The Cut

I probably have more important things to blog about, and I realize that I have been absent for like. a long time.

And I have really important updates like the concert via Karaoke Revolution for the Wii that the PH gave last week to KAT on Saturday night when she was exhausted from working all afternoon and evening and we were... well, drunk.

But instead, I'm going to share what I did most recently to my hair.

The Before:

(Although in truth that wasn't immediately before... that was after my last hair cut).

The After:

It was about 7 inches in back, 5 inches in the front.

I'm saving a boatload on shampoo. 

I will be sending out resumes to Internet companies this afternoon...

I had a work meeting this morning in which the topic of whether my company should develop more of a presence on the Internet came up. A lot of the people at the meeting are-- ahem-- quite a bit older than I am and don't really "get" the Internet. They use it rarely, if ever, and don't understand how it's used and why people prefer it over, say, a newspaper.

That's when I chimed in, giving examples of a search I did for a piano tuner, how I read the news not only on my computer, but on my phone, and how it's an easy way to look up local businesses. Then I said, "I never pick up a newspaper. I do everything on-line. I can't remember the last time I read an actual newspaper."

That's when I remembered I work for a newspaper. "Uh," I stammered. "I mean, a newspaper other than ours, of course." We'll see if I still have a job tomorrow.

Welcome to our home. Want to borrow a sweater?

The Pretend Husband and I are notoriously frugal people, especially when it comes to spending what seems like bajillions of dollars on heating oil. Basically, we don't like to do it. So we keep our house at a temperature that we seem to have gotten used to, but leaves our guests blowing into their hands and cutting short their visits. We generally keep our thermostat between 60 and 64 and only bump it above that if people are coming over (although sometimes we forget and have to amuse ourselves by watching everyone's breath until it warms up in the living room).

Anyway, I've been told having the temperature of our (large, inefficient, hard to heat) home kept in the low 60s is crazy. But we put on extra layers, always wear socks or slippers and deal with it.

Except when the PH and I got into bed to take a nap yesterday afternoon and I just.couldn't.warm.up. I had on extra layers and yet my feet were still ice-cold enough to wake the PH out of a deep sleep (he pretends to be angry when I do that, but I know he loves it). After 20 minutes of shivering and not being able to sleep, I decided our bedroom had probably gotten below 60 degrees and I would turn up the heat just a bit. That's when I glanced at the thermometer in our room and noticed it read: 56.

Fifty-six. Although the thermostat was set for 61, our room is far enough away from it that having it get that cold doesn't necessarily kick the heat on. So, I jumped out of bed, ran to the thermostat and, to make up for my misery, jacked it all the way up to 66.

My dreams are now sound tracked by the Super Mario Brothers music....

SJ and I consider ourselves to be fairly classy, mature women. Uproariously funny sometimes, but still, we try to stay classy. And mature. And I think we succeeded...

...until SJ and her husband, J, got a Wii for Christmas. On Sunday, after holiday festivities, too many work hours for yours truly and waaaaaaay too many Christmas cookies, the Pretend Husband and I decided the day was ours to do whatever we wanted. After breakfast with friends, it turned out we wanted to stop by SJ and J's house, rouse SJ out of bed, make fun of her bedhead and mock her as she played some game on Wii (I remember the phrase, "This is a game for 5-year-olds and you're losing" being uttered somewhere in there...)

Then, since we are the proud owners of two Wii controllers while SJ and J are still trying to find a second one, we invited them over to play Super Mario Brothers. Which, oddly enough, SJ and I started playing while the guys watched football in the other room. But the men (10-year-old boys at heart, those two) couldn't resist for long and our game turned into an eight-hour Super Mario Brothers marathon that included SJ's character going through 95 lives (she'll tell you the guys played her character part of the time...), me taking a break to bake cookies, the PH taking a break to make dinner and a short break for all of us to eat dinner before we played one last hour of the game.

We can make fun of the guys all we want for being immature, video game-addicted children, but it turns out that if you give us a chilly Sunday with nothing to do, you're likely to find these two classy, mature ladies right there on the couch next to them.

In case your resolutions are as trite as mine...

I received the best, best, best piece of cleaning advice ever the other day. Which, normally wouldn't make the blog except for A) One of my resolutions for the new year is to keep the house cleaner and better organized and B) This is the only cleaning tip that has ever changed my life. So, on my scale, it's worth sharing.

The Pretend Husband was in complete charge of choosing our appliances (seriously, the first time I saw them was when they were delivered) not only because he's the cook in the family but because he likes to research the crap out of things and appliances bore me (I bought myself a couple of Saturday afternoons of bliss while he stalked appliance salesmen). Anyway, like everyone else in the world, he bought stainless steel appliances. Which drive me crazy because they never look clean, what with all the streaks, fingerprints, etc.

And here's the advice that is going to change your life too (uh, but only if you actually own stainless steel appliances...) Here's how you clean them. Buy a microfiber cloth. Spray water on the face of the appliance. Wipe with the cloth.

That's it. So not only do you get shiny appliances, but you don't waste your life cleaning. Since I hate to clean, any other amazing tips are welcome.