Modern Hell

I have seen modern hell and it is not pretty.  I went to Ikea yesterday to get some random stuff, for a party I’m holding to look at furniture, the usual.  I went to check out and there the problem began.  There were only self-serve registers – no other choices were available.   I started the process.  One of my items was from the As-Is section, this had to be rung up manually.  I then accidentally double rang an item, for which I needed help.  No bags were in sight but the screen helpfully asked me, “how many had I used?”  Well, none yet, but I guessed one might be sufficient.  There was no paper to wrap more fragile objects.   People were standing behind me just waiting for me to leave so I dumped  everything back in the cart to drag it out to my car.  I put everything in my car and then continued on with errands.  Well, when I got home, I had a mess in the trunk and one of my serving platters was chipped.  I absolutely blame the shoddiness of the check-out for this problem.  Now I am debating whether it is worth the $10 to try to return it or just write it off as a lost cause (and not go back to Hell-kea again).

Forced Change

I don’t know why it bothers me, but it does.  Whole Foods no longer offers plastic bags.  Apparently this is a company wide change, though my local store just started.  I just envision a future when the youth won’t even know what a plastic bag is and how plentiful they once were.  I know it’s better for the environment, blah, blah, blah.  I just don’t like change.

Chatting

I realized that it has been about 15 years that I have been doing online chatting.  Today, it’s with gchat (gmail chat), but once upon a time it was with bulletin boards and freenets.  The topic came around to chatbots.  And I remembered Maur.  I went looking for the dragon so I could chat with him (and have him toast me), but he seems to be gone.  All I could find were old references to a website in Canada that no longer works.   Sigh.  I feel nostalgic.  I hope he’s still around somewhere.

Anywhere, USA

I am currently visiting my parents, and it could almost be Anywhere, USA.  We went to the mall yesterday.  It felt just like any other shopping center I go to.   There were only a few things that made it seem like it had a specific city location, instead of literally being anywhere.  The hottest talk of the town is our basketball team in the NBA Finals.  Workers at stores, people walking about were talking about it.  However, if this wasn’t occurring right now, there would be much less information to determine where in the country you were.  There was a new store that was opening and it was generating a lot of excitement.  But since I live somewhere that already had that store for many years, I would guess I was someplace other than the coasts.  The ethnic mix of the crowd indicated I was in the midwest.  It was a more upscale shopping center, so I knew I was in a large enough metropolitan area to support multiple, niche malls.  Beyond those features, I really felt I could be in many cities.  How did everything become so homogenous?

Observations while driving

For work, I had to drive some precious samples to south San Jose a few times and there were a few interesting tidbits from the trip.   I saw an original Mini Cooper and it was tiny, I could barely see it out my side window and my Saturn is small.   There were several Toyota Priuses on the road, they seem to be multiplying at an alarming rate.  I have been dreaming about getting a convertible.  I seem to notice the Mustangs the most, I’m an American girl at heart, I guess.

Online Invitations

I have been using Evite since 1999, which is an eternity in the online sphere. I was an early fan and even got a free Super Bowl Party kit in the snail mail when there were a dot com with too much cash. I was in love. But times have changed and now Evite Sucks. They redid the backend (to make it flashier?) and completely destroyed its functionality. I was not able to copy an old invite and the reminder system was hosed.  It also wouldn’t save my changes. And the ads have been getting overwhelming. Evite, I am officially breaking up with you. In the web world, I have many paramours (Google, TWoP
, etc.) and I am faithful to none of them. But this change required me to find an alternative website. I needed a replacement. I didn’t want a social networking site, just something simple and easy to use.  The best current option I found is mypunchbowl.  I will let it court me and see how it goes.  So far, there are no major gaffes.  I think my friends a little uncertain about the change.

Mannequins

I have been noticing a lot of nipples on mannequins lately.   Some stores (Ann Taylor) have none and some have mixed populations (Macy’s, Nordstrom).  I have yet to find a store that exclusively has nipple mannequins, but that might be for a lack of observation.  I mentioned this to a female friend and she commented that her fiance had pointed it out to her.  I wonder if more would go shopping if more mannequins had nipples.

The Vegas

My trip to Las Vegas for a bachelorette party was fun, but exhausting.  We stayed at Casears Palace mainly stayed on the strip.  I have this love/hate relationship with the Vegas.  I think they pump oxygen into the rooms and casino so that I feel awake, even when I think I should be tired.  But afterward, I feel so tired.   And I can’t point to anything from the trip as being a highlight of something I enjoyed, but at the time, it seemed fun?

The First Bathroom Stall Phenomenon

I work at a company with about 33 employees, of whom 7 are women (plus one more part time).  We moved to a larger facility that has 5 bathroom stalls, including the large handicapped accessible stall.  On average, I see someone else in the bathroom once every 2 weeks, most often just after a long meeting.  The building is only cleaned twice per week, on Wednesdays and Fridays.  When the toilets are cleaned, the seats are left up and there is a blue liquid in the bowl.  I have noticed, what I will call, “The First Bathroom Stall Phenomenon”.   Between any two cleanings, most often, the first bathroom stall will not have been used and there will still be blue liquid in the toilet.  I have always thought that the stalls further from the door were cleaner and had less use.  However, this is not the case in our micro-environment.  The first stall is shunned, in fact.   Does this hold true for the larger population?  Or perhaps we are all picky bathroom users who purposefully shun the first stall.

Las Vegas

I’m going back to Vegas in 2 weeks for a bachelorette party. I am excited about it, because it is with some good friends and Vegas is fun. But this is tempered by the fact that Vegas is incredibly fake. I have been thinking about why my sister and brother-in-law like going there so much. They don’t really gamble much, and then only slots. I think it is because they like familiar things, but it still feels like they are seeing something different. They can see castles, but they don’t have to go to Europe, they can visit the pyramids without going to Egypt and they can always go to McDonald’s for dinner. It’s 100 strip malls packed together and glorified by a factor of one thousand to one million. I hope I’m not too cynical about Las Vegas on this trip.