srah blah blah

Her Hitler hairdo is/ Making me feel ill

A couple of days ago, Jamelah posted about her haircare routine and said that one way she keeps her gorgeous communist hair in gorgeous communist shape is to only wash it 2-3 times a week. This is a haircare tip I've heard around a lot, but had never put into action. So I tried not washing my hair on Monday, and I just looked like someone who had rolled out of bed before coming to work. I realize that it takes a while for your scalp to catch on that it doesn't have to produce so much oil, but I think I will wait and try this experiment in a season where I don't have to battle both the head-grease and the hat-hair.

That said, someone complimented me on Monday about how nice my hair looked, which I found a bit worrying. Is it just that I'm much more critical of my own hair than casual observers are, or does my hair look even worse when it's clean?

srah - Wednesday, 19 November 2008 - 6:07 PM
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I must remain in close concealment/ Until I can appear in decent clothing!

Note: If you are reading this in England (or anywhere else where "pants" means "underpants" as opposed to "trousers") you should either substitute "trousers" for "pants" when reading this OR read "pants" as "pants" and laugh uproariously.

A few months ago, my sedentary lifestyle and love for ice cream and french fries caused me to have to go pants-shopping, as all of the pants I had were straining at the waist. I bought several new pairs of pants and retired many others. Now, although I am no less fond of ice cream and french fries (and no less sedentary either) I am finding it difficult to keep these up, and my waist is somewhere between Pants Classic and Pants: The Next Generation, so I can either wear the former and feel a bit snug or I can wear the latter and risk them falling down. After several days of trying to wear Pants 2.0 - stepping on the hems when they sag too low and fearing complete depantsing - desperate measures had to be taken. So, I went to Meijer and bought a belt.

The annoying thing is, I only went up ONE SIZE! Why is there such a slapstickcomedyesque difference between two sizes of pants? Why are there no in-between sizes? And why do I own one pair of pants that has fit me all this time while all the other pants fluctuated? Are they MAGIC PANTS?

srah - Tuesday, 18 November 2008 - 6:23 AM
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Can't think of anything I need/ No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound/ Nothing to eat, no books to read

I received an email from my dad this morning:

Subject: This is what you are getting for Christmas

Message body: We saw an ad for this on TV and thought it was much more useful than a GPS

When I clicked on the link, this is what I saw:

srah - Monday, 17 November 2008 - 7:05 PM
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Oh, they say she died one winter/ When there came a killing frost

I always thought that Fraulein Maria was on crack, but snowflakes that stay on my eyelashes are pretty cool. The first snow of the season has arrived in Srahtown, and it's a very calm, floaty type of snow that blows softly on a gentle breeze, but falls mostly downwards. It's more like movie-snow than the sideways biting snows we'll probably have later this season. My usual snow-behavior consists of shuffling around, facing the ground, with all of my body wrapped up in coats and scarves and only my eyes sticking out. Today, though, I turned my bare face up to collect them, because soft fluffy snowflakes kept landing on my face and lingering for a few seconds before they melted.

srah - Monday, 17 November 2008 - 5:39 PM
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Every time I thought I'd got it made/ It seemed the taste was not so sweet

I've just upgraded from Movable Type 3.3 to 4.21. It wasn't so bad, except that there was an Apache handling thingy¹ that's been set wrong on my server for months and which I've sort of just worked around, but I finally had to figure out today. And then there's the fact that my MT installation only seems to work properly when the www is included in the URL². If you notice anything that doesn't work, please let me know. I may be implementing some fun new stuff here soon!

Update 11/17/08 7:04AM: Comments should be working now! And my stylesheet (which was eaten when I was fiddling with things) has been restored to the latest archive.org version of it, so if you find things that look wonky there, let me know.

srah - Sunday, 16 November 2008 - 7:40 PM
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I like the girls with the boom/ I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom

I went to a football game today, and had to wait in line to use the bathroom at halftime. Unfortunately, the bathrooms were in Port-a-Potty form, but fortunately there were many of them so the lines weren't too long and moved pretty quickly. There was a couple in front of me in line who I didn't pay much attention to until they went into the Port-a-Potty together.

I thought, "Geez, that's weird. I mean, I've been in the situation before where a friend and I might go into a single-user bathroom together, so that we can move things along faster and the second person can be using it while the first person is still washing their hands. I get that. But that's somehow something I feel more comfortable doing with female friends than with a partner. And in this case, the line wasn't so long that it would really speed things up for you both to go in together. Besides, a Port-a-Potty is a really cramped space and it seems like two people would barely even fit in there together, so how would you even be able to maneuver around to take your turns and OH MY GOD, I JUST REALIZED..."

So yes, I am quite dense, but in my defense: ew.

