffereing from extreme dehydration because of this dietary shift...though I was covinced it was Dengue Fever. Coke is an interesting product, click here for Snopes for more "cokelore". 

High schoolers (cousin pictured above) have way too many books! It's unbelievable. One day they'll do SAT prep in Kindergarten if they don't already. Either we need to let kids be kids, or we should come out with a new business that reinforces book-bag straps... because something's gonna give. 

Amazing Website For City Info

I stumbled upon this CITY DATA website (without actually using StumbleUpon.com) and it is unbelievably thorough. 

Here is just a few of the interesting statistics it has formulated for the zipcode 90045.  

The website look itself is jenky, but it has data galore. Put in your zipcode and be amazed at the bigger picture.