Here is my question to you: Can you think of a place that would be more disgusting to have sex than a Port-a-Potty? The best I've come up with is slaughterhouse, but at least that would be cleaner.

srah - Saturday, 15 November 2008 - 9:17 PM
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You can see I'm in no shape for driving/ Anyway I've got no place to go

It's a good thing I went to China in September, or I would have nothing to blog about in November.

Once upon a time, I came back to Shanghai from the excursion to Nanjing I'd attended with one of the programs I visited. I arrived back in Shanghai around 4pm, then had to catch a taxi to get back to my hotel during rush hour (I probably should have just taken the subway, but - to my great shame - I never learned the subway system in the whole time I was there) . I stood there with my suitcases, waving my hand at the wrist, palm down, which is the typical Shanghainese taxi-waving gesture. After what was probably about 15-20 minutes (but seemed like hours), an empty cab actually came by for once, and actually stopped by me, instead of the fifteen other people standing in the street and waving. I guess looking different from the rest of the population can either work for you or against you, because when you stand out, you're more visible to taxi drivers, but you can also be passed by just because you look different.

The driver stopped and I leaned in and handed him the little hotel card that said, "I AM A STUPID FOREIGNER WHO DOESN'T SPEAK CHINESE, SO PLEASE TAKE ME BACK TO MY HOTEL." He gestured that he could take me, and I got into the front seat, which is something that I'd seen Chinese people do but I had never been quite comfortable with, with my Western taxi-back-seat-riding sensibilities. We drove for a while and got stuck in rush hour traffic, and at some point I happened to look at his dashboard dials and see that his fuel light was on and the needle was dipping dangerously close to E. Every time traffic stopped, I could see the driver getting more agitated, but I couldn't decide if he was really worried, or if I was just projecting. I knew that I would be worried, but maybe he knew his car better than I did, and knew how much further he could go.

I started to imagine what would happen if the car broke down, considering that our only means of communication was my "TAKE ME BACK TO MY HOTEL" card, gesturing and grunting, and my masterful command of counting from 1 to 5. Would he flag down another cab for me? Would he have to call another cab from his taxi company for me? Would he call a tow truck to bring more gas, then continue the drive? How would they get to us, if we we ran out of gas on a huge, wide four-lane road? Would he keep the meter running while we waited for gas? Would he just let me fend for myself? Would one of these other cabs who already had passengers take pity on me and take me along with them? And how would the driver communicate to me what his plans for the continuation of my journey were? Would I get any kind of discount on the cab fare, considering we didn't make it to my final destination? I wished I could communicate to him that it would be okay with me if he stopped for gas, as long as he turned off the meter, but that was way beyond our level of communication.

I then started imagining what was going through his head. What if I run out of gas? How will I communicate with this dumb foreigner who can't even speak Chinese? Does anyone in these other cars speak English? Will they translate for me? Why didn't I get gas? Why is she staying in a hotel out in the boonies of nowhere? She is ruining my life. I wonder if I could go to a gas station with her in the car. I wonder if I could keep the meter running while I did that...

In the end, we made it to the hotel without any trouble, although the tension was building throughout the trip. I just hope that he had enough gas left to get to a station afterwards!

srah - Friday, 14 November 2008 - 6:37 PM
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When I want to run away/ I drive off in my car

You may remember, from last year's NaBloPoMo, my training for and participation in a 5k walk on Thanksgiving. My parents, sister and I all participated in Ann Arbor's Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot 5k Walk/Run on Thanksgiving morning, and it was a nice way to spend some time together and do an activity that we all enjoy, as well as the first time that any of us had walked in a 5k race before.

We started out at a leisurely pace, chatting with each other and with the bicyclist who marked the end of the race group, then continued at a leisurely pace (at one point we saw a group of runners go by in the opposite direction and it turned out they'd already been all the way around Michigan Stadium by the time we got to Hoover) and finished at an extra-leisurely pace once the pressure of the race had been eased, by which I mean they had started tearing down the barriers and had opened the course back up to cars.

That said, Srahfam had a lot of fun and quite enjoyed our little walk in the snow, all bundled up in sweaters and ponchos while the runners sweated in spandex. Finally everyone finished the race. We (Srahfam) managed to each come in last in our age/sex category - except Alfie, who beat someone who had obviously gotten lost or forgot she was participating or decided to do the race on her hands. Then they could finally announce the winners and everyone could go home after waiting - in some cases - over 40 minutes from the time that they finished and the time that Srahfam finally finished.

This year, the race is very emphatically advertised as a 5k run rather than a run/walk. I feel as though I've made a difference in this world!

srah - Thursday, 13 November 2008 - 10:39 PM
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